The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
We can’t call her kitten of Doom because Reenie had that TM’ed, so psycho-kitty it is for now. Once she’s realized that hissing doesn’t do shit, she actually turns into a fusspot. Katy thinks that one night we’ll just find her sleeping on our face or something.
With lots and lots of patience.
If all goes as we’re thinking it will go, this feisty little lady will come live with us from January. Name still to be resolved (but must be Russian).
We are now catless. Tolstoy, the patriarch, the grumpy bastard, has passed. He’d been declining in the past weeks, with more yowled confusion, wobbling, vomiting and now using our bed as a litter tray. It was the right decision, at the right time, for the right reasons. It’s what’s best for him right now. That’s what I keep repeating to myself.
He was almost 18. He’d been hit by a car and had his jaw and pelvis broken. He survived a herniated diaphragm, peritonitis, pancreatitis, and a chronic heart murmur. He racked up 5-digit vet bills over the years. At one point, the vet told us we’d be lucky to have him for 6 months. That was 10 years ago.
Stubborn git.
I’m going to miss him.
The pig is no more. We’ve taken the hard decision to put her to sleep. Between the anemia and the potential nasal tumour, things were not going to improve, and she was starting to sneeze huge clots of congealed blood, while having a persistent nose bleed. She passed quietly, while her human was whispering nothings of encouragement in her ear.
The pig’s nose and fur look like a Jackson Pollock painting. Unfortunately, that’s blood, and it doesn’t seem to want to get better.
First news, Reenpig is still catting. Her nose cleared up (for the moment). She’s eating, drinking, demanding attention, walking around more. These are all good things and we’re still keeping a close eye on her in case the situation changes.
She’s also chilling out on her intense dislike of the chonk. He can come reasonably close to her without being hissed at, spat at and beaten up. To a limit, anyway. She’s at the point now where she’s actively winding him up, just sitting beyond the gates we use to separate areas in the flat. Still, progress.
I don’t think that 2023 will be a good year for the cats. Tolstoy is 16, deaf as a post, isn’t as agile on his feet and keeps missing jumps on things, sometimes shits randomly on soft furnishings, and showing signs of dementia (Crap, there’s a dog here! Runs away. 2 minutes later, saunters back, crap, there’s a dog here! Repeat indefinitely). Reenpig is 15, and… signs are not positive from her last vet visit. Because she’s part of our defective pet collection, her test results make no sense whatsoever and the vet is honestly baffled. He’s having to do litterature searches because he doesn’t understand what the tests are saying vs the actual state of the cat. She’s had a constant nosebleed for over two weeks. She’s sneezing and sniffling blood, but at the same time is eating, drinking, demanding fuss. But her bloods shows she’s severely anemic, has almost no platelets, zero coagulation. On paper, she should be bleeding out of every orifice. Except she’s not. And so, probably more tests… We’ll always do what’s best for her, but that might involve hard decisions, sooner than later. This is always the shit part of responsible pet ownership.
