Stories About Pets

Kintsugi has a serious lack of amphibian keepers.

How to remedy this state of affairs?

 

This is Beau.
Beau loves shower time. He hasn't gotten into the tub in a while, when I had a walk-in shower he'd observe in a corner. Nowadays he waits for the water to turn off, then begins howling until you pick him up in his own town and turn him into a purrito. He will cuddle in your arms purring furiously and resumes howling unless head scritches are provided.

 

My Cat Party Crackers are a success.

Prim hunts them by scent and kills them with an excited intensity.

 

Handed BigDog a whole chicken while I cut/prepped/warmed FatDog's Special Snowflake Upset Tummy breakfast of ground turkey, eggs and rice.

Turn around to discover that she got impatient and stole both wings and a drumstick off BigDog's chicken, despite turning her nose up at the offer of chicken just last night.

BRATS.

 

When FatDog was a svelte young pup, she always used to run up to me in that weird Ultimate Friendly Dog waddle where they turn into a C and somehow walk with their head and butt pointing in the same direction, not unlike a comic book superheroine.

She's been too much of a sausage to fold herself in half since I got her back, but today... Today she got about halfway there. I got a ( waddle <3

 

Spoiler: WTF THE FUCK?! CAT?!

I'M DOWNSTAIRS AND ACROSS THE HOUSE
HOW DID HE GET PAST THE DOGS?!
DO BOTH MY CATS TELEPORT?!

Spoiler: He's made himself comfortable.

ETA: Stop twitching your tail onto my mousepad you little shit

 

I have two cats. They're both former strays from behind my day job, and they are aunt and nephew. Shorty is the aunt cat, Cyclops is the nephew cat. Shorty's sister Fluffy* had a litter and kind of lost interest in them; Shorty had a small stillborn litter so she took over momming Fluffy's litter and babysitting the colony matriarch's kitten Spot.

Cyclops was one of Fluffy's kittens. He is so named because before he became friendly, he had a bad eye infection and... yeah, you can probably guess how that ended up. Good news is, he's fine now, he just has shit depth perception and sometimes accidentally takes chunks out of my leg when he tries a jump he hasn't tried yet and misses. He is clingy as all hell and has to have his side attached to my leg if I am standing or walking. He also gives cute little smoochy kisses.

Shorty has been obsessed with bread lately. If I throw a bread bag away, she drags it out of the trash and sticks her face in it to huff bread smells. If there's a stale heel or something in the bag, she pulls it out and throws it around the living room for a while and then just leaves it in front of the door. Sometimes she'll eat a couple of bites, but mostly she seems attracted to the smell.

The little shit dragged the bag containing my last challah roll off the counter, tore it open, pulled the roll out, ate one bite, and then left the roll on the floor. Do you know how rare it is for my grocery store to get fucking challah!?

* We tried not to name them. When that failed we just settled for not putting a lot of thought into the names.

 

Cat v. Melon

 

I don't technically have any pets of my own - living in a rented flat and all, not allowed animals. But my cats still sort of count when I see them at my parents, bless those precious dorks.

This is Clover. She is about 18 years old and composed entirely of spite and fluff. She is ridiculously small (even when she was a younger, more athletic kitty) and you can literally scoop her up one handed with no problem. She has also mastered the art of projectile shedding. This cat was the bane of my goth phase as a teenager.

Spoiler: Our tiny fluffy overlord

BOW BEFORE YOUR LORD


BEHOLD THE TINY FEETS OF DESPAIR

Then there's Jack, our second-hand cat that is part wild hybrid with scottish wild cats. It's pretty common as far as things go where my parents live, since the north east/grampian area of Scotland is where the largest populations of SWCs still live (though it's still really small and it makes me sad)

Spoiler: The manliest cat

He is undisputed king of the sofa. When he actually wants to be indoors. He's definitely more of an outdoor cat, which is thankfully possible in Scotland since we don't have bears or coyotes or mountain lions or whatever other crazy killer fauna yall have in the states.


For such a big butch outdoorsman cat though, he realy, REALLY likes a good hard bellyrub.


You can see his ringed tail a bit here, which is a hallmark of scottish wildcat genes. Domestic cats can have "rings" but they're generally connected by a dorsal stripe. A SWC's tail has full, unconnected rings, and a hybrid like Jack has partial rings at the end.


For reference, this is what an actual Scottish wild cat looks like.

And then there's Nerfie. Some scalded asscheek dumped a bunch of kittens in the wood next to my parents' house a few years ago, and as far as we know he was the only one who made it. We found him taking shelter in our garage (his real name is Nirvana, get it, hur hur) and eventually coaxed him indoors. He's a sweet ball of tub and velvety fur and I love the silly whiskers off him.

Spoiler: Nirvana was a far too dignified name for this derp

Look at this face, I can't even. That someone abandoned this guy still fucking astounds me.


He's a huge cuddlebug and loves to get right up in your business. Not that I mind.


BELLYFLESSSSHH


:3

It's not all bad living where I am right now though. A friend of mine recently got a Dogue Du Bordeaux puppy and I've been looking after her while the owners are at work. She is a ridiculous pile of legs, huge feets and floppy wrinkleface.

Spoiler: The softest puppy

This was her a couple of months ago. She's about 6 months old now. It blows my goddamn mind how fast she's grown.


She only has two expressions. Barely concealed disdain...


And resigned acceptance that she will never be allowed persue her dream of eating all the garbage.

DAMN THAT GOT LONG sorry all. I get excited showing people pictures of animals.

 

I'm currently dogsitting for boyfriend's parents. I am not really a Dog Person, and this is a somewhat Difficult Dog, but we're managing. I like the dog, and want her to be well cared for, and have been throwing all my spare spoons at that, so, it's going ok. Current project is teaching dog that her Actual Animal Bone (I think it's a pig femur) is an outside-only treat, because that probably should not be on the carpet. I am not sure she has the concept of outside-only things. So far, I've been telling her no and making her go back out when she brings it in, telling her she's a good dog and giving her skritches when she comes inside without it, and picking it up and taking it outside when I find it inside. Any advice from people who know dogs on how to better condition her around this concept? I'm thinking of taking it away when I find it inside, and then later calling her outside to get it again, but I'm just not sure how to make the association between this particular tasty thing and outside.

 

I am so happy, I needed a place to tell this story.

Okay, so our kitten is more like a cat-teen now, and has apparently discovered that he has a dick. So I walk into my room, and he's on my bed, in my spot, sprawled out on his back in that weird cat sitting position, licking his dick. He looks up at me, freezes, and then very slowly moves his paw in front of it. And then went and hid under the bed for a while.

I couldn't stop laughing.

 

One of my exes had a cat that was like that. Also he attacked my vibrators. Said ex was resistant to getting him fixed and it drove me nuts.

But when I told said ex that his cat had tried to attack my vibe WHILE I WAS USING IT, he did get fixed. Because nonconsensual sex with animals is not always the human's idea and it wasn't gonna happen to me!

 

Speak, my lynx point Siamese and the cuddliest kitty I've ever had:



I know, my address is visible, but I sincerely doubt anyone here will use it unless I get suicidal.

This is Asterix, who died a few weeks ago and who I really miss.



Asterix was diabetic (type II) but went into remission and was doing great, then suddenly had a heart attack/aneurysm. He was the smartest cat I've ever had. I had to put toddler locks on my fridge because he went in there and stole the meat. I didn't begrudge him meat, but not a whole package of hamburger that was gonna be 3 meals for ME, and also I was afraid that he'd get in there and not be able to get OUT. He could also open other doors. He broke the toilet seat when I had a roommate for a while who objected to him getting in the toilet even though the water was clean because he couldn't figure out how to lift the seat but he weighed about 20 pounds at the time and was able to push it to the side. He was my guard cat. I miss him. A lot.

This was Tissriel, who was with me from 1990-2009:



She was my first therapy cat (Speak is therapy cat #2) and probably literally saved my life during one of my worst bouts of depression. I miss her terribly as well and was a wreck for months after I lost her.

 

no story, really.

i bought osiris a jester collar thingy for halloween.

excuse his messy shed-head, is summer coat is coming out and it's hard to keep him fur-free even with brushies.

 

Aw kitty. He reminds me a little of Asterix. Asterix was always a shed-head because the weather in San Francisco is constantly changing and his poor fur never knew what to do.

 

Am still dogsitting. Today I took dog to the dog park next to the bay, and confirmed that I can in fact throw her expensive toys into the water, because she really will bring them back every time. She did happy doggy things for like two hours, and barely even got sad when I went out to dinner.

Tomorrow I get to test how well she'll tolerate me bathing her, since she swam a ton in brackish saltwater. Right now, she's curled up on a beanbag, being adorable and exhausted. A good day.

 

@cryptoThelematrix

This may be a stupid question, but does your therapy cat have any special training?

 

No, sorry, they're not Official Service Animals. They're just snuggly kitties that keep me from losing my shit sometimes. They're therapeutic for me. I suppose it's possible to have a trained therapy cat though. If I stepped on any toes I'm sorry!

 

You didn't step on any toes at all. :) I was just curious. I have a companion cat, ordered by my MD, so I have some legal protections in that I can't be barred from having her in apartments that normally don't allow pets nor can I be charged extra rent for having her. But she doesn't have any special training or anything. So, I just wondered if there are trained therapy cats just like there are trained therapy dogs. That would be cool.

There's a therapy dog that comes to the hospital where I volunteer. She's an adorable little Papillon and has a tiny vest in the company colors and a badge that looks just like the badges the employees wear. Unlike service animals, its OK to go up to her and pet her and make over her. That's what she's there for.

Anyway, your cats are beautiful. :)