Happy Howlidays 2010

Tis the Season for pet themed ornaments and antlers on your dogs!

Well, some of the dogs are more comfortable in antlers than others...

Mattie likes wearing her antlers. She even has the santa-beard to really emphasize her holiday spirit.

Scott is, er, not a fan of wearing antlers (or dog-back packs, or coats or sweaters). This was the best shot of Scott I could get of him.

I tried to put the antlers on Lucky but he is so gamey, he was trying to rip the antlers out of my hands. For a little dog, he is very driven. Here is a tree ornament that looks like him anyway...

Jude would not sit still. The one picture I got of him (antler-less) does not want to load into blogger, so unfortunately, no festive pictures of the giant Border Collie puppy today.

GiGi, our cat, is a dilute calico. For some reason, the tree ornament makers in China love to make ornaments that look exactly like our cat.

Since I haven't yet found a blue-eyed Border Collie ornament - I guess I need two of these now anyway - I use this steer to represent Scott...

And, for Jude (aka Klondike Bar) - he gets to be repped by this fluffy Suffolk from Switzerland.

I found some chicken ornaments this year. Yes, I know this is a rooster. However, I think Russian Orloff chicken ornaments are even rarer than blue-eyed Border Collie ornaments. Myrtle and Mergatroid the Orloffs will just have to get by with this ornament for now.

This season was also the first time I have successfully grown an Amaryllis. I bought the kit at the end of October and planted it in early November. This thing has gone gangbusters in our living room. So much so in fact, that out of the one bulb planted I actually have two stems that popped out. The stem shown here is about 2.5 feet tall. It's pretty amazing. The other stem (you can see it peaking up on the bottom right in this photo) is well on its way to being as tall as its older sibling.

And, this is a picture of the delicious Swedish baked goodies my dear co-worker Sandy makes each year. I especially look forward to the cookies in this pile that look like Snickerdoodles. But, these are no average Snickerdoodles. These happen to be Swedish Ammonia Cookies. Yep, you read that right, ammonia! Sandy orders this special cooking ammonia from an online Swedish bakery. I can describe this cookie as something that looks like a snickerdoodle, but is crumbly, lightly sweet, airy and has a very slight chewiness, sort of like a homemade meringue. Sandy knows I love these cookies and so she filled up my plate with them along with other Swedish goodies she baked.

Does your cat do this?

Does your cat do this?

GiGi, our nearly-5 year old pastel calico shelter kitty sucks on her tail about twice a day, sometimes more, sometimes less, but usually, we catch her doing this about twice a day. We're told it's because she was taken away from her momma too soon - we did adopt her as a kitten. But, she was surrounded by 5 other brothers and sisters and I doubt all of them are tail-suckers. Plus, I haven't heard any reports of tail-sucking from the kittens we fostered and adopted out to friends - those appeared to have been even younger than GiGi and probably never knew their slutty-mommas. So, I'm not sure what is up. Don't get me wrong - it's adorable for GiGi to do it, until she quits sucking and whips around her wet tail that ends up slapping you across the face if you're not too careful.

I looked online to see what other cat-ladies are saying about the phenomenon. All I find is that there are some pretty crazy people out there. One even says that what GiGi does is "dangerous." Okay, I understand that when George, our 13 year old kitty, ate a 3 foot long piece of stringy material and had to get it surgically removed that this can be "dangerous" behavior - this is why our home is a "string-free zone" now. However, GiGi, as seen above, is hardly endangering herself or anyone else.

GiGi has other skills though. She will still play with her "neutron accelerator" toy - a big round plastic tube that has a yellow ball in it that she can swoosh around - best $15 ever spent on a toy for the animals. She is also skilled at knocking things off counters, bitch-slapping our dogs in the face without getting killed, and keeping the spider and moth population down in the house.

GiGi Super Kitty

GiGi is our 4 year old, pastel calico cat. I rescued GiGi from the Seattle Animal Shelter in November 2004. She was supposed to be a foster but I failed there and ended up adopting her because Lucky and George, our other cat, got along with her so well (plus, we fell in love with her too). I picked her out of a litter of 5 kittens. She was the skinniest, sickliest looking one of the bunch - the only one not playing. Knowing I could only foster one cat at a time, I took her to try to rehabilitate her. I wouldn't say she was feral, but she did spend her first couple of days at home hiding behind the toilet and hissing when we got near. Then, she figured out that people were her food source and she quickly become a totally loving, happy little cat. Here is a kitten picture of GiGi after she put on some weight...

For the last few weeks GiGi had been acting pretty strange. She was SUPER hungry all the time and actually would try to steal food off our dinner plates, she would push Lucky the dog out of the way and start to eat his food, and she would constantly be hanging out by the pantry where her cat food was stored. Then, this past week or so, she started behaving oddly - sleeping under the bed and not trying to steal food anymore.

I took her to the vet on Thursday and she was diagnosed with something called Hepatic Lipidosis, or "fatty liver disease." Apparently, GiGi put herself into a state of starvation by not eating the cat food I was providing her 24/7. I guess George, my older cat, was eating her share and leading me to beleive that the lower-calorie formula of food was working for one of my cats - GiGi was losing weight (she was pretty chunky). In actuality, she was only eating the treats and canned food I was giving them everyother day (for which George also probably got a large share of).

The condition is horrible as it affects a cat's liver. Any cat can get it but I read it's more prominent among cats who are overweight, put on a diet, female, and indoor cats. GiGi meets all that criteria. The survival rate of a cat with this condition is 80%. GiGi's test results from the vet indicate that this is the only thing that she has wrong though, which is good news. In 50% of the cases of cats with HL, half have cancer or some other critical disease. I have a feeling it's those cats with other conditions that will have a higher mortality rate - that's what I'm hoping anyway since GiGi doesn't have another condition.

GiGi is actually jaundice, which I didn't know cats and dogs could even get jaundice. The jaundice is a clear indication that her liver is messed up. The only cure of Hepatic Lipisos (HL) is to make GiGi eat as much as she can. I'm so thankful that she has not lost her appetite. We have her on her favorite foods now, she gets extra treats and thankfully, she is keeping all this food down. If she chose not to eat we would have to have a feeding tube inserted into her side directly into her stomach and essentially "force" feed her through the tube for 3-6 weeks! Let us hope it doesn't come to that.

So, thankfully, GiGi is eating, keeping her food down, and eager to eat and greet us. She is an ambassador of cats because she is very pretty, sociable, doesn't scratch unless frightened and has impeccable house manners. We couldn't have asked for a better kitty actually.

Here is a picture of GiGi recently...

And here is a picture of her from the perspective of a spider that she is about to kill, er, I mean play with. She is quite the hunter and keeps those horrible wood-spider (Hobo spiders technically) at a minimum in our home.
We'll know that things are going well once GiGi starts to put on weight and her jaundice clears. That may take 2-4 weeks. I will then take her back in to the vet for more blood work just to make sure her liver is stabilized and healthy again. Having lacerated my own liver before, I know that the liver is an amazing organ in that it can heal itself quickly and that it is forgiving in the sense that once it heals, it's healed.