Someone recently asked me how to pick out a cat. I immediately thought of all of the cats that we had chosen who didn’t like us/me. AND, the cats who chose me whom I loved and who loved me back. And that is the key. When you are looking at kittens or cats, look for one who wants you.
There many varieties of cats and dogs. I don’t know if any one breed is better than another. The breed is not so important as the individual animal and their personality. I suppose some breeds are more prone to specific traits than others, certainly if physical characteristics can be bred, then emotional ones can also be passed on to offspring.
I haven’t had experience with many varieties. I grew up with labs, Pekingese, German Shepherd dogs and Siamese and domestic shorthair cats.
In 1966, the Domestic Shorthair became the American Shorthair to distinguish the common, non-pedigreed cat from their lofty, fancy cat selves. Domestic short hair cats are what the word ‘mutt’ is to dogs in America but it sounds more sophisticated.
There are 80 plus different color combinations/patterns of the pedigree American short hair. They encompass basically color or pattern except what can be attributed to crossbreeding with a specific breed that results in pattern or color such as a Siamese color/marking pattern or sable color.
The common breed, ‘mutt’ cat (And the far superior American Shorthair) are said to have come to America from England on the Mayflower. As some of my ancestors arrived by the same boat, I am quite happy to enjoy their company and daydream about the craziness that must have been the lives of those people and cats on the boat and in their new home.
In reality, it wasn’t just the Mayflower but all ships that landed on American shores that had cats. They had cats aboard (and some that escaped to dry land) for the same reason that I love ours: they provide companionship without neediness and they kill pests. They kill bugs, spiders, mice and birds, thus protecting belongings, goods and supplies aboard ships. Our Himalayan kills snakes as well, for which, no matter his faults, he is rewarded with a loving, safe home.
He is a cat who did not choose us. My daughter and her friend felt sorry for me because I was facing an empty nest so they spent their hard earned money on a Himalayan. He was an adorable kitten. However, they didn’t realize that he had preferences before he arrived.
They said, “Here he is! We know that you will be happy with him. He loves to be petted. He was sitting on a man’s lap when we went to see him.”
Do you see the flaw in their good intentions? He was sitting happily on a MAN’s lap. I am a female and animals know the difference.
When we first married, I told my husband that I wanted a cat. I had one before we began dating but my roommate scolded until I gave Camelia to my mother. Now that I had my ‘forever’ roommate, I wanted to go back to my status quo, which was a home with a cat.
Unfortunately, the lease said “No pets.” No matter how I pleaded, he would not budge. He didn’t realize that I had broken the rules of every lease that I had before him with a pet cat. I had hidden cats and litter boxes from more landlords than I dared tell him. He thought that he had married an sweet (!) and law abiding wife.
We compromised and bought a hand raised cockatiel. Somehow, to his mind, a cockatiel was not breaking the lease. Now, I think that he really preferred birds to cats back then.
Her name was Newton. Not only did we get her sex wrong, she also got the wrong sex in us, because she didn’t like the person who wanted her; me. She LOVED my husband and bit me.
She had been handraised by a man and no matter what we did, including only me feeding her and petting her, she clearly favored my husband and wanted nothing to do with me.
She never warmed up to me and when she became of age, she was broody and poopy. She made far worse messes than any cat would have unless it was very ill.
My husband eventually put her in her travel carrier and took her to an amenable pet store who was very happy to have a breeding bird.
When asked about her friendliness, he said that he mumbled something and quickly left. He wasn’t comfortable lying and figured that they were breeders so would be happy with the egg part of her in spite of her cranky unfriendliness. Thus we promoted the unfriendliness problem of pets. However, we did know that she was a good egg layer and she liked men, so she wasn’t without some merits.
Just as humans have preferences, so do animals, not just persnickety cats and birds, but also dogs.
Our Tucker was purchased sight unseen (I had seen photos of his parents) from a registered breeder. Unfortunately, the registration that I had believed to be discerning was not. Tucker was, in spite of his papers, a Puppy Mill pup.
He is a delightful dog. Actually. He isn’t, but he is well loved and certainly adored. He has more quirks than an average Newfie and they are known to be sulky and have easily hurt feelings as well as being stalwart and brave rescue dogs.
He is afraid of blonde women, he is terrified of small children and he slept with his head on his water dish that he held between his paws for months when we first got him. He also has a very odd crooked tail.
When we took him to a knowledgeable vet, she broke the news to us that we had purchased him from an unscrupulous breeder. After putting his behavior together with the bits that the breeder gave to us when giving us the sales pitch, we can surmise he was kept outside in an unheated shed, had been hurt by a mother and her child (that would create the fear and also explain his broken tail) and sadly, was denied his water when he was thirsty.
The shed must also have had rabbits because he refuses to leave the rabbit cage when my daughter bunny sits. He is ridiculously stouthearted in his affection towards rabbits. He also loves carrots more than any other treat but I don’t really think that is because of his affinity towards rabbits.
Our black lab was pathetic when it came to blonde women but in the opposite direction. I met his breeder. She was pregnant and nearing her ninth month with her first child. She and her husband desperately wanted to sell the pups before they became people parents.
We went to her home and looked at him and his brothers (his sisters had found homes already). I knelt down and looked them in the eyes as they cautiously hid but with friendly curiosity under their garage steps. A couple puppies ignored me, but he and another brother were interested in us.
I spent a bit of time coaxing and playing with them, letting them go away and then making a noise or movement to attract attention. The dog that we finally picked was the one that was most attentive to me when I tried to attract his attention.
He was a wonderful pup. Well, he was a bit aggressive and hard headed and as the children were small, I had to hire a dog walker to help keep him calm enough to be around small children. I hired the teenage neighbor who was also on the track team. He was very happy to make money while training for track meets. I never quite forgave him for bending over with obnoxious laughter when I was pulled face first and body flat into the muddy lawn by an overly exuberant almost grown ninety pound black lab. Dog walkers aren’t perfect either, but they should turn around if they cannot contain their unbridled laughter.
Dogs seem to be very sensitive to hair color. Because, just as Tucker is afraid of blonde women, our lab was captivated by them. It turns out that the reason that he was so attentive when I was testing him in his original home was because he was the breeder’s favorite. And she was a blonde.
When we called them to give them an update as they requested we do, her husband told me, “Oh, we loved him, he was our favorite. My wife would hold him and rock him and sing lullabies to him. She was sad that you chose him.”
That explained some of his strange behavior when I sang songs to my own children at bedtime.
But it also had another consequence that I wasn’t thrilled with either; we lived in an area that was predominately of Holland descent; mostly blondes (I am brunette). Our lab had absolutely no concept of loyalty. Whenever he met a blonde woman, he would immediately decide that she was his best friend and I was chopped liver. He flattered many women in his time with us and then he broke my heart and I may have broken his.
He was getting older and we moved to a larger property. His legs weren’t holding up and we had just gotten energetic Poppy who wanted to play with him all the time. My sister in law (blonde btw) had dog-sat him many times and dearly wanted him to come live with her. We finally gave him to her because we thought that it would be a better life for him, he was nearly twelve and we wanted only the best for him.
She assured us that he was very happy and as we know her to be kind and loving, we never doubted her. However, one day, we were reminiscing about him and she told me that whenever he had seen a girl running with a long pony tail, he would want to follow her. Our daughter. Our daughter had replaced the rude dog walker and our beloved dog never forgot his girl, our girl with the long ponytail. I have tears in my eyes even now, years later, as I write this. I would not have allowed him to go if I had known that he would always look for his girl who used to put dog biscuits in her pockets and hide from him when her brother was in school and she wanted to play hide and seek.
Animals choose to love us, learn to fear us and they associate the way we look with previous experiences. They are just as discerning, if not more, than we are because they are, for the most part at our mercy.
I don’t really think that there is any way to pick the ‘right’ animal because they aren’t like shoes, there is no perfect fit. It is a bit of serendipity and accommodation on both the part of human and animal.
Our Mac cat, the beloved ginger and cream that we have now, reached out and grabbed my sleeve in the pet store when we went to look for him from an ad on FB.
My cats that were my pets as a child were the ones who found me when I was in the barn doing chores or playing about in the hayloft. My cats as a young adult woman were ones that found my apartment and me.
I had two cats that hated me. One was a rescued kitten that was found on a Los Angeles sidewalk. A woman at work brought it to work in a box. Of course I fell in love with it. But it never warmed up to me. I eventually gave it to someone whom it did like.
The other was a gray, long hair that my friend who works at a shelter wanted me to take. His name was Smokey. He was as elusive as smoke and he hated children. We had children who wanted to play with him. We gave him to my mom who had a kind heart and loved us and him. He continued to hate us. When we went to visit her, he would hide from us. I think that he feared that we would scoop him up and take him back home. I once forgot something and turned around and went back to her house just in time to see him coming out from under her porch. He took one look at me and went right back under it!
I am not sure what the thesis sentence of this blog is today. I can’t decide if it is ‘How to choose a cat’ or ‘Animals choose us.’
I do know that we don’t really own a pet any more than we own a person. They may live with us, but they exercise their free will as much as we do. Their personalities are as varied as ours, they have more or less tolerance for our foibles and personalities as we do for theirs.
One: that animals have very long memories about things/people/events that they liked or were painful, even as young animals. It protects them.
Two: they decide whom they prefer and with whom they prefer to live.
When my mother passed away, one of the feral cats that she had rescued from my brother’s farm was taken back to his farm. The next morning, he could not find the cat. We found him. He was sitting on my mother’s porch waiting to be let in. He had walked seven miles back home to my mom’s house. The only time that he had been on the road was when he was just weaned and was brought to her as a tiny, sick kitten. I still grow misty thinking about him. Looking for Mom, not knowing she was gone forever.
Smokey was happy to live with my brother because his children were older.
I don’t know if there is an animal/person pairing that is perfect. I think that ‘owning’ a pet is much like being married; you love each other and you compromise by ignoring the other’s faults. It is chemistry, a lot of patience and hopefully, mostly love and fun.
Think carefully when you decide to own a pet; have your own set of requirements for a pet set in your mind before you head out to wherever you choose to find your pet and if you are lucky, one may choose you.
Decide if you want to walk your animal every day, a few times a day or change the litter box every day. All animals poop.
Think about how much attention you want to give and want to receive.
Do you want a companion to take for long walks? A friendly movie watching companion? How strong are you? Our Tucker sent me to the emergency room because he jumped up and I didn’t see him in time to dodge. He nearly broke my jaw. A friend tripped over a small dog and fell. Pets can be dangerous even asleep!
I prefer cats because I think of them as teenagers; they want attention but only when they want it. Dogs are more like toddlers: they need to be watched and need more companionship. That said, I quite often have to look for Tucker or Poppy and look up and see Mac the cat, who chose me, because he shadows me most of the day and night.
Dogs usually bark and protect. Cats may or may not protect you. I have had cats that were noteworthy guard cats and I have had dogs that would hide from most visitors. There is no perfect pet or answer to your quest because nobody, not even you, is perfect.
Make your list, investigate and then leave room for serendipity.
It is Christmas time and with it comes the precautions that we must observe to protect our pets.
One sometimes overlooked precaution is to pick up after your party, before you go to bed. I don’t mean do all the dishes but pick up the food and drinks and put them in the trash or pantry where they are up and out of the way from your pets. Animals are curious and while you are sleeping in, they may decide to investigate just what the fun you had the night before was all about.
If your pet swallows a battery, take the animal to the vet right away! It is NOT OK to wait. If your pet seems ill after getting into any kind of food or decoration, call your vet right away.
If you have questions about something your pet may have swallowed,
Mistletoe is commonly thought of as dangerous to our pets but that is a matter of mistaken identity for the most part: there are two types of evergreen shrubs called mistletoe: the American mistletoe or
Phoradendron serotinum) and European mistletoe (Viscum album).
Abundant literature and folklore describe the European variety’s herbal, mythical, and medicinal history. Poisonings and deaths have been reported from ingestion of European mistletoe. American mistletoe’s toxic reputation is probably guilt by association because it has the same common name as its European relative.
The reason that the European mistletoe is often said to be poisonous is because it is made into tea, not because it is eaten by children or pets. However, it is poison.
Just buy plastic mistletoe and you don’t have to worry about your pets or your children.
It is Christmas time and with it comes the precautions that we must observe to protect our pets.
Mistletoe is commonly thought of as dangerous to our pets but that is a matter of mistaken identity for the most part: there are two types of evergreen shrubs called mistletoe: the American mistletoe or
Phoradendron serotinum) and European mistletoe (Viscum album).
Abundant literature and folklore describe the European variety’s herbal, mythical, and medicinal history. Poisonings and deaths have been reported from ingestion of European mistletoe. American mistletoe’s toxic reputation is probably guilt by association because it has the same common name as its European relative.
The reason that the European mistletoe is often said to be poisonous is because it is made into tea, not because it is eaten by children or pets. However, it is poison.
Just buy plastic mistletoe and you don’t have to worry about your pets or your children.
I read several varying accounts about reindeer and I think that they became part of our Christmas tradition because Clement C. Moore wrote The Night Before Christmas in 1894. It wasn’t anything to do with promotion Alaskan reindeer farming which happened and failed in the 1920s.
I found that it was very interesting that Donder (or Donner) and Blitzen began as Dunder and Blixen. These are the Dutch and German words for Thunder and Lightening. Thor, the Norse god road a chariot that was pulled by goats that changed into reindeer.
Reindeer also are well known as far better than any other animal in the arctic for pulling sledges. They are amphibious; able to pull things through water and across land. They are trainable and were used on battlefields to pull both artillery and rescue wounded from the battlefields. They even pulled disabled planes to safety.
They aren’t hardy when it comes to moving however and they must rest every few days for a a few days when they are being herded from one place to another. They also do NOT do well being transported. When they were transported on the train in World War II, they fell ill and some ran away when they disembarked. One of their primary difficulties is their food. They prefer their native food which is lichens.
Today, people who raise reindeer buy lichens that are harvested in Lapland to feed their herds.
Which brings us to a myth that may be important to children throughout the world: they don’t have top incisors. The only reindeer who like carrots are Santa’s reindeer.
Reindeer are a member of the deer family. They are cousins of the caribou. They have antlers and they shed their antlers. Male and female reindeer aren’t on the same timetable with their antlers however. The older males usually shed their antlers in November/early December after their mating/fighting season.
Females and younger males keep their antlers through the winter. The antlers act as shovels to uncover food for the reindeer. Females are generally pregnant during the winter and they need to keep nourished. Early man watched the reindeer and discovered plants that were helpful for people too.
Earliest man believed that reindeer took them to heaven. Their elaborate antlers stretched back and their legs stretched as if flying have been found in graves and in paintings for thousands of years. A professor has explained why they have the reputation of being able to fly: they are great leapers. They can leap very long distances, which, if viewed from a long distance may look as if they are flying.
We, who believe in flying reindeer and Santa, know that the real reason that they fly is a combination of magic and the special food that children leave out for them on Christmas eve.
½ cup raw oatmeal
1 teaspoon of your favorite sprinkles
Mix up and leave in a cup beside Santa’s cookies.
If you live in the woods, you can give them a lichen from a tree but they are just as happy with birdseed or oatmeal and sprinkles. (I am too!)
Merry Christmas! Best wishes for the New Year!!
https://youtu.be/4G58Uyc33do The Oregon Zoo Flying Reindeer youtube
https://www.poison.org/articles/2011-dec/pets-and-holiday-hazards
It's nearly Thanksgiving and I've been thinking of my family a lot lately. Of my Mom, who didn’t get to see my children become adults and my grandparents who never met them or held them, but whose wisdom, humor and love touch their lives every day through me.
When my mom divorced in her 50s, in the 90s, a cat soon showed up at her little house on Divorce Road. It wasn't officially named that but I am from a tiny town and her road had 7 houses and 6 were owned by divorced women.
Affordable and safe little homes on the road's unpaved end on the edge of town. No stinky gov to condemn them for roofs that only mostly held out rain. No homelessness in our town. No crime really either.
It's anachronistic; a factory town post NAFTA. Although there is a WalMart at the edge of town, somehow Main Street has remained essentially the same. It still has independent, family owned stores that bear the years that the stores were built and often, it was over a hundred years ago. The factory tried to leave in the 1990’s, but they make food products and nobody with cheap labor has better water. So, reluctantly, they stayed and our town survived better than most because we had work.
Riding the school bus, when I was in high school, children could smell what foods their parents were making each day because the smell of exotic bananas or homey peaches would fill the cold, snowflake swirling darkness and the scent would seep through the school bus windows as we passed the factory parking lot on winter mornings.
Sometimes the sky would be streaked with the brilliant oranges and pinks of a midwestern, mid-winter sunrise peeking through the black silhouetted trees on the hill behind the factory.
I can still see the chrome frames around the bus windows, gleaming from the street lights against the darkness of the early morning.
Most of us trying to wake up, listening to soft rock from a station in the nearest city, a good hour away, on the bus radio, as we sat quietly, mentally preparing for our school day or trying to finish homework, scribbling in the darkness.
We were one of the new buses that had a radio and there were no individual devices, except, some of us had calculators. They were early communication electronics; If we were very clever, we could make them read "hello" by typing "07734" and turning it upside down.
We were all together, snugly warm with occasional blasts of arctic air as the bus stopped at a house. Maybe, closer to town, we would see a mom and a dog or cat on the back of the couch, looking out the softly lit window to wave goodbye..
My dog used to wait with me until I had to get on the bus and then my mom would call and he would run back to the house, then they would head out to the barn to do chores together.
My parents didn't work in town; their farm provided food to the factory, until I was grown up and they divorced and Mom moved to town. Leaving all the animals behind with Dad. But there weren't many left by then and the new owners kindly took them with the house and barns.
On our farm, barn cats stayed in the barn. They worked and were needed; they protected the food supplies for the other animals from mice and other critters. Dogs sounded the alarm if anyone came, herded animals and followed us like a summer shadow.
But, every year, kittens would be found in a safe corner, tucked away with a Mama cat and sometimes one would find its way into our house or Grandma's or a cousin's. We had a casual relationship with cats. They came and went and were fed from a big bag of cat kibble bought at the local feed store and fresh milk twice a day at milking time and all the mice they could catch and eat.
Mama cat used to come to the house but she had a fondness for freshly picked vegetables and she was sneaky. More than once she was thrown out of the house for helping herself to dinner before it was cooked. She would tear right through unhusked corn on the cob to get to the sweet, succulent kernels waiting to become fried corn.
Animals: pets, livestock and wild, were intertwined with our lives. They protected us, helped us, investigated suspicious noises or problems with us, sometimes created problems (Cows only get out on cold, dark nights and sows only give birth at 1a.m. or so it seemed when I was growing up, and what stupid hen decides that the top bale in a hay loft is a good place to hatch a dozen chicks?).
They entertained us and comforted us. They were our vocation, our job, our lives. We fed them, cared for them and at times, it seemed as though we, animals and family, understood each other so well that we had a common language.
When Mom lived a few blocks away from the town's factory, on her tidy street, sometimes the fragrance wafted to the edge of her lawn. Her corner house backed up to a ravine that had a creek along the bottom, winding its way through town detrious and woods, a strange but common combination in small towns.
Snakes would come up from the darkness and damp of the ravine to sun themselves but her lawn was guarded by Mac; her cat. I watched him kill one once while I was painting her bedroom upstairs. He jumped over it and grabbed it and threw it down, then turned around and did it again.
She told me about how cats killed snakes when I was a child. It was, for us, because snakes were enemies, fascinating. Now, my daughter would save it because she doesn't have a chicken coop and likes snakes.
Snakes crawl into chicken nests and eat eggs. Your first job as a child on a farm is to feed chickens and collect eggs. You aren’t always tall enough to seen into the nests so reaching in and finding snake instead of eggs in the dusty, feathery, poopy hen house is shocking and terrifying.
Any snake found was quickly dispatched; we didn't share and they didn't either. They bit.
Granddad always had cats and hounds in the barn next to the coop. Grandma had dogs, not hounds, in the house. The kids had whatever critters they found or bartered; fox and raccoon were common pets as well as horses, dogs (hounds don't make good pets, they hunt) and cats.
When our children were in preschool, I wanted to get them pets. I wanted them to have the same experiences with animals that I had. I wanted to pass on the art and instincts of being able to communicate with animals that I had been given by my Mom and grandparents.
I wanted them to understand that the world was more than them; pets do that, they make you live outside yourself. And they protect us; from snakes, spiders, unwary mail carriers and selfishness and loneliness.
Mom made me take two feral kittens from my brother; Cuddles and his sister. Tom wanted a dog, so we got a black lab named Boomer who walked Pete to the bus on his first day of kindergarten.
Our pets are an integral part of our lives. Its what we have in common with our friends and our relatives; if you disagree with someone about politics, you certainly can talk about how great your pets are and how much you enjoy their antics when you are at the Thanksgiving dinner table.
Today, we have 3 cats and 2 dogs that follow me around all day. I feel bad if I leave my glasses downstairs after lunch because all 6 of us traipse down the stairs to get them, then back up again to my room where they all surround me while I work. My sentries. When I miss my family, I look up and I feel my mom and grandpa in those furry bodies softly dreaming while I work.
So, when I was thinking about granddad and his barn, my mom and her tidy house and me with my beloved sentries, I was thinking about our children too. Our children will always have pets because they have learned the lessons that were so important to me long ago: that the world is bigger than ourselves and our pets make sure that we understand that.
When we are afraid or alone, a warm furry body with a pokey nose can console us. When the world seems cold and the winds are harsh, they can also persuade you to get up in the morning because no matter how lousy you feel, animals need to go poo and they always need to be fed. Somehow, once you start putting one foot in front of the other, the world doesn’t seem so bad, or unconquerable.; It isn’t, when you have a good friend.
Pete is mad at me because this blog is VERY late. But I couldn’t help myself. The deeper that I dug for stories and details about animals who served in the military, the more fascinated I became. Every time that I thought that I had finally found The Best story about an animal, there was another one just a bit further on the page.
Everyone knows that dogs are currently used by our Military, but I found that they, and everything from elephants to slugs have been used as far back as there have been wars.
Oxen were dressed up like dragons and set lose upon the enemy in 267 BC by Chinese warriors. Dogs were dressed up in turbans and long robes and lured the enemy out; the enemy thought that they were shooting at careless soldiers, only to be shot at by the hound’s owners. (Pete didn’t like this story but I think that the hounds got away.)
Monkeys were sent over walls with incendiary devices and fleas and flies were dropped as bombs by the Japanese onto China in WWII.
Elephants were used in war but mainly as intimidation; horses would panic because of the unfamiliar smell and well, elephants are intimidating to anyone in battle, I suppose. But! While the myth that elephants are afraid of mice may be untrue, they are afraid of the sound of squealing pigs and rivals of elephant owners made use of this fact.
My favorite insect story is about spiders. During WWII, bomb sites and rifle scopes weren’t made with etched lenses and regular thread couldn’t hold up to the jarring of firing. Spider web silk had been used since ancient times for nets, sutures and fishing line.
It was natural to turn to spider webs when they needed strong silk thread for sights in military weapons. After some trial and hard work, they discovered that black widow spiders were the best spinners for silken web thread. The silk was harvested from the spiders (garden spiders were too fast, so they used black widows), wound onto minuscule spindles and then sold to the government and put into the scopes. This was standard until they discovered a way to etch the crosshairs on the scopes, after the war.
The primary spider harvesters were in Ohio and California. In California, Nan Songer heard that the U.S. government needed silk so she began her spider silk harvesting operation in jars on her front porch. This was newsworthy, so the local newspaper wrote an article that was picked up by national papers. In the article, she lamented that she needed more spiders. Much to her surprise, she began receiving them from all parts of the country!
It was against the law to mail poisonous spiders through the post office but the government not only overlooked her outlaw ways, they offered her a contract for more silken web!
We used slugs because they are more sensitive to dangerous mustard gas; when soldiers saw the slugs shrink and stop breathing they knew it was time to put on their mask. They were more effective than birds at alerting them about dangerous gasses.
Soldiers used lightening bugs (or fireflies) because ten in a jar gave them enough light to read their letters from home or maps.
A goat from Saskatchewan named Sergeant Bill (Billy Goat) joined the Canadian army as a good luck mascot and finished as a hero. He was awarded the 1914/15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal for his four and a half years of service. He fought along side his fellow soldiers in the 5th Western Calvary Expeditionary Force from Canada.
A train load of new recruits spied him pulling his owner’s cart and asked Daisy Curwain of Broadview, Saskatchewan if they could borrow him for good luck. Her family owned a jewelry store, so didn’t need him for their farm and gave him to them.
After training, when they were being shipped out overseas, they didn’t want to give up Bill so they bought all the oranges from a local woman who was selling them to the people on the army base. They bought the oranges and the crate also. Into the wooden box went Bill, and they brought him aboard the S.S. Lapland in October 1914 as a crate of oranges.
Bill adjusted slowly to army life; when they first arrived, he ate the personnel roster. Then, he objected to the C.O. and butted him soundly in his hind end when he wasn’t looking. It was feared that he would be in the brig for quite sometime but he eventually learned to keep his horns (engraved with his battalion’s number) mostly to himself.
Sgt. Bill distinguished himself and was promoted to Sergeant because of his usefulness and bravery. He got trench foot/hoof with his men, he was hurt by shelling and had shrapnel wounds. He was shell shocked right along side his people and he recovered with them as well. He was gassed with them and he recognized the members of his battalion. He also liked to drink beer with them.
Sgt. Bill was on guard duty one night when he detected a German soldier who had sneaked into their territory and was making maps of the their encampment. He used his horns for good this time and butted him to the ground and stood on top of him until he was relieved by his fellow soldiers who took the enemy into custody.
He had superior hearing to his people and learned to recognize the sound of the planes. He was given an award because of a specific incident when his comrades didn’t hear the plane that was coming after them, he knocked all three men into the trench before jumping in with them. He saved them from annihilation as the shell landed where they had been standing.
He accompanied his men to Berlin and marched in the VE (Victory Europe) parade wearing a blue coat with Sargent's stripes. Sgt. Bill was also in his hometown parade, in full dress and he was arguably the star of the day.
His battalion was very sadly depleted when he returned to Canada and the men who returned were greeted with great warmth and happiness; he was one of the few original soldiers of the 5th who was still active.
I spent a long time researching Sgt. Bill. I thought that I had everything that I could possibly have on him for you but then I found an article that contradicted some of my end facts about Sgt. Bill after he died.
As I am not a journalist, and Pete is tired of waiting, I will simply tell you what I used to tell my children when they were young: He lived a long and happy life upon his return to Daisy.
(And when he died of natural causes, he was given to a taxidermist by Daisy and he is now the main attraction in Broadview Museum. He was very popular in death as well as life and school children used to climb up on him and ‘ride’ him until he got a little worn. Now, he is safely in a ‘No Touch’ exhibit. Or not.)
Of course we also used dogs throughout military history. In ancient times, they were given armor and fought in battle. They trained and worked beside humans. They were used to run down trenches with new, replacement communication cables during WWI when the lines of communication were damaged.
They often stood guard during the long, lonely, frightening nights with their people companions throughout the ages. During the American Revolution, the men took their dogs with them when the joined the militia without a thought because they were a team. Who better to be their brother in battle?
They were frequently used as couriers on the battlefields. One particularly stirring story was about an unnamed dog who had been sent to give a message but on his way found a wounded soldier. He stopped and refused to leave the soldier. The message wasn’t received, but the soldier was found and given medical aide because of his 4-legged guardian angel.
I chose to tell you about Sinbad the Sailor who was with the Coast Guard because, well, I love Barnegat, New Jersey and my niece is a member of the Coast Guard. Like most stories on this blog, it is a personal, loving choice.
Sinbad was a 40 pound mutt who was eventually described by reporters as “liberty-rum-chow-hound, with a bit of bulldog, doberman pinscher, and what-not. Mostly what-not.”
He served with the US Coastguard aboard the US Coast Guard Cutter Campbell, The Queen of The Seas, for its entire tour during World War II. He received numerous awards and was also court martialed twice and found guilty both times. Once of “conduct unbecoming a member of Campbellcrew” (for harassing sheep in Greenland) and several years later for going AWOL from his own promotion ceremony.
In 1937, he began his naval career as many do; unwanted and needing a home. He was a gift to Boatswains Mate A.A. “Blackie” Rother’s girlfriend but her landlord wouldn’t let her keep him. So, at the end of Liberty, at home port in New York City, Blackie and his buddy Ed Maillard brought him aboard the Campbell in a duffle bag.
The next morning Sinbad announced himself present by barking during muster while the ship’s captain was telling the men just how serious their mission to patrol the seas was. From behind the men, Sinbad the Sailor, who had been given his name the night before, when he was brought aboard, barked to show himself in attendance and ready for duty.
He was not thrown overboard for being a stowaway, but given the rank of Dog, 1st Class.
He quickly became part of the crew and was frequently found at the galley when it was chow time. He had a hammock for a bed because it was more stable than an actual bed on a ship that was heaving through waves on the Atlantic Ocean.
The first 3 years at sea were uneventful for Sinbad, except that he was court martialed and busted down to Seaman Pup for his sheep harassing in Greenland. He was also banned from ever setting paw there again. But he considered himself lucky, because the Greenlanders were seeking deadly retribution upon him and he was much safer drinking coffee in the galley with his shipmates on land.
Sinbad saw battle and was a critical part of the crew. While most of the time, his battle station was behind a ladder well or in his bunk, on February 22, 1943, the Campbell was protecting a convoy when they became involved in a cat and mouse game with allies and a German U boat in the North Atlantic. After a day of drizzle and poor visibility, the German sub’s periscope was spotted. The Campbell dropped a series of depth charges but in the end, it was the ship itself colliding with the sub that sunk it.
When the crew of the Campbell was rescuing the Germans with their lifeboats in the water, they got a better look at the cutter and they realized that the Campbell had been severely damaged. Half of the crew had to be evacuated to a Polish ship.
Commander Jimmy Hirshfield deemed Sinbad an ‘essential’ member of the crew and decided that Sinbad was to stay aboard ship during restoration because his men felt so strongly that they were unsinkable with Sinbad aboard.
That day he had been on deck all day with his crew and he deserved to remain. All was well and they were reunited with the rest of the crew a few days later in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
His valor and good conduct was a good counter balance to another of his unfortunate incidents when he pulled the lanyard of a 300lb depth charger and nearly sunk the ship.
Sinbad was beloved by his crew and the world not just because he was a dedicated sea dog, but because he was as rowdy as any sailor who ever sailed the seas. His tales of rowdiness are long and pretty much run along the vein of being a hard drinking dog.
He had a fund for taxi rides home during Liberty in the Quarterdeck Shack because he reportedly would take cabs back to the ship. (I assume that he was aided by his fellow shipmates when he had to hail the cab and give instructions.)
One night on Liberty, he was reported as a ‘dead dog on the street’ by a woman in Manhattan only to be discovered by a policeman as a ‘dead drunk dog in the gutter.’ His fondness for draft beers and Boiler Makers (beer and a shot of whiskey) was legendary, if not exaggerated. Those were different times, now we would say that he was an abused animal but back then, he was hailed as ‘one of the boys’ and he was beloved enough to be invited to their revelry as well as their work during war time.
His main job aboard ship was his companionship and distraction from the horror of war. He gave his love to the crew just as our dogs give it to us, with an open heart and enough naughtiness for us to know that he was his own dog.
He loved to play and he would hoard three inch metal washers. When he could get someone to play with him, he would give one to them and they would balance it on his nose then he would give a quick jerk and catch it in his mouth.
He was promoted a final time to Chief Dog. The captain arranged a ceremony in their home port in New York but he decided that he had enough of the publicity and photographers and ran down the gangplank and out into New York City, presumably to find another beer and better company. He was promptly court martialed again and demoted back to his previous rank upon his return.
He earned, among other awards, 5 Battle Stars during his time on the high seas. He retired on September 21, 1948 to the Barnegat Coast Guard Station in New Jersey where he continued to swill beer with his mates and keep everyone safe with his good humor and good luck. He passed away on December 30, 1951 at the age of 14. He had a funeral with full military honors and was buried at the foot of the flag pole at the Barnegat Coast Guard Station. A bronze plaque honors him there.
The Campbell was decommissioned in 1982 and replaced by another that is stationed out of Kirby, Maine. But Sinbad is not forgotten. There are paw prints painted on the main deck and when the cutter is underway, a white flag flies that says, “Sinbad Lives.”
Eddie Lloyd, the editor of the old Coast Guard Magazine said: “Sinbad was a salty sailor but he’s not a good sailor. He never rated gold hash marks nor good conduct medals. He’s been on report several times, and he’s raised hell in a number of ports. On a few occasions, he has embarrassed the United States government by creating disturbances in foreign zones. Perhaps that’s why Coast Guardsmen love Sinbad – He’s as bad as the worst and as good as the best of us.
Cats are less flamboyant that dogs in military history. Which doesn’t mean that they were any less important. They were fantastic workers and were responsible for keeping the mouse and rat populations down so our military personnel could eat. They also provided much needed distraction from the hells of war.
They seemed to be more often on ships than land and unfortunately, there seems to be two ways that a ship’s cat disappears; it goes down with the ship or it disappears at a port. Both scenarios seem to typical ‘cat.’ Dedicated and independent.
The CIA foolishly tried to use a cat for espionage in the Kremlin in the 1960s. In operation Acoustic Kitty; they implanted the cat with listening devices in his ear and on his collar. Back then, the electronics were bulky and had poor reception.
Like most government programs, they overreached, and were short-sighted: they thought that could control a cat. The theory was that they could bug a cat and it would wander through the building collecting information. It didn’t. It was frequently distracted and when it ate, the noise interfered with the reception.
After wasting millions of taxpayer dollars and more than likely annoying the poor cat, they decided to give up, because, unfortunately, when they sent the cat on his first ‘mission’ to go and listen to a couple of men sitting on a park bench, the cat was hit by a cab. The cat could not be saved, nor could the operation.
I wanted to finish this with a heartwarming story about a cat. I am afraid that the only heartwarming story that I found is a recent one. Pfc. Hammer recently was brought here from the Middle East and he is very happy and loved with his owner in Colorado. He was aided by Alley Cat Allies and Military Mascots.
sadly no pictures avalible
There are far too many stories of animal loyalty and bravery and utilitarian usefulness for me to write even half of them. I don’t have room and Pete doesn’t have patience enough for me to write about horses! But! A horse in Korea learned the route between camps so well that it could carry supplies between camps without a person. Even snakes were used/tolerated in jungle trenches because they ate mice and other crawlies.
The fact that Sinbad and Sgt. Bill were happily included as drinking buddies tells us what we need to know and what we already know; that our animals are our friends. They distract us in times of great stress and give us a loving swat when we need a hug.
Hammer was grabbed by the person nearest and slid under the protective gear when his mates were being bombed. He was family. They are the best part of us; the unexpected, interesting, distracting friends who give our brains a rest and comfort us when we can’t confide in people. They remind us of home and the reason that we fight; to protect our country, our homes and our families. Because they are family and their dedication to us inspires us when we are afraid and we need comfort.
Every animal story that touches our heart is one that is compelling because of mutual love.Links:
https://warisboring.com/even-animals-needed-gas-masks…
https://www.military-history.org/articles/war-culture…
https://warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles…
slugs of war detecting gas and other creatures who helped win wars
https://roadstothegreatwar-ww1.blogspot.com
sergeant bill the goat
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-i/stubby…
https://roadstothegreatwar-ww1.blogspot.com
https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/how-did-animals….
https://www.historyhit.com/animals-used-for-military…
https://www.lifewithcats.tv/2011/11/11/11-11-11-remembering-the-countless-cats-who-also-served/
http://petslady.com/articles/hammer_time_cat_iraq_62910
http://www.operationwearehere.com/Pets.html
https://www.dogsondeployment.org/
Our pets are in very real danger at Halloween because we are distracted by our people excitement and therefore not always paying attention to them.
Our pets are like any child, if you aren’t paying attention to them, they get into trouble in the blink of any eye. They can become frightened by all of the noise outside and the doorbell. The strange cars on the street and even strange pets who are trick or treating with their owners. It is all a giant spook house.
Keep your pets safe. Lock your cats and dogs in a bedroom or safe room/area that they are used to and feel safe in. Our cat loves the laundry room and we put him there when he needs to be kept in and we know that we will be busy with distractions. Make sure that they have a litter box and food and water.
Do not put everyone together if they don’t get along! You will have a Gingham Dog and Calico Cat fight on your hands. Please use common sense.
Besides the danger of our pets escaping into the night from a dropped leash or an opened door for trick or treating ghouls and princesses, the Candy Dish is a potential hazard.
I tried to break things down into groups and decided to do another blog in the future regarding XILITOL. Xilitol is a very common artificial sweetener, but just briefly let’s touch on it for Halloween. It is in most gums, some sugar free Jello puddings and jell-o’s, and many sugar-free candies.
It is more dangerous than chocolate because it is harmful in smaller doses and it is in everything from toothpaste to candy to gum to shampoo and deodorant. Your best bet is to check the labels of all of your products at the store, before bringing them into the house. Especially if you have a puppy or a dog who likes to get into everything.
We had a horrible, expensive and nerve wracking evening with Tucker because I was given Trident gum by my dentist because I kept getting cavities in spite of dedicated brushing. Tucker found some on my desk and all that we found was a wrapper. Or multiple wrappers. Thankfully, he is a large dog and his body weight vs. the amount of gum that he could have eaten (even if he ate a wrapper or two) was not enough to harm him. But it was enough for me to now dispose of my chewed gum by wrapping it in toilet paper and flushing (sorry about the plumbing hazards, Tom) and to keep the unchewed gum in my closed desk drawer.
The most common hazardous Halloween items for pets are:*
I think that Chocolate is probably the most popular candy in America for Halloween so I want to focus on that as a hazard to our dogs. It is also dangerous for cats.
Dark Chocolate is more dangerous than Milk or White because it has more concentrated cacao in it.
We have a Chocolate Hazard Calculator for your dogs and cats! both animals have the same toxicity threshold. (do NOT use this as ‘how much chocolate can I give my dog without harming him.’ That is just dumb and risky.) (CALCULATOR NOT AVAILABLE IN AMP WEB MODE)
If your dog eats chocolate, you need to know what kind of chocolate, how much he ate and how much he weighs.
A small dog who ate dark chocolate is in more danger than a big dog who ate a milk chocolate Kiss.
The dire signs of a sick pet from eating chocolate are:
Unfortunately, these signs don’t always appear immediately. So, if you think or know that your dog has ingested chocolate or any other toxic substance, please call your vet as soon as you can. If you wait until they have the above symptoms, you may have waited until it was too late.
Keeping an eye on your pet should be second nature to you, even on exciting nights, so if your pet is acting strangely quiet, has that ‘my tummy hurts’ look in their eyes, needs to be next to you more than usual or seems to need to go out urgently or is very thirsty, look around, see if anything is out of place.
Pets are curious and sneaky. You may find a scarecrow torn up and paritally eaten, some people snacks that were forgotten and eaten by your pet or even some make up that has been tasted.
Please check it all out, go around your home, look for messes (poo or Halloween things torn up) and just double check to make sure that everyone is alright before you go to bed.
Putting candy up and away from your pets (cats aren’t supposed to eat candy either) is a good way to prevent emergencies and heartaches (and vomiting and diarrhea at the very least). Put the candy inside your kitchen pantry and shut the door, put it in the garage if your pets don’t go out there (although mice may find it) or put it in your kitchen cupboard. I always stash things on top of the refrigerator or on top of the plates in my kitchen cabinet.
DO NOT put the candy in the oven for safe keeping!! That is a topic for another time as well, but obviously, it is potentially a big disaster waiting for someone to turn on the oven without checking first because they want a midnight snack of frozen pizza.
Here are a few brands and products to alert you to potential hazards:
Sterile saline eye solution (the solution for your eyes, not your contacts)
IF: your pet has been sprayed directly in the eyes and they are red and irritated and your pet is in distress, take them to the vet because the skunk spray can damage your pet’s cornea.
Once you understand skunks, it is difficult to dislike them. They are virtually helpless except for their stinkiness. They have poor eyesight. They can’t fight predators (although they may bite you or your pet, so don’t get too close to either end!), they can’t run away or climb trees to escape. Their only real defense is to hit you with their noxious spray.
Skunks have a gland with its spray on either side of their anal opening. They don’t like to use their weapon because it takes about a week to replenish it so they will try to warn you away.
They will hiss, growl, stomp their feet, shake their tail and do a U-shaped maneuver where they aim their tail at you and curve their body to look at you to see if you are paying attention to their warning.
When all else fails, they will spray you. AND don’t think that you are off the hook with one spray! They can spray you up to 10 times, up to 15 feet away!Depending on how coordinated they are at spraying and stopping, they can launch a formidable and prolonged attack.
When they are pups, they spray each other when they are playing, just like puppies and kittens tussle and play fight and hunt, the young skunks, add spraying to their future adult life skills. They are usually experienced sprayers by the time that they are grown up and rooting around in your yard.
Skunks do spray one another as adults as well as when they are pups. Their mating season is early spring (February onward) and they use their spray to fight off other males and females will squirt males that they have no interest in as fathers to their offspring. (I am sorry, but that just makes me laugh. I dearly love my husband and son. But I am certain that both sexes have, at one time or another been annoyed with someone and would have just liked to have given them a quick skunky squirt and walked away.)
They can’t see very well so they rely on sound to warn them of approaching enemies. If you turn on your porch lights, stomp around or make any other noise that will catch their attention, they will probably hustle back to their lair. Which, unfortunately, could be under your porch or deck. The best way to take care of that is to put up a barrier before it is pup season and hopefully before a skunk has decided to live with your.
They eat just about anything, which is probably why they can create such a stinky oil. They eat beetles, worms, roots, nuts, fruits, eggs and even mice.in the winter. They also forage through the trash that raccoons knock over. (yuck to most of that menu.)
Skunks are nocturnal animals. So my best advice is to try to warn them that you are on your way out for your final dog walk before you head through the door with your pet.
They shoot an organosulfur compound called a thiol. It is an oil and it is water resistant. A chemist named Paul Krebaum invented this recipe. Like many good ideas, it was an accident that coincided with a need.
He was working for a company that was patenting a polymer that produced a hydrogen sulfide gas. His building was stinky and his co-workers were unhappy. He created solution to scrub the waste gas stream with good results. When a co-worker’s cat was skunked not too long afterwards, he gave him a much milder formula and it worked!
Like all good scientists, he published his findings in a scientific journal. A reporter for the Chicago Tribune read about it and Mr. Krebaum’s fame and recipe became public for which we are very grateful. He has not received any monetary gain from his invention, but I am sure that he has racked up many thankful good wishes from countless pet owners.
For more information about his recipe, you can go on his website.
Pole beans are the purr-fect place for cats to hide. And for cats and dogs to eat. They are healthy and delicious and BEST! They are easy to grow. In fact, they are more likely to be too bountiful than unsuccessful when you grow them. My favorite type of pole bean is the Kentucky Wonder Bean.
I think that when the Brothers Grimm wrote Jack and the Beanstalk, they had experience with Kentucky Wonder Beans. Their vines grow 6’-9’ long and the beans grow up to 9” long. Pole beans effortlessly provide you with fresh greeness all summer long. You can freeze them or dry them or pick the little ones to add variety in your summer salads. They have protein and are a superfood in nutrition.
Dogs enjoy them raw. They are nutritious for pets (and people) when lightly cooked or raw. Green beans have Vitamins A, Bs, C, E and K as well as magnesium, calcium, iron, manganese and potassium. They are even suppliers of carotenoids even though they are green, unlike the expected orange and red foods like carrots and tomatoes. Green beans are considered a crossover food; because they are legumes inside and vegetable on the outside. (For people, they are helpful in their ability to lower risk of chronic diseases like high blood pressure, coronary heart disease and Type II diabetes.)
Dogs should not have beans as more than 10% of their daily diet.
What about cats? Green beans have all the wonderful qualities for cats that they do for dogs, PLUS! The protein that they provide is less fatty than meat so they can provide protein while helping your cat lose weight.
It is important that you don’t feed either animal overcooked green beans. Beans are the ‘musical fruit’ for humans or animals: gas is uncomfortable for all of us. They are more easily digested when raw or lightly cooked.
Kentucky
Wonder Beans have been around for millenniums. 7-8,000 years ago,
they were growing in Central America. Somehow, they made their way
to up to America where they were popular throughout the Southern United States under various names until they were officially named ‘Kentucky Wonder Beans’ in 1877 when a seed company put them in their catalog to sell commercially.
Obviously any plant that is a food that has been grown for thousands of years must have good qualities. I find that these are exceptional (and the only bean that I grow) for several reasons; they are tasty, easy to grow, are ready in 65 days (10 days earlier than most), continue to grow beans until frost (as long as you pick them every few days) and for the happy cat purpose: they grow UP.
They are supposed to grow 6’-9’ high but I choose to grow them over an arching trellis because it is much easier for me to reach them and also, because I love looking at them. It is very satisfying to walk under a trellis and be able to pick veg for dinner on the way through. We have picked nearly a bushel of beans from this one archway.
You only need about 18” of garden plot soil. I planted this entire archway in one line of seeds that is about 18” long. I put a small ‘A’ frame over the seedlings and as the grew, I trained their little, young vines up the frame. Eventually, I had to add a more substantial trellis made from willow branches and an old deceased fruit tree whose roots were perfect for grasping vines.
They are still growing even though it is now October and we haven’t had significant rain in a month. Mac, our cat loves to sit under the bean vines that entwine in and around the end tables and glider. He occasionally bats at the beans hanging down.
Poppy
loves to eat the beans raw as I pick them. She takes them out of my
basket.
Their leaves are sticky and heart shaped. They stick to everything from clothing to dogs.
Their flowers (blossoms) are very pretty too
Even if all that you have is a tiny two foot square of garden space, you can put in a dozen seeds for pole beans and have enough beans and bean vines to nutritiously feed yourself and your pet all summer as well as giving your pet a pleasant, cool place to hide during the summer/fall months.
When we moved to New Jersey, our cat, Cuddles went outside just as he did in Michigan. We lived in a safe, suburban lake community and I thought that he would be safe from cars or predators.
He was a rescued feral kitten and I could not keep him inside, so we tried to make him as safe as possible as an indoor/outdoor cat.
A month or so after we moved into our rental property, I began finding odd looking grape-like things on the floor. I kept picking them up and chastising my kids for dropping food on the floor.
Oh! What a stupid, stupid mom I was!
Those ‘grapes’ that I was finding were not fruit! They were full of blood TICKS! I am not sure who was bringing them in, Cuddles or our black lab, probably both.
Thankfully, I soon figured out that those disgusting things were not grapes, but ticks that were engorged with blood and had dropped off our pet onto the floor. Presumably to find a good place to lay eggs and create more horrid, disease carrying ticks.
Of course, the discovery that they were engorged ticks made the next step a panicked one. Checking our pets!
Luckily, our dog was not overwhelmed with them. Possibly because we were using Revolution on him. However, poor Cuddles.
When Pete picked him up to look a him, we discovered that he was COVERED with them!
We called our vet and they saw us immediately. Rather than chastising us for our ignorance, they were very kind both to Cuddles and to us.
They explained that it is rare for cats to get lymes from ticks. Cuddles didn’t seem to mind that he was dinner for those horrid bugs but obviously we had to get them OFF!
We watched as they used their Tick Spoons. They tucked the spoon snugly under the tick’s butt and lifted gently until they successfully pulled them all the way out. Then they put it in a jar of alcohol.
We left him in their capable hands and when we returned a few hours later, they told us that they had removed 27 ticks from his little body.
We were given Frontline for him and we also purchased the handy Tick Spoons that we sell on our website.
The reason that we carry only these Tick Spoons is because when you remove a tick, it is important that they do not leave their heads in either your body or your pet’s body.
It is also important to make sure that they do not vomit into their bite. That means NO essential oils and/or burning them off.
The old wives tale about using a match to get them to move off is absolutely WRONG. I can attest to this first hand.
I went camping in the California mountains as a young woman and when I waded through tall grass into an idyllic stream, five ticks hitched a ride back out on me!
My friends swore that was the way to dislodge the tick that was attached to my rib cage, just below my armpit. Their cigarette (it was the 80s) did not make him leave. It killed him.
As we were young and fearless, none of us had a first aid kit and we certainly didn’t have access to any cell phone information about what to do. We tried to pull him out. His body broke off and his head was left in, burrowed firmly beneath my skin.
In the end, I had a 2nd degree burn from the cigarette and a gigantic circle around the tick bite. It was infected and took a long time to finally heal.
I completely ruined the camping trip because I insisted upon leaving right now! and going down the mountain to take care of my wound. Nobody was happy with me. Which is probably why that was the last time that I hung out with that group of ‘friends.’
I’ll never forget talking to the nurse who told me, “I’ve never heard of a person getting a tick. My dog does, but not me!”
All in all, my experience was terrible and while it did not leave any physical scars, I do have strong emotional responses to ticks and I am especially adamant that everyone in our family keep/carry a Tick Spoon in their car or in their pack if they are hiking. I don’t ever want anyone else to have a tick’s head stuck in them.
The Tick Spoon addresses all of the problems that we have when confronted with a tick butt poking up from our pet.
There is a narrow triangular slit in the spoon that you push firmly against the tick, gliding against the skin. When the tick is right tight in the tiniest part of the ‘V,’ you push a little bit as you gently pry up and then ‘Pop!’ You have a tick IN THE SPOON!
The tick spoon not only gently and painlessly removes the tick but it CATCHES it too!! HOORAY!
We have had enough unfortunate experience with ticks that haven’t stuck their snouts in out pets for a snack to know that they move FAST!
Personally, I panic when I see them, so between me panicked and them in a hurry, it is usually a gamble whether I catch the critter or not. I have gotten better but I am still suffering from Tick PTSD.
So, the beauty of the SPOON part of the Tick Spoon is that it holds the tick in it for a few seconds so you can dump it into some alcohol or a piece of toilet paper and flush it down the pipes.
Yes, it is okay to flush them. They don’t swim back up. I don’t know why people worry that they might not die right away. But I am content to have a colony of ticks in our septic tank. They won’t crawl up and bite bottoms like Black Widow Spiders.
Do you know, (missing the point of this blog post) that many people are bitten on their butts by Black Widow Spiders when they use outhouses?? That seems like an important piece of information for everyone to know.
Remember! When you remove a tick or a blood sucker/leech, do your best not to have them regurgitate into your wound. This causes infection and you may end up going to the doctor.
If you or your pet gets a leech, take a pocket knife and scrape it off. DO NOT put salt on it! Do not put Essential Oils on Ticks!
If you don’t feel comfortable removing these parasites, go to your emergency room, your med center or doctor. Have them help you because, the infection is significant.
(Yes, we have personal experience with this too. It was my fault. I gave my husband salt to put on the leech. It threw up into his foot. He had to go to the emergency room.
A decade later, his foot still hurts where the leech bit him. I am not sure which hurts more at this point, my guilty conscience or his foot.)
Once the tick is out, safely disposed of or put in a sealed jar for safe keeping until you can dispose of it, you need to clean the wound.
I use betadine or a first aid wash but the CDC says soap and water or rubbing alcohol works just fine.
Keep an eye on it. There may be a bulls eye or maybe not. But lymes disease is a real illness and you need to be aware of the symptoms. On the East Coast, it is good to speak to your doctor about whether or not to get antibiotics.
A couple final notes: It is good to take two showers within 24 hours when you have been in a tick area. Pay special attention to your hair when you shampoo it.
I had a tick drop down from a tree branch one morning when I was talking to my daughter. My arm was on the gate and we both watched as it dropped lightly on my arm to find a nice breakfast.
Also, please consider using light colored bed sheets. Unfortunately, our fur babies (and we) sometimes carry ticks inside. Ticks show up right away on light colored bed clothes. No sense in being a midnight snack for the wee beasties.
Remember:
Don’t panic
Gently pry the tick out using firm, even pressure
Catch the tick
Dispose of him
Clean your pet’s wound
Take a good shower because if your pet has a tick, you could too.
Tick Removal Device Sold Here!!!Why does my cat pee in the wrong place?
We have a cat that would insist on peeing in my husband’s office. Worse, after we put a litter box in his favorite pee corner, he refused to use the litter box about half the time. He is, or was, a Rude Kitty Litter Box System failure.
Until I faced his litter box towards the wall.
Fluffy is an elegant Himalayan cat with a debonair air. He is the model for the ‘Grooming cat’ and the ‘Toy cat’ icons on our website.
He is (of course) fluffy and long and very low to the ground. He has short legs and sits upright with his front paws up to his chest like a rabbit when he wants to get a better look at things that are high.
PHOTO (standing up cat)
While he seems like a large cat, most of him is fur. We have had him trimmed for summer and when he is trimmed, you can see how small he really is, beneath his fur.
PHOTO(poodled hair cut)
Fluffy is the only cat that we have that is a ‘purebred’ cat. Our other two are American Shorthairs. Basically mutts. Both of them are feisty. Cuddles, our Rude Kitty is 19 and pretty much ignores the others. Max is a gigantic youngster at a whopping 18 pounds who thinks that he is a dog. He expects to be roughed up and most of the time, he incites it.
Max and Fluff were friends until Max had a growth spurt and he bit too hard during a friendly tussle. Fluff is more refined that the other two. He doesn’t tussle with ferocity, more out of politeness. He is a gentle soul who prefers using his skills on spiders and snakes. (More about his hunting and defending skills in another post.)
PHOTO (snake and poppy)
He doesn’t like confrontation. He usually hides in a closet and naps all day. He has frightened me more than once when I have reached in to pick up something only to find Fluff on top of towels or sheets.
PHOTO (closet)
Fluff even prefers to eat his meals on the breakfast bar, high above the fray. (Which should have been a clue about the litter box problem.)
Our household is a boisterous one for a fluffy, shy, short legged cat. We also have two large dogs.
Fluffy was fine with our German Shepherd, Poppy, because she is a nurturing dog. I have watched cats weave around her legs while she looks down at them, intrigued as they tickle her nose with their tails.
But, when Fluffy was about two years old, fully mature and happily ensconced in our home, we bought a Newfoundland puppy; Tucker.
PHOTO: WINNIE
Tucker is a huge, (apologies to fellow Newfie owners) clumsy bully. He is loving to family, but he likes to boss our cats around. It is ironic, bc he is a ‘fraidy dog, who was afraid of the Chihuahua in Puppy Obedience Class.
We tried to help Fluff acclimate to Tucker. We put his food and water up on the breakfast bar, so he could eat peacefully. We put tall cat trees by his favorite windows. We never allowed Tucker to chase him. Because Fluffy was friendly with Poppy, we thought that he and Tucker would become friends too.
However, just like with children in a classroom, not everyone will get along, no matter how hard you try to facilitate friendships.
The disappearance of Fluffy from daily life was gradual. He often slept during the day, so we didn’t realize that eventually he had become mostly a nocturnal pet; he would come out when the dogs were safely asleep.
Then, we realized that his toilet habit had become a problem. He was peeing in Tom’s office. A room, by the way, where even angels fear to tread, it is filled with all sorts of clutter, from sports equipment to computer parts and is shoveled out twice a year; as birthday and Christmas presents.
At first, because Fluffy had been raised by a male, I thought that Fluff’s choice of Tom’s office was he preferred men and was marking his territory. I cleaned up the mess, used BioKleen on the floor and put in a nice, new litter box. The box was a limited success.
My cat-expert friend told me that he had a UTI. The vet said that he didn’t.
I would like to say that I had a ‘lightbulb’ moment, but I didn’t.
I was frustrated by our Fluffy who was peeing randomly on one side of the house when his least-disgusting-to-humans litterbox was on the other side of the house.
He had a litter box in the office, a litter box (fairly disgusting) in our living room as well as one upstairs and one in the utility room. (We follow the Number of Cats + One Rule for Litter Boxes: 3 cats = 4 litter boxes.)
We changed litter types. We tried several eco-friendly litters as well as the scented standbys. I even tried making our own litter from a combination of them. Hoping that Fluff would find the litter acceptable.
Nothing seemed to work except putting cardboard boxes in places where he seemed to like to pee because they were actual physical barriers and closing the office door.
One day, I was in the living room, cleaning up Fluff’s mess (on the floor, not even close to the litter box) when I shoved the litter box opening towards the wall in a effort to make having a litter box there slightly less disgusting.
Low and behold, over the next few days, I realized that there were no more pee puddles and the litter box was finally being used!
I had finally (accidentally) cracked the code of what was wrong with Fluffy.
He wanted privacy! And a safe way to enter and exit the litter box without any curious, bullying dogs. (We never saw Tucker bother him at the litter box. If we had, the problem would have solved much sooner.)
After I discovered the solution, it was easy to interpret the clues. I realized, (like the Pet Therapist Detective that I pretend to be,) that Fluff was unhappy with Tucker.
The office? It wasn’t male bonding that he desired, it was privacy and a safe egress. Nobody dared go in there through all the clutter. Tucker simply could not fit.
Oh i have been waiting to do something like this for over a year. Finally my mothers and my website has been filled with products and pictures all carefully looked over and double checked. It took a year to flesh out an idea that you can explain in 60 seconds, as my mom had to me last summer. Oh its a great idea i had, you use a box to catch the cat litter instead of a mat because the mats are expensive and made of nylon!
When our rude kitty cuddles pees everywhere like a male cat should we assume. The mat was fine to just be discarded because it was cardboard. I honestly thought my mom was a crazy cat lady. Oh yeah mom you solved a problem that only you deal with, congratulations. Lol seriously i was unimpressed it would be a lie to say that i herd the idea and just immediately went to go make it a product. No, instead i just wrote it off, but my mom never quit using them. She also never quit telling us about how great of a fix it was.
Then one day it occurred to me, that is a really good way to stop dumping so much plastic in the trashcan every week (i am responsible for trash) i see all the 'awesome ideas' people sell my mom in the trash every week. This is not that, it goes in the recycle. It is also very cheap, my family is no trump clan, we have modest luxuries but non of us operate under the allusion that money and material is just falling from the sky.
I had also recently figured out (oh money how i loath you) the 4 year college that accepted me wanted $200,000 to finish what i though was to be just 2 more years of school.
Yeah i did not want to just sign my life away at age 21, I wanted to be with my family, i wanted to start my own business. Thus The Rude Kitty.com begin. Ok it was a lot more complicated then that and i honestly forgot the details a little but i can say for a fact that this year has had huge downs and some nice little ups.
In the end we were able to launch a full product line with affiliate products and our own proprietary rude kitty litter system.
I am ecstatic to be at this point, we have currently have had a grand 0 orders, but we have yet to get our products to the internet of cat parents!
I just wanted to write this to kick us off from here, if we ever get going really good i would be happy. however if we never sold a thing i would still feel like this year was worth my time because i was able to build something with my mom and it tough me about family and life and where i came from. I wouldn't trade this year for another year. Even threw the hard droughts of eating nothing but peanut butter sandwiches and fruit i knew it was worth it because you can be broke but if you can learn to stay optimistic you are unbreakable.
Seriously. if you are reading this and trying to start a business or just think the whole idea is silly and i should have solidified my life for $200,000 of student loan dept ill tell you that this experience i have had is worth more then $200,000 liquid cash. I have learned how to negotiate with companies to some degree, i have learned to build web servers. I have learned things that you can only learn from thinking things and doing them, over and over every day.
That is the real lesson i learned, if you want something. go build it, no-one else is going to. legit anything you want you are going to have to get on your own, so do not trick yourself into thinking college or ANYTHING is somehow going to "save" you, or make you just inherently better off then me. I have talked to people with more money and family then i could ever imagine to have and they all share something. They all understand that everything is earned, and it dose not matter where you begin you can get anywhere you want you just need to try so hard it hurts and you want to quit, thats how you know its getting good.
To conclude, if you read all the way to here i hope you have a wonderful day whatever that might entail and please check out our other blog posts written by my mother and i or anyone we find friendly.
Bye for now!
An Ode to Grumpy Cat
I just read that Grumpy Cat passed away. I was saddened along with many others that this hopefully happy underneath Grumpy Cat face is no longer here, except in spirit and many, many photos.
Besides being sad about her passing, I was also reminded of my own problems with our Rude Kitty, Cuddles. He also has problems with his urinary tract.
At first, I was just worried about the awful, overpowering smell of pee in my laundry room. I couldn’t keep it clean enough to be able to do laundry without nearly suffocating from trying to hold my breath.
After a month or so, I decided that the problem was not me unable to keep the litter box clean and not Cuddles ‘marking his territory’ on my Christmas boxes that were also stored there.
So I called my friend, who is an expert in cats as she has spent most of her adult life volunteering at animal shelters of every sort.
She said that some canned cat foods (or too much of some) can cause urine to crystallize. “Cut back on the canned cat food” Was her advice.
I looked up urinary crystals/stones. There is an great deal of information and theories about it. But there doesn’t seem to be an agreement about what causes wet cat food to contribute to it. It could be magnesium, ash or the pH. Theories change and I don’t feel comfortable repeating what can easily be wrong or found on the net.
I trust her. I knew that she was probably right, but canned cat food was a nice part of our day. Cuddles was happy to eat it, I was happy that he was happy and he didn’t seem sick. But, as I couldn’t think of a good reason not to do as she said, I decided to stop feeding him canned cat food.
It worked. Our laundry room smell returned to soap and fresh kitty litter.
One solution that is recommended by the articles that I read says that always having fresh water available for your cats is important. But that is important for every pet ALL the time. And I always keep at least four dishes/waterers available for our pets. I knew that was not a problem.
We have three cats: Cuddles, Fluffy and Max. I used to buy each one the canned cat food that they liked but Fluffy and Max decided that they didn’t like canned cat food any more. I may be a dedicated Cat Mom but I do not taste their food. I took them at their turned up noses and uneaten food.
Max used to like it, but decided that he didn’t at just about the same time I began smelling a strong urine odor in our laundry room where the upstairs litter box is kept.
Then I noticed that Cuddles wouldn’t eat some types of food, not even his favorite expensive ‘treat’ brands. It seemed like there would be batches of food that they ate fine then wouldn’t touch. I was wasting money and making my cats sick.
My solution was to once again go back to the sensibilities of my childhood on a Midwestern farm; before corporations took over and when life was more easily understood.
My Grandfather told me if I had ever gone to a canning factory, I would never eat apple sauce again. My mother told me that she didn’t eat ground turkey because there weren’t many pieces of turkey left over to grind up…and NONE of them were pieces that she wanted to eat.
Thinking about this, I thought about what was probably used for cat food. Certainly not even the pieces that my mother didn’t want to eat.
I decided that I could also go back to the days when my mother made dog food for our dogs. It smelled good enough to eat for dinner back then, although, I didn’t want to eat potato peels.
I decided to give Cuddles only People Food. I also began pulling a cat-sized portion of unseasoned (not spaghetti or taco meat, etc.) chicken, turkey or beef leftover from dinner and giving that to him.
He loves it and I do to! I save money and I know that, because we eat non-processed foods, he is also getting good, wholesome food.
It has been two months since I began feeding him people grade food and Cuddles has not had any difficulties with his urine.
And Max has started eating meat again. He loves turkey.
We don’t feed them raw food and we are careful about what we feed them. Nothing with heavy spices, preservatives or processed foods like bologna, pepperoni, or reconstituted chicken nuggets.
I offer them cooked fish as a treat (mostly because it is also a treat for us. We don’t have it on a regular basis either.). Raw fish is dangerous and could give them worms.
None of our cats like eggs, but eggs are safe for them to eat. Don’t think because they like bacon or ham, that is a good thing. Salt and preservatives aren’t good for either pets or humans!
It is not a good thing to feed them dairy (think diarrhea). Some foods are poison like onion, garlic, and chives. Grapes/raisins are poisonous for dogs and so, just to be safe, it is recommended not to feed them to cats either.
Cats are not vegans. But they do eat a variety of vegetables. I feed ours cooked/steamed vegetables like peas, green beans, corn, carrots, sweet potato, rice, or oatmeal.
If you choose to go our route, I suggest going on: www.ASPCA.org/animal-poison-control/people-foods-avoid-feeding-your-pets
Look up things to double check if you are uncertain about what to feed your cat.
Cuddles is 19 years old this year. He is surprisingly healthy and my vet says that he is in good shape for a cat much younger. He has had scraps from our table for years. It is just recently that we removed canned cat food from him completely and he isn’t unhappy at all.
Think about it, not many people want to eat cat food, but most cats are happy to eat people food.
All of our lives are better when we eat local foods with a minimum of preservatives. It is better for everyone when conserve/have low waste for ourselves and our pets.
If you think that your cat has been poisoned call 1-888-426-4435 Animal Poison Control Center.
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Mom is important so treat her well. That goes for all you Rude Kitty's too!
We're all aware of sibling rivalry with our children, but how about our pets?
We've all seen the cuddly YouTube videos of cats and dogs together in a cozy pile of sleeping pets. But I've found that our pets have had some insurmountable differences no matter how much effort we have put into diplomacy.
One theory is that overlapping pets when one is older and nearing the end is helpful in easing our grief when the time comes for our beloved pet to pass on.
When we purchased Poppy, we had an older Black Lab. He had loved the company of other animals throughout his life, but Poppy was too much.
Poppy wanted to run and play and would bite at his front legs to entice him to play. He wanted none of it.
Eventually, we gave him to a beloved and loving aunt who loved him and who often watched him for us. He was loved and well taken care of but one day she broke my heart.
She said, "everytime he sees a girl in a long ponytail, running. He gets excited and wants to join her."
She described our daughter.
We tried to do the right thing by giving him a peaceful and loving home, but obviously he still missed us.