Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…
The Johnson household is back to two cats. Today we went to Sangamon County Animal Control in hopes of finding a suitable kitten for our home, and brought home a fun little energetic boy.
David immediately started calling him Bottles for reasons unknown to us, so we figured we’d try that out as a name. Several hours later we decided Bottles just wasn’t working out, so we instead have ended up with Faraday. Dozer and Faraday. Works well.
More photos available in the gallery.
This past Tuesday (January 20), we had to have one of our cats put to sleep. Neo has had a past of developing crystals in his bladder and blocking him up, and last week was just too much for him to handle. We had several trips to the vet and emergency vet (the “nights and weekends” vet), with a couple of procedures done to offer some relief, but in the end they were just not sufficient.
Ana got Neo from “kitty juvy” (the humane society behind the youth correctional center in Springfield) when she got out of college, and was a great companion since. He had some bipolar tendencies, but he really loved Ana, myself, Dozer, and David.
I’ve never had to have a pet euthanized; I found it incredibly difficult when I had to actually say the words of permission to the vet. I’ll never forget that or the last 30 minutes of his life.
Neo, thank you for everything. You’ll always have a place in our hearts.
I’ve got a couple of little stories today, about some cats on attack!
A couple days ago we had the house opened up to enjoy the beautiful weather. It was roughly 11:30pm, and I was sitting here at my desk working on the computer. Ana and David were sound asleep, and I was starting to get a little tired.
All of a sudden, World War III breaks out in the adjacent room – I hear cats attacking each other, and I don’t mean play-fighting. I mean all-out, screaming at the top of their lungs, I’m going to kill you attacking. I jump up to find Ana’s cat Neo mid-air and tackling my cat Dozer in the open window. I then hear a third cat, out on the porch – I’ll refer to him as Mr. Instigator. I have to throw our cats apart, then sit between them growling/hissing/screaming at each other in the hallway. Ana wakes up and runs downstairs, at which point I tell her to grab Dozer and get him out of there. Neo keeps trying to get past me to attack him, but I was able to keep him at bay.
Completely insane, I’ve NEVER had them act like that. Neo growled anytime anyone got near him for hours. Dozer was freaked out and a little scared for the same amount of time. I kept him in our room over night with the door closed to prevent any further damage, but he wanted out bad. It got to the point where around 3:30am I had to take and walk him around the house to show him everything was a-OK. Neo was sure to keep his eye on him the entire time.
Upon further inspection of Dozer, he had Mr. Instigator’s white fur in his claw and a bit of a busted up claw on his back foot. Pretty impressive considering there was a screen (which he looks to have ripped through a little bit) between him and Mr. Instigator.
Later in the morning, I got the two cats together and they’re all fine – as if nothing at all happened. BUT, I had the window open, with both cats sitting my desk when I spotted Mr. Instigator outside again (along with a sidekick, and a dead mouse in his mouth). Luckily I was able to close the windows and shades before our cats spotted them again. GEEZ!
And on a completely unvicious, unrelated incident. David got a little scratch when playing with a family cat (Peanut, for those in the know..) yesterday. He just doesn’t quite know yet when the cats are done playing.
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