Long day over, mostly
Happy Birthday, live_momma!
I was on edge all day due to cat drama at home. So about six months to a year after we moved to Texas, a neighborhood cat started visiting our yard. It was mostly funny at the time, since he looked exactly like the kitten who'd adopted us that fall, and Mom would mistake him for our Max much of the time. We called him Not!Max, for obvious reasons, and while we speculated that he was related to our Max, he looked well-fed and just seemed to have an adventurous spirit.
Well. Seven years on, "adventurous" has turned into BIG and NASTY. This cat fears neither other cats nor humans; my mom used to be able to chase him away just by coming outside, but these days, he will actually charge her, and water thrown only drives him away for so long. Our cats are big boys who've traditionally dominated their neighborhood, but they're sweethearts and are more frequently coming out the worse in nighttime cat fights.
Felix, the oldest at a healthy and spry 13, was the latest injury. He had some scratches on his head last weekend that my mom kept an eye on, but as the week went on, he got lethargic and his face started to swell. My mom took him to the vet this morning, and it turned out there was another scratch under his ear that got infected. They drained the abcess and he's feeling a lot better now, but there were about ten hours in between me hearing the beginning and the end of that story.
Sigh. My Felix will be okay, we just don't know what to do about Not!Max. He's a menace, but...he's not an ant nest, he's a cat. A possibly owned-by-someone cat, who knows. Keeping the boys inside all the time is not an option. The vet said the SPCA would give us a trap for him, but I don't know if my mom's really considering that, as much as she dotes on the cats. She didn't mention it when she updated me.
Man, I'm tired. SGA needs to be on earlier. /old
I was on edge all day due to cat drama at home. So about six months to a year after we moved to Texas, a neighborhood cat started visiting our yard. It was mostly funny at the time, since he looked exactly like the kitten who'd adopted us that fall, and Mom would mistake him for our Max much of the time. We called him Not!Max, for obvious reasons, and while we speculated that he was related to our Max, he looked well-fed and just seemed to have an adventurous spirit.
Well. Seven years on, "adventurous" has turned into BIG and NASTY. This cat fears neither other cats nor humans; my mom used to be able to chase him away just by coming outside, but these days, he will actually charge her, and water thrown only drives him away for so long. Our cats are big boys who've traditionally dominated their neighborhood, but they're sweethearts and are more frequently coming out the worse in nighttime cat fights.
Felix, the oldest at a healthy and spry 13, was the latest injury. He had some scratches on his head last weekend that my mom kept an eye on, but as the week went on, he got lethargic and his face started to swell. My mom took him to the vet this morning, and it turned out there was another scratch under his ear that got infected. They drained the abcess and he's feeling a lot better now, but there were about ten hours in between me hearing the beginning and the end of that story.
Sigh. My Felix will be okay, we just don't know what to do about Not!Max. He's a menace, but...he's not an ant nest, he's a cat. A possibly owned-by-someone cat, who knows. Keeping the boys inside all the time is not an option. The vet said the SPCA would give us a trap for him, but I don't know if my mom's really considering that, as much as she dotes on the cats. She didn't mention it when she updated me.
Man, I'm tired. SGA needs to be on earlier. /old