Travel Tips

It's those $%@# Sarah McLachlan ASCPA ads that made me do it, I usually change the channel when those weepy eyed cats and dogs come on but I was somewhere that I couldn't change the channel! So off we went to the humane society, turns out it was a national adoption marathon where the 1st 10 pets adopted out were free and the place was crawling with people looking to adopt a pet, they were sending them home on the spot without the usual waiting period. There weren't any really young kittens but we found a 7 month old pure black longhaired kitten that looked like she wanted to break out of that cage.

A few hours later and disclosure of fleas, tapeworm and an upper respiratory infection (on Nell, not me!), we carted little Nell in her cardboard box home with us. She spent the 1st week quarantined in the bathroom but now that she is out, the two cats are getting along fine much to my relief as Dudley went on a 2 day hunger strike, broken only by some appetite stimulants and the really expensive kind of Fancy Feast which must have some kind of kitty drugs in it.

Nell has turned out to be an odd little cat, she watches TV, gazes at herself in the mirror and has no fear of things like fire or knives but is scared to death of loud noises, going into a room she's never been in before and even my husband. But she's my odd little cat and hopefully she will never swish that big fluffy tail too close to the burner on the stove...

If we had found a boy cat, he would have been Snidely Whiplash but since it's a girl, she is Dudley Do Right's true love, Nell. If I could only get that awful Jodie Foster character out of my head...

I vowed I wasn't getting another animal while I still had Rocky, by then a senior citizen cat, but you know how these things happen, a friend has a stray cat that has kittens and they are so darn cute. That is until they start shredding your curtains, eating your venetian blinds, unrolling the toilet paper, licking the dishes, oh yes, it's coming back to me now! Off to the pet store I went, a bag filled with scratching posts and plastic balls with bells and stuffed mice laced with catnip and I'm sure he'll still shred my curtains and eat my venetian blinds!

Now that Dudley is a grown cat, he's calmed down quite a bit and will now come and sit on my lap while I'm watching TV, that is as long as he is not constrained. He'd love to be an outdoor cat so we compromise and I take him out to the gazebo where he can pretend to be outside. His favorite "tricks" are playing fetch just like a dog, knocking over water glasses, playing in his water dish, drowning his toy mice or throwing them down the heating vent and under the couch.

Since my 1st four cats were all named after characters in the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, I stayed with that theme and the little fellow is named Dudley after Dudley Do-Right, the Canadian mountie who could never quite catch Snidely Whiplash or win the heart of Nell. Mr. Peabody is a strong contender should I ever get another dog...

When we first got married, I went a "little nuts" adopting animals. My first two (sadly departed from us)were strays from a shelter, Natasha, a tortoise shell cat, and Boris, a black cat who thought he could make himself invisible. Then a coworker said "you can't have the spies from Rocky & Bullwinkle without having Rocky and Bullwinkle" and off I went to the shelter again to get them.

RIP 4/7/07

From the moment I saw this little ball of fluff at the local shelter she was my favorite, when she was small and wanted attention, she would climb up my pant leg to be close to me. After she ballooned to 17-18 lbs and this was no longer possible, she would jump on top on my computer and crawl into my lap or hoist herself onto the couch to curl up in my lap and keep me company. For most of her life she was 17-18 lbs, looked just like a bowling ball with a little head attached.

I suppose you know that the day to say goodbye will come, I struggled with the decision for a few weeks as I watched her drop weight and lose her appetite. But when she started to cry when I picked her up, I knew that it was time to say farewell to my chubba wubba after 17 years of companionship. She was a diva but a lovable one and I miss her enormously.

RIP 10/23/08

Rocky was a tough little cat, regularly beat up on Nikita the dog, but that was until Dudley appeared and started doing running leaps at her. Her favorite place was wedged behind the toilet where he couldn't get a running start until I made a little cave for her out of an HP Printer box. People who say that cats aren't affectionate didn't have one like her. She used to sit in my lap and help me write my tips. The last couple months of her life were spent in that HP box once she lost the ability to jump up onto the couch, that is when she wasn't meowing for more food. She died in my arms at home, the 1st one that spared me that agonizing decision to end their life.

Both Rocky and Bullwinkle were born in 1989, the same year we got married, Bullwinkle lived to be almost 18, Rocky lived to be 19.

At one time we had a house full of pets, 4 cats and 2 dogs plus a couple of tanks of fish, not to mention some temporary visitors, a litter of 5 puppies and a stray cat that gave birth in our bathroom. All six of our cats and dogs lived into their teens so the last few years have been rough as they've been leaving us one by one, Natasha, Boris, Lucy, Bullwinkle, Nikita and finally Rocky who, at age 19, was the last of the original bunch. We got all of the cats from local shelters, when I saw Rocky sitting in her cage, I knew she had to come home with me, a beautiful little tabby with fur the color of sand. She had a good quality of life up until her last couple of days, I came home on Thursday to find her near death. I picked her up, she looked at me, and passed to kitty heaven where I hope she is frolicking in a giant field of catnip with an unlimited supply of fish, reunited with her buddies Bullwinkle, Natasha and Boris.

Dudley is now our only cat, at 1 1/2 years old he should be with us for many more years to come.

Well, then I decided I really wanted a Samoyed and while scanning the paper one day, I ran across an ad for a free 1 year old Samoyed who the owners could no longer keep and that's how we got Lucy. She was renamed Lucifer for the first few months we had her, she ran away constantly, knocked over our garbage cans, made incredible messes and I was wondering how such a sweet looking dog could be so bad!!! Turned out she was an unwed mother and right around Christmas she delivered 5 healthy puppies, one of which my mother in law adopted. She lived with us for almost 15 years. She settled down after being spayed, turned out to be a wonderful dog and is greatly missed.

The final addition to the zoo came through a coworker who's exboyfriend's dental assistant couldn't handle her dog and that's when we got Nikita, an American Eskimo. They told me he was just a smaller version of Lucy but Eskimos are bred to be guard dogs so they bark all day, never sleep, are very protective and don't handle having strangers in the house very well. The last couple of years of his life, he slowed down quite a bit, slept a lot but still kept constant watch over me. Nikita was 16+ years old when we finally decided to take him in when his quality of life was no longer OK. The house is very empty without him.