Schmat

Today I'm starting a weekly Wednesday feature on pets. I'm going to go through pets we have, pets we've had, and animals that have lived with us in some way that might be loosely interpreted as being pets. I'll keep this up until I run out of animals. I might even go into my childhood, which is where I keep the really weird pets. This is story telling, and it's gong to take a while. 

We'll start with Schmat. She's the first pet my wife and I got as a couple and, because she's still hanging around, is also the pet we've had the longest. For some reason, I'm unable to have a normal story about getting a cat. It's probably because my parents are veterinarians and vets never get cats by normal means. They're always found in a ditch covered in ants or hit by a car with a broken leg or found in an abandoned car with a pile or kittens or brought in with a grub living in their eye. Every cat has a story, and Schmat is no different. After moving to Texas my wife (not yet my wife) wanted to get a cat. Our apartment allowed cats and I had always lived with cats so I wasn't violently opposed to the idea. That's all it took. The next thing I know, my mom is keeping an eagle eye open for nice little kittens brought into her office with some malady or another and no owner to pay for them. Schmat was brought in after being hit by a car at about four months old. She was dragging a useless front leg. It wasn't broken, it had nerve damage and was just hanging there. You can't just leave a numb leg hanging like that, they drag it around and it gets sores rubbed into it and it gets infected and bad things happen. If they don't regain control of the leg, you have to amputate it. It's not so bad really, three legged cats get along just fine, I've known more than my fair share of them and they have all seemed just fine. After a week of hanging out at the office Schmat became one of the lucky ones who heal instead of becoming a cat named Tripod. All three legged cats are named Tripod. 

Now we had an exceptionally nice kitten with four legs to come live with us. The only problem was that she was in Michigan and we were in Texas. That Christmas I had to work so my wife went home to visit relatives without me. She got a carrier, got the cat from my mom, and brought her home. In this story, flying a cat across the country is the boring part. Mostly because we flew the cat legally and all went well. The story of my sister flying week old kitten in the pocket of her sweatshirt to New York while occasionally slipping it a bottle to keep it happy is a much better story. Those were the days before body scanners and pat downs. The good old days of smuggling kittens.

You might think that the story ends there, Schmat comes to live in Texas and we all live happily ever after, but no. Schmat decided to be a real cat and scratch things. A lot. We tried all of the conventional measures like sticky tape and spray bottles and providing appropriate surfaces to scratch on, but no, she wouldn't stop. We could have let her be an indoor/outdoor cat but doing that in our part of Texas is sentencing her to a premature death by loose dog or owl or car or any of the other dangers in the neighborhood. We liked her and wanted her to live, so we decided to declaw her. Again, this shouldn't be an interesting story, declawing a cat, but as I said, both of my parents are vets which means that nothing is ever normal. When I mentioned to my parents that Schmat needed to be declawed my dad just said "wait until I come down and I'll do it". So I did, and he did, right on the kitchen table. So now I have a hit by a car cat transported 1000 miles on an airplane (because there's clearly no suitable cats in the whole state of Texas) who was declawed on the kitchen table. Done, right? No. 

Another time when my dad was visiting he casually mentioned that Schmat should have her teeth cleaned, they were pretty yucky. Vets kids are the worst people in the world about actually taking their pets to the vet. Instead of making an appointment we call our parents and have them send us flea medicine or wait for them to visit and perform minor surgery in the kitchen. We hate going to the vet. My wife doesn't have those hang ups so she made the teeth cleaning appointment. When we got her back we found out that when we brought her in, she only had about half of her teeth left (who looks in their cat's mouth?) and when they tried to clean them, the rest of them fell out, all but one. (That one fell out later) That's when we learned about stomititis, when a cat is allergic to their own teeth and they just fall out. This is a real thing, honest. We felt pretty bad though and bought her soft food and everything. Of course she refused to eat soft food, even once, and insisted on gumming her hard food and swallowing it whole. Have I mentioned how she prefers to eat? She takes her paw and flicks food out of her bowl one piece at a time and then eats it. I think she feels like she's hunting if she does it that way. She's so weird. Anyway, now we have a toothless declawed cat. She's a riot to play with because she doesn't have any sharp parts, unlike most cat's who are just a collection of sharp parts loosely held together with fur. She's like playing with a live stuffed animal. It's fun. 

I could keep going about Schmat. About how she jumps into bags when you pack for trips. If you open a bag, turn around to grab clothes and then turn back, there she is, sitting in your bag. Even if you just saw her sound asleep in the other room, she'll be there. It's like the magicians silk hat, but with a cat. And then boxes, and her rubbing on every book I've ever read as I'm reading it an so much more. I need to stop though, because I'm writing a post about Schmat, not a book. 

I hope this gives you an idea about pets and their stories around here. If you ask me if I have any pets you had better get a drink and find a comfortable place to sit, because I've got a story. A long story. A lot of long stories in fact.