(Reposted with full text as well as original link.)

So you just had a baby, and now you want to dump your loving, lifelong pet at the shelter because of it?
Read this first.

( Full text under cut, with permission of original author. )

My pussycat was rocking in the rocking chair
Rocked so hard she lost her hair, poor pussy

This has been a freaky spring and summer -- everything has been running late. Lilacs normally bloom in late March or early April, yet we didn't have lilacs in flower until late June fer pete's sake. And here it is late July, and the cottonwoods are still ( Read more... )

I stopped by PetSmart on the way home last night, to pick up some crickets for my tarantulas. As I gathered up my wallet and bag o'crickets, the casher said to me "Thanks for shopping at PetSmart, and enjoy your, um, crunchy morsels!"

The phrase "bird-brained" obviously does not apply to parrots. I found this YouTube video on my websurfing travels, in which a cockatoo engineers a jailbreak for his fellow inmates and himself. Not only does he know how a padlock works, not only how the latch to the door opens, but he knows the correct order in which to perform these steps! He ( Read more... )

My pet tarantula Cheezit is dead. I'm not sure when she died, but it was sometime in the last few days.

( Sic transit gloria mundi )

After writing about my adventures in getting my cat to eat canned pumpkin, I made a point of seeing just which can of Fancy Feast it was that I'd used -- you remember, the "chopped-up fish bits in some sort of gelatinized goop"? I'd thought it was Ocean Whitefish... but no, it was, in fact, the Seafood Filets Sardines, Shrimp & Crab Feast In Aspic ( Read more... )

I had a wonderful little adventure with cat excrement this past weekend. I am pretty good at keeping up with the litter box maintenance, but every once in a while, the cat and I disagree on whether the litter needs to be replaced. (I use silica cat litter... wonderful stuff. Lasts a long time, and really does work for eliminating odor.) When ( Read more... )

Brave Cat Singlehandedly Fends Off Pack Of Ravening Canines!

Well, ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration (heh). What happened was, a litter of ten golden retriever puppies encounters the family housecat for the first time. And the cat was so terrifying, so horrendously intimidating (*g*), that it didn't have to do anything except just sit there. ( Read more... )

My cat, Sofia, is a big old long-haired calico. She's one of those long-haired cats that is bushy as well as long-haired, and her fur is also the type that tends to look kind of oily and tangled, no matter how long or how many times a day I brush it. (Fortunately, she loves being brushed, so that's one good thing....) And her undercoat is that ( Read more... )

I have a new bug. I was out walking in the central City park last night with a friend of mine and her big ol' chow-mix dog, and we saw this odd green thing on the pavement of the zoo parking lot. At first I thought it was just a leaf, but it turned out to be a praying mantis. So of course I used one of the plastic bags we were carrying to catch ( Read more... )