Saturday, February 21, 2009

Farewell to Socks

Various news outlets are reporting that after a long and popular ride, Socks the Cat has gone to The Great Meadow in the sky. He was 19 or 20 years old, and moved into the White House with the Clintons in 1992. There is coverage at CNN and a longer article at one of our favorite cat blogs.

The Daily Stench: Double Feature

Whitey threw up spittle (an attempted hair ball?) fifteen minutes before breakfast at 8 AM. I was able to boot him off the living room rug onto hardwood front hall floor, which helped the clean up.

Not to be out done, Billy lost his breakfast a half-hour later. He saw me coming to shoo him to the front hall, and took off across the rug as he threw up, leaving a line of kibble and ... well, you get the idea. Clean up was not helped.

Both boys were otherwise acting normally, and both kept their dinner down without any issues.

Monday, February 16, 2009

The Daily Stench: Solid Evidence

Whitey just left a deposit in the master bath. That is very odd, he's not prone to ignoring his litter box.

(There is occasionally a litter box in the master bath, but we last had one in there months ago.)

I hope he's okay. We'll keep an eye on our junior overlord.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Down But Not Out

Billy give us a nasty scare this evening, even worse than Whitey's problems after exercising a few weeks ago.

He was chasing a cat teaser up and down the waist high cat condo in the bedroom when he slipped and landed funny. It took him a moment to get up, and when he did he was heavily favoring his left rear leg. In five years of playing with The Mighty Hunter, I have never seem him with an obvious limp, no matter how high a jump or how awkward a landing.

Needless to say, playtime was over.

Katherine and I watched him, and over the next ten minutes he seemed to mostly recover, to our great relief. After fifteen minutes, he was jumping to the top of the dresser (not that we told him to) and back down.

We'll take it easy with him for a couple of days, although I doubt he'll be easy on himself.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Tummy trouble, or just picky?

As mentioned, last week someone lost most of his dinner. Then we had a couple of hairballs over the last few days. Then yesterday, Billy didn't have much interest in his breakfast. So I sat up and took notice this morning, when he did the usual happy Billy breakfast routine, sniffed at his bowl, and trotted back to me. "Got anything else?" he seemed to be asking.

Lack of appetite is a big red flag for cats, so we called the vet. But his energy level was fine and his body language was fine. The vet suspected he was just looking for a better offer, like a different flavor of food. (Or maybe some of that cheese I had at lunch yesterday... Or treats!)

So we picked up a few cans of a different flavor. Sure enough, he attacked dinner with all his usual energy. So much so that he forgot to stage his usual raid on Whitey's bowl until after Whitey had finished.

We think the problem is solved, but we'll also be a bit more aggressive about washing the food bowls. It's possible that he smelled something off or something like that.