Hey, you know what was a GREAT idea?
Deciding to move a month before I have to turn in a new book!
Ha, ha, no stress here!
So, until I get through this...
And this...
And this...
I will leave you with this....
(my Trib column that I completely forgot to post earlier this month)
and this....
(deets on how to win lunch with my best friend Stacey and me)
and this...
"Fuck you, Labradoodle."
If you'll excuse me, I'm off to find an IV drip full of Xanax...
For years we wondered exactly what kind of dogs we have. Because they're from a shelter, they didn't come with any breed information other than what was guessed by volunteers. I mean, sure, we could tell a lot about Maisy and Loki's heritage from their looks and their proclivities, but we didn't really have any concrete proof of their ancestry.
We always wanted to do a doggie DNA test but wondered how to go about this - would we find a testing facility on the internet? Bring them to our vet? Go on the Maury Povich show?
We planned to do the test years ago but we were broke and even spending a dime on something so silly was out of the question. The good news is that the prices have come down since we initially looked and now kits are available in many pet stores. All the owner needs to do is take two samples from the back of the dog's mouth and send them in to the lab for analysis in a handy pre-paid envelope.
Naturally, this chore proved easier on Loki than Maisy. While Loki stood there and panted obediently as we swabbed his gums, Maisy reacted as though we were trying to stuff a live snake in her maw.
I'd expect nothing less from her.
Maisy's results came in first. I always knew she was mostly pit bull, probably American Pit Bull Terrier specifically, but I figured she had to have something else mixed in, maybe some English Bulldog or possibly even a touch of Beagle or Jack Russel. She's a little on the small side and she's got a wicked underbite, so didn't quite conform to some of the APBT breed's standards.
Turns out Maisy is 100% American bulldog, which is a type of pit bull that's directly descended from the English bulldog. This neatly explains why Maisy's stockier (read: fatter) than the garden variety APBT or American Staffordshire Terrier and why she has all those kissable face wrinkles. It also accounts for why she's so strong, so sweet, and so damn stubborn.
Loki's results took a bit longer because there was some confusion on my email address. While we waited in anticipation, we couldn't help but speculate on his parentage. Would the tests show exactly how much wolf we believed he had in him? Or could his lupine tendencies be better explained by traces of Husky or Akita? Naturally he'd have tons of Shepherd in him because he's a dead ringer for their body type. I mean, just google images of "black German Shepherd" and every single one of them looks exactly like Loki.
Finally I received the email telling us our results were ready.
"Fletch, Fletch! Get in here! We got his results!" I shouted down the hallway. Fletch dashed into my office and hovered over my shoulder. "Okay, I've got to put in our last name here and plug in his sample number here... and... here we go!"
The test form displays what breeds are associated with the dog from minor (meaning 12.5%) to significant (meaning more than 50%.) The more a dog has of a specific breed, the larger and lower-down the label is displayed on the heritage grid. As the test found nothing but American Bulldog in Maisy's ancestry, her parentage was displayed as a big button on the bottom of the screen.
The first thing we noticed once our grid was populated was that Loki didn't have any significant heritage, which was kind of a shock as we figured him for at least 50% Shepherd.
Actually, the bigger shock was that the test found no traces of Shepherd whatsoever.
We weren't prepared for what it did find.
"No. NO. That can't be right," Fletch exclaimed, glowering at the screen.
"Okay, now you really do sound like one of those guys on Maury Povich's show. DNA doesn't lie, honey," I replied. "That's why it's such a popular daytime television topic."
"But it's impossible," he gasped, staring at the screen. "Seriously, it is NOT POSSIBLE."
"Fletch, he's still the same dog regardless of what this test says. This changes nothing. He's still funny and sweet and will bark his head off protecting us from every squirrel in the neighborhood."
Fletch was steadfast. "I want another test."
"Oh, please. Paying for one test is fine. Paying for a second test is ridiculous," I countered.
He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "Fine," he conceded. "Maybe I could see a little Labrador in him, even though he hates the water and refuses to retrieve anything."
True enough. Just try to toss something to Loki and see what happens. Loki will simply stand there and be all, "Hey, look at you, throwing that thing in which I have no interest." For a while we wondered if he had bad depth perception and started tossing toys right to his face. Tennis balls would bounce off his snout and then he'd get upset because he thought we were mad at him. (We don't try to play fetch any more.)
"What I refuse to accept," Fletch continued, "is that he's a quarter POODLE. Poodle! This dog is not a poodle!"
"Look on the bright side. Maybe he's not a Lab and a Poodle. Maybe he's a Labradoodle like the people next door own. Perhaps that means we should buy him some sweatshirts with his name embroidered on them, too." Then I collapsed into a fit of giggles.
Fletch eventually stalked off, spending the rest of the night researching how DNA tests can be inconclusive.
The thing is, at least 50% of Loki's parentage is unknown. The test people say that some of this could be attributed to his last three generations being mixed breeds and some might be because the test doesn't cover every breed, particularly if that breed happens to be a wolf. And there was some confusion about my email address, so it's entirely possible that some poor purebred owner is demanding a refund based on Loki's results. But if that's the case, I don't want to know because the notion of him being a Labradoodle is too hilarious.
Seriously, I've been laughing about our "new" Labradoodle for weeks. Actually, I love that Loki had a completely unexpected DNA test. I swear to you that this dog has a sense of humor and were he capable of pulling a prank, this is exactly the kind of thing he'd do.
A couple of nights ago I was looking at Cute Overload and they had video of dogs howling. I pressed PLAY and cranked the volume on my speakers to see what Loki would do. Then I started to google different dog howls to see how Loki might react to each of them. Off and on, Loki would bay and bark. Fletch heard all the noise in my office and up to investigate.
"Look up 'wolf howl' and see what he does," Fletch demanded.
So I googled 'Labradoodle howl' and played it.
Loki completely lost his shit.
"See? See how he reacted to the wolves?" Fletch said.
"Yeah," I agreed. "Except those were Labradoodles."
"Don't be cute. Try it again and do a wolf this time," he demanded.
So I googled 'Labradoodle' again.
Same reaction.
Fletch got (adorably) righteously indignant. "I'm serious! Pull up 'wolf cub howling.'"
So I pulled up 'Labradoodle puppies howling' and Loki went crazy. I couldn't suppress my laughter and that's when Fletch stepped behind my computer and did his own google-searching.
He played 'wolf howling' and... nothing.
He tried again. No reaction.
He tried a third time, evoking nothing but a few staccato bursts of farts from Maisy. (American Bulldogs are a particularly farty breed.)
Fletch said Loki was probably just too tired to react, so I played the Labradoodles again and Loki - with his impeccable comedic timing - completely mimicked the video dog's cry, causing Fletch to skulk off, grumbling about shopping for embroidered sweatshirts.
Then Loki stretched and yawned on the bed across from where I sat at the computer.
And I swear that bastard winked at me.
"I am not a frigging Labradoodle. But I would take a sweatshirt."
I've talked about almost nothing but books lately, likely because books are what I turn to when I'm stressed. My recipe for dialing anxiety down from eleven is an engrossing story read in or by a body of water. (A pool's preferred, but bathtub works in a pinch.)
Fortunately, most of my stress stems from stuff that will eventually manifest into something that makes me happy, e.g. the new memoir about volunteering. We're also close to being done house hunting as we've narrowed our choices down to two. Now we must determine if we want the place that needs work outside or needs work inside. One's a lovely Colonial with a gorgeous pool and rose garden out back but acres of old Scalamandre wallpaper inside.
Seriously, acres. Literally.
One room features paper that appears to be monkeys perpetrating hate crimes against Chinese men. Another displays tropical birds of every color, save for those in our furniture and rugs. And don't get me started about the baby-blue bow and pinstripes combination room, complete with a shag carpeting in desperate need of a haircut.
After we pay a crew millions of dollars to remove every inch of this stuff, we'd have to do some remodeling in the kitchen, e.g. reface the cabinets, replace the countertops, update the appliances, and remove the gun cabinet. I've yet to figure out why there's a glass-faced gun display cabinet in the kitchen. You think that'd be a selling point for Fletch, but even he has his limits.
The other house is much more updated inside (as in no green marble or gold fixtures) but the backyard's an unbroken strip of flat grass. Although it's big enough that you can see the curve of the earth, we'd have to put in a pool or something just to make sure no spontaneous polo matches break out back there.
Anyway, these are good problems to have and I recognize that. We're looking at both houses again next week and should make our decision shortly thereafter.
But until then, even I'm getting tired of hearing about what books are on my nightstand, so today I'll address one of the most asked questions when on tour.
"How are the Thundercats?"
They are, in a word, ridiculous.
I was going to say they're evil incarnate, but they're not malicious and plotting like some cats. Actually, they're particularly sweet and loving and spend every evening curled up on our chests while we watch TV. (It's freaking adorable.) They don't bite, scratch, hiss, mess with the dogs, and they respect the authority of our two elder statesmen cats.
Rather, the root of the problem with them is their large size - the concept of which they completely fail to recognize - and their ineffable stupidity. They are three young bulls running amok in the china shop that is my house.
Now, I've had cats for almost eighteen years, so I understand that this comes with a modicum of knocking-shit-down. Yet none of the six cats that came before them had ever mastered the vertical leap like these idiots, particularly Chuck Norris. A vase being bumped off an end table is one thing. But a vase being bashed off the top of an eight-foot bookshelf with enough power to make it sail across the room before exploding into a veritable Kristallnacht is another.
Gus, perhaps dissatisfied by his personal hang time after a jump, has taken to climbing the walls. He makes a running leap at the corner, then digs in with his claws and tries to see how high he can get. As gravity is a factor in these pursuits, as is his considerable bulk, he must sink his claws deeper into the drywall which now appears to have been attacked multiple times by a small werewolf. Goodbye, security deposit!
Odin is a special kind of dumb due to being partially blind and a touch cross-eyed. He tends to be the most nervous and when he gets scared, he somehow sinks his head back into his body, much like a furry tortoise. Because of his compromised eyesight, I believe that everything from a distance looks both frightening and imposing to him... and thus must be destroyed. Apparently our dining room rug "is scary monster" and has summarily been shredded. He's also dug a hole in one of our leather couches so he can hide from the can opener, vacuum, doorbell, air, etc. And yet as dumb as he is, it is patently impossible to keep a collar on him for more than four minutes. No matter what kind we buy or how snug we fit it, he can wriggle out.
Of course, the penultimate instance of stupidity came a couple of months ago. Our elderly cat Bones was in the end stage of kidney disease and would occasionally take a leak in inappropriate places, like on the dogs' bed. Apparently this left quite the impression on young Gus whose little pea brain must have taken in this information and translated as, "Oh, dis what we do naows?"
One morning I was asleep and Gus hopped up to join me. I petted him in a quick hello and then flipped over to my side. He's generally a good little snuggler so I thought nothing of it. But then Gus climbed across me and headed down to my midsection, whereupon he promptly took a leak.
On me.
Specifically, he whizzed on my bottom, thus giving me the exact sensation I vaguely remember from wetting my own pants a good thirty-five years ago.
Not only is this one of the least pleasant sensations in the entire world, but apparently he peed quickly enough and with sufficient force to get into - how shall I say this delicately? - my nooks and crannies.
After I finished screaming, I leaped out of bed and promptly took a Silkwood shower. I was particularly concerned with what contaminants may have lurked in his pee as I didn't want to get an infection. Having just been to the doctor for both pink eye and what I thought might be worms, I figured if I presented with a complication from having been peed on, I would have gotten assigned to a case manager.
We lost Bones not longer after that. We were pretty sad about it, but as soon as he was gone, Gus's stealth-whizzing stopped. Which is good.
However, I'm not sure I want to discourage him from clawing the walls.
Those skills may be useful in removing hideous wallpaper.
"Gussie - is whats for dinners."
Or possibly not.
Setting: My family room, last week. We are watching television and two feral kittens are curled up on my chest and shoulders, and one on Fletch's lap.
Me: Hey, I was doing some research online about kitten development and I found out the Thundercats aren't always going to be so sweet. I guess in the next few months they're going to hit "adolescence" and we can expect them to be bratty and distance themselves from us.
Fletch: Where'd you find this information, CrazyCatLady.com?
Me: No! I think I found it on maybe Purina.com. And I'm not a crazy cat lady, so shut it. Anyway, you know what would be funny? If I got all the guys costumes and took pictures of them for Halloween.
Fletch: Yeah, you're not really helping your case here.
* * *
First up, Chuck. Behold the bigness of this five month old kitten!
"Not only shall you die for this, but it is I who'll do the killin'."
Here's Gus in his trick or treat finery.
"While you take this photo, my minion will spit on your ice cubes."
And here's Odin, who's too mellow to put up a fight.
"Yeah, this is WAY better than living on the street."
Oh, look Charlie Brown! There really IS a great pumpkin!
"Even my outfit is laughing at me."
Anyway, have a safe and happy Halloween!
(And P.S. You're not a crazy cat lady if your husband HELPS you take the photos.)
"And let Maisy know if you has any extra candy."
I've got two weeks left to finish this book, so until that's done, I won't be putting up any new posts as I shall be busy both writing and crying about deadlines to anyone within earshot. (You can probably expect some increasingly panicked Twitters, though.)
Regardless, the internet exists almost exclusively to display pictures of kittens anyway. As I'm not without resources, I've got you covered.
Although, given the fact that Chuck Norris is already almost seven pounds at four months old, he's less of an alley kitten and more of an alley cougar.
Behold the bigness that is Chuck Norris!
Am thinking "Clint Eastwood" may have been an appropriate name, too. The LOLCat caption on this one would have to be "GET OFF MAH LAWN."
Odin and Angus, or "Dis my uther bruther Daryl."
"Shut up about your stupid deadline already! God!"
P.S. See you in a few weeks!
Technically I was ready to put up a new post a couple of days ago except it's been so long since I logged on to my site that I forgot my Typepad password.
Which is not an excuse so much as it is an explanation.
So... where've I been for the past month?
Judging from the (increasingly aggressive) tone of some email I've received, this is a hot topic. I'm flattered that many of you seem to have missed me. You're very sweet and I thank you for sticking around. (And for those who found fit to lecture me about my "responsibilities" as a blogger/author, well, let's just say it took all my willpower not to invite you to go fuck yourself with a very sharp stick.)
Usually around this time of year I get super-busy working on the next manuscript. Posting becomes more sparse because I try really hard not to "cross-pollinate." I don't want to fill my blog with what's going in the next book. As the fifth one is all about current experiences rather than old memories, there's not much happening outside of what I've been doing for it. So, as much as I'd like to tell you all about accidentally setting the curtains on fire at the Four Seasons in New York, unintentionally buying what may or may not have been black tar heroin in Chinatown, and the whole ear-candling debacle, I'm obligated to save those stories for print.
My hope is that it will have been worth it.
Normally I can deal with working on deadline and posting with semi-regularity but this year's been different. When I got back from tour, I noticed my ancient calico cat Maggie was looking more frail than usual so I brought her to the vet. (We use Cat Hospital of Chicago and LOVE them.)
Back when I had graduated from college, my cat Savannah got sick and we only had enough money to get baseline treatment at a different facility. We ended up losing her when she was only seven and it was awful and I vowed that I'd never let finances dictate my pet's health again, regardless of what we might have to sacrifice. Even when we were both broke and unemployed/without healthcare coverage, we made sure we had pet insurance. (When you don't have kids, pets' lives take on extra significance. Not to say that they don't for parents, too, but at least for us, our guys are an enormous part of who we are.)
So, when I brought Mags in, I told them price wasn't an issue and to do whatever they had to do to fix her. We were back and forth to the vet's office all the time and I learned how get outside of my comfort zone and administer injections. Unfortunately, she had intestinal lymphoma on top of panceratitis and all we could do was to make her final days as comfortable as possible.
Maggie was always a master manipulator and she took me at my pledge to spoil her as much as I could. So, despite her waning appetite and failing systems, she managed to inhale $45 worth of fresh shrimp from Whole Foods' seafood bar before she left this realm.
Fletch and I were devastated the day we had to put her down, even though she was almost seventeen and, by all counts, had lived a long and happy life. We knew losing her would impact us, but we didn't grasp what an effect it would have on the other pets. I never realized it before but Maggie was their leader and they looked to her for how to behave - when to eat, where to sleep, when to play, etc. Without her, our pets drifted around the house, confused and a little lost. And that was heartbreaking.
Fletch and I went away for the Fourth, and the whole time we were gone, we talked about the pet situation and what to do next. We have three other cats and they're all elderly. If we're lucky, we'll get a few more years out of each of them. I hated thinking about how soon we might go from four cats to none.
A few weeks before we lost Maggie, I went on a Little India adventure with my friend Gina. (Note for the new book - Indian food? Two thumbs up. Indian threading? OH, HELL NO.) Gina mentioned that she was feeding a litter of kittens in her backyard and trying to place them with a shelter, but apparently it's "kitten season" and no one could take them. As Gina's already been suckered into bringing in two stray cats who hate each other so much that they have to live in separate areas of her home, she couldn't keep them herself. (Another new book story - the day Gina and I thought her cat and my menagerie would enjoy a play date.) (FYI, there's a damn good reason "kitty parks" aren't a doggie park counterpart.)
As we watched the fireworks in Las Vegas and talked, Fletch came to the conclusion that we had enough room in our home/hearts for a new kitten.
Of course, I came to the conclusion that we had enough room in our home/hearts for THREE new kittens.
Seriously, how could I break up a set? How could I take just one? What would determine who got to live in luxury and who might die horribly on the mean streets of Chicago? They were litter-mates and they'd be so helpless and weak and scared and, really, it's not like dogs where as each one is exponentially more work.
Three is no big deal.
Three is fine.
Three would effectively replace all the cats we've lost over the past ten years. Three is the new black.
We made a plan to round up our newest family members on Monday as we weren't getting back from Vegas until Sunday.
Before I even brought my suitcase up the stairs upon arrival home, I was hit with a voicemail telling my my pit bull Maisy had cancerous tumors.
Let's just say I did not take this news well.
For years Maisy's been covered with these gross lumps. The vet always told us they were essentially big doggie zits and they weren't a problem and yeah, we could have them removed but it would be traumatic for Maisy and to not worry about them. Finally, something dawned on me this year and I insisted they not only aspirate one of the lumps, but also get a formal lab report.
Malignant.
(BTW, thank you VCA Lake Shore Animal Hospital, for charging me $800/year for doggie wellness visits in which your care did nothing to promote their wellness. Added kudos for refusing to forward our records to another vet for a second opinion until you spoke to us to try and persuade us to let you keep the business and do the surgery. I sincerely hope this is the exact quality of care you receive if you're to get sick.)
We couldn't get Maisy in to see the new vet on Thursday and I figured the best thing for me would be some distraction, so we headed down to Gina's on Monday night. Gina told us all about how cute the little guys were and said they were really, really sweet.
Which they were.
Until cornered.
Gina had been able to lure them into her gingerbread house with a can of Trader Joe's tuna. Complications only arose when Fletch tried to move them from Gina's trap to our carrier.
Suddenly these tiny grey beings who Gina had called "The Cherubs" because they were so stinking cute turned into a tiny tank full of sharks.
Covered in lasers.
They bit Fletch hard - and repeatedly - as he moved them from one carrier to another. Neither Gina nor I were of any help because we were laughing so much. When Gina offered Fletch some rubbing alcohol for his puncture wounds, he dryly remarked, "Yes. That will certainly stop the rabies."
Gina had never been allowed a real look at the little guys and when we finally did see them up close, we noticed they were in rough shape. Sneezy, rheumy, wheezy, itchy, and one of them had what appeared to be a giant pink balloon attached to his butt.
That couldn't be good.
We got them home and sequestered them in our treadmill room (it's nice to know it's useful for something) and I brought them to our cat vet first thing in the morning. Turns out the poor little guys wouldn't have made it for more than another day or two. They had eye infections, upper respiratory infections, dehydration, ear mites, fleas, worms, and one of them had a prolapsed rectum, which essentially means the little guy had such bad diarrhea that he blew out his o-ring. As they were so sick, I didn't want to name them in case we lost one, so I just called them collectively The Thundercats.
Fortunately for Fletch, they didn't have rabies, nor did they have any of the fatal cat diseases so we went ahead with treatment, thus incurring the first pet surgery to repair Thundercat One's bunghole.
There was an issue with Thundercat Two's eye and the vet kept a close watch on it. She did her best to treat it but it was too far gone due to infection so on Wednesday we were referred to a feline opthamology clinic.
Nope, I didn't know such a thing existed, either.
I found out that Thundercat Two needed an operation to sew his third eyelid over the eye if there was any chance he'd be able to keep it. I confirmed that even with one eye Thundercat Two would have an excellent quality of life, so I authorized the surgery and named him Odin. (Come on, it's the perfect name. And if we ever have a three-legged dog we're going to call him Tripod.)
In the mean time, Thundercat Three had made an almost complete recovery, but he was still an asshole. The vet's nurse said she'd hold him up in the window of his incubator so everyone could get a glimpse of his "mean face." She said she kept intending to bring in her camera so she could take a LOLcat photo with an "I has an evil" caption.
Naturally, we named him Chuck Norris.
On Thursday we took Maisy to her new vet and got a thorough workup. We found out that not only had VCA misdiagnosed her, but they also missed two more mast cell tumors at which point I asked Fletch to hide all stabby/shoot-y/explode-y elements in our house for fear I'd go Columbine on them.
Our new doggie vet explained how serious this condition could be and referred us to "the Mayo Clinic for pets" in the suburbs where Maisy would be operated on by a board-certified surgeon and her follow-up treatment would be taken care of by a canine oncologist.
Yes, canine oncologist.
Apparently they exist, too.
Maisy had surgery on Monday and she came though like a champ. (For those of you keeping track at home, that's three pet surgeries in one week.) Her blood, urine, xrays, and ultrasounds look clear, so at this point there's not a lot of evidence that the tumors metastasized, but we won't have a real conclusion until the pathology reports are back next week. She'll start seeing an oncologist but hopefully more for preventative treatment than anything else. And if her prognosis isn't as positive as we hope, we're off to the vet school in Madison where they do miraculous stuff with animals.
In the meantime, the Thundercats (with Three now named Angus) came home this weekend.
You might think they'd show a little bit of appreciation for the people who wrote four-figured checks on their behalf.
You would be wrong.
At one point, Fletch asked me if people couldn't get sweet, socialized, non-feral kittens for $25 at PAWS.
"Um, yeah," I replied, "but only if they don't like a challenge."
However, we're slowly winning them over, one can of kitten food at a time. Now their hissing and cowering is cursory at best.
As of this moment, Odin's surgery didn't take and he's still going to need to have an eye removed, but we've got to hold off while his orbital bone grows with the rest of his face. This has in no way stopped him from being the quintessential leaping, cavorting, frolicking kitty. He just does it all in an e-collar.
Maisy is in fabulous spirits, too, although I have to try and keep her from leaping, cavorting, and frolicking until her stitches come out. She acts like everything was simply like that season on Dallas where it was all Bobby's bad dream.
As for me, yesterday was the first day in a couple of weeks that I didn't have to spend hauling pets to specialty clinics or having panic attacks.
That was nice.
Which means now I have to start concentrating on the fifth book, a task made less easy when being stared at by eight seven and a half sets of eyes.
Odin - "Tryin' to catch the deluge in a plastic paper cup."
Angus - "Bungholier than thou."
Chuck Norris - "One pounds of fury."
FrankenMaisy - "We has teh technolgees. We cans rebuild her."
"Heaven's awesome, but please send more shrimp."
P.S. Does anyone know what Hawaii's like at Christmas? Because we're not going to find out this year.
After I posted my tour info today, I thought, "Hey, a bath might be nice." So I ran a tub, grabbed my book, and settled in for a soak.
Not even one full page in, Loki joined me in the bathroom, which is sort of disconcerting what with all the staring and the n-a-k-e-d.
I ignored him and read my book.
He stared a bit more.
I kept reading.
Staring.
Reading.
Awkward.
Staring.
Reading.
Awkward.
Staring.
Reading.
Awkward.
Staring.
Reading.
Climbing in.
Apparently I've been keeping the house so cold that Loki decided taking to the water was the only way to fend off hypothermia.
Then he sat on my lap.
It was creepy.
I got out and took a shower.
He stayed.
And here he is twenty minutes later.
OK, dogs. You win. The heat goes back up to 68 degrees.
P.S. I brought home a pineapple yesterday and all the cats have been fighting over who gets to sit next to it. Is it any wonder I'm excited to get out of here for a month?
