Pet stories: sometimes happy, sometimes sad

[hepcat]

Hive mind. They also will try to get access to your email for phishing scams if you're not careful.

[Drazzil]

Sadly my daughter's cat Felix passed away at about 17 years old. Fortunately it was over quickly. I let him in from outside one morning, he coughed strangely a couple times, went into my daughter's bedroom and was gone.

A couple weeks later we brought home a kitty for the grandkids, and they are ecstatic. Which brings me to a question:

How do all cats, even without exposure to other cats, seem to automatically know all the cat moves? Such as stretching, sharpening claws, running, jumping, cleaning themselves, rubbing against human legs, even wrapping their tail around their feet while standing still. Is this stuff all instinct?

Yep.

[Drazzil]

Hive mind. They also will try to get access to your email for phishing scams if you're not careful.

My cats are the phishing scam. They show up one day and boom, there goes free time, money and ability to focus on other things when in my apt.

[Daehawk]

Sorry about the cat Jay. Least he got a long life and passed quick and easy it seems. Best to you guys.

[Blackhawk]

Instinct. Go look at the sheer number of birds who engage in exactly the same two stretches (The one-legged wing back and the double shrug.)

[Blackhawk]

Dragging this over from Random Randomness. Here was the original post:

Yesterday Michelle walked outside and watched a hawk nail a pigeon across the street. The little guy got away and scrambled under a parked car. We went over and collected him and brought him home. The hawk's aim was off, thankfully, and it seems to have mostly grabbed tail feathers. The poor guy's tail is completely gone, but the feathers were just pulled out with no actual injury to the stump. The only other injury was a scratch under the left wing. It wasn't deep, and wasn't located near any organs. It just seems to have been tissue damage.

I have enough experience with birds that I got the bleeding stopped, and we've gotten the little pidge through the worst of it - the stress and shock phase is behind him. Today he's up and active, his eyes bright, his head up and alert. He's walking around, stretching, and eating. That's all great news. We're keeping him warm, quiet, and away from our other pigeon in case he's carrying any feral diseases.

Right now we're concerned with infection, though. We'll be keeping the injury clean with diluted betadine, but we're concerned about what might have gotten into his bloodstream. We're in contact with the nearest avian vet, which is far enough away that going isn't an option, but we're hoping we can get some advice on an antibiotic option. Time will tell.

It is unlikely that this pigeon is going to be able to be returned to the wild, mostly due to the timing and loss of his tail. He won't survive without a tail. The tail will grow back, but that would set any release in the middle of winter after a rehab indoors. That doesn't work due to temperature adaptation. And by the time the weather warms up again, he'll be acclimated to humans. Pigeons who have adapted to humans don't do well on release (they're a domestic species, after all - there are no wild (rock dove) pigeons, just ferals.

So we may have stumbled on a new pet with a possible 15-20 year lifespan. We're not there yet, though - survival is still far from a guarantee. Enough so that we're still using a placeholder name (Pidgename) for the time being.

Day four, and he's doing fine. He's active, eating, preening, and drinking. That suggests survival. And that means he'll be a new member of our flock, and a friend for Payton.

For now, though, we're going to be starting him on a round of antibiotics (just as soon as they arrive), followed by a round pribiotics, then anti-parasitics and a treatment for feather lice. He'll be in pigeon quarantine during that entire time, while I brush up on the wildlife rehab skills I haven't used in almost 25 years.

The big problem for now is that we're going to have to buy another cage, and those are expensive. We don't have floor space, so we'll have to go with a double vertical cage, and that's about $300, hitting right before Christmas and two birthdays. That stings.

Anyway, here's [Pidgename], still sans tail (we're waiting a few more days before giving him a permanent name.)

[Daehawk]

Pretty bird. I hate that most people think of them as the flying type of rat. Might find a cage on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist.

[Blackhawk]

Pretty bird. I hate that most people think of them as the flying type of rat. Might find a cage on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist.

They're among the smartest of birds (corvids still win, and with parrots it depends on the species), and they're entirely an artificial species. Humanity has spent 10,000 years breeding them, and any population you see in the US aren't wild animals - they're the descendants of domestic birds that survived and became feral. They're bred to be around humans. They're very social creatures.

And yes, you can find cages for sale like that, but not one to fit our needs. Pigeons need horizontal cages, not vertical, and a lot of parrot cages (the only ones big enough) have bars spaced too far apart. On top of that, we need to have two cages (or, rather, one cage dividable into two temporarily), but they need to take up the floor space of one. There is an ideal cage out there, and there isn't a whole lot else that we can make work.

[Daehawk]

That is expensive. My late rat's cage is 3 lvls like that but not as big.

[hitbyambulance]

i think keeping that guy was always going to be the way to go, since they're a (long established, but still) invasive species. local wildlife agencies would be thankful to you for taking one more rock dove out of the wild, lol

what's his personality like?

[Blackhawk]

i think keeping that guy was always going to be the way to go, since they're a (long established, but still) invasive species. local wildlife agencies would be thankful to you for taking one more rock dove out of the wild, lol

what's his personality like?

Keeping him wasn't really a question once we saw his tail was gone. It was more of us not committing to that idea until we knew he'd survive. He isn't completely out of the woods yet, but his chances are much, much better than they were that first night.

As far as personality goes, he is young. Possibly hatched within the year - he still has a lot of blood feathers, and he's small. He isn't showing the signs of being overly afraid (he isn't pulling his head in, for instance), but he's still in the "I got attacked and injured, hid, was kidnapped by giants, and every day they grab me and poke at me" phase. Once he starts to trust us we'll start to see his personality. But I've had a number of pigeons in my life, and they're intelligent enough to have wildly different personalities, so it'll be interesting to get to know him.

[Blackhawk]

So, [pidgename] is still with us. Except that it isn't [pidgename] anymore. He's passed the 'high risk' period, so we defined the variable of [pidgename] with 'Pippin.' Given that he's small, prone to misfortune, and yet brave enough to make it through all of it, it seemed like a good choice.

Having spent more time with him, we're convinced that he isn't just young, he's barely past fledgeling. Fully feathered, but not quite fully grown, probably hatched sometime in the late summer.

His wound is healing well. We've started him on a course of antibiotics and delousing will start soon a delousing spray, and after that it will be probiotics, a broad anti-parasitic, and then probably more probiotics. Once he's been through quarantine and treatment to ensure he isn't carrying anything nasty from The Wild, we'll introduce him to Payton. It'll be cage next to cage for a while. Once they're used to each other, they'll be allowed out of the cages at the same time (to meet in neutral territory.) Once they're friends, he'll be moving in to her cage.

Speaking of which, we got the new cage in and assembled yesterday. That thing's a monster. Part of the problem is that pigeons are horizontal birds, not vertical. Prior to domestication they were cliff dwellers. Unlike most birds their feet are flat when relaxed, not curved. So where most birds need tall cages for vertical flight with a few perches, pigeons need horizontal cages with platforms for walking on. And yet they still need some vertical space to stretch their wings, and because they enjoy standing up high. So most bird cages are either too small (pigeons are the size of a small parrot), while larger birdcages are not wide enough to allow them to move around. One really popular pigeon cage - and the one we went with - is the [https://www.midwesthomes4pets.com/produ ... ouble-unit]Critter Nation[/URL] double cage, which is designed for small mammals - ferrets, chinchillas, etc. They're also hugely popular with the pet rat crowd.

So last night we moved Payton in. She's angry about it, of course (she's a very intense pigeon.) The old cage was moved to our room, and Pippin was moved from the cat carrier he's been in all week to that one. He can finally stretch his wings, although you can tell he feels a lot more exposed in the open cage than in the mostly dark hidey-hole that is a cat carrier.

And yeah, all of this medicine, caging, and extra supplies cost a lot - more than we could afford to spend. A big chunk of the Christmas budget went into this (with everybody's approval.) Still, it was that or let him die.

What really helped this morning, though, was that some of the OO folks here decided to donate to the Pippin fund in the form of an Amazon gift card. It'll replace part of the Christmas funds we pulled out to pay for the little guy. Thank you, all!

[Blackhawk]

So, Pippin (the new pigeon) got moved into the living room about a week and a half ago, his cage right next to Payton's so that they basically have a shared wall to get used to each others' presence. Yesterday was the first day they were out together, and it was... dramatic. Pecking orders need to be established. They normally hang out on top of the cage during their free time. Pippin - about 1/3 Payton's size - has a Napoleon complex and kept trying to show dominance. Every time he did that, Payton would grab him by the back of the neck, drag him over to the edge of the cage, and toss him off. He kept coming back - he picked seven fights with her, and he got his feathery butt tossed off of the cage seven times. After that Payton had had enough and started going after him if he got near the top of the cage, resulting in him retreating about half of the time.

Pecking orders need to be established, but Payton doesn't get to claim the entire space for herself. And then she started going for him on the floor. See, the top of the cage they can be territorial about, but the floor? That's my territory. On the floor, I'm the alpha, and they don't get to fight over who controls it. I do. Pigeons tend to self-regulate their violence. They fight until there is a winner, then stop. But if one is retreating and the other isn't backing off, that can become a problem. So, every time he was the aggressor we let her toss him off the cage, but if she was the aggressor when he was minding his own business, or when they weren't on the cage and they fought, I had to step in. This once resulted in giving Payton a 'time out' back in her cage for 15 minutes, which she did not enjoy.

This will go on for a few more days. Eventually, Pip will recognize that Payton is in charge and stop antagonizing her, and Payton will accept Pippin as an underling and let him share communal space. Until then, I get to play Pigeon Referee.

They won't be able to share a cage unless they decide to pair up, and that could take a while (or more.) Until then, we have two cages in the living room, totaling about five feet wide, five feet high, and three feet deep.

[Daehawk]

I saw this in Kevin Smith's post where his dog had passed away. thought it fit here.

[Kraken]

Relax, this is a happy pet story.

When Warren had his annual checkup last week I mentioned to the vet (who is new there) that he's an FIP survivor. She said "I noticed that! We're always so happy to see FIP survivors. Did you find the group on Facebook, or...?"

I explained that Warren is their original FIP Warrior. I taught Sue, the vet who owns the practice, about the Chinese miracle drug while we were treating Warren. She'd never heard of a cat surviving FIP before Warren did, and she followed his progress in real time. I urged her to do her own research and spread the word, since they can't provide the treatment themselves.

We chatted some more about the miraculous nature of the drug and their frustration at not having access to it. I sensed a little skepticism about Warren being the granddaddy of them all so I suggested that she tell Sue that Warren stopped in to say hi and he's still doing great.

She felt a mass in his abdomen. We had an expensive ultrasound for an unknown mass before he started his FIP treatment and it was never resolved what that was. She finally decided it was just some matter in his poop chute. He'd had some kibble just before we left and I knew he needed to use the litter box.

This was my first indication that Sue had taken Warren's lesson to heart and passed it on to others. Knowing that Warren and I have indirectly saved other cats' lives made me happy.

[Alefroth]

[Holman]

I don't have a sad pet story (thank God), but I'm posting here since it seems like the closest thing to a pet health thread.

Our dog Gus is 4.5 years old. Two weeks ago he got all his shots updated, and the vet pronounced him a very healthy dog.

Just yesterday, though, I noticed some hazy/cloudiness in his right eye. It's translucent (not opaque) and covers about a quarter of the visible eye with an irregular smear just below the surface. It's kind pale blue-ish or grey. Since I look at him closely every day, I think it must be very recent.

He seems too young for a cataract, and it doesn't seem to cause him any irritation. (He's not visibly agitated about it.) Could it be just an infection? If it's a physical wound, I can't imagine where he got it. I hope it's not glaucoma.

The earliest vet appointment I could get is Monday. If these symptoms sound more urgent than that, please let me know what you think.

[Kraken]

If the animal isn't in obvious distress my standard operating procedure is to watch the issue's progression overnight. If it gets worse, go for an emergency visit. If it stays the same, stick to your scheduled visit. If it resolves on its own, cancel the appointment.

Warren and Bowie both recently developed a bout of severe sneezing, and one of Warren's eyes started watering. It wasn't red and didn't seem to bother him, but it was weeping. They weren't having breathing trouble, appetites were fine, behavior normal, so it wasn't an emergency. The next day Bowie was over it and Warren was somewhat improved, so I didn't call the vet. It kept getting better and he was fine after 3-4 days. My working hypothesis was allergy to cleaning products. We had our house deep-cleaned (desperately needed, since I've basically stopped cleaning and Wife never did any) and the cleaners saturated the place with ammonia and soaps. The cats got better as the smell slowly faded.

Could Gus' eye have an environmental cause like that? Since it's only one eye, I'd suspect an injury.

[Holman]

Update:

I took Gus to the vet, and they dilated the eye and shone a couple of special lights in and couldn't really determine the issue.

Fortunately it doesn't look like glaucoma, and they couldn't find any scratch or ulcer. It's possible that something very tiny got stuck in the eye and caused the irritation. It might even be an allergy.

They gave me some medical drops to put in every day and suggested that I contact a specialist eye vet (gave me a name) if it gets worse. So far it looks the same or maybe even a little better than the weekend. All along, Gus hasn't seem to notice the issue, so I don't think it hurts him.

[Holman]

Update:

I took Gus to the vet, and they dilated the eye and shone a couple of special lights in and couldn't really determine the issue.

Fortunately it doesn't look like glaucoma, and they couldn't find any scratch or ulcer. It's possible that something very tiny got stuck in the eye and caused the irritation. It might even be an allergy.

They gave me some medical drops to put in every day and suggested that I contact a specialist eye vet (gave me a name) if it gets worse. So far it looks the same or maybe even a little better than the weekend. All along, Gus hasn't seem to notice the issue, so I don't think it hurts him.

Update update:

We finally got Gus to a dog ophthalmologist, and after taking tear samples and other tests, it appears that he has a condition called Pannus.

Pannus (or chronic superficial keratitis) is a genetic condition that causes the growth of an mostly opaque, thin layer across the cornea. It is not painful, but if untreated it will eventually cause blindness.

There's no cure, but daily application of a topical medication (i.e. eyedrops) can put the condition into remission and keep it there. In other words, we're doing prescription eyedrops twice a day every day for the rest of my dog's life.

Gus *hates* eyedrops. As Chief Eyedrop Officer, I'm going to find this challenging as well.

Still, I'm really glad that it's not glaucoma.

[Kraken]

What does Gus like? Because he gets one after his eye drops now, every time, and only after his eye drops.

[Daehawk]

I know it wasn't Gus's problem but as dogs age they always get cloudy eyes. I noticed my little chihuahuas eyes in pics now reflect more and looking in them you can see it now. I hate they live so fast.

[Holman]

What does Gus like? Because he gets one after his eye drops now, every time, and only after his eye drops.

That's good advice, and the doc suggested it too.

[Holman]

I know it wasn't Gus's problem but as dogs age they always get cloudy eyes. I noticed my little chihuahuas eyes in pics now reflect more and looking in them you can see it now. I hate they live so fast.

Lots of older dogs get eye conditions, but Gus is just four and a half.

[Zenn7]

Our old cat had an eye problem, I forget now, some bump or something in his right eye that was causing issues with sight and got infected was pain.

They gave us a couple drops, had to give him one, then wait 5 minutes and give him the other - one was 3 times/day, one was twice/day.

Cats w/ all their claws DO NOT like eye drops. Fortunately we only had to do one of them for about a month. The other we had to do every day for the 1-2 years he lived from there (he was old, 14.5 years old when he died).

[Isgrimnur]

[Kraken]

That cat has no will to resist. Fighting with a motivated cat would've been more informative.

We really need to trim Bowie's front claws. Bowie really disagrees, and he has sharp claws. The burrito technique demonstrated breaks down at step one, when we try to restrain one foreleg while leaving the target paw free. If we persist, the back legs go into action.

You'd think 400 lbs of humans should be able to subdue a 12 lb cat easily. You'd be wrong.

BTW it's now been two years since we stopped treating Warren for FIP and started observation (if you're just joining us, that was the "maybe happy" story in the thread title). January will mark two years since he was pronounced cured. He's perfectly healthy.

[Isgrimnur]

[stimpy]

That cat has no will to resist. Fighting with a motivated cat would've been more informative.

No doubt. That kitty is catnipped out of it's mind.

[hitbyambulance]

"To all the comments: this cat is Murray, he has had no sedation, I promise. He is a very good boy and extremely shy, his main line of defense is to flatten his body to the table and not move a muscle hoping nobody will see him. I am the girl making the video, Murray is a cat I rescued from a feral cat rescue in Salem, OR. He lived there from 8wks-10mo, nobody adopted him in all that time beacuase he was always glued to the back of his kennel scared sick- this was misinterpreted as unpredictability and aggression. He is the most gentle cat I have ever met and doesn't have a mean bone in his body. I used him for this video so I could go really slow and go demonstrate l the steps clearly. Also, these videos are prearranged so that the film crew and person in the video are in the hospital at the same time. The chances of having an actual patient needing the same thing at the same time that also has photo consent from the owner is very unlikely for these types of demonstrations; hence why most of our videos have compliant animals, they are our own animals most of the time. Thank you all for watching and please know that I have used this technique countless times and it keeps everyone safe, most of all the patient!"

[Kraken]

Reminds me of the Vancouver Vet (who in turn reminds me of Pete Butigieg) and his cat, Mr. Pirate. I've watched a LOT of this guy's videos.

[Blackhawk]

So, the pigeons.

Payton (whom we adopted from a rescue in Chicago) has been here about two and a half years. Pippin (whom we rescued ourselves) only a little over a year. Every day we let them out inside the house around 12:30 to stretch their wings, explore, and generally experience life. They go back in at around 6:30 when we put their food in. We had hoped they'd hook up and save us some space by sharing a cage, but they have decided that they're rivals. They ignore each other, or they war with each other over territory. Payton has her cage, the TV (it has defenses), and the floor under Pippin's cage. Pippin claims his cage, the perch, the shelf, and the space under my desk. Other areas are contested.

Come dinner time, if Pippin goes in first, Payton will go into the seed tray under his cage (his territory) and taunt him by poking at the floor mats he's standing on. This, of course, makes him angry, and he responds by trying to pull the mats up to get to her and chase her out of his area. Periodically he will stop for a few seconds to circle around and declare that he is, indeed, a pigeon, and that he claims the cage as his.

Sorry for the TV noise, and for the grainy zoom. This was a spur of the moment recording.



I hear this for hours every day.

[Jeff V]

Our shiatzu is putting the shit into the zu lately. She's approximately 300 in dog years. The other day, my wife suggested it might be time to put her to sleep. Our 6 year old replied, "that's a good idea, you can put her to sleep when you go to work, then wake her up when you get home!"

She still is not aware that the kittens aren't happily frolicking at "the farm."

[Daehawk]

They are pretty. I love to hear their little coo's. He seems to be saying "Ill remove this mat and poo all over you."

[YellowKing]

Since the thread was bumped I guess I'll give an update on Mia, the Australian Shepherd we were given.

I freaking LOVE THIS DOG. That is all.

[Kraken]

And I'll state for the record that even though I'm a full-on cat person, I like dogs, too. Big dogs, anyway. Little drop-kick yap-yaps invariably hate me for some reason, but I get along just fine with real dogs.

[AWS260]

This is Harper Lee, sitting on my chest a few days ago. I had to put her there, because she's lost most of her mobility over the past couple of weeks. She's been dealing with kidney failure since 2021, and it's finally caught up with her (along with other ailments). I think we'll have to have her put to sleep this weekend. She's really great, in the way that cats are; i.e., she does not give a shit about you except for those precious moments when she does.

[Alefroth]

Damn, that is so hard to do. So sorry AWS.

[Kraken]

Harper looks like she had a long life. How old is she?

[Daehawk]

Im sorry AWS. She is so cute. Made me tear up. Losing babies like this is harder than most people to me. I wish it could be different.