Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler OT: One crappy weekend

Chess,
Oh man, I feel for you. I can't tell you how many times I've woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of the cat puking. Those who own cats know what sound I'm talking about. "Shrek 2" pretty much nailed the hairball experience.
Cat urine is a bad smell. No fun. Sometimes I wish I had gone the goldfish route.

I've probably told this story before.

My ex had two cats... an old burmese/siamese cross and a younger calico. I'm not much of a cat guy, or even a house dog guy anymore.

The siamese was pretty much a vomit machine, a quick "HAAAARRRRCHHHHTTTTT" noise and she'd back up producing what I can only describe as something like what used to come out of those Play-Doh(tm) pumpers... always in a traffic area (hallway, etc)... after about the 3rd day in a week of stepping in it just as I was running late for my bus into work (in sock feet), she was introduced to the toilet bowl.

The calico cat, however... about 3am one early morning, I hear the sound of plastic dishes hitting the floor in the kitchen, I get up, no glasses on and see the cat intentionally knocking dishes out of the dishrack. Without corrective lenses and with all the finesse of a pregnant wombat, I take a kick at her and miss... then I notice a foul smell. My ex had left a candle burning on top of her desktop AT computer case and it was melting the monitor... given maybe another 15 minutes, the apartment would have been on fire... I tracked the cat down, petted her and went off to go kick the ex. Weird thing is, she was selective and ONLY knocked out the plastic dishes, leaving anything breakable untouched.

Bren R.

Funny story, Bren. At night with the lights off, it's like walking through a minefield. Nothing like stumbling into the bathroom at 3 in the morning to clean the "kitty surprise" from between your toes.

I hear stories similar to yours and makes me wonder just how smart these stupid cats are? After all, they've trained us to feed them on time, let them out when they want to, and they only want attention on their time. Where did we loose control?

My $.02 -
Declaw if a cat is damaging, regardless of age. Cats instinctively 'sharpen' and 'kneed', so you're not going to stop them. My cat made my decision for me when he leisurely walked up and began sharpening his claws on the grills of my old speakers. He had already shredded up the back of our old couch, but this just wasn't going to fly. The funny thing is watching him sharpen and kneed now....we call it knubbing.

FYI...he was not a kitten at the time and he survived. It takes them a couple days to fully recover, but they're resilient and the alternatives are worse (ie giving away or putting down).

As far as the peeing goes, another thing to consider is looking at a litter out there called CatAttract. It's not going to cure any medical issues, but it will assist if the issue turns out to be behavioral. Cats sometimes start peeing elsewhere when they are stressed out by changes in their lives, etc....new baby in my case. Either way, this litter has something in it that draws them to it. It's a little more expensive, but it's worth it compared to the alternative (putting down).....behavioral problems are hard to break which makes giving them away not always a viable option. So, you have to do what you can to help fix the problem. In my case, it was a blend of the new litter, better focus on cleaning the litter box, and letting him outside to get the anxiety out of his system. Ironically, he goes outside at the same time as the two dogs.....the procession is kind of funny to watch.

Well the decision to declaw was not an easy one for my wife. Age was a concern but with our friend being a vet as i said, it made the decision a bit easier. We knew he was going to give her a good checkup before proceeding and if any blood chemistry was abnormal, we would abort.
The laser method of removal is much better than the old pull technique. Recovery is much faster with alot less pain. The cats go home next day rather than being held for multple days of observation. As long as the cat was healthy, and she is, we decided to have it done.

As for the peeing, the location was limited to 2 areas off to the side of our HT area (as luck has it). We are going to move her cat tower and food over into that corner which is a good behaviour modification technique for cats. Place the food near the defecation area and they won't urinate there anymore. Now there is a chance that she may begin urinating in another location, but if there was something specific about that corner she liked (old carpet smell, carpet tape or glue underneath, etc.) then the odds of her adding scent to another location in the house as compensation is small.
Secondly, we are adding catnip to some other areas in the basement that we think she 'may' move on to if she wants another pee spot. She loves to chew on catnip (the cat's equivalent to tobacco) which once again places 'food' in an area that she may have conisdered to be fair game for urinary relief.
If all that fails, we will try some behavioural modification drugs which have had some success in the past on my vet friend's calico. As i understand it, he says calicos are nasty as temperament goes.

On the other fronts, the bathroom tub area has been gutted. We are getting ready to put the new green sheets in place followed by the new Barker tile later today. Should be cured and caulked by tomorrow night. The wife is shopping for new bath fixtures this aft.



The CRV already has its new tires onboard (Michelin Hydroedge) and is good to go.

The new carpet has been purchased and is ready for installation later this week.

Total Approximate Cost:
$700 Bath materials
$330 new carpet
$900 tires, balancing, winter package checkup, etc.
$200 vet
All in all, not as bad as it could be since we're doing most of the labour ourselves, but i have spent the past 3 days working on the house instead of actual paid work. Good thing i work out of a home office on my own time.

Chess-I can certainly feel your pain. We've got 2 aging cats, a constantly shedding dog and our 5 year old daughters aquarium to contend with. They've all had to adapt to the addition of our (now 10 month old) twin boys and it hasn't been all that pleasant. I've been constantly reminded of my wise old Grandma's quote when she heard that we were going to have a poodle in the house, she said with more than a little conviction "God invented barns for animals to live in-houses are for people". I didn't listen, needless to say.

We're now faced with a new, and even more troublesome addition to our home. My father-in-law, (due in no small part to his own doing), finds himself penniless and in poor health at the ripe old age of 68. We agreed to let him move in with us temporarily. Last Friday I got home from work and find him angrily staring at a blank TV screen and a loud hissing HT system. All he could say was "All these damn speakers give me a head-ache". He tried to shut the system down and apparently punched every button on the every component. Didn't do any harm until he told me that "the sound on the TV was a helluva lot better than what was coming out of the speakers". Ouch. Then to add insult to injury he came into our kitchen and dropped his pants around his knees so he could show me his scar from hip surgery. That's an image I didn't need imbedded in my brain. Anyway, sometimes pets although difficult are still easier to deal with than people. At least I can kick the cat if my wife doesn't catch me.

Good luck with your remodel project.

Just when I thought things were going horrible for ME.

jorge
Thanks for that post.
You made me realize things could be worse.

Your welcome Bray. Life just go better. I found out I've got a ticket to see Steve Earle at First Avenue this weekend. I haven't seen a live show for a while and had given up on seeing this show. Now I can't wait.

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I've got a ticket to see Steve Earle at First Avenue this weekend. I haven't seen a live show for a while and had given up on seeing this show. Now I can't wait.

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If you haven't seen him in a while, you might be in for a (potentially unpleasant) surprise. Let's just say you won't need to take a soapbox. He'll have one of his own.

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soapbox

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so whats his issues?

politics, the war, east coast-vs-west coast, the state of the music industry in general, or does he just have a nicely bloated image of himself?

bigjohn