Raven has gone from 19 pounds of cat to 16 pounds of kitty.

She is missing even more fur now up to the back of her head. There are several burned holes/places in her skin that we have to clean and watch, but they didn't give her a lion cut, which I thought they might.

Since it never grew back originally, I suspect that our cat will forever be a shaved...cat. (Ahahahaha, you thought I was going to say the other, weren't you?)

Crappy cell phone pic of preparing for vet visit day before:



( Here are some crappy cell phone pics of today's Vet visit )

We take Raven to the vet again today.

Pretty much for the same reason we took her the last time. She has these odd bumps--they grow, and when they grow from just a bump they end up looking just like little brains. Tightly coiled bundles of spirals and hoops that are her skin, and they begin to loosen and break as they grow larger. If we aren't careful when we pet her, they break apart. We know they're skin because when they break on their own, they bleed and scab.

When we brought her to the vet the last time, they took a sample of a lump on her butt and a sample of one of the 'brains' as I like to call it. The vet seemed completely nonchalant, and when they called us a week later to tell us things were fine--they still were.

So (back then) we brought her in, they shaved nearly her entire back and burned off what they could. She seemed like a different cat after that. More energetic and happy.

We're bringing her back because all the little ones they couldn't get before, have regrown. All the hair they shaved off hasn't grown back. At all. Not a single bit. She's been on a strict diet to lose weight for a year, and I don't think she's losing it.

I don't know about you, but if I were covered in bumps and scabs I'd be a might uncomfortable, and that's what we're worried about. We'd like to see her bump-less, but these things keep cropping up. Again, the Vet seems pretty casual about it, but the comfort of our cat, especially at this age, is most important.

It's a good thing Raven doesn't care what she looks like. I'm pretty sure there's going to be more shaving involved in her future.

That is what my sleeping habits and patterns have become. It is not, however, due to insomnia which has generally been an off and on problem for most of my adult life.

It is due, in many great parts, to a large eighteen pound cat we put on a diet the end of last year.

It can start any time at night, some times it starts as early as midnight, some times we catch a break and it starts around 5am. Most nights, it starts around 1am to 3am, and is constant until one of us says some rather nasty crap and gets out of bed to feed the land beast we call Raven.

The ritual for the cat begins with her claws on the side of our bed which she uses to haul herself up. The edge of the bed she uses is now a mess of pit marks, claw swipes and the california King cotton sheets are plucked from her claws; making smooth look nubbed. Once she manages to haul herself onto the bed, she begins her rounds. These start at the feet.

Since Raven is some how physically unable to retract her seven foot long claws, having her walk over our feet every morning is a study in how well we can stand bleedingdeathpain. See figure A:

Figure A


She used to do this on our heads, but I grew wise to this, so as you can see with Figure A, I scoot down the bed every night I crawl into it. I sacrifice my feet for my head--I figure thinking is just as important as walking.

Once she is thoroughly finished leaving new holes within our ankles, she makes a 3/4 circut around the bed, trundling up the left side and across the head of the bed. The delightful part to remember while picturing this is that she is an old cat, and tends to bring gifts with her when she gets up on the bed: some times litter is clumped on the back of her legs, some times my hair. It's always an adventure in ew, great, now I have to wash the entire bed again. Thanks. While she is doing this, she will often sniff for any random pieces of food that may have mysteriously rained down from heaven and landed on our pillows. The approximate sound I can compare Raven's sniffing too is the sound of an elephants trunk shoved into your ear. See figure B:

Figure B


Now that I am good and wide awake, contemplating honorable suicide or becomming a nun, Raven will gracefully heave herself to the floor, wait anywhere from five to ten minutes and do it all again.

My sleep at night has turned into a series of unfortunate naps. I long the for the days of sleep that lasted two hours or more before some sort of interruption--Flora, get off the ceiling fan. No, Flora, the blinds are not a jungle gym. Flora! Stop knocking the computer on the floor!

For now I guess I'll just have to stock up on really good band aids and get used to curling into a fetal position in the middle of my bed while the demented snuffleupagus that is my cat shark-circles around us and I wonder what it's like to get a full night's sleep.

--you'd think that I was starving her TO DEATH.

Ah, the sounds of a fat cat an hour before feeding. She does this anywhere from 4-6 until we feed her at 6pm. Which has been her feeding time for nearly as long as Shawn has had her.

Some of you may remember my post a while back about Raven, our getting-elderly-pee machine.

The issue wasn't that Raven was going outside the litter box purposefully, the issue was it seemed to be such a struggle to get into the box, she'd hang half her ass off the side (because she'd only go as far as RIGHT at the front) and then pee. Without squatting. So of course, there she'd be IN the litter box, peeing...out of it.

We've mostly solved that issue with a random find at a local pet store. This experiement has been running since a few days after asking advice and I gotta say, it's been pretty kick ass.

This dog litter box.





Yes. Dog. I am so far behind the 'pet times,' I guess. I hadn't a clue that they were making dog litter boxes. The one we have as pictured above is roughly as deep on the back and sides as the largest cat litter box, but without the huge wall of plastic at the front for Raven to jump over.

In fact, I'm not sure if you can tell by the picture, but there's a little plastic piece that fits over the opening that can be removed too--forming a lip that's nearly flush with the floor. Maybe no higher than an inch or two. Essentially, any cat with joint problems or too old to jungle-gym all over the place just to go poop can waltz right in and go.

With the old litter box, I was cleaning up her pee on the mat (a little blue mat that picks up some of the litter from their paws) four or five times a day. Now, with the newer, lower doggy litter box I might catch her having an accident once a week. With the added bonus of the puppy training pads around the front, I have even less clean up than before.

This dog litter box was a large--apparently you can order much, much larger ones. This will set you back $30 dollars, but, for Shawn and I, that really wasn't much to ensure our ol' kitty comfort and ease. Flora took to it in seconds too. So that's one worry out of the way.

It's heavy duty plastic and really durable so far, even with all the scratching and clawing. It's surprisingly light and easy to pick up when empty and clean. I really, really, really recommend this instead of the usual cat litter boxes if you have room for it and don't mind the fact there's no cover for it.

In other pet news: Some of you may recall that I was trying to move Nugget from a mostly seed and some pellet diet, to an complete pellet diet. We figured out what was wrong with the first set of pellets: they came in three colors, two shapes. Red, green as little beads and yellow/beige as banana shaped as well as smelling like fruit. He would eat all the red and green and leave the banana. So when he ran out of the little round red and green pellets he'd behave as if he were starving to death, tweeting and chirping and chirping and tweeeeeeting--leaving the 'naner shaped ones. So we didn't get it at first, as his food bowl would still be pretty full.

Eventually, we caught on and changed him over to Zupreem pellets. These pellets are round only with pieces of real dried fruit mixed in. He eats all of them without issue and we haven't fed him any seeds at all for over a week and a half. I'm very relieved we figured things out, as we realized that seed diets were simply awful for birdies.

And that's it on the pet front!

For the tl;dr crowd: Cat's peeing less due to a doggy litter pan and the bird's now eating an all pellet & fruit diet. Mel's a crazy animal lady. Blahblahblah.

P.S RANDOMRANDOMRANDOM: MY CAMERA WASN'T DELIVERED FRIDAY SO IT MIGHT COME TODAY AND I'M STILL EXCITED OH LAWD.

My memory is a black hole, I don't know if I've put many videos up of Raven. AKA: Pee Beast.

Here's an amusing video of her after a bath yesterday. The only time she ever really cleans herself, and I think it's mostly just arranging her fur and not cleaning.

Now, I know the signs of a sick cat. Or a cat trying to tell me it's sick--and one of the biggest signs is why they decide to use everything but the litter box after several years of the same litter, the same box. The sudden change of behavior.

And that's the thing. Raven, our eighteen pound land beast, is still technically using the litter box.

Except...She's stopped squatting to pee.

Instead, she gets in the box, she stands there and let's it go. Which might be fine if we had an entirely sealed litter box. But we don't. So she stands there and let's it fly, and it goes all over the side and on the floor then puddles under the box.

As much as I bitch about it, as badly as I bitch about it, it's all hot air. I know she's old. I know she thinks in her mind, she's squatting and having a go of it and all is well. I know, too, that when I signed up to be a pet owner one of the first things that you have to understand is that your life will be filled with lots of crap. And pee. And more crap.

But after spending most of the night scrubbing the bathroom from one end to the other after our toilet exploded, only to have to take apart the just-cleaned litter box, again, and put everything back into the tub and scrub it all then mop the floor a fourth time has made me a little irratible. Not to mention miss out on sleep.

Has anyone had this issue, at all? Where the cat's behavior to their litter box is the same, (no significant changes in litter brand or box has been made in years) but for some reason they're not able to pee..inside of it?

Does anyone have any suggestions?

tl;dr version: HAI GUYZ. CAT PEE.

Did you know that April 10th is ASPCA Day?

No? Let's find out what the ASPCA day says about it!

ASPCA website says:

"On Thursday, April 10, cities all over the country will be going orange to celebrate the ASPCA’s victories on behalf of animals and the joy they bring to pet parents everywhere. Lend us your voice on April 10 by dressing yourself, your kids, your pet—even your school or company!—in ASPCA orange, and show the world you support the ASPCA and the pets we protect."

Sounds pretty damn good to me. I don't think I have anything orange, however. I think Shawn might have an awful Hawaiian shirt. I'll have to drum up something! Won't you wear orange on April 10th for me? Won't you help speak for those who don't have a voice?

If not, do it for Nugget:


EDIT: APRITH? I ORIGINALLY HAD APRITH IN THE TITLE. WHAT THE HELL IS AN APRITH?

Now that the Holiday's are over I feel like life is returning quickly to it's norm. I've been loathe to sign onto AOL to have that change. :p

Snippets of our past Holiday include Grandma telling both my mother-in-law and my self on Christmas Eve that neither of us know anything because we tried to tell her how to work the microwave. The display is messed up and because of that, I guess she thinks it'll explode. So she keeps it unplugged until she needs it, then plugs it in, clears it, and hits "beverage." The display then says 4.0, which is the power setting. She seems to think it's 40 seconds. I tried pointing out the period between the 4 and 0. Mother-in-law tried to tell her that--I got my hands slapped and Shawn's mother got yelled at. :D I love Grandma.

Raven went in a little more than a week before Christmas to have calcifications burned from her. There were a lot, and she still has a few growing but most of the larger one's were gone. It was really odd--they looked like little wart-brains that eventually turned pussey because she'd pick at them. We also had a biopsy done on a large lump above her butt. The vet hasn't called us to tell us bad news still, so I guess she's okay.

Without further ado, here are some Raven pictures I took yesterday: