Smudge: Very Tired and a Little Bit Stoned
Posted on October 15, 2018 Posted by John Scalzi 25 Comments
As you can see from this photo. Krissy had gotten in close to pet him, and he just plain snuggled into her arms and started to nap. It’s adorable!
Why is Smudge tired and a little bit stoned? Because today he took a trip to the vet and was relieved of a couple of small things, namely, his testicles. He won’t miss them much, and in exchange we’ll get a cat who won’t spray and otherwise go looking for trouble (or as much trouble, in any event).
He’ll be fine tomorrow, and in the meantime we get to watch him stand were, wobbly, with an expression on his face that says “what just happened?” We’ll tell you later, Smudge. Get some rest for now.
And now Krissy is stuck there for the foreseeable future.
Like the classic Far Side cartoon with the dog hanging his head out the window and taunting the other dogs saying “I’m going to the vet to get TUTORED!”
Nuts!
Wouldn’t he be…
…a little LESS stoned now
Smudge – The Revenge: This Time It’s Seriously Personal… coming soon to a Scalzi residence near you.
Thank you for taking good care of Master Smudge that way, sir, and for helping to limit the population of stray/feral cats in your neighborhood. Yes, I realize there are other toms out there, but Smudge doesn’t need to add to the population.
Chin-scritches to the stoned (or perhaps more accurately, unstoned) little fellow, and I hope you got good salmon treats when you got home.
Awww – poor little guy. My orange tomcat SodaPop was very non vocal – we thought he had harmed his voice as all he would do is open his mouth, no sound would come out. So I brought him home after he was “neuted” and set him in a chair to get some sleep. I went out to get the mail and I heard him SCREAMING his little head off. I ran up to see if he was caught in something, and no, he just wondered where I was. Maybe he was wondering where other things were. Oh, he was a great cat.
Ah, poor Smudge. But I so thought the title was referring to you 😎
I just have to say, I love your screen name
Warning: I had a male cat growing up. We got him snipped. He still sprayed.
Smudge, laying down is a good idea. When Midnight (RIP) made “that” vet trip, he kept staggering around the house and eventually clambered up onto a chair. Then he jumped down from the chair, and you could see the “oh, I don’t want the back legs to land” thoughts running through his fuzzy little brain.
Sam, I’m told it depends (at least in part) on the age at which the male cat is neutered. A fully adult male cat will go right on spraying, testicles or no; one that is neutered early in life (before he has started spraying) likely won’t–though I assume it can vary, depending on the cat.
In any case, Smudge will go out doors with the older cats in his family, so he probably won’t spray in the house.
Had a male cat nuyeterd early. Later, developed uti. We were THRILLED to see him outside,spraying
Aww poor Smudge. I hope that you are back to your mischievous self soon.
Smudge won’t miss those bits at all. Especially with a little extra pampering and snuggling from his favorite humans.
If he goes outside, he’ll probably spray, but probably not indoors, since you don’t have another boy. If he does spray indoors, it won’t stink like an unfixed Tom, so you may never notice. Win win.
“Because once they took me to a place,” Sanchez said. “A horrible place. Where a horrible creature removed two very important things of mine.”
What, no neuticles? Maybe it’s not as important to cats as it is to dogs, but just in case: https://www.neuticles.com/
Aw, that’s a really trusting cat!
sweet picture :-)
So you have Smudge neutered and while Krissy consoles him you hop on a plane to get out of town for a couple weeks.
I’m looking forward to seeing all the hot takes on this from the usual alt-right & MRA types, John. Should be funny as hell.
@mintwitch
Territorial peeing is still pretty offensive, even when a cat is desexed, it’s true that it’s not as bad though. One of my desexed girl cats started doing it when I had a friend & her own cats – all desexed too – staying at my place for a while. It was nowhere near as smelly as spray from a complete Tom, but man, it was still pretty bad, & I had to throw out stuff that still stunk after being washed.
Would it be fair to say that, in the longer term, Smudge has been de-stoned?
He will still get into trouble. Our cat Fred got neutered and it didn’t even slow him down from doing stupid stuff that could get him killed by our female cat Reilly. Our current young male Max is still getting into trouble. Only he does it to Fred (Reilly passed on about a year ago). I look at Fred and think “Karma is a mother”.