I don’t remember now if I had mentioned it, but at the end of last summer, Griswald developed an “overgrooming” habit which left all four of his legs and his stomach all patchy, as he’d literally licked all of the fur off.
I took him to the vet, and after $250 worth of science, we learned that he didn’t have fleas, mites, fungus, or the mange, but was probably just a little bit defective in the brainmeats department and was compulsively grooming himself to a point of nakedness.
I was offered two options. Medicate him, or “wait-and-see.” I chose “wait-and-see,” because pilling this energetic, neurotic, and very pointy cat is toward the bottom of my “things I like to do when I have nothing else better going on” list. I have a scar from that time he had the bladder infection and I had to pill him twice a day for a week-and-a-half.
The scruffy picture you see above was taken on 11-7-10. I took a new picture last night, and while it is grainy, because I wasn’t using a flash and was trying to not get Zombie Laser Pew-Pew-Pew-Kitty eyes, you can tell quite clearly that he has an entire coat of fur once again.
Waiting and seeing ultimately proved much less traumatic to all of us, and Griz is as close to “back to normal” as he’s ever going to be. At least he’s entirely furred up once again.
I call this pose “Le Chat Noir Avec Home Renovation.” It works best if you use a Peter Sellers French accent.
Minnie is doing pretty well. She’s actually snuggly and friendly pretty frequently, though every day she has at least one, but usually two periods of going bug-eyed-crazy and rampaging around the house knocking things over and chewing on inappropriate items.
The other night, I was brushing my teeth and Minnie was sitting on the toilet seat, gnawing vigorously at the toilet handle. She managed, during the course of her mastication, to actually flush the toilet, whereupon she was startled and summarily raced from the room with her tail inflated to three times its normal size. So I posted about it on Facebook and was rewarded with a link to the following video:
Here’s Ruby, doing one of her favorite things – going for a run alongside my bike. We go most evenings, especially since the time change, when there’s plenty of daylight. She gallops along like this for quite a while, though I managed to catch on video her seamless transition from gallop to trot.
I’m sure there are some show-dogs who’d be proud to have such a good gait.
Or a tail this floofy. This picture is from last May, but right now she’s at about the same level of furriness. She gets super fuzzy during the winter, then sheds it all off in wads come mid-June.
She gets a big, fluffy mane, her ears are so covered in fuzz you can’t really even see their outline, fur sticks out between her toes, her elbow-tufts are impenetrable, and her belly is so well insulated that she loses her ticklishness.
Elbow-tufts.
So, that’s the State of the Beastlies address. They’re all doing pretty darn well at the moment.
I’ve always wanted to try riding with my dog, but I’m afraid she’ll yank me right off my bike when she stops to sniff something. Ruby doesn’t do that, I take it?
She’s usually pretty focused on running. Not much stopping and sniffing until the worst of the ya-yas are worn off. Then, we cruise around at a slower pace so that it’s way easy to stop if she needs to stop and piddle or sniff.