[OT] Anyone good with cats?

[d4]

i don't think she was equating a pet's life with that of a human's.

what i believe she was saying is that killing a pet because keeping them alive might inconvenience you is bad.

in that, i agree with her.

 

[LightPhoenix]

Well, for starters I think a lot of people don't know or think about how much of a financial burden that a pet is going to be. Shots, medicine, paraphenalia, vet visits, and all of that add up really quickly, and some people just can not handle that financial strain. Especially so when a cat grows older and requires more medical care. Let's also keep in mind that insurance doesn't cover any of this, so it's vastly more expensive than visiting your doctor for a prescription for amoxacillin.

The problem isn't that a lot people don't care, it's that they don't understand. Not everyone is a pre-vet/animal store worker, and they simply don't know what is involved in taking care of an animal. Instead of blaming people and calling them uncaring, the people who dare care should work more on making people understand what they're getting into. For those people that do genuinely treat animals un-humanely and enjoy it, they certainly need to be checked. I just don't think the majority of the population is of that category, and I don't think it's fair to get riled up over that.

 

[Uzumaki]

...a 10-pound critter with a brain the size of a tennis ball.

Sounds like a baby to me. And ever wonder why euthanasia is 'the right thing to do' for pets and illegal for consenting humans?

Negative population growth, ho!

I picked up a cat from the SD Humane Society. Two weeks later, I find out he has a tapeworm (fantastic ). So, he's gonna get dewormed and we'll be back to normal. No big deal. People's pets are their friends. Good pet owners make an effort to hang onto that friendship. All of the advice here has been great, and I applaud Mercule for doing what he can to solve the problem.

My other cat had a bit of a puking problem. I think she was just bored, because as soon as we got our new cat, she stopped. But, before then, I would just make sure she couldn't get into the bedrooms. Everywhere else is hardwood floors, and it really wasn't that much of an inconvenience. Not like cat pee, anyway. I've heard that vinegar gets the smell out, but I've never tried it. Maybe some strong perfume to mask it?

 

[Cedric]

Kahuna Burger and Djeta Thernadier:

You may have worked at pet stores that had well-informed personnel, but if so, you are in the vast minority. Is it really worth the animal's health to guess whether or not you've found the one place that gives good advice? Consider that the average pet owner can't tell the difference between good advice and bad until it is too late.

There may be exceptions to the rule, but the general guideline of "Don't talk to the pet store, do talk to the vet" is the safest bet for a person with an animal problem.

Umbran: Djeta made that very same point herself more than once in her replies. Basically stating that a pet store with knowledgeable employees was very much the exception and not the rule...ask your Vet.

As for problem pets...we had a male cat that was about 7 years old. He had done very well with my stepdaugther and my stepson when they were babies and toddlers. But for some reason did not at all get along with my daughter when she was born.

We had hoped that the situation would improve, but when the cat stratched Emily on the face, right across her eye (thankfully her eye was unharmed), we knew we had to do something.

Now many people may think shelter or even no-kill shelter at this point, but honestly...Tigger was a friend of our family and deserved to be treated as such. We hated to have to part ways with him, and we weren't about to just toss him aside. Yet at the same time, the health and well being of our 4 month old daughter came first.

So we scoured the web and our list of friends for people who had the right living arrangement that they could take in a "fixed" male cat who was getting a bit tempermental.

Eventually a good friend of Lyn's in Pennsylvania spoke up and said she could take him in. So we loaded him up in the car and away we went. It was about a 5 hour drive and we stayed the night and hung out with her friend.

In the end, Tigger wound up in a great place with a nice family.

Now our daughter is 3 and we have two cats, littermates about a year old, both female and both fixed. Tiki and Misty. And just like Tigger, they are a part of the family.

When Tiki got a hold of a houseplant that she turned out to be very allergic too, it cost us about $450.00 in vet bills to get her stomache pumped and for her to get better, but we never hesitated paying it for two reasons.

The biggest reason, she was a member of the family as far as we were concerned. The second reason, how do you tell a two year old that her kitten isn't coming home again?

If you aren't going to treat your pets like family...don't have pets. Get a nice aquarium screen saver and some calendars.

Oh..and unless you are going to be breeding your pets and they are officially registered and of breeding quality, have them fixed.

Cedric

 

[Cedric]

Sorry I offended folks.
I guess I was sort of offended when I read this:



Sounded like someone was equating an dumb animal's life with that of a human. Telling a pet owner that he needed to set aside his own needs for that of a 10-pound critter with a brain the size of a tennis ball. That a *promise*??? to a cat was somehow binding.

THAT offended me. I guess I should have just said so, huh?

I'm really not trying to instigate trouble here, but I think you could have worded your apology better.

Cedric

 

[BVB]

...a 10-pound critter with a brain the size of a tennis ball.

Sounds like a baby to me. And ever wonder why euthanasia is 'the right thing to do' for pets and illegal for consenting humans?

But it's not a baby. Different rules.

I understand Mercule's frustration about the problem he initially posted here -- you simply cannot live in a household where an animal is pooping on your floor every day and nothing you do seems to make it better. The guy needs to do what he needs to do, and to heck with implied "promises" made to a cat.

That being said, however, it's pretty clear that there are a lot of useful, creative suggestions being supplied here which may provide a solution. I really hope so.

But I wouldn't fault someone for recognizing the inherent limitations of his lifestyle and choices that need to be made.

 

[Umbran]

For the record, I did see what Djeta was saying. I was trying to be brief and emphasize part of what she said at the same time, and it didn't work too well.

We should perhaps stay away from the topic of human rights vs animal welfare. That's pretty much a political issue, and not really a fit subject for around here.

 

[Henry]

Everyone, let's eliminate the euthanasia debate also, please. I'm not singling anyone out, but otherwise the pretty useful health advice for the peeing kitty-kat will have to be shut down for avoidance of flame wars. Peeing babies, OK - peeing euthanasia-babies, not so OK. Peeing kitty-kat problems, OK - peeing euthanasia kitty-kats, not so OK.

Yes, I'm being silly.

And for the record, I agree with handling your responsibilites - but there are multiple ways to handle them, too. We'll leave the specifics for another day.

Carry on with further advice.

 

[Particle_Man]

BVB, you do realize that people form emotional bonds with their pets, right? I mean, maybe you don't, but you do realize that it does happen (in the majority of cases, in fact), and so saying "kill it, kill it, kill it" would not be helpful, right?

And as for the "different rules" idea on the treatment of babies and animals, that depends on what you mean. It could mean "different legal rules in our society". In other societies (ancient Sparta, for example), babies' lives were treated casually (they were left to live or die of exposure -- a very primitive form of eugenics), and anyone who objected would be called, well, a whiner.

In addition, the laws in many modern societies are changing to give more rights to an animal. Thus people get more severe punishments than before for harming an animal or being neglectful of its care. It is not impossible to imagine that in the coming years, it would become illegal to put an animal to sleep, unless the animal would have a worse life by continuing to live (severe pain, etc.).

If you mean "different moral rules" then you either have not read or disagree with the idea put forward by many utilitarian philosophers, namely, that what is relevant to having moral rights is the ability to feel pleasure or pain, and that animals have this ability. For people that subscribe to these theories (and I would bet that many pet owners would share such a belief) it would be distasteful to say the least to automatically "solve" a problem by killing the pets. Just as (I assume) it would for you be distasteful to say the least to have someone suggest you "solve" a problem of a non-stop screaming baby by killing the baby (even if laws were different so that it was legal to do so).

I personally think that some people should not have pets, and I think that it would be helpful if people had to sign an explicit, legally binding contract to take care of any pets they own before they were allowed to own pets (it could prevent a lot of animal cruelty and neglect). So I can certainly understand the "implicit contract" idea put forward in the above posts.

 

[Gospog]

Have you tried :

1. Making the bath mats smell bad (to the cat) to make him avoid them

and/or

2. Change the cat litter (we had to do this for our cat).

Good luck!