Confessions of a registered nurse (Confessions of a student nurse): Cat stories

The joy of stubborn animals

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 14:58:00 GMT

The day after my NCLEX, when I was more stressed than I have been in years, Isis left me a wonderful surprise on the carpet right next to her litter box. She peed on it, twice. Some of you non-cat owners out there might not know this, but the smell of cat urine is extremely difficult to get out of carpet. I wanted to kill the little ball of fur. But I stayed calm and spent three hours cleaning it up. Five boxes of baking soda and two ruined towels later, the smell was gone. I had to accept the blame for the incident because I had been sick and stressed, and had not been giving her the attention she deserved. Plus, when I get stressed, so does she, so I can imagine what she was going through. I forgave her, Mike forgave her (he had no choice in the matter) and we moved on. I got home from work last night and there she was, "digging" on the carpet trying to bury her fresh new urine. "You can't bury your urine because you just peed on my carpet!!!" I screamed at her, knowing full well she probably only understood half of the words I was yelling. She ran and hid under the bed and knew to stay there for at least an hour. Things have been great here- I have been working a lot, but Mike has even been playing with her, so this is not a behavioral thing. That means that something is wrong with her, probably a UTI. When she had this a few years ago, the vet charged me a ridiculous amount of money to hold Isis in a cage all day waiting for her to pee on these expensive little beads in the litter box. I think we ended up paying $40 just for the vet to collect a urine sample, which of course Isis never provided (I don't know how she got so stubborn). I'm not throwing away $40 again, so I cleaned out a container of sour cream and dedicated my night to getting a urine sample from my cat. I get them from human infants, I can get one from my cat, right? Every half hour exactly, I would pick Isis up and place her in the litter box. She would sit there for a few seconds with her ears straight back and then make a run for it. Finally, on our sixth field trip, Isis started digging. I shouted to Mike, "She is finally giving in! Isis: 0, Katie: 1!" Once she squatted, I held the sour cream container under where the urine should be coming out. All of the sudden, she started making these funny movements with her stomach, and she stood up a little bit. Hmm... this is interesting... That's when she pooped. New score: Isis 1, Katie 0.

Food?!

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 01:45:12 GMT

To get my cats to come running, all I have to do is lift up their bag of cat food. They hear the bag and are at my feet, meowing and purring, within a few seconds. Today while going through the normal feeding routine, I came up with a little experiment for them. I filled the bowl all the way to the top and waited for them to finish eating. They ate what they wanted and then walked away, leaving the bowl almost completely full. I counted to ten, and then picked up the bag again. Within ten seconds:

And yes, they both did eat again. Could this be why Isis's belly swings back and forth when she runs and Skitz weighs as much as a small dog? Hmm... time to hit the kitty gym.

Edit: Isis is very upset that I mentioned her belly fat because her boyfriend Manny might be reading. So I take that back, Isis's belly does not swing back and forth when she runs. It just sways a little bit.

Cat massage

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 07:19:58 GMT

See Mike, cats are good for something!!

Skitzo vs the sprinkler

Fri, 05 May 2006 15:45:51 GMT

If you were betting on a fight between a living animal and a nonliving object, which would you put your money on? If you picked the living animal, you are probably right in most circumstances. Unfortunately, this is not the case when you are dealing with Skitzo, my adorable but unintelligent cat.
Yesterday, I was combing Skitzo outside and like always, he became angry and annoyed that he was being combed. When either of my cats get angry, they attack whatever is near them- a chair, my leg, the other cat, etc. The sprinkler is what happened to be closest to Skitzo while I was combing him yesterday.

With his ears pointed straight back, Skitzo walked up to the sprinkler. He sat down next to it and held out his paw, warning the sprinkler that it was going to get smacked if it didn't move out of his way. The sprinkler held its ground and did not cave under the pressure. Skitzo smacked the rotating part of the sprinkler, causing it to move away from him. "Take that!!" Skitzo was probably thinking. A second later, the other side of the sprinkler rotated around and tapped Skitzo on his back. Skizto jumped into the air and let out a shriek, then ran away from the sprinkler, defeated.
Stay tuned for Skitzo vs the kitchen wall...

The joy of cats

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 00:33:03 GMT

To prevent my cats from getting hairballs, I have been trying to comb them as often as I can tolerate it (they hate being combed but seem to enjoy biting me). Surprisingly, Skitzo was being calm today and allowing me to comb him. I was excited that I wouldn't be cleaning up any hairballs for quite some time thanks to the wonderful job I was doing when suddenly he started making funny noises. I looked to see what was going on, and realized that my stupid cat had his mouth full of some of the hair that I had just combed off of him! I pulled what I could out of his mouth, which he thanked me for by biting me right on the shin. I guess today was completely counterproductive.....

Different paths

Thu, 23 Feb 2006 04:04:55 GMT

Sometimes in life we have to choose which path to take. One path is usually the right way, and the other leads you on a painful journey. We always hope we make the right decision, but sometimes we fail. Today was Isis's day to make the bad decision.

Path 1: (stairs) Path 2: (free fall)

Can you guess which path Isis took today?
My little brother sent me an instant message that said, "Katie, your cat jumped off the loft." I know Isis is not that stupid, so I thought Michael was just kidding. A few seconds later, another message, "I think she hit the door on the way down." Just in case he wasn't kidding, I ran downstairs and saw Isis sitting on the floor, looking very confused. The hallway door was half closed, so my wonderful cat had indeed hit the door on her shortcut downstairs. She seems ok, but I hope she learned that jumping off the loft onto a tile floor is not the wisest path to take!

Broken printer

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 22:08:48 GMT

A few days ago, I started printing a large document on my printer and then left the room. When I returned later, several of the pages were crumpled and the printer was jammed. This is a new and expensive printer, so I was pretty upset. I could not figure out what had gone wrong, so I tried to print it again after removing the jam. It worked perfectly. I hadn't thought about the jam again until I was printing another document today. After the printer started, I saw Isis run towards the printer, jump on top of it, and stick her little paw inside the part where the paper comes out. What happened? The thing jammed, of course, and all the papers on top of the printer were crumpled. It's so great to have a loving cat to protect me from the evil printer (and the evil photo album too). *sigh*

Bubba the Guard Spider

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 00:26:02 GMT

As some of you may know by now, my cats are good friends with Manny, an adorable cat that likes to cause trouble. Awhile ago, I read that Manny stole his owner's contact case and hid it from him. Fearing that my cats would copy Manny and do the same, I had to hire a guard to watch over my contact case at night. Skitzo is scared of spiders, so who better to protect my contacts than a scary spider? I hired Bubba the Spider, and he hangs out by my bathroom sink protecting my stuff from trouble-making animals.

Update: Bubba the spider is dead. I don't know what happened to him, but have a feeling Manny gave Skitzo some spider-killing tips. Look what happened: "I'm going to eat your contact case. Mmmmm...."

The gift

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 00:07:07 GMT

You know you are loved when:

Skitzo's favorite toy somehow ended up inside my backpack. What a pleasant surprise! :)

The ghost

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 11:44:44 GMT

Last night as I was about to fall asleep, Skitzo, who was sleeping next to my pillow, suddenly stood up and was very tense. He was staring at something, and I couldn't figure out what, so I turned on the light. That's when I saw Isis sitting on the floor staring up towards the ceiling. I looked in the direction they both were looking, and again there was nothing there. At this point, I just thought there was something on the roof they were listening to. But then their heads started to follow this invisible thing, and they were both moving their heads together- they saw something I wasn't seeing. I know it wasn't a bug or something of that sort, because they would both have tried to catch it. Instead of being playful, they were really tense and completely freaking me out. All of the sudden they both ran out of the room. I grabbed their bag of treats, and for the first time ever, even treats couldn't get them back in that room. So there I was, a 24 year old woman, sleeping all night with the light on. I know for sure that one of two things happened last night: there was a ghost in my room, or these two cats put their heads together and played one damn good trick on me.

Isis's foot

Sat, 07 Jan 2006 08:29:19 GMT

Isis and Skitzo make it difficult to get any work done. I was sitting here studying earlier tonight when I heard them fighting. I looked to make sure they were ok and realized what was going on: Skitzo was trying to bite Isis's foot. Of course, Isis wasn't happy about this, but was too lazy to get up and move. So she just laid there smacking him while he tried to bite her. This continued long enough for me to get my camera and take pictures. I posted them for you HERE. You might want to view them with the speed turned up a little bit- it makes the action shots even better!

The evil photo album

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 03:13:30 GMT

Apparantly, we have an evil photo album in our house. Thankfully though, we have Super Isis to save us from this awful album.

We can't figure out what Isis thinks is wrong with this photo album, but for some reason, she keeps pulling it out from the stack of albums against the wall and trying to tear it apart. There is a picture on the front cover that she has poked many holes in. We will put the album back with the others, and within a few hours, it will be on the floor again with several new holes. Well, at least she's busy ripping apart photo albums and not throwing up on the carpet, right?

Cat alarm clock

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 13:46:02 GMT

I am sure that many of you cat owners have come to this same conclusion before: the most effective alarm clock would be one that imitated the noise of a cat about to throw up. When I hear the beeping of my alarm clock, I slowly and painfully make myself wake up. But when I hear that distinct hacking, I am up, alert, and searching for the closest thing to put under the cat to catch the vomit, all in under a second. At about 4:30 this morning, I guess I was a little too quick getting up though, because it scared Isis, so she started running while throwing up. The result? An inch wide line of vomit stretching about three feet on the carpet. Stupid cat!! I have to clean it up right away, not because it will stain, but because Isis will find something around my room to "cover" her mess up with. She will drag clothes, paper, towels, whatever she can move with her little paws, and attempt to hide what she has done. Does anyone else have an animal compelled to do this? She even hides Skitzo's messes. Sometimes when cleaning the clothes off my floor, I find her nice little presents. If my room is actually clean and she can't find anything to hide it with, she will just sit there and attempt to dig a hole in the carpet. She is declawed, so it doesn't harm anything, but it's really annoying when I'm trying to sleep! Animals are so much fun!!

Poor Skitzo

Sat, 03 Dec 2005 20:45:33 GMT

I didn't like how much room Poor Skitzo was taking on my main page, so I added it to an earlier blog. To view this posting (pictures & all), click on Poor Skitzo (the link is in the upper right corner, under my Guest Book link). This will bring you to the Attack of the Birds story, just scroll down and you'll see my beautiful, crazy cats!!

Attack of the birds

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 01:23:45 GMT

My cats, Isis and Skitz, are indoor cats, but on occasion, I will sit outside with them. About a month ago, we were all sitting outside when I saw a large flock of geese in the distance. They were getting lower & lower, and it looked like they were going to land just past the patio. As they were swooping down, I thought, "I'm going to get crapped on!" All the sudden, I heard the sound of something hitting the pavement. This is it, I'm going to be covered in bird doo. I looked up, and my cats were both pressed up against the screen door. Isis was higher up than Skitz, and was holding herself up by being between the outside sliding door and the inner screen door. Skitz was below her, jumping into the screen. The poor things were scared to death of the birds! The sound I heard was my cats claws as they raced across the patio & dove into the closed screen. I looked at the ground and there were two trails of urine, one from where each cat had been sitting, reaching all the way to the door. On the kitchen floor there was also a nice little puddle of Isis's urine. My mom came running and opened the door for them, and I have never seen them run as fast as they did through the house to hide in my closet. The screen door was ripped from Isis's back claws, and the urine inside was a pain to clean up (there was a wood border on the ground that it soaked into). This gets better though. When I went to comfort Skitz, I noticed an awful smell. I looked closely at him, and noticed that the top of his head was all wet. Isis had peed on Skitz while she was up on the screen! So, after Skitz suffered through the attack of the birds, he had to have a bath, which is never a fun thing for cat owners.
The cats stayed inside for a few days, but they are back to wanting out whenever I will let them. Yesterday, I was sitting outside with Isis, when all of the sudden she got low to the ground and ran towards the door. Thankfully, the outside door was closed, so we didn't have to deal with another ripped screen. What scared her so much? Bub the squirrel wasn't yelling at her, and I didn't see any birds... I looked again and saw that the leaves were blowing in the wind. Wow. She has really developed a phobia if she is now scared of leaves!! I don't see how anyone could hate cats. They just make life so interesting!

Finals start on Monday, so I am scrambling trying to find ways to avoid studying. One of my favorite blogs, Man oh Manny, was featured on Best of MSN, so I thought I would post a cat story in honor of Manny (and to give me an excuse not to study):

Poor Skitzo

One day, Skitzo met a beautiful girl.

But Skitzo made her mad by checking out the girls outside.

So the girl left him for Isis.

Skitzo got jealous and fought with Isis, but the girl did not come back.

Skitzo looked everywhere for the girl.

Isis even helped him look for her.

When he finally found the girl, he tried to talk to her and say sorry.

But the girl said she no longer loved Skitzo.

So he ate her.

And fell in love with Isis instead.

Until Isis saw Manny's website, and left Skitzo for Manny.

So poor Skitzo was left alone and depressed.