Posts tagged with "cats"

Patches Gets Put Down

Patches on the couch

Poor Patches has to be put down today. I have the option of being present dur­ing the process, but I real­ly doubt that I could han­dle some­thing like that. He has­n’t stopped pee­ing and poo­ing on my car­pet for the last few weeks, and does­n’t seem to be very hap­py with Dolly attack­ing him every time she sees him. He’s too old to be adopt­ed by any­one; all attempts to find a suit­able own­er have turned up fruit­less. Since he’s so old and does­n’t adapt well to mov­ing any­way, Trolley, Aaron, and I think it’s best that he’s put down now. He’s lived a very good four­teen years, spoiled by Aaron in his child­hood. Nick and I have real­ly enjoyed him being around these last few weeks (aside from the con­stant car­pet elim­i­na­tion). He was very docile, vocal, and affec­tion­ate, always try­ing to sleep on me whether I was awake or not. Sometimes he would fol­low me around the apart­ment when I was doing chores for the chance that I would sit down and turn into a pil­low. When Nick and I would chill on the couch, he would be the third stooge, always hang­ing out with us. I gave Aaron some time alone with Patches and a bag of Temptations. Everyone will def­i­nite­ly miss him.

Patches Keeps Pooing

I’m bring­ing Patches to the vet on Wednesday with Trolley’s help. He’s been shit­ting on the car­pet fair­ly con­sis­tent­ly, in front of Nick’s blue couch. At least he stopped uri­nat­ing, which was much more dif­fi­cult to deal with. I doubt this entire thing is health relat­ed because he does­n’t seem to be in any pain, although cats are known to hide their pain very well. Dolly still attacks him and has some­how become the alpha male of the house. Patches will back off if she wants food but he’s already eat­ing. I wish I could keep him because he’s a very affec­tion­ate cat who’s too old to be moved around any­more, but I think he’s unhap­py here. Rob will hope­ful­ly end up adopt­ing him, because he also grew up with Patches when he was grow­ing up with Aaron.

The Un-Housebroken Cat

Patches pissed all over Nick’s new lily-white futon matress yes­ter­day. Somehow it soaked through the matress and even reached the bot­tom. He’s been incon­sis­tent­ly incon­ti­nent the last week and threw up twice over the week­end. I’m bring­ing him to the vet for a check up to make sure it’s not a blad­der infec­tion or sick­ness. I hope it’s some­thing health relat­ed, as opposed to a men­tal prob­lem, such as fear or ner­vous­ness with Dolly run­ning around. That way it can be fixed, where­as a men­tal prob­lem is much more dif­fi­cult to cure. Dolly is still attack­ing him, half play­ful­ly and half force­ful­ly, but Patches does­n’t like any of it. He’ll sleep on my bed for pro­tec­tion at night, usu­al­ly on my ankles but some­times on my pil­low.

Patches Can Breakdance

Patches stalls

Patches has been hid­ing under my bed less and less. He’s more com­fort­able with his sur­round­ings now, but not quite accus­tomed to Dolly’s aggres­sive play-fight­ing. He thinks that she’s attack­ing him, so he’ll just growl and run away. I’ve got­ten him to be more relaxed by giv­ing him cat­nip. He’ll start rub­bing against me every time he smells it, and when he eats some he does a few kit­ty break danc­ing moves. Sometimes it looks like he’s try­ing to wind­mill into a stall, but I think those are his only moves.

The Hidden Kitty

Dolly hides

Dolly has late­ly been sleep­ing under the rugs. Nick and I will think that she’s miss­ing until we see a large lump in the liv­ing room rug. It’s pret­ty frus­trat­ing because every time I straight­en it out, she’ll just dig under­neath it and mess it all up again.

One thing that she’s been doing for a while is sleep­ing on things to mark them. Every time some­one brings a bag or jack­et into my room, the first thing she’ll do is sniff it out then sleep on it, which I per­son­al­ly see as a viable alter­na­tive to uri­na­tion.