Pets = kids

My dear friend Gaby was out of town this past weekend and asked if I could take care of her little clan of pets for a few days, to which I most happily obliged. While she does have a few roommates who were able to care for the pets throughout the day while I was at work, she really wanted someone to be able to spend the night with her two dogs and two cats, as they have never been alone overnight before.

No problems here - bring on the animals, I say!

However, since Scot and I have two little monsters cats of our own, we decided that I would stay at Gaby's all three nights and he would only stay the first and third nights. Scot would stop home in the mornings before he went to work to check on our own little guys. Super.

This being the case, I was the one primarily taking care of Gaby's four pets. Let's meet them, shall we?

First we have Peanut, the three legged lab.

Poor girl is almost 15 years old and has really started to struggle due that whole missing leg thing. Stairs have become quite a challenge for her.. my heart breaks every time she plops on the floor after walking a few steps because it's so hard on her joints. She really is such a sweetheart!

Next we have the little terror, Chewy.

This dog yaps. A lot. She's sweet as anything, but when she barks at a bird outside the window at 4am? Not so amusing.

As for the kitties, we have Milo, the old, wise, mostly outdoor cat.

Milo likes to have his cake and eat it too - he likes the comfort of a warm cozy bed at night, but only for about an hour or so at a time. He needs to be let out and back in constantly. I was up almost every 2 hours with this dude and his whining.

And lastly we have Timmy, aka my one true love.

Timmy is really the 'household' cat - he's more Braden's than Gaby's, I suppose, but he likes to chill with Gaby and the rest of the pets in her room (which is really the whole bottom floor of the house) at night (oh yes, they all sleep in her room every night). He is so fluffy and so rambunctious and I'm just in love with him.

He used to be terrified of me for some reason but we became BFF's this past weekend. I kind of wanted to steal him.

Needless to say, life was a bit crazy the past few days with staying at Gaby's, being away from Scot, taking care of four animals, living with roommates, etcetera. Then add to this mix the fact that our own cat, Tully, randomly started urinating in our bathtub.. and it was bloody. (Sorry for lack of gross warning. But we're all adults here and I think most of us have pets and are ok with this.)


Scot discovered this when he went home before work after the first night we were at Gaby's. He called the vet, and the idiot who answered the phone just said that we could come in on Monday for an appointment. I was worried.. but if the vet wasn't worried, I wasn't sure if I should be. So we called back the next day (Saturday) just to be sure, and whoever answered the phone that time said we should take him to the emergency pet hospital right away.

I had to be at work, so Scot took him in. Long story short, Tully is prone to crystals in his bladder and the symptoms that result, which we already knew. He went through this a few years ago, but we have been keeping on top of it with medication and prescription food, so it really didn't make sense that he randomly starting peeing blood again. The vet at the pet ER said that high strung and neurotic cats (um yea, that's Tullyjandro to a T) can get stressed and basically cause these symptoms to themselves. Her theory is that our cat is stressed by something, and that it's nothing more severe than that.

We still have an appointment with our regular vet this morning to get a second opinion - while I guess I would like it to be "just stress".. it's hard, because I'm not sure the exact cause of said stress. It also stinks because blood in the urine can be a symptom of something as simple as stress or as dire as kidney failure. Since he's apparently prone to these symptoms, we will never know in the future if/when this should happen again.

Le sigh. So that's that. A lot of animal drama lately.. please keep our kitty in your thoughts; he's a neurotic mess, but he's MY neurotic mess, and I just want him to be ok!