When our cat was 11 or 12 he was dying of kidney failure. My dad, who is a vet, checked him over and said as he didn't seem to be in too much suffering it was probably best to let him go naturally rather than uproot him, take him down to the surgery and put him down.
So my mother puts the cat in the airing cupboard. The airing cupboard was his favourite place because it was always warm and full of soft clean clothes. She thinks it'll be a nice place for him to die.
A couple of hours later my sister is sitting down doing homework when she suddenly screams. My mother dashes in and finds the cat, comatose, in my sister's lap and she's screaming. What had happened was that my sister was sitting beneath the airing cupboard, and when the cat had slipped into a coma and his muscles had relaxed he'd fallen off the shelf, through the cupboard door and straight into my sister's lap, scaring her to death.
Anyway so the sight of my sister just sitting there screaming her head off is apparently really funny and my mother bursts out laughing and can't stop. She rescues the cat from my sister's lap and he dies in my mother's arms and then she rings me up with dead cat in her arms, still laughing, to tell me the news.
The bad thing is that my mother's laughter is kinda infectious and so I started laughing too.
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited April 2008
I will probably turn violent when my dog dies.
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RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
edited April 2008
My cat was most likely stolen last August.
10 year old cat just up and gone, only his broken collar left sitting alone in the front yard.
It's okay though. It's helped me refocus my life.
I'm going to build a time machine and murder the bastards who took him. And I'll get my cat back too!
VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
edited April 2008
Okay I am going to write this post as eloquently as I can because it's about something I earnestly cannot understand but WANT to understand, even though I am sure it may possibly offend some people in this thread. Please know that I am not being judgmental or anything like that, but I am genuinely curious... I cannot personally fathom the kind of attachment some people have to their pets, as I have never experienced it.
I have noticed, solely through observation, that people who care deeply for their pets (i.e., the people who consider their pets human to a degree, loving them as truly and as much as is expected of them to love the people in their lives, such as family and friends... the people, in other words, who would mourn the loss of a pet as severely as anyone else would mourn the passing of a family member) tend to have a more distant connection to their parents than people who don't care as strongly for their pets.
I'm not implying that loving your parents means you don't love your pets, or vice versa. What I'm asking is that, if you care about a pet that much, is there also a tendency for a noticeable, wider distance between you and your parents (as in, more than what you would consider the "normal" gap between parent and child), particularly when you were growing up?
RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
edited April 2008
I don't know what you would consider the "normal" gap between parent and child. In a "broken" home, your pet is much more likely to be a constant and faithful companion than one or both of your parents, if simply for the fact that one of them doesn't live there anymore.
maybe you had too close of a relationship with your parents
^correct statement
yourclothes on
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Okay I am going to write this post as eloquently as I can because it's about something I earnestly cannot understand but WANT to understand, even though I am sure it may possibly offend some people in this thread. Please know that I am not being judgmental or anything like that, but I am genuinely curious... I cannot personally fathom the kind of attachment some people have to their pets, as I have never experienced it.
I have noticed, solely through observation, that people who care deeply for their pets (i.e., the people who consider their pets human to a degree, loving them as truly and as much as is expected of them to love the people in their lives, such as family and friends... the people, in other words, who would mourn the loss of a pet as severely as anyone else would mourn the passing of a family member) tend to have a more distant connection to their parents than people who don't care as strongly for their pets.
I'm not implying that loving your parents means you don't love your pets, or vice versa. What I'm asking is that, if you care about a pet that much, is there also a tendency for a noticeable, wider distance between you and your parents (as in, more than what you would consider the "normal" gap between parent and child), particularly when you were growing up?
When I was in highschool, for the first two years, I was without a friend. The only people I talked to after school were people that I knew on AIM, and either always lived in another city or moved away. I was sick all the time, I was left alone in the house. My parents both worked, but they couldn't be home all the time. The only thing that kept me sane was my dog. He was my constant companion during the day. He was my only friend. I don't mean that in a sappy way to ham up the story. I had friends who lived in other cities. My dog was the only friend I had at home.
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VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
maybe you had too close of a relationship with your parents
Yes and no. It's no secret that I grew up moving around a whole bunch, going from place to place, not know anyone each time... except for my family. Every time we moved, we only had each other, so we would grow close and rely on each other as we each expanded our individual social circles in the new place.
That said, we also had an awful lot of baggage between us, mostly because my sister and I grew up living a lifestyle that my parents knew nothing about (both of them grew up in one city their whole lives). There was a communication gap that I think was wider than usual simply because my sister and I were growing up in environs completely alien to what my parents experienced, both culturally and personally.
But then again... after I graduated from college, there was a summer of yelling and screaming and fighting about our problems, but we all agreed that we would work on our communication and try to be more empathic of each other. Now, I am very, very close to my parents and sister, closer than I can ever remember being. The fact that we were able to "reconcile" somewhat is probably a sign that the closeness was always there (or the desire for it, at least), so maybe I'm just exaggerating our emotional distance.
To bring it back to pets... a reason we never had one was because of all the moving... by the time a pet would pass quarantine, it would be time to move, so it was never particularly ideal to try to give a pet a home and then move it or give it away after such short periods of time.
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited April 2008
Oh, and I don't have a distant relationship with my parents.
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My cat died when my parents had had it for 24 years, was fully grown when they found it, timid around people, presumably ran away from its previous owner due to mistreatment but was by no means a stray.
It died when I was like 14 or 15. Man that kinda sucked considering it had always been around and at my house. Although when it died it was put down, it stopped pooping kept eating, withered chest and then its feet started to swell up. For like the last 7 years of its life it used to wake up in the morning out of its cardboard box + towel pile, go out of the laundry, eat breakfast, go upstairs get let outside onto the deck, and sleep in the sun, if it was raining it would still want to go up and it went under the deck, or went and sat in my room. Then it would come downstairs at night eat dinner, sit on someone's lap then go to bed.
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited April 2008
Now I feel really sad because I imagined what it would be like without my dog.
I'm holding back tears, cause I love my puppy.
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VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited April 2008
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
Years ago we had this fiesty (but great) little manx cat we called Liz. She was solid black except a diamond of white on her neck, ergo, Elizabeth Taylor. Liz was a small cat, made of solid muscle, a brilliant hunter. Goddamn that cat could pluck birds out of the sky.
Liz got knocked up, and ended up having a litter of 4 kittens. Two of the kittens came out a little deformed. One of them had a nerve disorder, couldn't poop, we had to put him down. We took him to the vet for that. The other deformed kitten had deformed back legs. He had a funny walk, but he was the sweetest kitten in the world. He could run just like a normal cat, but when he walked he had that funny gait. We called him Spaz. The way I figured it was if he could survive for a few years, with our love and care, all would be well. It would have been okay.
Spaz used to follow my mom around the house, used to love getting picked up, never wandered far from home.
Then one day we found him on the side of the road, killed by a car. He was just under a year old. He'd wandered, and had gotten himself killed. We'd never fixed him, I mean, he was deformed, he never wandered, he was always around.
His story is the most tragic but honestly we lost so many pets to the road at that house it was ridiculous. We lost 3 dogs to that fucking highway. One of them was a puppy we'd taken in, with an infected eye, sorely underfed. We gave him a second chance and then his life came to a screeching halt. Innumerable cats. I literally have lost count of how many cats. We used to get cats wandering in, we'd take care of them, feed them, they'd become great pets, and then BAM the road would claim them. Usually just after we gave them their shots or got them fixed, the sign of "permanence" when it comes to adopting strays.
Sometimes I wonder if it was all worth it - to take in those strays that nobody else would. We gave them food, shelter... life... and then the proximity of our house to that highway inevitably took that life away.
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RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
edited April 2008
"Two dogs fighting? Two dogs fighting?! My brother would've killed to be named Two Dogs Fighting!"
The Black HunterThe key is a minimum of compromise, and a simple,unimpeachable reason to existRegistered Userregular
edited April 2008
One time I was home alone, I was about 11 at the time. As my mum is a wildlife carer, we had two baby kangaroos, joey's, if you will, snug in their basket up in the spare room.
I was sitting in the living room watching TV. I saw something to my left, and it was a baby roo coming towards me. I get up to put him back. "Rodney, what're you doin out?"
Then I notice he is walking funny.
Then I notice he isn't walking, he is crawling, and trying to lift himself up, his hips just had no strength, so he just fell sideways. Then I noticed blood coming from his various parts, then I freak.
I start bawling my eyes out, yelling for my mum, knowing she won't be home for hours.
I picked him up and grabbed a bunch of tissues, telling him it'll be okay, bawling my eyes out and sobbing, and start cleaning the blood off. It was part yellow, with the consistency of blood, and actual blood, little bits of flesh, like rice, were coming out aswell. I clean him up as best I can, and put him back in his basket.
My mum comes home about an hour later, to me crying in the fetal position on the floor, crying as hard as I can, saying "He's dead, rodney's dead" over and over. She went in and got him out, he was still alive, at this I sat up, still crying. I knew he was going to be put down. My mum took him to the vet's and did just that.
I got a fair amount of kudoes from the vet and the assisstants, but I really didn't give a shit, it was our first joey.
Granted I became far more detached from any other animals in our care after that
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Big Red Tiebeautiful clydesdale style feettoo hot to trotRegistered Userregular
Okay I am going to write this post as eloquently as I can because it's about something I earnestly cannot understand but WANT to understand, even though I am sure it may possibly offend some people in this thread. Please know that I am not being judgmental or anything like that, but I am genuinely curious... I cannot personally fathom the kind of attachment some people have to their pets, as I have never experienced it.
I have noticed, solely through observation, that people who care deeply for their pets (i.e., the people who consider their pets human to a degree, loving them as truly and as much as is expected of them to love the people in their lives, such as family and friends... the people, in other words, who would mourn the loss of a pet as severely as anyone else would mourn the passing of a family member) tend to have a more distant connection to their parents than people who don't care as strongly for their pets.
I'm not implying that loving your parents means you don't love your pets, or vice versa. What I'm asking is that, if you care about a pet that much, is there also a tendency for a noticeable, wider distance between you and your parents (as in, more than what you would consider the "normal" gap between parent and child), particularly when you were growing up?
I don't think so.
I have a few friends that have similar relations to me with my parents where I wouldn't say we are not close, but we could be closer (I would probably describe myself not terribly close to my family but I am incredibly loyal to my family) and the influx of animals really doesn't make any difference.
Pets hit people hard though because they aren't human and as such it is a very different relationship, you don't talk to a cat or dog, you just hang out with them and have good times. A cried like a pathetic girly man when both my cats died yet I didn't shed a single tear when any of my grand-parents died, that was because I saw my cats every single day, I had met my grand-parents maybe four times and I can only remember two of them.
Obligatory kitty photo.
This was Mog she was 21 when she died (I think she was maybe 19 in this photo)
One of my three or so cats escaped the house one day, I guess she didn't like being an indoor cat when her brother got to go outside all the time. But she ran off and disappeared, couldn't find the apartment I guess. She was pregnant too...
Then almost exactly one month later we had gave up hope and when to some local animal shelter to pick a new female cat. We did and then had to wait for her to get her shots and get neutered and everything. The very next day we got a call that someone had found our first cat, exhausted of starvation and having lost her litter, laying in their yard. They identified her by her collar and took her to the animal shelter. That day we got to go to the shelter and bring back both our old cat and our new, it was awesome.
And now she is just the best cat ever. She's fattened up now and has had a successful litter of kittens. When she gets in the room she'll just jump onto your lap and purr and rub around, happiest thing ever. Don't let her outside though.
When we moved we let our male cat out to explore the new place, and he never came back. To this day I still have no idea what happened to him. Once, several months afterwards we thought we saw him go underneath a house, but after a big fuss to catch him it turned out it was just another cat that looked very similar. He was a hunter though, always bringing in dead birds and shrews, I'm sure he could survive a while on his own.
We don't let any of our cats loose outside anymore, we'd still let them go out in our backyard tied to a long leash (we don't have a fense). One day though Precious (the one we got from the shelter as a replacement) climbed on top of our neighbor's fense and somehow got the leash snagged. And then it walked along a lengthly portion of the fense and got the leash snagged again. When it jumped off, there was only enough leash to get down halfway and it died by hanging itself in midair. We didn't notice until several hours later; there were scratch marks all over the fense.
We don't let them go out on that leash anymore either.
Okay I am going to write this post as eloquently as I can because it's about something I earnestly cannot understand but WANT to understand, even though I am sure it may possibly offend some people in this thread. Please know that I am not being judgmental or anything like that, but I am genuinely curious... I cannot personally fathom the kind of attachment some people have to their pets, as I have never experienced it.
I have noticed, solely through observation, that people who care deeply for their pets (i.e., the people who consider their pets human to a degree, loving them as truly and as much as is expected of them to love the people in their lives, such as family and friends... the people, in other words, who would mourn the loss of a pet as severely as anyone else would mourn the passing of a family member) tend to have a more distant connection to their parents than people who don't care as strongly for their pets.
I'm not implying that loving your parents means you don't love your pets, or vice versa. What I'm asking is that, if you care about a pet that much, is there also a tendency for a noticeable, wider distance between you and your parents (as in, more than what you would consider the "normal" gap between parent and child), particularly when you were growing up?
Actually, my parents and I are on very good terms. I'm the family guy out of the entire clan, I'm close to the several lines of the Lovelace clan, I'm moving down to our Seattle area where all but my parents have settled and my dad and I get along great. That dog was just an incredibly good friend to me and my family. I think in Alaska, dogs tend to be a lot better friends then normal because we constantly do outdoors stuff. It's really different when you are hunting or hiking alone and you have the dog right there beside you the entire journey. That's the hardest part, knowing this summer I won't have my buddy quietly moving through the forest with me, catching voles and bringing them to the campfire.
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So my mother puts the cat in the airing cupboard. The airing cupboard was his favourite place because it was always warm and full of soft clean clothes. She thinks it'll be a nice place for him to die.
A couple of hours later my sister is sitting down doing homework when she suddenly screams. My mother dashes in and finds the cat, comatose, in my sister's lap and she's screaming. What had happened was that my sister was sitting beneath the airing cupboard, and when the cat had slipped into a coma and his muscles had relaxed he'd fallen off the shelf, through the cupboard door and straight into my sister's lap, scaring her to death.
Anyway so the sight of my sister just sitting there screaming her head off is apparently really funny and my mother bursts out laughing and can't stop. She rescues the cat from my sister's lap and he dies in my mother's arms and then she rings me up with dead cat in her arms, still laughing, to tell me the news.
The bad thing is that my mother's laughter is kinda infectious and so I started laughing too.
10 year old cat just up and gone, only his broken collar left sitting alone in the front yard.
It's okay though. It's helped me refocus my life.
I'm going to build a time machine and murder the bastards who took him. And I'll get my cat back too!
I have noticed, solely through observation, that people who care deeply for their pets (i.e., the people who consider their pets human to a degree, loving them as truly and as much as is expected of them to love the people in their lives, such as family and friends... the people, in other words, who would mourn the loss of a pet as severely as anyone else would mourn the passing of a family member) tend to have a more distant connection to their parents than people who don't care as strongly for their pets.
I'm not implying that loving your parents means you don't love your pets, or vice versa. What I'm asking is that, if you care about a pet that much, is there also a tendency for a noticeable, wider distance between you and your parents (as in, more than what you would consider the "normal" gap between parent and child), particularly when you were growing up?
So, uh, maybe?
^correct statement
When I was in highschool, for the first two years, I was without a friend. The only people I talked to after school were people that I knew on AIM, and either always lived in another city or moved away. I was sick all the time, I was left alone in the house. My parents both worked, but they couldn't be home all the time. The only thing that kept me sane was my dog. He was my constant companion during the day. He was my only friend. I don't mean that in a sappy way to ham up the story. I had friends who lived in other cities. My dog was the only friend I had at home.
Yes and no. It's no secret that I grew up moving around a whole bunch, going from place to place, not know anyone each time... except for my family. Every time we moved, we only had each other, so we would grow close and rely on each other as we each expanded our individual social circles in the new place.
That said, we also had an awful lot of baggage between us, mostly because my sister and I grew up living a lifestyle that my parents knew nothing about (both of them grew up in one city their whole lives). There was a communication gap that I think was wider than usual simply because my sister and I were growing up in environs completely alien to what my parents experienced, both culturally and personally.
But then again... after I graduated from college, there was a summer of yelling and screaming and fighting about our problems, but we all agreed that we would work on our communication and try to be more empathic of each other. Now, I am very, very close to my parents and sister, closer than I can ever remember being. The fact that we were able to "reconcile" somewhat is probably a sign that the closeness was always there (or the desire for it, at least), so maybe I'm just exaggerating our emotional distance.
To bring it back to pets... a reason we never had one was because of all the moving... by the time a pet would pass quarantine, it would be time to move, so it was never particularly ideal to try to give a pet a home and then move it or give it away after such short periods of time.
Though I am very affectionate with my g/f.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/registry/wishlist/1A4GKH199FBMU/ - My wishlist
i'm like this all thie time: :...:
It died when I was like 14 or 15. Man that kinda sucked considering it had always been around and at my house. Although when it died it was put down, it stopped pooping kept eating, withered chest and then its feet started to swell up. For like the last 7 years of its life it used to wake up in the morning out of its cardboard box + towel pile, go out of the laundry, eat breakfast, go upstairs get let outside onto the deck, and sleep in the sun, if it was raining it would still want to go up and it went under the deck, or went and sat in my room. Then it would come downstairs at night eat dinner, sit on someone's lap then go to bed.
I'm holding back tears, cause I love my puppy.
Liz got knocked up, and ended up having a litter of 4 kittens. Two of the kittens came out a little deformed. One of them had a nerve disorder, couldn't poop, we had to put him down. We took him to the vet for that. The other deformed kitten had deformed back legs. He had a funny walk, but he was the sweetest kitten in the world. He could run just like a normal cat, but when he walked he had that funny gait. We called him Spaz. The way I figured it was if he could survive for a few years, with our love and care, all would be well. It would have been okay.
Spaz used to follow my mom around the house, used to love getting picked up, never wandered far from home.
Then one day we found him on the side of the road, killed by a car. He was just under a year old. He'd wandered, and had gotten himself killed. We'd never fixed him, I mean, he was deformed, he never wandered, he was always around.
His story is the most tragic but honestly we lost so many pets to the road at that house it was ridiculous. We lost 3 dogs to that fucking highway. One of them was a puppy we'd taken in, with an infected eye, sorely underfed. We gave him a second chance and then his life came to a screeching halt. Innumerable cats. I literally have lost count of how many cats. We used to get cats wandering in, we'd take care of them, feed them, they'd become great pets, and then BAM the road would claim them. Usually just after we gave them their shots or got them fixed, the sign of "permanence" when it comes to adopting strays.
Sometimes I wonder if it was all worth it - to take in those strays that nobody else would. We gave them food, shelter... life... and then the proximity of our house to that highway inevitably took that life away.
-One Man Bucket (paraphrased)
died of a tumor of some sort
really affected my dad, he loved that cat
I was sitting in the living room watching TV. I saw something to my left, and it was a baby roo coming towards me. I get up to put him back. "Rodney, what're you doin out?"
Then I notice he is walking funny.
Then I notice he isn't walking, he is crawling, and trying to lift himself up, his hips just had no strength, so he just fell sideways. Then I noticed blood coming from his various parts, then I freak.
I start bawling my eyes out, yelling for my mum, knowing she won't be home for hours.
I picked him up and grabbed a bunch of tissues, telling him it'll be okay, bawling my eyes out and sobbing, and start cleaning the blood off. It was part yellow, with the consistency of blood, and actual blood, little bits of flesh, like rice, were coming out aswell. I clean him up as best I can, and put him back in his basket.
My mum comes home about an hour later, to me crying in the fetal position on the floor, crying as hard as I can, saying "He's dead, rodney's dead" over and over. She went in and got him out, he was still alive, at this I sat up, still crying. I knew he was going to be put down. My mum took him to the vet's and did just that.
I got a fair amount of kudoes from the vet and the assisstants, but I really didn't give a shit, it was our first joey.
Granted I became far more detached from any other animals in our care after that
I don't think so.
I have a few friends that have similar relations to me with my parents where I wouldn't say we are not close, but we could be closer (I would probably describe myself not terribly close to my family but I am incredibly loyal to my family) and the influx of animals really doesn't make any difference.
Pets hit people hard though because they aren't human and as such it is a very different relationship, you don't talk to a cat or dog, you just hang out with them and have good times. A cried like a pathetic girly man when both my cats died yet I didn't shed a single tear when any of my grand-parents died, that was because I saw my cats every single day, I had met my grand-parents maybe four times and I can only remember two of them.
Obligatory kitty photo.
This was Mog she was 21 when she died (I think she was maybe 19 in this photo)
Satans..... hints.....
I talk to animals plenty. But then I talk to myself as well.
DO THE ANIMALS TALK BACK?
Satans..... hints.....
My dog does
it just isn't that understandable
Then almost exactly one month later we had gave up hope and when to some local animal shelter to pick a new female cat. We did and then had to wait for her to get her shots and get neutered and everything. The very next day we got a call that someone had found our first cat, exhausted of starvation and having lost her litter, laying in their yard. They identified her by her collar and took her to the animal shelter. That day we got to go to the shelter and bring back both our old cat and our new, it was awesome.
And now she is just the best cat ever. She's fattened up now and has had a successful litter of kittens. When she gets in the room she'll just jump onto your lap and purr and rub around, happiest thing ever. Don't let her outside though.
When we moved we let our male cat out to explore the new place, and he never came back. To this day I still have no idea what happened to him. Once, several months afterwards we thought we saw him go underneath a house, but after a big fuss to catch him it turned out it was just another cat that looked very similar. He was a hunter though, always bringing in dead birds and shrews, I'm sure he could survive a while on his own.
We don't let any of our cats loose outside anymore, we'd still let them go out in our backyard tied to a long leash (we don't have a fense). One day though Precious (the one we got from the shelter as a replacement) climbed on top of our neighbor's fense and somehow got the leash snagged. And then it walked along a lengthly portion of the fense and got the leash snagged again. When it jumped off, there was only enough leash to get down halfway and it died by hanging itself in midair. We didn't notice until several hours later; there were scratch marks all over the fense.
We don't let them go out on that leash anymore either.
Actually, my parents and I are on very good terms. I'm the family guy out of the entire clan, I'm close to the several lines of the Lovelace clan, I'm moving down to our Seattle area where all but my parents have settled and my dad and I get along great. That dog was just an incredibly good friend to me and my family. I think in Alaska, dogs tend to be a lot better friends then normal because we constantly do outdoors stuff. It's really different when you are hunting or hiking alone and you have the dog right there beside you the entire journey. That's the hardest part, knowing this summer I won't have my buddy quietly moving through the forest with me, catching voles and bringing them to the campfire.
now next time I feel like shitting on the floor and yelling at a wall, I gotta worry about people trying to kill me for my own good
thanks a lot, stale
What am I supposed to do with my weekend now?
He didn't.
Then they said he could never walk again.
He did.
It took months to recover and more to learn to walk again but he made it. Then we moved and he ran away and we never saw him again. He's dead now.