Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Joe Biden can go out like FDR, not by dying in office, but by crushing the fascists.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Please don’t feed the bears.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Motown is Joe-Town!

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Cat Blogging / Late Night Open Thread: The Wrath of Cat

Reader Interactions

92Comments

  3. 3.

    TriassicSands

    I’m calling BS! If Steve is such a tough guy, where are all the scratches?

    Stinkeye, pinkeye! He looks like a damn cat.

  4. 4.

    Viva BrisVegas

    I think it’s obvious that Steve was expecting some Marshall Crenshaw that somebody forgot to provide.

  5. 5.

    danielx

    Forget tomorrow; if I were you I’d be looking for something tonight. You gotta have a Steve-sized box somewhere.

  10. 10.

    Mnemosyne

    Medicating our cat Annie’s pemphigus (autoimmune disease) with steroids is going so well that she’s now blithely strolling into Charlotte’s territory and eating her food. Charlotte is pretty sure she doesn’t like it, but she doesn’t want to deal with any ‘roid rage from Annie, even though Charlotte is at least twice her weight.

  11. 11.

    TriassicSands

    @danielx:

    You gotta have a Steve-sized box somewhere.

    If Steve is worth a damn as a cat, and I don’t doubt he is, any box from a fraction of his size to at least refrigerator size will do. See Maru, the Scottish fold master of boxes. If you’ve never seen a Maru video, you’re missing something. He even has his own Wikipedia entry!

  17. 17.

    jl

    OK, Cole claims to be a big pet lover, but no empty cardboard box for the cat.
    Does the poor thing even have an empty paper bag it can jump into?

    Edit: and curses on the commenter who mentioned the Youtube channel Vet Ranch. I am addicted now. Curse you, unknown BJ comementer. Look what you’ve done to me. I am a victim1

  19. 19.

    TriassicSands

    @Aleta:

    Some believe that Maru can close the space between his atoms, thus reducing his size and allowing him to fit in a matchbox.

    @Mnemosyne:
    As you probably know, one of the side effects of corticosteroids, which, thankfully for Charlotte, do not cause ‘roid rage, is weight gain. It’s important to keep that under control if you can.

    Did you ever try Pill Pockets?

  21. 21.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    Steve shakes his little paw and cries out: “Johnnnnnnnn! Johnnnnnnn!”

  22. 22.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    after I finished that box of cd’s and closed it

    “finished”?

    See it turns out I was doing CDs wrong all along. I never even knew you could eat them.

  23. 23.

    Mnemosyne

    @Aleta:

    We’ll see how it goes — she’s definitely punching above her weight right now, but it makes us happy. In retrospect, we can see that the pemphigus had been slowly coming on for a while before we realized it.

    Now we’re in the process of figuring out the minimum effective maintenance dose since long-term steroid use isn’t good for anyone, including kitties.

    @Major Major Major Major:

    It’s good for us and Annie. Possibly not great for the other two cats. ?

  24. 24.

    Mel

    Perhaps a frontpager would be willing to receive and post “cat-in-a- (box/bag/open dishwasher/ other inappropriate lounging spot)” photos?

    My Pixie B is a total danger cat, and also incredibly speedy and stealthy. We are on constant cat-proofing patrol. If we turn our backs for half a second, she’s sitting cheerfully inside the dryer, or racing for the just-opened dishwasher, or lounging inside an empty plastic paper towel package that’s on its way to the recycling bin. Nope. No suffocation hazard there…
    It’s like supervising a herd of hyperactive toddlers with sugar highs.

  27. 27.

    NJDave

    Oh come on! Whiskers forward == interest, not aggression. Probably thought that strange thing John was holding up to his face was weird, but interesting.

  28. 28.

    Mnemosyne

    @TriassicSands:

    We haven’t had to try Pill Pockets yet — we’ve managed to convince her that chasing her down and either dropping a pill down her throat or snuggling her is a game. It’s not a game she’s particularly fond of, but she’s humoring us.

    She lost close to 2 pounds while we were getting this figured out and she was barely 8 pounds to begin with, so she actually needs to gain weight right now. We’ll worry about overweight once we get her back to normal, but the preferred rate of weight gain is one of the things I want to discuss with the vet when we see her this week.

  34. 34.

    danielx

    In yet another example of that kitten levitation thing you hear so much about, Natasha somehow managed to reach the top of a stack of Harry Potter items without knocking it over. No, she was not picked up and posed there….

  36. 36.

    TriassicSands

    @Mnemosyne:

    I had a cat with pemphigus foliaceus. I took her to a veterinary dermatologist in Seattle and he/I treated her with gold salt injections (gold sodium thiomalate or aurothiomalate.) I gave her gold salt injections for almost thirteen years. Over time, we lengthened the time between injections until she finally got only one injection every four months ($35 per injection)). In 2016, the doctor ran out of his supply of the drug, but he had told me they no longer manufacture it. However, I just checked the Costco pharmacy site and they list gold sodium thiomalate. It was a much better treatment than corticosteroids and in all the time she took it, she never had a relapse or exhibited any negative side effects. I’m confused now and will call the vet to discover what the deal is. Is the currently available formulation not suitable for cats? Have they increased the price to absurd levels? Does anyone know anything about gold salt injections?

  38. 38.

    Mnemosyne

    @TriassicSands:

    Interesting! I’ll have to ask the vet what she knows about that treatment. Annie is already 10 years old, so I’m not sure how much shorter her life would be with steroids.

    She’s reacting to them very well — it’s been a pretty amazing transformation. Her paw pads and claw beds were affected, so I think it was painful for her to walk for quite a while.

  40. 40.

    Mel

    @Mnemosyne: Their criteria for “best lounging spot” is a constant bafflement!

    Pixie’s uncle figured out how to pull open the file cabinet drawers in order to nap atop thevwobbly hangung files. We’d try to foil his efforts by blocking the bottom drawer shut with a book, a boot – whatever might foil his breaking and entering plans. All to no avail – he’d just wait until we left for the day, drag or push the barricade out of the way, and do his thing. He’d then take a nap on top of the hanging files (complete with stabby little label tabs poking him in the abdomen – his idea of a cat Temurpedic, apparently).

    One day, he must have slipped off of the files and down into the back of the drawer while napping. We came home and he didn’t greet us at the door. We started looking everywhere, calling his name, getting more frantic by the minute. No kitty after forty minutes. Total panic.

    We started through the entire house again, calling his name and shaking catvtreat bags like a coupke of lunatics. When we went jnti the office, I thought I heard a little bumpung noise. We shhok the treat bag, then wsited. About five seconds later, we heard purring coming from the (closed) fule drawer. Rolled the drawer open, and there he was, sleepy-eyed and smug, lounging in the empty space at the back of the drawer, behind the files.

    Either he fell off while sleeping, and his body weight rolled the drawer shut, or the other cats decided to a dramatic performance of The Cask of Amontillado.

    We went straight to the hardware store and bought a bunch of toddler safety locks for all of our kitchen, bathroom and office drawers.

    Cashier: “Oh! You must have a very busy baby!! I bet he’s crawling and getting into everything!! How okd is he?”

    Hubby: “He’s 12.”

    Cashier: “Oh! I….well…” (silently hands us the change).

  41. 41.

    Mel

    Missed the edit window. Sorry for the typos! Yucky chemo meds = unsteady hand while typing.

  43. 43.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Mel: I had exactly the same thing happen in my first apartment, with my first cat, who was pretty much a kitten. Came home, searched, heard him mewling muffled somewhere, finally opened drawers in the chest of drawers and there he was in one, with the socks. In my case I decided he had figured out how to climb up the back where there was a little space, but couldn’t figure out how to reverse the process.

  46. 46.

    TriassicSands

    @Mnemosyne:

    I was just reading (again) about “gold salts” in Wikipedia, which discusses it in a human context. The most serious side effect — long term — seems to be kidney damage, which is no fun. The use of gold salts has been replaced by newer treatments, but those treatments, or the newest ones, are never going to be available for cats. The biologics, like Humira, the best selling drug in the world in 2016, costs about $2100.00 for a human injection — given every two weeks. That’s about $55,000.00 a year (that’s the normal dose for Crohn’s disease — it may be different for RA). Not many people are going to (be able to) put that kind of money into feline health care.

  48. 48.

    TriassicSands

    @Mnemosyne:

    I asked about Annie’s initial symptoms and then saw that you mentioned her paw pads. Nootka’s first symptoms were very fragile blisters on the backs of her ears and very swollen and infected dew claws. (The litter box is not a great place to take broken blisters.)

    Did you see other signs?

  49. 49.

    TriassicSands

    Random comment about the new drugs for some chronic diseases.

    They’re insanely expensive and can have some pretty horrible side effects.

  51. 51.

    TriassicSands

    @sm*t cl*de:
    Thanks, that first photo is classic Maru.

    Maru is a Scottish fold, a relatively new breed (around the early 70s, I think). Maru doesn’t have the signature small, folded ears, but he definitely has the big round face and eyes. They are a wonderful breed with some cute attributes. Angus, my mother’s fold, like the breed in general, lay stretched out on his back normally and sat in chairs like a person — back upright, legs straight out in front of him. He had an extremely calm and gentle disposition.

  52. 52.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @TriassicSands:

    Folds came about in the early 60s. That they are a wonderful breed is right on the mark. Our little guy, Morty, has never scratched, drew blood or bitten anyone. They are very gentle cats and sensitive to what is going on around them. The Buddha position is a thing with them as can be seen here with our Morty, who fell asleep in that position on our waterbed while grooming himself.

    That little guy has a lot going on with him; Siamese/Snowshoe/Scottish Fold and polydactyl (14 up front, 10 in rear) and as cute as it gets. Loves boxes too! ;)

  54. 54.

    TriassicSands

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:

    Oops! Proofread! I meant to type 60s.

    I looked at the photo right away — before readind your description — and immediately thought Siamese? That’s quite a combination. Do yu have a photo showing Morty’s face?

  55. 55.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Yeah I do except that Photobucket seems to be choking for a minute… give me a few… :)

    Got it! Here is a shot if him doing his flexikitty routine. I have another shot of him somewhere that he’s doing a 3/4 twist. He’s very liquid… :)

  56. 56.

    Ruckus

    @Mel:
    When I first brought home my rescue cocker I put everything behind closed doors. Trash can, etc. This old guy took about 15 min to figure out how to get to the trash and make a mess. So I had to child proof the place for an 11 yr old cocker spaniel. Doesn’t matter how old they are, they want something they are going to figure it out. Probably faster as they have more experience.

  59. 59.

    Ruckus

    @TriassicSands:

    Random comment about the new drugs for some chronic diseases.
    They’re insanely expensive and can have some pretty horrible side effects

    Even some old line drugs for chronic diseases which are rather cheap can have some pretty horrible side effects for some people. I was put on a med for a condition which has no cure but this makes the disease bearable. Had bad hallucinations, the brown acid kind, I was afraid to get up and walk 12 ft to the bathroom. Less than 2% of users have any side effects at all, for a drug that’s been prescribed for 68 yrs and which is the first line prescription for this disease. My treating neurologist, a doc in his mid 60s had never seen this before in a patient. He thought I was fucking with him.

  60. 60.

    Elizabelle

    @Omnes Omnibus: Got Marshall Crenshaw on Youtube as scan this thread. With 2nd mug of coffee brewing. It’s just after 10 am Barcelona. Seems cooler today.

  61. 61.

    Elizabelle

    @Ruckus: It’s your inner Salvador Dali emerging.

    Can you imagine 10 minutes of that man’s mindstream.

    We have to beat back this psychopathic healthcare bill, and get them to stop fucking with the ACA. Leave their plutocrat-soiled paws off it. You and what you’ve experienced help motivate me.

    We can do better. We must.

  62. 62.

    Mel

    @Ruckus: So true. Immune suppressant and immune modulating drugs, old school and new, can both cause some seriously funky side effects. As if the illness itself isn’t already a enough of a barrel of fun to deal with.

  63. 63.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @Elizabelle:

    It’s your inner Salvador Dali emerging.

    Apparently the outer Salvador Dali is emerging as well.

    They are digging him up for a paternity test.

  64. 64.

    Elizabelle

    @Viva BrisVegas: Saw that.

    Dali’s crypt is in his Museum/Theatre in Figueres. I didn’t know that; entered the lower level of the museum, with his gorgeous handcrafted chalices, and there was the crypt.

    Dali’s heirs (pretty much his Foundation, etc) have the right of appeal, so stay tuned there.

  68. 68.

    Mark

    Steve looks like he’s doing OK. I can see the comb marks in his hair. He just got brushed before this picture was snapped.

  72. 72.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @TriassicSands:

    Agreed, he’s an adorable little bugger. When we got him at six weeks old, he was cream colored with white hints at his nose and paws. Over a very short time Morty morphed into what he looks like now, a SIamese Snowshoe Scottish Fold. The best part is that being a fold has toned down the Siamese meow! He meows and chirps a lot but it’s very soft sounds, not piercing full-metal Siamese MEOW!!

    One final shot of him working free weights… :)

  73. 73.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @raven:

    Maintaining altitude, despite everything my body is trying to do. ;) I caught something a bit back about you getting treatment for a serious problem? How are you doing? Better I hope!

  75. 75.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @raven:

    That’s good to hear! What I had read was maybe involving some kind of light treatment? Either way, I hope you and yours stay well.

  77. 77.

    raven

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: Oh yea, Blue Light, it’s a skin cancer preventative therapy. They put an acid cream on your mug for an hour or so and then 16.5 minutes under Blue Light. It’s uncomfortable but no big deal.

  79. 79.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @raven:

    Cancer preventative? I would say that’s a big deal, but in a good way. :)

    Glad to hear it!

  80. 80.

    raven

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:

    Photodynamic therapy or PDT is a type of treatment that utilizes a laser to treat the skin in a variety of ways. Also known as blue light laser therapy, this treatment can be use to treat skin cancer, acne or even an uneven skin texture. It has many exterior applications, all of which can be performed as an outpatient procedure. However, none of this treatment’s uses are as important as for skin cancer or pre-cancerous growths.

  85. 85.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @raven:

    Interesting… well, as I said many times in my youth, “Light up!” In this case, it’s good for your health… :)

  87. 87.

    bemused

    A paper bag from grocery store will work in the meantime. One cat loves to look invisible in it, the other is meh.

  91. 91.

    VOR

    @bemused: We keep a folded grocery paper bag on the kitchen floor at all times. One beast likes to sit on it, must be something about the texture of the paper. And whenever we get a box, we leave it out for a day or so to see if it is acceptable to the real owners of the house.

  92. 92.

    Mnemosyne

    @TriassicSands:

    Sorry, had to go to sleep. Annie is a very fuzzy cat, so we mostly noticed behavior signs and our regular vet was puzzled enough to send us to two different specialists. She inadvertently confused the issue by giving Annie a couple of steroid shots, which temporarily cleared up the pemphigus, but not for long.

    Annie had small blisters on her ears, sore paw pads, and a few lesions on her head, plus the issue with her claw beds. After a month on steroids, it’s all cleared up and she’s herself again.

    ETA: She is a very fuzzy cat, which made diagnosing a skin disease a little tricky. Also, they had to rule out a tumor before anything else due to her age.

Comments are closed.