Anybody Want a Cat?

My mother loved animals. She was not allowed to have pets as a child and had suffered some unamed pet tragedy. There was a sense of comedy in her love because, she was not above chasing a dog or cat thru the room with a broom shrieking because of some offense committed.

When I was small and before we moved to town, there was a dirt road a few miles from our house. Down this road lived a lady who cleaned house for us from time to time. On the way to pick her up, sometimes my mother would spot animals that people had dumped on this road. One time we were with her and she pulled off the side of the road, opened the trunk of our car. She started sobbing and began to round up puppies somebody had dumped.

As a child over the years, we had a diverse assortment of pets. Once we had a pet aligator (he was a baby, thankfully he choked to death on some hamburger meat. I say thankfully, not to be cruel, but what would we have done with a full grown alligator? We had birds, both caged and the wild kind rescued from a cat until it could fly on it's own. We had rabbits, hamsters, turtles, mice, and the usual cats and dogs. (including an old toothless chihuahu that would chase us through the house as we shrieked with glee, trying to gum us. When he died, she wrapped him in my little sisters old baby blanket and buried him as she cried.)

Maybe because of my mother's obsession with animals, or maybe because I am more like my mother's mother, I do not want pets.

I unfortunately at the present time am a "proud owner" of a 30 + pound cat who apparently has a urinary tract infection at the present moment. I could be a UTI or maybe it is stark raving anger at me because I stuck him on the porch last night when he would not stop meowing in the hall. Since them he has peed on the leather couch about 5 times (in one day). The leather couch he is full aware is "off limits".

Where I do not share my mothers fondness for pets, I do have the same running and shrieking through the house with a broom after a peeing feline. I am having serious visions of cat murder. I have visulized hurling him off the balcony of our apartment complex, I have imagined my self sticking in the garbage dumpster and turning the compactor on. I have fantasized about sticking him in a bag with a few good heavy rocks, and placing him in the drainage ditch that is full right now from the recent rains.

So tonight, what do I do? In the spirit of my mother, I went out and purchased a new scratch toy, (the old one thrown away because he had peed on it) and urinary formula cat food (in case there is a problem, and hairball relief treats. I also bathed him, and cut away his hair balls. (he has extremely long thick hair that mats very easily)

My reward? A few minutes ago, at my feet, he promptly puked up a fine assortment of hairballs.

Want to read more about my cat and the struggles we have been thru? Read one of my very first blog posts "The Cat With Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome".