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Does new baby have a name yet?
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Loungers' Pets
- Thread starter John in Covina
- Start date
LizzieMaine
Bartender
- Messages
- 33,040
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- Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Yes, she was a feral who was picked up in a spay-and-neuter program and they tipped her ear with the intention of returning her to her colony -- except when the time came she didn't want to go. She lived her whole life from then on indoors, never attempting even once in the eleven years she lived with me to go outside. She knew when she was well off.
I went over to the shelter and adopted another feral with a similar story, this one missing half her tail along with the tipped ear. Her name is Marjorie -- all my cats have had dignified human names -- and she is hunched at the top of my stairs glaring. This shall pass.
I went over to the shelter and adopted another feral with a similar story, this one missing half her tail along with the tipped ear. Her name is Marjorie -- all my cats have had dignified human names -- and she is hunched at the top of my stairs glaring. This shall pass.
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^^^^^^
The fellow who had the cat before us, the fellow who crossed over the bridge himself in May of last year, was cognitively incapable of providing reliable information as to the cat’s history when he moved into our place in June of 2020, after the death of the woman who had been providing his care needs, without which he was left unable to tend to his own survival. So we, his son and I, recruited an old friend to go scoop up him and his cat and his meager worldly effects and bring him here, a two-day drive away, which took them four, what with this fellow’s diminished abilities to travel such distances without numerous breaks along the way.
I asked him how old his cat was. “Three,” he said. But the friend who drove him here said he had had the cat for at least 10 years at that point, and as he recalled the cat was a stray who found him. The cat‘s serrated ear edges and a scratched eye appear to be souvenirs of fights from his early life.
Like your late Miss Carol, Mr. Mittens (the name he came to us with) doesn’t even try to go outside. He has a good deal going here. He might prefer we didn’t have a dog, but he and the mutt mostly ignore each other.
The fellow who had the cat before us, the fellow who crossed over the bridge himself in May of last year, was cognitively incapable of providing reliable information as to the cat’s history when he moved into our place in June of 2020, after the death of the woman who had been providing his care needs, without which he was left unable to tend to his own survival. So we, his son and I, recruited an old friend to go scoop up him and his cat and his meager worldly effects and bring him here, a two-day drive away, which took them four, what with this fellow’s diminished abilities to travel such distances without numerous breaks along the way.
I asked him how old his cat was. “Three,” he said. But the friend who drove him here said he had had the cat for at least 10 years at that point, and as he recalled the cat was a stray who found him. The cat‘s serrated ear edges and a scratched eye appear to be souvenirs of fights from his early life.
Like your late Miss Carol, Mr. Mittens (the name he came to us with) doesn’t even try to go outside. He has a good deal going here. He might prefer we didn’t have a dog, but he and the mutt mostly ignore each other.
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We are calling her "Pearl". But if she is anything like our other dogs over the years she will end up with several nicknames. Her older sister (with the fine, upstanding brown hair above) is named "Ava Lenora", but I've devolved to calling her "Wabe Wabe" lately.
ChiTownScion
Call Me a Cab
- Messages
- 2,241
- Location
- The Great Pacific Northwest
We've had to bid farewell to our two Pugs within two years: Chloe (the larger and older one) and Calvin. They developed spinal problems that not only impaired their mobility but also assured household messes. When a bad situation like that arises and there is no realistic likelihood that it's ever going to improve, you simply want their suffering to end. The head tells you that you're making the compassionate choice, but your heart is breaking. It's never easy even when it's the right thing to do.
We still have the hybrid- mutt- "designer dog"- Teddybear, Casey. A Bichon- Shih Tzu mix. No denying that he's a lot smarter than his Pug siblings were. I miss the days when the three dogs graciously allowed my wife and I to share "their " bed. Casey likes being an only child-- if for no other reason than there are no fights over wayward morsels that happen to hit the deck anymore.
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Great pic, to be cherished!
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I’ll bet she hears real good!
fred askew
New in Town
- Messages
- 27
Thanks @Hurricane Jack. A keeper indeed.
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Your Casey and our Sandy, who went the way of all things late in 2021, could have been littermates, judging from appearances. We have no idea of just what the late Sandifer’s heritage might have been. We got him from a private mutt rescue at an Adopt-a-Thon in a Petsmart parking lot in Puyallup (say that three times fast).
Puyallup is in Western Washington, where spaying and neutering of dogs not meant for breeding is all but universal. So you might find a nice cat at a shelter (as we did, way back when), but dogs, other than rescued pit bulls, are scarce. (This is not to disparage pit bulls, but rather too many of the people who choose to turn them into public hazards.)
It’s quite a different story over on the much more rural dry side of the Cascades, where the rescue operators have more mutts than they know what to do with, short of loading them up and taking them to the wet side of the hill, to Petsmart parking lots, where Westsiders line up to claim them.
Our Sandy came from Richland, Washington, on the Columbia River. It was love at first sight between him and my lovely missus. The first time I saw Sandy he was sitting on her lap (she’s a wheelchair user). She asked the woman about that sandy-colored dog. The woman told her “no one wants that dog,“ but my wife asked to meet him. When the cage was opened he immediately jumped in her lap.
I’m guessing that your Casey sees the groomer every couple-three months, lest he become a mop with legs. That was the case with our Sandifer.
Sandy’s ashes are in a fancy wooden box on our mantel.
ChiTownScion
Call Me a Cab
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- The Great Pacific Northwest
Casey was given to us by my sister. She came up with a story about how she was going to move into a condo that prohibited pets and was looking to strangers at a family member's party to take him. We stepped up and the rest is history.
When we took him home, we found that he had ear mites, a urinary tract infection, and he hadn't been groomed in so long that his thick hair had to be groomed almost to his hide. "Miraculously," my sister almost immediately decided not to move to the condo and went out and purchased two labradoodle pups. Casey also has socializing issues from being crated 22 hours a day. My tolerance for laziness and an unwillingness to pay for necessary vet care in pet owners is nil: that applies to family members. My sister clearly wanted to get rid of him because it interfered with her general life game plan of always choosing the course of least resistance. And she's been that way all of her life. Married a guy with the same moral and intellectual inertia, and so our eventual estrangement was foreordained.
Anyway... Casey has become a much beloved member of the family. He's thrived with us here in Oregon: the lack of Illinois blizzards is clearly to his liking. Grooming every 3 months is about right, Tony. This has become one of those instances where "man's best friend" may be an understatement. His needs are so minimal, and yet he gives all of us so much.
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^^^^^
FWIW, I, too, have a sibling for whom I really don’t have the time of day. He’s yet to grow up, and, what with his being nearly age 70, I’m holding out little hope he ever will. So yeah, I know how disappointing it can be.
Dogs have been our best friends since prehistory. While that remains, our relationships with them have changed in conspicuous ways, even in our lifetimes. I doubt my grandfather could have foreseen a time when dogs got routine dental care, for instance, or when people paid a week’s wages to “adopt” what had been a stray mutt.
It’s better these days, on balance. I can’t recall when I last saw a dead dog alongside the road. It was a routine sight when I was young. And while kids with a box full of free just-weaned puppies outside the grocery store on a Saturday morning is practically the definition of cute, I can’t imagine that most of those puppies lived to ripe ages. People these days don’t go to the supermarket to pick up a couple bags of groceries and, on a whim, a puppy. The very thought of it seems absurd.
EDIT: A photo of our Sandy when he was taken in at the shelter shows a vaguely dog-shaped pile of matted fur. He had likely never been groomed, and he was at least 2 years old then, and maybe more like 4.
FWIW, I, too, have a sibling for whom I really don’t have the time of day. He’s yet to grow up, and, what with his being nearly age 70, I’m holding out little hope he ever will. So yeah, I know how disappointing it can be.
Dogs have been our best friends since prehistory. While that remains, our relationships with them have changed in conspicuous ways, even in our lifetimes. I doubt my grandfather could have foreseen a time when dogs got routine dental care, for instance, or when people paid a week’s wages to “adopt” what had been a stray mutt.
It’s better these days, on balance. I can’t recall when I last saw a dead dog alongside the road. It was a routine sight when I was young. And while kids with a box full of free just-weaned puppies outside the grocery store on a Saturday morning is practically the definition of cute, I can’t imagine that most of those puppies lived to ripe ages. People these days don’t go to the supermarket to pick up a couple bags of groceries and, on a whim, a puppy. The very thought of it seems absurd.
EDIT: A photo of our Sandy when he was taken in at the shelter shows a vaguely dog-shaped pile of matted fur. He had likely never been groomed, and he was at least 2 years old then, and maybe more like 4.
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- Messages
- 19,122
- Location
- Funkytown, USA
It hasn't been a smooth road, but they're working it out.
Bugguy
Practically Family
- Messages
- 563
- Location
- Nashville, TN
Born to fetch... outstanding eye-mouth coordination plus agility. Tomorrow she starts 'tracking" classes. She's being groomed as a 'cadaver search dog' per my daughter. I think with a keg around her neck, she could look for me when I go missing when lawn cutting.
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“Fetch” is pretty much an all-day game around here.
- Messages
- 19,122
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- Funkytown, USA
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We lost a granddog last evening. This was my daughter’s second puppy. Done in by heart failure at age 13. We’ll miss you Frankie (aka Tina Louise, Franks & Beans, Tiny T and just “T”).
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I’m sorry for your loss, Bob
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Always a sad time, my friend. My condolences to you and your family.
