chrangharris
06-19-2006, 06:30 AM
Hubby started a blog last night after trying to give the cat's some medicine- I thought it was quite funny and painted a good picture so I thought I would share with you guys! Hope you get some laughs!
"For those of you that know me this will come as no suprise, but I am now officially a crazy cat person. Darth Vader had a bunch of kittens he wanted to get rid of and I took one. We now have 5 cats and a dog. Our animals outnumber us two to one.
Anyway, the new cat has ringworms and earmites so we have to treat all 6 of the animals. Now giving a cat a flea treatment can be fun (if you're a mean, sick person) or it can be a heart wrenching experience (if you think they have feelings) or it can be just about impossible (if you don't know what you're doing). I happen to fall into all three categories to some extent.
The way it works is this. You grab the nerest cat and hold it down. (Hopefully you have an assistant to do that.) Then you part the fur on the cat's neck and sprinkle the medicine on the cat's skin. It sounds easy right? Well it does sound easy, but it's not.
We started with the kitten, Cokes. (I always wanted a little bengal cat.) Now she's the smallest and easiest to hold down, but she still has all her claws so starting there could be iffy. Luckily, she trusts us and we were able to catch her without a fight. Plus she only weighs like two pounds and the dose is small. So Mrs. Stonebrow held down the kitten and I applied the medicine. So far so good.
Next, we went after Ebony. As her name might imply, she's an all black cat. She's also pretty friendly and small, and happened to be trapped with us on the first floor. We caught her without too much fuss and got her on the kitchen table. Once the medecine hit her skin though, she stiffened and started wailing a long mournful sound that only a cat in distress (or perhaps a woman in labor) can make. We got her whole dose on and let her go, but now the other cats were on to us.
To give them some time to calm down, we thought we'd give the dog her medicine. That's easy. We catch her by saying "COME" and then "SIT". The dog then sits while we do the exact same thing that sends the cats into spasms of terror. Sometimes I wonder why I'm a cat person and not a dog person. Oh yeah, cats don't poop all over the back yard or stand outside and bark at nothing while you're trying to sleep. (The neighbor's dog does that.) Anyway, three down three to go.
Ezmerelda as you might imagine is also a black cat. Now she is neither small nor friendly. She is however a bit slow, so catching her was suprisingly easy. Having been acquainted with her claws a few times, I knew well enough to wrap her in a towel for her treatment. Once you get the cat bundled like a burrito, it's suprisingly easy to apply flea medecine. They even stop struggling. So Ezzy was pretty easy too. Four down, two to go.
Now the boys are a bit timid, and easily spooked. I guess I should have seen it coming, but I was stupid. I walked right up to Oreo, the younger of our Black and white (tux) cats and grabbed him before he could run. As I picked him up, this smallish cat went into the most violent spasms I've ever seen. I could barely believe it. Now he doesn't have front claws so I felt relatively safe. I was wrong. He raked my chest and drew blood in three diagonal lines with one paw, but I didn't notice that right away. What I did notice was the claw that got stuck in the meat of my thumb as he jumped out of my arms. Right now I have a 1/4" deep puncture wound bleeding through the bandage on my hand.
Well this made me mad at the time and instead of a towel I went and grapped the bedsheet from my daughter's bed. The cat was scared and I was mad, which made for a lively combination. Now we had the cats confined to one floor. This is an essential step toward catching a cat that doesn't want to be caught. After a bit of chasing, we managed to corner the little animal behind out entertainment center. Mrs. Stonebrow shooed him out with a broom while I stood ready with my bedsheet.
I really felt clever for this. I grabbed the fitted sheet and had my feet spread wide standing on two of the corners. I held the other two corners in my hands and draped the sheet down so he couldn't see what was behind it. When he finally bolted, he shot right between my legs. Ordinarily this would be a smart move and the chase would begin all over again. This time however, he ran right smack into my makeshift fish net and he was neatly caught as I brought the remaining two corners down. Apart from a little difficulty finding which lump of my cat-in-a-bag was the head, this ordeal was over. Woohoo! I'm bigger and smarter than my three year old cat.
Anyway, we caught Patches (our other black and white) basically the same way and that was that. He was upstairs hiding under our bed by this time, but my net trick worked exactly the same.
I have to admid I enjoyed it. I just can't figure out why the cats don't like me? On the bright side, the medicine works really well (we've done this before if you can believe it.) and now our cats are protected from fleas, ticks, ear mites and lots of other repulsive six or eight legged creatures."
"For those of you that know me this will come as no suprise, but I am now officially a crazy cat person. Darth Vader had a bunch of kittens he wanted to get rid of and I took one. We now have 5 cats and a dog. Our animals outnumber us two to one.
Anyway, the new cat has ringworms and earmites so we have to treat all 6 of the animals. Now giving a cat a flea treatment can be fun (if you're a mean, sick person) or it can be a heart wrenching experience (if you think they have feelings) or it can be just about impossible (if you don't know what you're doing). I happen to fall into all three categories to some extent.
The way it works is this. You grab the nerest cat and hold it down. (Hopefully you have an assistant to do that.) Then you part the fur on the cat's neck and sprinkle the medicine on the cat's skin. It sounds easy right? Well it does sound easy, but it's not.
We started with the kitten, Cokes. (I always wanted a little bengal cat.) Now she's the smallest and easiest to hold down, but she still has all her claws so starting there could be iffy. Luckily, she trusts us and we were able to catch her without a fight. Plus she only weighs like two pounds and the dose is small. So Mrs. Stonebrow held down the kitten and I applied the medicine. So far so good.
Next, we went after Ebony. As her name might imply, she's an all black cat. She's also pretty friendly and small, and happened to be trapped with us on the first floor. We caught her without too much fuss and got her on the kitchen table. Once the medecine hit her skin though, she stiffened and started wailing a long mournful sound that only a cat in distress (or perhaps a woman in labor) can make. We got her whole dose on and let her go, but now the other cats were on to us.
To give them some time to calm down, we thought we'd give the dog her medicine. That's easy. We catch her by saying "COME" and then "SIT". The dog then sits while we do the exact same thing that sends the cats into spasms of terror. Sometimes I wonder why I'm a cat person and not a dog person. Oh yeah, cats don't poop all over the back yard or stand outside and bark at nothing while you're trying to sleep. (The neighbor's dog does that.) Anyway, three down three to go.
Ezmerelda as you might imagine is also a black cat. Now she is neither small nor friendly. She is however a bit slow, so catching her was suprisingly easy. Having been acquainted with her claws a few times, I knew well enough to wrap her in a towel for her treatment. Once you get the cat bundled like a burrito, it's suprisingly easy to apply flea medecine. They even stop struggling. So Ezzy was pretty easy too. Four down, two to go.
Now the boys are a bit timid, and easily spooked. I guess I should have seen it coming, but I was stupid. I walked right up to Oreo, the younger of our Black and white (tux) cats and grabbed him before he could run. As I picked him up, this smallish cat went into the most violent spasms I've ever seen. I could barely believe it. Now he doesn't have front claws so I felt relatively safe. I was wrong. He raked my chest and drew blood in three diagonal lines with one paw, but I didn't notice that right away. What I did notice was the claw that got stuck in the meat of my thumb as he jumped out of my arms. Right now I have a 1/4" deep puncture wound bleeding through the bandage on my hand.
Well this made me mad at the time and instead of a towel I went and grapped the bedsheet from my daughter's bed. The cat was scared and I was mad, which made for a lively combination. Now we had the cats confined to one floor. This is an essential step toward catching a cat that doesn't want to be caught. After a bit of chasing, we managed to corner the little animal behind out entertainment center. Mrs. Stonebrow shooed him out with a broom while I stood ready with my bedsheet.
I really felt clever for this. I grabbed the fitted sheet and had my feet spread wide standing on two of the corners. I held the other two corners in my hands and draped the sheet down so he couldn't see what was behind it. When he finally bolted, he shot right between my legs. Ordinarily this would be a smart move and the chase would begin all over again. This time however, he ran right smack into my makeshift fish net and he was neatly caught as I brought the remaining two corners down. Apart from a little difficulty finding which lump of my cat-in-a-bag was the head, this ordeal was over. Woohoo! I'm bigger and smarter than my three year old cat.
Anyway, we caught Patches (our other black and white) basically the same way and that was that. He was upstairs hiding under our bed by this time, but my net trick worked exactly the same.
I have to admid I enjoyed it. I just can't figure out why the cats don't like me? On the bright side, the medicine works really well (we've done this before if you can believe it.) and now our cats are protected from fleas, ticks, ear mites and lots of other repulsive six or eight legged creatures."