The River Green

Parasites freak me out. These creatures live off of the life force of others. It's terrifying to think about. Never in my life have I encountered a tick. Fleas- yes; they're disgusting enough and make my fur friends miserable, but at least they can be methodically taken care of with minimal trauma. That all changed this past week when Autumn, our oldest, came in from her nightly walk with one of these dreadful things on her chest. Marieke found it and swiftly dealt with it (thankfully), so I only heard about it and got correspondingly heebiddy jeebeedied.

Labels: animals

For at least the last year or so, Autumn has had an infection of some sort on her underside. We had been treating it with bandages, antibiotic creams, peroxide, etc. It would go away for a few weeks, then come back again, which would start the whole treatment cycle again. Without getting into too many gory details, she had to wear old t-shirts of mine to keep the areas where she would lay down clean. During these times, her temperature rose and she was very uncomfortable; made even more so during the summer by the lack of air conditioning in our bedroom.

When the area got so bad that our treatments stopped working, we sought a more permanent solution and considered surgery. The vet prescribed antibiotics which cleared the area up quite nicely in about a week. A biopsy ruled out cancer, so a routine surgery was scheduled.

The part of me that is a dog owner had a rough night knowing that Autumn was away from home in a strange place for the first time since we got her. At one point, I almost walked down to the vet’s office to see if the sitter would let me see her.

She was a bit groggy the next day and we had to keep her away from everyone else in the house so that she could recover in peace. After another week, the sutures were removed and she is just now starting to get up and walk around without too much difficulty.

Labels: animals

Manfred, Opie, Oskar and Autumn all have fleas. Even more terrible- it seems like the fleas have been here for a while before we realized what was happening. They’re even in the rugs on the porch, and that is how my legs have become bitten up. We tried a natural flea killer consisting of various oils because of Manfred’s sensitivity. It hasn’t done much yet, but Manfred smells very nice.

I have reason to believe that the fleas came on mice that have gnawed their way through several feet of fiberglass insulation in the basement. The cats have so far killed three this season. We had to put Manfred in his own room, with a box and food so that he wouldn’t get sick from everyone else’s flea treatments. It’s bad enough he had an adverse reaction to the all-natural flea killer that kills fleas on contact. His mouth became a little swollen and the slobber was epic. He spent the first night in the basement and scared us both silly that something much larger was the issue.

Poor Oskar has almost no hair left on his belly and can not seem to stop scratching. He is the easiest to treat because his fur is so coarse and not at all dense. When he started scratching, we knew we had a problem- he is always the last to get them.

Labels: animals

At the point when my finals were nearing completion, I decided that Sunday would be a good day to take a break and relax for a bit. Things were going oh-so swimmingly, when suddenly, because of the guttural cat posturing, we realized that our feisty orange cat, Opie, was still on the porch. I ran to the door to see that our cat had jumped the gate and was now off the porch and in direct line of the un-neutered orange neighborhood cat, whose posturing he was responding to.

No sooner did I have my broom in hand to shoo away the intruder than there was a single ball of screaming, clawing, biting tangle of orange hair at the bottom of my porch steps. This went on for about a half minute, but seemed much, much longer, but when it was over, I could tell that my little bruiser of a kitty had kicked the snot out of the neighborhood ruffian.

I quickly took notice that the other cat had merely retreated and was likely planning a second assault. Not wanting to witness another exchange, I set aside the broom and reached for my cat. It was immediately clear that this was not the best idea. He reacted as if I was another enemy and quickly tore my right hand and arm to shreds- five deep puncture wounds and countless scratches.

Apparently aware that Opie was otherwise pre-occupied, the other one decided to commence with round two, while Opie’s teeth and claws were still in my hand and arm. His attack resulted in four puncture wounds and two particularly nasty scratches on my left hand and arm. The blood was horrific.

On my left hand was an especially gruesome injury consisting of a connecting puncture wound beginning in the webbing of my first and second fingers and extending downward, to just past my knuckles. When I went to initially clean them out, I made the teeth chattering, heebie geebie discovery that when I ran the water on the wound between my fingers, it ran through and out of the wound on the top of my my hand.

Luckily, Marieke managed to get Opie back in the house and was then able to render assistance to my bleeding appendages. Either from the heebidy geebidy nature of my injuries or from the loss of so much blood, I became an unconscious pile on my bathroom floor.

When I came to, I began to hyperventilate and had a slight panic attack. After recovering from that, I was finally able to dress my wounds, and to reduce my level of acute discomfort, I shaved my arm hair around the wounds so that the bandages would not Brazilian Hot Wax the hair off for me.

The most painful of my injuries is on the inside of my right first finger, below the first knuckle. It was just a bite, but I’m pretty sure Opie’s tooth was stopped only by my bone.

I used an entire bottle of alcohol and peroxide cleaning everything out, and have no less than 9 bandages on both hands. It is all really very sore.

Labels: animals , random events

Our collection of animals… these are only the mammals.

Labels: animals , family