Picture Day, Part 4: Cats
Posted on April 28, 2003 Posted by John Scalzi 1 Comment
Here are the cats:
Rex of course has been featured here before (he has his own page on the site, in fact), but this marks the first appearance of Lopsided Cat, who you’ll see to the left. Lopsided Cat is so named because his head is always tilted at an angle. The cause for this is medical — apparently he had an ear infection for a very long time — but now the ear infection has been cleared up and his head still tilts, so we suspect at this point it’s just habit. We got Lopsided Cat because he walked into our yard and started loving up Athena, which is one thing Rex won’t do. We suspect he was a neighbor’s cat first, because among other things he’s missing a couple of things that don’t fall off on their own accord. But he was either abandoned or just likes it here better (or still lives with them part-time, which is possible because he’s primarily an outdoor cat, and who knows what he’s doing out there).
Long-time readers will look at Rex and be surprised at his relative litheness; there was a time when Rex topped 30 pounds, which made him substantially heavier than Athena for much of her life. However, about a year ago, Rex got a tooth infection and dropped quite a bit of weight and has now stabilized at about 10 pounds, which is normal cat weight anyway. Having the tooth infection was no good for Rex, but the end result will probably be that he’ll live longer than if he continued his tub ‘o’ lard ways. Aside from the weight, however, Rex remains the same anti-social, prone-to-random-vomiting feline he’s always been. It’s good to have some consistency, I suppose, although personally I wish it didn’t involve partially digested food.
More pictures coming later in the day. Stay tuned.
There are three basic kinds of vomiting cats:
1) hairball collectors
2) greedy eaters
3) interior desecrators
Type 1 can be kept in check with regular dosages of Tonic-Lax or some other malt flavoured petroleum jelly concoction. Type 2 can be controlled if you feed them about 3 grains of kibble at a sitting, which few of us would have the patience for.
And Type 3 is going to bloody well spew anywhere they like for as long as you have them no matter what remedies you try. Bulimia plus schadenfreude: not a great combination.