Really no way to make this one funny.

Posted by Hollyann

So, I am not even going to try. Saturday night my kitty came to the back door as usual, came in with the dogs as usual, and sat under the table as usual.  At some point I noticed he was bleeding from his jaw, upon closer inspection some of his jaw was missing, as well as some teeth, and it appeared he was crying blood.  I rushed him to the vet, and after xrays and pain meds and a lot of crying on my part, it was decided that even if I had the thousands of dollars necessary to try to save him, and it worked, his quality of life afterwards wouldn’t be worth the effort.

Toby, you were an awesome cat to have around, and we miss you bunches.  

 

Of Mice (well, rodents anyway) and Men (well, little girls, really)…

Posted by Hollyann

Kayla’s birthday was two weeks ago.  All she really wanted for her birthday was a hamster.  This was, of course, because Katie first got to bring the class hamster home for school over winter break, and then Katie got her own hamster.  Therefore, Kayla must have a hamster as well.  

Todd wasn’t a fan of my great hamster plan, which involved telling the grandparents to buy a hamster cage for Kayla’s birthday, and me buying her the actual hamster, so I let it go, and got her a movie.  Pretty sweet, right?  Movie, hamster, it’s all entertainment.  

What we didn’t forsee was that Kayla got a lot of money for her birthday.  Like enough to buy a hamster and every possible accessory one needs for a hamster.  So we had to revisit the great hamster plan, with Kayla getting everything herself, and this time Todd agreed to it, ending the argument with a heavy sigh and the words “She’s going to kill it, and if she doesn’t the cat will.”   4 hours later, Cookie the gay hamster was ensconced in his pink cage in Kayla’s room.  

Fast forward 2 weeks, to yesterday.  I go into Kayla’s room to wake her up, and the pink cage looks a bit… hazy.  Not only that, but the entire downstairs smells suspiciously of coconuts.  There is a surfboard shaped bottle of some perfume called ‘Stoked for Girls’ laying next to the cage.  Cookie does not look well.  So, being up for parent of the year and all, I scream Kayla awake and tell her, look, I think you killed your hamster, were you spraying that perfume in there?  She tearfully tells me that yes she was.  Why?  Not because it smells or anything, she replies, (thanks for cleaning my hamster cage day before yesterday mom never came up) but because the perfume says right on it ‘for girls’ and Cookie is a boy, but I want him to be a girl, so if I spray the perfume for girls on him, then he’s a girl!  Yes.  That makes perfect sense to any 7 year old, I imagine.  Then, being up for parent of the year and all, I went ahead and yelled at her some about opening the cage without an adult around, spraying perfume that smells like Coppertone anywhere in general and on small rodents in particular, and ended (parent of the year, remember) by calling her a murderer.  Then, I took her to catch the bus to school.  Once she was sufficiently blotchy and crying at a nice fever pitch.  

I returned home and Todd and I went to… well, dispose of the remains.  Here is a summary of our conversation:

T:  You were maybe a bit hard on her.

H:  I don’t really care, she broke the rules and I am ANGRY.  Look at that poor… omigod.  Baby, the hamster just moved.

T:  No, that hamster is dead as a doornail, it just looked like it moved because you are looking through the curve in the cage.

H:  (taking cage apart)  No, it MOVED.  Get this thing off here so that I can get him somewhere away from the perfume, um, fumes.

T:  Whatever, I am telling you, that thing is DEAD.

H: (putting dead hamster in big cardboard box) Just humor me then.

T:  OK, but its… omigod, you’re right, it’s moving.  

H:  See?  Not dead.  

T:  I still think it’s dead, maybe they are like chickens, and they spasm.

H:  Seriously? We need to google.

T:  Google, just call the vet!

H:  *I* am not calling the vet to ask about a dead but spasming hamster.

T:  (reflects for a second) Yea.  Google it is.

So, I googled.  Apparently, very sick and very cold hamsters can go into hibernation.  At which point, the helpful website told me, you will think its dead, because it barely breathes, and doesn’t move when you poke it.  However, not so dead, and you can bring them out of it by warming them up.  

I put Cookie in a box, and put the box on a chair with the ‘Cookie end’ I will call it, sticking out over the space heater.  Cookie began to spasm more often, and had moved up to almost constant shaking or twitching or mouth movement (all part of coming out of hibernation) before he actually died.  It was truly one of the more bizarre things I have witnessed in my life, right up there with the whole ‘liquid to solid over the speaker’ deal that I saw on Big Bang Theory and had to try for myself.  From dead to mostly dead to almost dead to dead again.  

Now, those of you paying attention may notice that we just slipped under the wire with the 15 day small animal guarantee Petco hands out.  So of course once Cookie finally kicked the bucket, I returned him.  At Petco, to return a small animal, you must bring both your original receipt AND the small animal in question.  So I marched into Petco, where the first person I encounter says to me, “Hey, whatcha got in the box?”  So I showed her.  That face was pretty cool, as you could tell she was getting ready to say “Awwww, how cute” before she saw what was actually inside.  At which point she tells me that the stupid thing died from some common hamster disease, not perfume poisoning.  Parent of the year, I say.  Vote now.

Those of you who actually know me also probably know that there is no way I am walking into a pet store with a dead pet and a credit and not coming out with a live pet.  So yes, Cookie has been replaced.  Only now the hamster is MINE, HER name is Daisy, she is a tiny baby thing, and she’s cuter than Cookie was on his best days.  Also she lives in the dining room, away from small children armed with perfume, just in case. Â