A New Cat

Well, Duncan survived his surgery and is now lounging around the house taking pain meds three times a day. Although personally I don't really think he needs them, he just likes the relaxed feeling he gets from them...I have to watch that little guy, don't want him pulling a Rush Limbaugh on me.

I picked him up from the snippy place around 4:30pm the same day I dropped him off. I was expecting him to be quiet and drugged out, but he seemed fairly alert and even meowed on the way home a little. Poor guy was probably traumatized. Not only was he neutered, but he got a feline leukemia immunization and some other vaccine thing. Then, in my quest to be a good pet owner I tried to take a short cut home and it ended up making a 15 minute trip a 30 minute trip. Sorry Duncan...it tried.

Being that this is my first cat I had no idea of the aftercare but had looked up the info on the internet. Turned out I needed to use a special kind of little or news paper for a week after the surgery so that the incision didn't get infected. They don't use stitches any more in male cats, they just apply some super-glue type stuff and let 'em go. I bought the Daily News (cute name eh? It's litter made from recycled news paper) and paid for his surgery and the shots. It wasn't too bad, the whole thing cost me $95 at the non-profit SNAP (the Spay Neuter Assistance Program) place. I heard people talking about how their vets were asking $150 for male and $250 for females if the office did it. Crazy!

Now I love the earth and try to do my part as much as I can, but I might have to draw the line at recycled or newspaper cat litter. This stuff is hard to deal with because it doesn't clump plus it smells like a cat in here now. I hate that. Oh well, just one more week of this and we should have our new house (yeah!) and we can bring back the Fresh Step. He seems to be doing pretty well though, and miracle of all miracles...he has not cried during the night since we brought him home. I don't know if the night time crying is fixed (pun fully intended), and I hope not to jinx things with this email, but I am feeling optimistic about being able to let him roam the new house at night without him keeping us up. Especially with the pheromone thing we are going to unleash in the new place before he arrives. As my friend Steph says; I'm going to try to "Kitty Fung Shui" my new place. I hope it works. As you might have guessed from the title of this post; he really does seem like a new cat. Or rather just a slightly improved version of the original.