I got my first piece of hate mail.

A concerned cat lover let me know in no uncertain terms that putting the cats to sleep was a terrible idea. I wrote back, explaining the decision, and Lloyd thought perhaps I should tell all of the internet the whole story. If you already know this, feel free to skip ahead to tomorrow.

Cricket and Pfennig were 15 1/2 and 14 1/2 years old, respectively. Our vet told us that they were becoming geriatric. They’ve lived through a lot.

About five years ago, Cricket woke me up howling one morning. She was holding her paw like it was broken, and I rushed her to the vet. After they x-rayed her (and she bit them all), they told us she had arthritis. A cortisone shot helped, but he said she needed to keep skinny so it wouldn’t become aggravated. (Remember that part.)

When Pfennig was a wee cat of 3 years old, she had pretty bad urinary problems – peeing all the time, peeing blood and peeing in visitor’s suitcases. We put her on prescription cat food that cleared it up, but she had to be on it for the next 10 or so years, and she got really fat. A year ago, it stopped working. I took her to the vet to find out why she was drinking so much water, and he said she might be diabetic. There were tests he could run, but we decided against that. (Cat lovers, hate me here. I decided against giving my cat a shot everyday. I’m the devil incarnate.)

As you know, over the next year or so, the cats switched bodies. Pfat Pfennig became skinny, and skinny Cricket became fat (aggrevating her arthritis). Then Cricket had the anal gland trouble that required the antibiotics that messed up her system. She never had a regular bowel movement since then, despite yogurt, probiotics and several kinds of expensive cat food. When we took them in again, we were told just to watch her and see how it went. Oh, and Pfennig had a heart murmur. “Watch for strange breathing – it might be her heart.”

Then there was the summer ‘poop all over the basement floor’ issue that preceded the digging of the grave. The vet said that they might just be getting senile. We changed food again, added another litter box, put litter attractant in the boxes, changed the litter daily, and put a step up to the litter box. I should mention that when Cricket would pee, it was not a normal amount of pee. Something was wrong. Daily scooping yielded 3-4 giant bricks of clumped litter.

So now it was down to this. It wasn’t just ‘missing the litter’ box, it was pee in my closet, in Brad’s closet, in the play room, all over two twin guest beds, their chair in the basement, the floor in the tool area, the floor in the library area, the floor in the laundry room. (I got out the blacklight last week, and nearly fainted with what I saw.) Pfennig had become a skinny ghost that only slept and ate, and Cricket had a hard time jumping up onto my lap.

And the barfing. Oh, the barfing. Beth can attest to the barfing.

I loved my cats. I’m sorry that my cheap cat food post made it seem like I only fed them crap. They had other, non-cheap (IAMS, Purina, some organic stuff, and yes- Meow Mix) dry cat food in addition to that (several kinds – nothing worked).

So, forgive this overly-detailed post. I’m left with a freezer full of different kinds of cat foods that didn’t help, various items in different stages of de-stinking, and now, a heap of guilt from a stranger. No, wait. I don’t feel guilty. I just feel sad.

So here’s the wrinkle. I want to take the high road here, so no support of me and no bashing of the letter writer, or vice versa. Your comment must be about your feelings regarding mustard, or I will delete it.

big-cat

Ok, I’ll tell you the Shadowlands troubles. Aside from the crazy long days at work, on Wednesday we had 4 inches of rain come down in a couple of hours. It flooded one of the window wells at school and the basement carpet got wet. That was dealt with (it involved bailing with a bucket), but I was beat before the school day actually began.

Later, I had a meeting at church that night but forgot my folder of notes. After the long meeting, I came home to look for the notebook and found it on one of the guest beds, and noticed a horrible stench. Someone had peed on the bed. So, after this very long day in a series of long days – now I had to rip all the bedding off and go to Wal-Mart to get stench remover. Unfortunately, we hastily moved all the stuff off the bed and didn’t do a thorough check of everything.

I went to work the next day with the folder so I could make some phone calls, and found out that there was old dried pee on the folder and papers. So, ruined notebook and ruined bag. As it turns out, she had been peeing all over that bed and the other one. (I thought it smelled weird in here, but again – I’ve been beat when I get home, and didn’t bother to investigate. I chalked it up to ‘old house smell’.)

Which brings us to the looming doom of the rest of the week. We had the cats put to sleep on Saturday. Dr. Wallman was very kind and understanding, and I am so grateful. Pfennig went quick and quietly, like a balloon letting out its air all at once, but Cricket was awful to the bitter end. She scratched Dr. Wallman and bit Lloyd through the muzzle. She needed a sedative to get the final injection, and that made her barfy and woozy.

It was sad, and I’m still sad, but honestly, since I’ve been mourning their imminent deaths since Cricket had that terrible diarrhea, it’s a bit of a relief to finally be at an end. We’ve ripped up a lot of carpet and thrown out a lot of ruined things.

I loved them very much, though, and will miss them terribly.

Which brings me to how I deal with grief. You guys are awesome, but if you’re local, please don’t call or come to commiserate. I absolutely hate to cry, so I need a heap of alone time, please. Please don’t be offended, it’s just the way it is.

By the way, I just want to say that Lloyd is an awesome husband. In all this awfulness, he has been nothing short of stellar. Perfect score, Lloyd. Perfect score.

The cats have been eating canned cat food for a while now, and I’m down to buying the cheapest stuff they make. I buy the pâté version because if I get the stuff that looks more like meat in gravy, Skinny (a.k.a. Pfennig) just licks off the gravy and goes back to her freezer.

So, I buy the giant cans of Special Kitty. The beef kind is stinky and I’m trying not to buy the tuna kind because apparently we’re killing them off. Instead, I bought the kind that they make by scraping out all the different flavors from the machinery at the cat food factory.
“Super Supper Dinner – because we’re not really sure what’s in it!”

Um….. beef and tuna.

First floor stink: Pfennig has been slowly wasting away these past months, so to get her to eat I’ve been giving them canned cat food, which completely stinks on its own, so I always have smelly cat-food-slimed bowls sitting in my dishwasher waiting for a cycle.  Bleh.  Plus, I actually cooked this weekend so there were food scraps in the trash that stunk.  (Not the compost stuff.)  Plus, I had left the trash cabinet door open and that accounted for 40% of the stink in the air.

Second floor stink: The other 60% is accounted for by the fact that someone peed in my closet, probably last night.  Cat pee festering all day in a hot house makes for a barfy Lauren.  I’m pretty sure Lloyd didn’t do it, so it must have been a cat.

Since our directions to Brad (when we were in Missouri) said to do away with the cats if any toileting was done anywhere other than a litter box, we come to a bit of a crossroads. Either the pee-er has to go or we have to move to another house.

I am fairly sure it was Pfennig.

Or Cricket.

Fifty-fifty.

Stupid cat.

Stupid cat who?

Stupid cat who can’t open the new cat door.

Seriously, those senile cats are driving me nuts.

Here I slaved over making that travesty of a cat door look less like a beer-induced bad idea, but they couldn’t figure out how to use it. Cricket kept trying to open it with her paw (instead of her head), but then her toes got pinched. Pfennig got all panicked because she had to use the litter box, but the door was ‘closed’. My physically pushing their heads through just freaked them out, so yes – I had to demonstrate with my own head.

I think I’ve sunk to a new low.

On Saturday night I woke up at four in the morning convinced that Pfennig was outside and dying. No amount of rationalization could fix it, so – creak, creak creak down the steps to look for her, then outside to call for her. I didn’t find her, but Neighbor Kitty and I had some meaningful moments. Pfennig met me in the kitchen when I got back.

Last night, there was the familiar *skritch*skritch* at the attic fan, and Lloyd caught another bat. I was super-brave this time and watched it all (from the safety of the bathroom), but we couldn’t get a ‘during’ photo because the camera was downstairs. Lloyd brought it back up before he took the bat outside and said, “Take a picture. Tomorrow might be a slow news day.”

It was.

Well, in honor of this special time, my colander gave up the ghost. You might remember this colander from post #501. Well, the old girl just couldn’t take it anymore. I drained pasta for Lloyd’s Famous Pasta Salad that we take to Heit’s Point (which, by the way, I make), and when I went to pick it up, the entire top broke off.

Yippee!!! A new colander is in my future!!

I mean, *sniff* I’ll miss you, Old Faithful.

I complained about it today, too – especially when I noticed my profile. I’ve always had a bumpy nose, and I’m ok with it, but it looks EXCEEDINGLY bumpy to me now. I made Lloyd come look, and he concedes that it might look a tiny, tiny bit swollen. I proceeded to convince him that this witch nose looks nothing like my normal nose. We took photos to document it, but I’ll never ever share those with you. If it continues to look like this, I’m getting a nose job.

So what happened? Did he accidentally hit me in the night? Neither of us remember that. Did I hit myself – waking myself up? I must really hate myself to give me this nose. Hmmm….. what could have happened?

Brad will be staying here while Lloyd and I are in Missouri with our families in July, and I joked to him, “If you find poop twice in the basement or once in a living area, put ‘em down.” Yeah, that was funny until Wednesday night I discovered three piles of poop downstairs. I was pretty upset, and told Lloyd, “This can’t happen.” We’ve been cleaning the litter box daily since the pee episodes, so there’s no reason for her not to use it.

Friday night there was poop and pee downstairs. There was much weeping and Cloroxing on my part, and we decided to take them to the vet in the morning. If this was unfixable, I wanted them both put to sleep. We’re pretty sure it’s Cricket, but what if we only had her put to sleep and it turned out to be Pfennig? That would be bad. (To help us gather evidence, we’ve been using the webcam on my laptop. It has not been helpful so far.)

Anyway, long story made longer, we made an appointment for 11:30, and I wept my way around the morning. I sniffed, “I don’t know where we should bury them outside.” In a very kind voice, Lloyd said, “Lauren, they take care of the bodies.”

I know what that means – they throw them in a dumpster.

“No.” (crumbling into tears)

I sobbingly said that they could go under the hostas, since that’s where they like to sleep when they’re outside.

Lloyd is the best boy in the whole wide world. He went right out and dug a grave.

Well, we took them in and the vet said that ‘inappropriate elimination’ has many reasons, and gave us a couple of things to try. So, we have another litter box in another spot, and are putting some ‘attractant’ in there, because our old cats are becoming too senile and stupid to know what to do. We’re giving it another week or so, and if it keeps happening, we’ll put them to sleep.

That’s it. Warning: If and when this actually does happen, I will not want to talk about it. I hate crying.

Here’s a picture of Pfennig. She sat on my lap while I stared at the keyboard.

How ’bout some ideas for future brain stalls?

In this house, Pfennig has always been fat and stupid pretty, while Cricket has been thinner and meaner. (They have strange dangly pooches on their bellies, but that’s beside the point.) Now, however, Pfennig is scrawny like an old granny and Cricket is hefty, hefty cinch sack. They weigh 7 and 10 pounds, respectively, but at least Cricket isn’t as bad as this. The odd thing is that they eat exactly the same, rationed amount. What’s up with that?

The most interesting part of this whole transformation is that Lloyd is much, much nicer to Pfennig. When she jumps up by him while he’s reading, he snuggles with her. “I don’t like her, I just feel sorry for her,” is his defense.

Oh, I think they need water, too.

To add to the naughty cat list, Cricket found out where I hid the cat food bag.

Whoever would have thought that Pfennig is my favorite?

Regarding water, I’ve got some of those plastic waterers for Pfennig, but Cricket always gets a nasty face infection when she drinks from those.  Tonight I rigged up an all-glass model for her.  I’m sure it will sell millions!

That’s right – a board with a hole cut out of it. The mat is there to catch all the water I spilled when testing it out. I’ll be sure it’s full before we leave. (The bottle, not the mat.)

Everybody pray for us!  We’re going to try driving the whole way in one shot.  I haven’t done that since college.

In the past, Bethany and Macy’s adoration was limited to offering Pfennig limitless Yummy Crunchies, which was right up her alley. (They’re properly leery of Cricket, though. Her name is “Mean Mean Kitty” to all children who visit.) Lately, though, somebody must have told Bethany that you can actually pick up cats. That probably works with most of them, but not our pfatty Pfenning. She has some serious extra poundage on her frame, so when Bethany picks her up like Frieda’s boneless cat from Peanuts, Pfennig has difficutly breathing…. and making her heart beat. Pfennig is used to being Cricket’s punching bag, so she has no way to express her displeasure except by flicking the tip of her tail.  Actually, last time she actually raised a warning paw – but she didn’t know what to do with it.

Thanks, Bethany. You’re nothing but good for my lazy cat!

It is much more pleasant taking Pfennig to the vet than Cricket.  Cricket lashes out at everyone there and one time she bit all the way through my finger.  Pfennig just trembles and shoots fur out in clouds.  This time she got to stay in the box for the whole thing. (We don’t have a cat carrier since I gave it away with a kitten in it once.  The box is far funnier.)

* I should say, “One of the cute vets”, for there are three – all cute.

What could happen if you let eye infections go too long?  Ned can tell you….

Occasionally we give our old, creaky cats some catnip just so we can watch them get high and beat the Meow Mix out of each other.  There’s no greater entertainment.  These photos are pre-attack, when they haven’t quite realized that they’re actually occupying the same rug.