Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Survivor: Pet Edition


I think most of us believe we are doing animals a favor when we bring them into our homes as pets. We feed and care for them, and give them a safe haven, free of predators and roving automobiles. They say that indoor cats live longer than outdoor cats, after all.

But we forget that we can be the greatest danger of all to our own dear pets. I was reminded of this recently when I dangled a foot long length of Malabrigo lace yarn on my cat Sketch's head, hoping he would play with it. He grabbed it with his mouth, and proceded to slurp the whole thing into his mouth in about three seconds. Luckily this yarn passed through without incident, much like the various earplugs he has consumed over the years. 

Here my cat Sketch survives being in the middle of a hug sandwich:



I know that, but so far, the pets in our household have been extremely lucky.

Last month my other cat Max threw up food several times in one day, and on a couple of occasions, it looked like there was blood in it. Away he went to the vet for xrays and tests. Eventually we realized he'd eaten the red plastic fringe off a cocktail napkin (the little plastic bits looked like blood when he barfed them up), and a couple days later, he was fine. However, during the course of all those tests, the vet discovered high globulin levels. Looks like Max is harboring an infection of some kind, so tomorrow he's getting an antibiotic shot which will hopefully take care of it. 

A couple of months ago we brought a garden snail into the house.



This little guy is definitely a survivor. The first disaster to befall him was that my 7 year old sprayed a mild bleach solution on him, thinking it was plain water. If you google "bleach snails" you'll find it is a method of killing them. We carefully rinsed the little guy by moving him from place to place on the deck, while spraying him with clean water, and Fluffy lived.

Then I made the mistake of plucking an old leaf out of his tank, not realizing he was stuck to the underside of it. He dropped about three feet and cracked his shell. In fact, the shell section was about 4x20mm and broke clean out of the middle. He lost a bunch of water and I was sure he'd dry up. In a desparate move, I glued the shell piece back on with acid-free scrapbooking glue. He spent a few weeks estivating and not doing much. I thought he was dead, but he wasn't. He recovered and is now a very active, seemingly happy snail.

So somehow these pets have survived living with my family. I hope they will be with us for many years to come.

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