Cat thread

[tgr]

If the cat's more than 4 years old, chances are it's FORL, which means they should do an xray and check if there are more teeth which needs to be extracted while you're at it. if at first they're attacked in that fasion, there's no going back iirc.

At least that's what caused one of my cats to get 4 teeth pulled.

[Trippy]

http://www.break.com/index/cat-hugs-baby-kitten-having-nightmare-2064155

[Minvaren]

I decided to check the one hiding place I hadn't today for a stash of cat toys, as I hadn't seen any of them in weeks.  Jackpot!  I found 7 of those plastic caps from bottled water, one mushroom cork, and a Dr. Pepper bottle cap circa the early 1980s.

Then I closed that hole between the kitchen cabinets up so I don't have to spend 15 minutes fishing all that out again with a yardstick. 

[Sky]

Bart wakes me up every morning around dawn to be fed. I just give him some noms and return to bed. This morning, I was wicked tired and kept putting him off, he was persistent.

I get up to fill his dish...and it wasn't empty.

My cat is a prick.

[Reg]

My cat demands to be fed every day at 6:30pm. It doesn't matter if there's food in his bowl or not. If he doesn't get more he feels cheated.

[Engels]

Cats love routine. It wouldn't really matter if they had food, they want to make sure you've been trained to get up at five am, food or no.

[Sky]

Over the long weekend, I planned on staying up at dawn after he waked me, so I could stack some wood before the day got too hot.

He woke me up at eight that ONE DAY.

I reiterate: he's a prick! My fiancee would point out that I'm the one he learns these things from.

[tgr]

Kitty rescued from a small pipe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViihNz_6F0g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7nJTyB0NbQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvsDpiya0UQ

[Sky]

Normally, Bart enjoys sitting in this box. Pretty typical cat behavior.

He really enjoys sitting in this box when there's a brown bag on it. He likes to sit in the box, under the bag. That's a bit weird.

The last week, he's decided he likes to sit in the bag in the box. The first night he did this, he ended up falling backwards out of the box (in the bag), knocking a bunch of stuff over in the process (remember, he weighs 20lbs). I got laugh cramps.

[Sjofn]

Jack went to the vet today! He peed himself in the carrier! He weighs 13.5 lbs! My weight nazi vet did NOT complain my cat should lose some weight! First time ever for one of my full grown cats! Even Gilly WHEN SHE WAS DYING got me scolded that she was getting a little pudgy! He is a much better patient than Lizzie! Everyone loves him, even when he reeks of cat pee! He apparently doesn't mind getting a bath, as they gave him one and no one got clawed! One side of his mouth has nasty looking gingivitis and the vet is Concerned he might have that weird "teeth irritate their gums" thing because he has like no tartar on his teeth! But she says some cats grow out of it so here's hoping!

It was exciting.

[tgr]

By "teeth irritate their gums" I assume you mean FORL?

If that's the case (this is easy to see via an x-ray) and the cat is between 4 and 8 years old, the main thing to do is just to get the teeth pulled as there's not much else to do since they'll just keep eroding until they fall out, and it's just painful for the cat.

[Sjofn]

No, it's not FORL (although she said he might develop that eventually too, hooray), it's some sort of autoimmune thing where his gums are hypersensitive to plaque or some shit. His actual teeth look good and it's not anything serious yet (he still eats, he doesn't act like he's in any pain at all, etc) so it's just something to keep an eye on for now, apparently. She said one of her own cats had that issue when he was young (Jack is a little over one year old now) and eventually just grew out of it. But if he stops eating or pawing at his mouth or anything else weird, back to the vet for us!

I swear whatever cat that isn't Lizzie is just cursed to have all the health problems. Lizzie's teeth are awesome, for example! Third year in a row now that the vet was like "Eh, she doesn't need a cleaning yet, maybe next year." Jack's pretty healthy too, though, so I shouldn't complain. 

[tgr]

I was actually surprised to learn one of my cats had FORL, she had literally no symptoms, but the xray clearly showed the symptoms.

I guess it's time to take the bitchiest of my cats to the dentist soon, she's 6 or so and in the dangerzone of FORL. I'm not looking forward to that though, she absolutely fucking hates travelling, or any kind of change in her environment whatsoever.

[Arrrgh]

Hats!

http://www.youtube.com/user/shironekoshiro

[Hawkbit]

I posted back in May that one of ours had teeth issues.  I took him in for a cleaning and an extraction or two, and he came back missing nine.  Holy hell he was sore.  Cat is tough as nails, though... wouldn't eat the softened food, so he tried (successfully) to crunch up the food with his palette.  Now that he's healed up, it is obvious he was in some pain.  He's actually really lovey now. 

[Sjofn]

Man, Hawkbit, your cat must really like dry food I guess! Glad he's feeling better in spite of losing so many teeth!

I'm lucky in that my bitchy cat at least is totally fine with change. She's fine in the car, she is fine at the vet ... until they actually start the check up. Then it's all hisses and growls and attempts to climb up on my shoulder for safety. The thing that universally cracks up the vet techs about Lizzie is she will fight and yowl and growl and bite and the instant they let her go, she settles right down, cleans her paw, and acts like nothing in the world was bothering her. Half the time she doesn't even take a step away from where they let her go. And if they pet her, that's fine too. It's very odd. She has Definite Boundries, I guess.

Jack just clamps his tail between his legs and sheds quietly throughout the entire thing.

[Sky]

He weighs 13.5 lbs! My weight nazi vet did NOT complain my cat should lose some weight!

Bart just went for a normal shot deal. He was very chill, we've been going to a new vet that's closer and this time he didn't complain at all for the entire trip. He weighed in at 20.8lbs, up from 20.4. Not only did I not get yelled at for his size (because he's really not all that fat, just a monster sized cat), I have to parade him around for all the technicians to check out. He's a sexy cat and they all love him. He also sheds quietly for them, I think happily praying they don't go for a toe clipping, which is when he gets brutal.

I like the new vet so much more than the chain store style vet we were using before. One main doctor who is a cat saint, she does charity work spaying/neutering strays.

[Sjofn]

Yeah, a bunch of the vet techs who knew Jack when he was a kitten there (I got him out of their kitten bin, same place we got Lizzie) were all cooing over him and fussing over how big he's gotten. He seems monstrous to me, mostly because Lizzie is a small cat I guess. Your Bart is a monster and I bet Ingmar is secretly jealous. He loves enormous cats. :P

[01101010]

Yeah, a bunch of the vet techs who knew Jack when he was a kitten there (I got him out of their kitten bin, same place we got Lizzie) were all cooing over him and fussing over how big he's gotten. He seems monstrous to me, mostly because Lizzie is a small cat I guess. Your Bart is a monster and I bet Ingmar is secretly jealous. He loves enormous cats. :P

Count me in that crowd as well. I really was convinced I'd be getting a Maine Coon or a Savannah after my boys departed, but the way they passed on blew that right off the table. Can't go through that again...

[K9]

How to switch off a cat.

[squirrel]

How to switch off a cat.

That's awesome.

[01101010]

Those fucking clips hurt. Wonder if you get the same effect with another type of clip.

And I actually used to do this type of thing when I would catch my two boys with something they should not have. Grab the scruff and pull them to the ground and remove whatever thing they had in their mouths or were playing with, then release. My best friend who is a vet told me that little nugget. Never thought of using a clip though. 

[Sky]

Does not work on my behemoth. I've tried, because it always worked on other cats I've had. For Bart, it's just leverage for him to get in some bunny kicks on my arm.

[Hawkbit]

Yeah, my fatass cat it won't work on.  He just kicks.

But the other two... oh yeah.  The one I never have to grab that way because she's just sweet all the time.  But Ivan (the Terrible), it works wonders.  He just shuts down and makes these little kitten mew noises for as long as I hold him by the scruff.

[Morfiend]

By "teeth irritate their gums" I assume you mean FORL?

If that's the case (this is easy to see via an x-ray) and the cat is between 4 and 8 years old, the main thing to do is just to get the teeth pulled as there's not much else to do since they'll just keep eroding until they fall out, and it's just painful for the cat.

One of my cats (Ellie) had this. She used to always be kind of bitchy, and never wanted to hang out. After several years trying to treat this with antibiotics and other meds we got her teeth pulled. With in two months, she became super cuddly and almost needy in wanting to hang out with me. I guess she was just in a lot of pain before, and now wants to make up for lost time or something.

The only problem now is that she has become super vocal in her needyness. As in very very vocal. I cant move in my house with out her wanting me to stop and pet her. Sometimes she even follows me around our house meowing until I get her some love. I am debating getting a squertgun or something to try and break her of this new habit.

[apocrypha]

How to switch off a cat.

Does not work on Zebedee. Zebedee pissed off at me trying.



Oh god, the blood. Need... hospital... everything's going dark....

[K9]

 

[Merusk]

On the cats it doesn't work on... how early were they removed from their mothers?  It's supposed to work on all cats because it's an instinct that allows their mothers to move them around as kittens.

[CmdrSlack]

I have two cats. The older one always nabs the younger by the scruff when he's being annoying. The fact that they're both boys makes it look like Feline Oz, but it is still pretty cool.

[Sky]

On the cats it doesn't work on... how early were they removed from their mothers?  It's supposed to work on all cats because it's an instinct that allows their mothers to move them around as kittens.

I'm sure that's at least part of it with Bart. The vet judged him at 7 weeks when we found him in the bushes outside the library, but given his...err...robust frame, I think he may have been even younger. And of course we have no idea if he was dropped off or if he had spent a week on his own, he was ravenously hungry and had a pretty bad cold, so my thought was he had spent at least a few nights out on his own.

That, and I would probably need to use one of these:

[Hawkbit]

The cat it won't work on in our house was supposedly a stray that someone fed for roughly five years before we rescued him.  So we don't have a history of his kittenhood. 

Also, we rescued him because he had been shot with an arrow that went through his neck/back.  Scraped across his clavicles, and they had to remove 2-3 inches of dead skin in that area.  He had the arrow in him for days, likely, so might have some nerve damage up there. 

[Sky]

My evil fiancee just showed me an article for the humane society that has a 5yr old cat that was found stray at 6 weeks and now weighs 19lbs and looks exactly like Bart. I'm tempted to ask them where he came from, because it sounds exactly like Bart, but two years older...

I don't think I could afford to feed 40lbs of cat.

[MuffinMan]

Smeagol the Beagol was 17.5lbs when he was at the vet when this whole eye infection thing started. I think he's getting wise that his toys are for him to lose weight.

[grebo]

Here's a heartwarming thing from Best of Craigslist:

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/1604951280.html

[01101010]

Here's a heartwarming thing from Best of Craigslist:

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/1604951280.html

Though I will say, I hate when people do this shit to cats. Take it to a shelter and leave it on the doorstep there, who the hell leaves them in a parking lot, or dumpster, or side of the road. I'd rather know they had to be put down at a shelter then to possibly freeze to death, abandoned like that. Good outcome though.