R.I.P. J.D.

My darling baby boy. I am going to miss you so much. You brought me so joy and so much peace.

From the first moment I saw you, I knew you were special. And I wasn't wrong.

I will miss the way you purred so loudly, you sounded like a motorboat. I will miss the way you would sit so Zen like with your front paws crossed. I will miss the smell of your fur and the way you would kiss me when I rubbed my face against yours. I will miss your little pink paws and your orange tipped ears. I will miss the way you would stare directly at a fly on the wall even though you had no eyes. I will miss the way you would meow for me to pick you up and put you on the bed when you could no longer jump up. I will miss the way you would snuggle down in a blanket until you were completely covered up.

You were pure magic.

Love forever and ever,

Trifecta

Pee.

Poop.

Barf.


I had a %()&*^(&*%%$&)*) morning.

I woke up LATE to the sound of Mike barfing. He was on the edge of my bed. Sooooo grateful he has a good aim and completely missed the bed. Soooooo not grateful it splattered everywhere.

Then, my mom informs me that J.D. pissed all over the bathroom floor. Right by the toilet. 8 inches from the litter box.

THEN, my mom further informs me that someone (either J.D. or Mike but most likely J.D.) POOPED in the dining room.

THEN, she pointed out more barf that Mike apparently had leftover and decided to let loose in the living room.

4 rooms, 3 bodily functions.

It's days like this that make me want to pack up a suitcase and get the hell out of dodge.

However, despite the J.D.'s apparent lack of use of the litter box, how can you be mad at this:

You can't. So, I just suck it up, clean it up and move on.

In more animal news, Max has this cleanliness fetish. He HAS to get every bit of trash that's thrown out of moving vehicles that land in our yard or the neighbors yard or the other neighbors yard or, well, any trash at all in a mile radius.

Even if it's buried.

So, it's nothing to walk outside in the morning to find bits of lime green Styrofoam or broken glass jars with dirt on them or torn to shred soda cans in the yard.

However, this morning?

He stumped me.

Yeah, that's a sweet potato. And not a rotten one. And not one covered in dirt.

Where the hell did he get a sweet potato?

This, people, is REAL LIFE.

And some days, it's just too much.

I just have to keep telling myself, "One month, one week and two days."

Later,

Mama Dawg

Toothpaste On My Belly

(I got nuttin' today.....so this is a re-post from 2008, enjoy!)

Did you know it was possible to get toothpaste dribble on your belly?

It is.

Especially when you've just gotten out of the shower, your buck ass nekkid, you're in the middle of brushing your teeth and one of your cats (yeah, I'll call him out, it was J.D.) comes by and bites you on the ankle making you jump right as you're about to spit.

Yeah, it's possible to get toothpaste dribble on your belly.

Later,


Mama Dawg

The Other Light of My Life Finale

When I bring him home, I realize that I need to come up with a name for him. I went through the usual “black” names. Joe, Blackie, Blackberry, Java, Coffee, Blackbeard, etc….but nada.

None of them seemed right and he wasn’t responding to any of them.

I then started saying any male names I could think of. Bill, Dan, Bob, Richard, etc…

The minute I said “Mike”, he turned his wee head, stared at me with those luminous green eyes and meowed.

Swear to God.

He meowed.

So, Mike it was.

Mike and J.D. got along great. They played with each other and kept each other company.

During all this time, I noticed that his eyes were getting bigger and bigger. It was almost to the point that his eyelids wouldn’t close completely over his eyes.

I also discovered that the nerves in his eyes must have been dead or not there at all. Mike and J.D. were chasing each other through the apartment and Mike turned and swiped J.D. in the face and ended up scratching one of his eyeballs. With blood dripping from his eye, J.D. continued to chase Mike around the house. He was not even aware that his eye was bleeding.

That was my wake up call to take him back to the vet to get him checked out again.

The eye situation bumfuzzled the vet and she didn’t know exactly what was wrong.

She told me I basically had two decisions to choose from.

I could get some eye drops and drop them in his eyes 7-8 times a day to keep them moist or I could have his eyes taken out.

I looked at the vet long and hard and asked her what she would do if this was HER cat.

She said that she would have them removed. It would be the only way he wouldn’t suffer.

So, $2000 later, we had the surgery. J.D. was no longer just a blind cat but he was now an eyeballess cat.

He looked like a lion. They had to shave part of his fur around his eyes and so the fur around the cheeks stood out making him look all majestic. They also ended up cutting a couple of whiskers.

Poor kitty. For a few weeks, he walked around in circles due to the clipped whiskers! It was kinda funny.

About 6 weeks or so after his surgery, I was over at my mom’s house with the cats and J.D. was sitting near my mom or on her, I can’t remember when. Anyway, she shushed me while I was in the middle of talking and said “listen”. I strained to hear what she was hearing. All I could hear was purring.

Wait….purring….from J.D……who had NEVER PURRED IN HIS TIME WITH ME!

He was PURRING!

It was the sweetest sound I had ever heard.

About a month after that, he meowed for the first time. And cuddled and loved up on me and snuggled down.

When I went to the vet for a follow up a while later, I mentioned this to the vet and she said that his eyeballs were putting such pressure in his little noggin that he was probably in constant pain and didn’t feel like purring or being cuddly.

They did do a biopsy on his eyes and they were cancer free and glaucoma free. They were never sure exactly what was wrong. But, they gave him a clean bill of health which is all I cared about.

He truly is a miracle cat. It is so funny to watch him “watching” bugs that fly around (he can hear their little wings beating, that’s how he follows them). He is also very adaptable to his surroundings. I used to be afraid to move furniture or leave boxes and bags in his way, but, over the years, I’ve learned that it doesn’t bother him. He senses they’re there and will walk around them. The only times he bumps into things now is if he is running and not taking his time.

I found out in Christmas of 2007 that he has a heart problem. It’ll probably be what kills him. His heart is also throwing off clots to his back legs and for a while there, he wasn’t using his back legs AT ALL. He would drag himself around. It was to the point I was researching how to make a wheelchair contraption for him to get around in.

The vet gave me some meds and it’s pretty much under control now. However, I don’t anticipate having him much longer. I want to keep him forever, but I know that’s not the case.

So, I just enjoy every day that I have with my love.

That’s all I can do.

Thanks for reading.

Captain Dumbass…I’m done. You can come back now.

Later,

Mama Dawg

The Other Light of My Life part 2

Somehow or somewhere, I heard about a non-profit no-kill shelter that was constantly looking for volunteers. It was about 45 minutes away, but I started going there regularly on the weekends.

About a month into my volunteer services, I arrived on a Saturday morning and saw the new kitten that had been brought in the night before.

This little ball of dirty fur was in its own cage separated from all the other cats and kittens.

I went over to check out the new arrival and before I actually made it all the way over to the cage, I could see the fleas and smell this awful smell.

I dubbed the kitten Orphan Annie and proceeded with my volunteer duties. I would check on it periodically throughout the morning and before I left, I asked the front desk clerk what the story was behind the drop off. She said that some man came in Friday morning saying that he rescued it from some dogs that were about to attack it. He didn’t want to keep a cat so he dropped it off to them.

I went on with my day, running errands and whatnot. I went to bed that night thinking of that kitten.

On Sunday, I got up and went out to the shelter again. I check on Orphan Annie’s progress and noticed that it was even more lethargic than the day before. I tried to coax it into playing with me, but to no avail.

I asked the desk clerk what would happen to the kitten since it seemed so sick. She said that they had already made the decision to put it down the next day when the volunteer vet was making his rounds since it appeared to be fatally ill. They also didn’t want any of the other cats or kittens catching some sort of disease that Annie might have had.

Although this made sense to me, it still broke my heart a little. Even though it’s a no-kill shelter, they still had to take precautions as well as remain humane for the animals sake.

So, with a heavy heart, I said good-bye to Annie and left for the day.

I didn’t sleep a wink all night.

I got up the next morning, skipped classes (I was in my second year of community college) and went to the shelter, praying I was arriving in time.

I got to the shelter and ran to the front desk asking if the vet had made his rounds yet and they said that normally he would have been there and gone but that he was held up at his clinic and was running late.

It was FATE.

I don’t care if you believe in it or not. This is a real life case of FATE.

I went to the cat house, snatched up little Orphan Annie and ran out of there like I was on fire. All I had in the car to wrap it up in was an old flannel shirt. The whole hour drive back to my apartment, all I could do was pray and cry, cry and pray.

I arrived at the vet’s office and literally walked in with this kitten wrapped up in an old flannel shirt, crying and begging them to save it.

They took us immediately to a room and unwrapped the shirt. The vet came in, took one look and told me there was nothing they could do for it. That the humane thing was to put it to sleep.

I asked them to take a closer look and to make sure that nothing could be done.

They hesitated but went ahead. They cleaned it up, discovered what I thought was a she was actually a he (no real basis on why I thought he was a she, it just seemed fitting. I had never “peeked at the goods” so to speak) and re-evaluated.

He had ear mites, he had fleas, he had an infection, he was dehydrated, he was blind, he was OVER A YEAR OLD! They based this on the fact that all the teeth in his mouth were permanent ones.

Yet, he only weighed a little over 1 pound.

He was THAT malnourished.

They sent me home with a bathed and flea free cat. They told me that the infection would probably take him sometime during the night and to be prepared. They said if he survived the night, I was to bring him back in the next day for a follow up and a course of treatment.

I stayed up all night. Just holding and petting and giving him water and trying to encourage him to eat. He took a few small bites and drank a little bit of water.

He lived through the night.

I took him the next morning to the vet. They gave me vitamins, ear mite meds, antibiotics and feeding instructions.

Over the course of a month, he gained 4 pounds, shed the ear mites and fleas, got rid of the infection, learned how to use the litter box and learned the lay of the apartment. He rarely ran into anything.

After I had had him for a few months, I decided he needed a playmate since I was working full time and going to school part time.

At this time, I was also looking for a new apartment since the one I was in was getting too crowded and the lease was about up.

I found a complex across the street from the one I was in and fell in love with the apartments. When filling out the application, one of the questions was if you had a pet. I said yes and discovered that the apartment manager was a cat lover. She said that her boyfriend’s cat just had kittens and asked if I wanted another one. I thought about it for a second and asked if I could come see them.

She gave me their address and I went the next weekend. The kittens weren’t weaned yet, but they were at that really adorable stage. I fell in love with the tiniest one and they told me they would call me when I could come pick him up. They’d have all the initial shots done and then would pass him on to me.

A month or so goes by and I go and get my new kitty.

To be continued......(last entry tomorrow)

Later,

Mama Dawg

The Other Light of My Life

No, I don't have another kid.

This is about J.D. My cat.

I've gotten several e-mails and comments asking about J.D. and his lack of eyes, so I thought I'd do a series of posts on him.

For those of you that hate cats or hate reading stories about cats, you may want to come back another time.

If you look at my header up above, you see a cream colored cat “staring” right at you.

That's J.D. It stands for James Dean (although his vet swore it stood for Jack Daniels).

Yes, THAT James Dean.

I’m a HUGE James Dean fan. I think he was probably one of the most brilliantly talented actors to grace the silver screen and it absolutely sucks that he shined so bright yet so brief.

If you look closer at that picture, it looks like he has his eyes closed.

But….if you look even closer, you’ll see that that’s not the case.

He has no eyes.

Nope, not a single one in his furry little head.

Back in 1997, I was living in an apartment with my then best friend, Mimi (of the Mama Dawg was a Drug Mule story).

Wait…..

I need to give you some background info first.

I’m a HUGE animal lover.

When I was about 5 or 6, I caught a tiny minnow in the ditch behind our house. I took him home and put him in a small Tupperware bowl full of water and named him Squirmy.

We lost Squirmy later that night after I decided that he needed a bath since he smelled bad.

Yes, you guessed right. I went and got that little Tupperware bowl that housed the doomed Squirmy and dumped the entire contents, poopy water, fish and all, right into my bathtub that was full of soap, Barbies and me.

Did you know that soapy water will kill a minnow?

Yeah, I found out the hard way.

When I was seven, a tiny black kitten was dropped off in the street in front of my house. My mom found him and convinced my dad to let us have a cat. His name was Pirate and I loved him with all my heart. He was the tiniest little thing ever and I adored him…for all of 3 days. Then he just kind of faded into the background of my ever expanding life. I still loved him and took care of him, but my life didn’t revolve around his every need. He got sick and had to have an expensive operation which my mom paid for (mostly due to the waterworks I shed). My parents separated and my mom, Pirate and I moved to Florida. He lived until the ripe old age of 11. I was 18 when he disappeared from my life. All I can figure out is when I was taking out the trash one night, he slipped out the door behind me and either crawled off to die or got hit by a car or someone catknapped him. Whatever happened, he was out of my life. I was heartbroken. So heartbroken, I went to the shelter EVERY DAY for a month searching for him.

While at the shelter, I found a cat that I just felt had to be rescued. I took him home and called him Boots O’Malley.

I’ll make this one real short. We didn’t mesh. I put an ad in the paper and gave him away to a family that was able to incorporate him into their lives much easier than I did.

Also at this time, I was preparing to move out of my house and into an apartment with Mimi. We had a good friendship and were real tight and things were flowing smoothly. To make a long story short, life happened and the friendship got strained.

I got depressed.

To be continued:

Later,

Mama Dawg