Does your Cat (or any pet) misbehave since caregiving your loved one?
Have you been required to take care of your loved one's pet after they have passed? Does your pet have cute antics that entertain your loved one?
And finally, has the cat or dog transferred their loyalty to your Mother?
And SharynMarie,Thank God your Grandkids were OK.
It is scary how fast they can get into real trouble.Today,I caught one of my kittens trying to eat the electrical cord to the lamp and then another almost got his head caught in some bars on a rocking chair and they pulled all of Bootsie's food in breakable bowls to the floor,just one thing after another.....and I'm exhausted-
Sharyn, I am glad your grandkids are OK. They can be quick!
Right in the middle of her forehead,
And when she was good,she was very,very good and when she was bad she was Horrid......
A perfect description of my kittens~
Today when I went in,they were climbing up on the top of a shelf,jumping to the floor and racing back to do it again like teenagers jumping off a cliff into the lake,it was a new ,fun game they created until they thought of their next game.
The girls, they are prim and proper except for toe nail inspection. Oh my gosh, for one you would think I was taking all of her 9 lives at once. The screeching and squirming.
When cats get older, mine are 16-18, their toe nails will start to get thick and sometimes will grow around into the pad of the foot. That's because they aren't walking on concrete or other rough surfaces as much as they should to help get rid of the old claw automatically. For those thick claws, I use wire cutters as I can't use the cat nail clippers.
He will out grow that in about 10 to 20 years :P Oh, I bet he has some Maine Coon in his linage, those guys can get to be very long.
I was surprised, though, that my cat kept her prize pet rabbit alive for so long - more than six hours, and wasn't appearing to have been torturing it. She was apparently carrying it gently from one corner to the other and not batting it around or anything. I am going to stay with the idea that it was her pet.
(Another not-so-nice story ahead, so if you're at all squeamish, you might want to pass this over.)
When I was about 10, my indoor/outdoor cat was outside, rattling the door to come in. When I got out there to get him in, I saw he had a mouse in his mouth, and yelled for mom. I had *no* idea what to do - we'd never, ever had a mouse in the house, so I hadn't the first clue how to handle this. While Mom is coming to the door, the cat decides to show off his juggling skills and starts throwing the mouse into the air, smacking it around, grabbing it in his teeth, then smacking it back up into the air again. The poor mouse is bleeding, squeaking for all he's worth, and doesn't even have the strength to try to run away. Mom arrives, and yells at me to grab a shovel and kill the mouse. I'm completely freaked out by this idea, but more freaked out by the yelling that Mom is doing behind me, telling me, "KILL IT! KILL IT! DON'T LET IT SUFFER LIKE THAT!" So, feeling much like I would imagine a mafia hit man would, I whacked the poor mouse with a swift smack of the shovel. I never did get that image out of my head.
So, yesterday, apparently my little girl cat decided to keep a pet baby bunny. She caught said baby bunny and kept it corralled in one corner or the other of the screened porch. Kept it for several hours apparently (I got this part of the story second hand from Mom's caregiver today). Matilda would pick the bunny up and move it from one corner or the other. She would lay there and corral the bunny between her paws. She didn't hurt the baby bunny but I have no idea what her intentions were.
I did not know anything about this last night when my dog came in through the pet door with something in her mouth. I heard a squeaking noise and thought it was a dog toy. Boy I was wrong. I quickly noted that it was a baby bunny but before I could take any action... chomp, crunch, crunch. The dog ate every bit of bunny from head to toe. Bad dog!
I do wonder what true cat's plans were, though.
We never figured out if he actually was someone's pet or if he was truly a stray that was born outdoors and just figured out that if he was pitiful enough, people would feed him. He was a rack of bones when we got him, but that changed soon enough once I took him in, got him to the vet and started feeding him good quality food. His fur and everything changed completely. He looked like a ratty short-haired cat until I took him in - now he is a beautiful (very photogenic) long-haired fat cat. Not overweight fat - just big. The vet says he's an incredibly long cat, so whatever mixed breed he is, he's mixed with something big. When he stretches out, he's incredibly long.
Dog:
My little Corgi hated the vacuum - we're talking major HATE here. I had to keep her in another room if I vacuumed, or she'd attack it. (Lesson learned after she ripped the rubber bumper off one vacuum while it was in motion.) She got loose one day while I was vacuuming (and I didn't hear her because the vacuum was running) - until she barked and then lunged between my legs from behind me to bite the vacuum. She missed. I still have a canine-tooth-shaped scar from the hole she put in my leg by sinking her tooth into my calf.
Larger dog that I have now was a terrible chewer as a puppy. Dog - 1. Rocking chair - 0. (He chewed the wooden rockers right off one night as we slept. He was crated at night after that until he got older.)
Cat:
Ohh...almost too many to tell here. This cat is nuts, I tell you. Former stray, so I think he was on his own for most of his 18 months before we took him in. In that 18 months, he developed some very bad habits.
Things he has run off with:
-The plug from the bathroom sink.
-Small pieces of the Christmas tree branches
-Various Christmas ornaments
-The baby Jesus from my nativity scene
-Charger cords (several) for my cell phone
-He has toy mice hidden all over the house - every time I do a deep cleaning I find about 5 of them, and he plays with them all day until he loses them again.
Things he has chewed and/or tried to eat:
-Legos (despite my repeated attempts to get DD to keep them picked up - pretty sure there will be a vet visit sometime in the future if they don't move out soon.)
-Charger cords again - my current phone charger cord has teeth marks in it, because he finds it at night when I'm sleeping, no matter where I put it, and chews it. Finally had to put it in a closed cabinet to charge.
-Hair dryer cord. He climbed up on the sink during the night to reach the hair dryer in its holder on the wall. (not plugged in at the time, of course)
-Mom's oxygen hose. I can't tell you how many times she'd get up in the morning and say she felt like she wasn't getting enough air - yeah, you're not, Mom, because there are holes in the dang hose. Finally had to lock the cat in a spare room at night, which caused him to yowl and claw at the door all night. I don't miss those nights.
-Shoelaces. He thinks they're noodles, I think. (not that I feed him noodles.)
-Shoes. Slippers. Socks.
-BRAS. He loves bras. The straps fascinate him. I've woken up at night to hear him rifling through the dirty clothes hamper to find a bra and chewing on the clips.
-Various body parts. This guy is a biter - worse than any puppy I've ever seen. When we first got him, he was up on the back of a chair at my chest level, and I was petting him. Apparently he'd had enough, so he reached out and bit me right on the boob! As I was reacting with shock, he promptly bit the other one!
Seems the cat bites and scratches, or cat scratch fever was very serious.
Oops, just bit my own tongue! Will I now get lockjaw? Not be able to talk, or type? (Possible, if I was typing hunt and peck by using a pencil!) Maybe if I get a cat, it could walk across the keys for me (kindle with touchscreen here).
A sort of assistive cat. Nice.
Not sure why, though. All the animal programmes are quick to point out that cats are essentially purpose-built killing machines, razors at each corner and daggers in the middle. It's just there's something really feeble about having been beaten in a fight by something that weighs approximately one-sixteenth of you.
Mind you, speaking of unfair fights. My former neighbour shot a mouse with an air rifle, after his semi-feral cat had brought it in for him one night as a treat, to play with. And he stood on a chair to do it. The man's about six foot tall, for heaven's sake, and apparently with a big yellow stripe down his back.
(quarantined )