Cat Life tip #1 - You don't know what you got till you got it
Let's pretend for a second that you're not me. Let's also pretend that you're very naive and you allow a cat off the street to just walk into your house. Let's pretend you decide to keep this cat. For the purposes of this exercise, you're welcome to pretend that this is a good idea if you want, but it's not required.
Got it?
So now you make the decision to send your wife out into the disease infected world to take a stray cat to the emergency vet for no real reason other than you never met this cat. They're not you and they know better, so they basically laugh her out of the joint, so you tell her to get cat food. You feel like you HAVE to do this because you're not sure what else to do. Your initial plan was to feed the cat what the baby is eating. The cat points out that even though it's starving, it's not eating that boiled cauliflower either, so you need a new plan. Thankfully, your wife is smart enough to remember that "What goes in must come out" and picks up litter during her run. You dump the litter into a tin foil roast pan, dump as much food into a spare bowl with some water (in a separate bowl, duh) and lock the cat in a bathroom. Crisis averted, you stay up all night trying to figure out what to do with the cat.
Side note - if you like vets (or human doctors) it helps to be sick. You get more opportunities and nobody judges you! Ear infections are a sure bet. They require medicine AND follow up visits. Double the fun!
So you still haven't decided if you want the cat, but you should probably have it spayed. I mean, you should, right? Bob Barker was always going on about it, so it must be a good thing. You don't actually know what that means, but you're pretty sure the vet does and that's the part that counts. The cat seems to know something is up. A few days before the vet appointment, her belly starts to get really fat. She might be eating the dog's food, you can't be sure, but you know she's not eating the baby's food because no one is eating that. One day in your office, she leisurely strolls across your keyboard while you're typing, as she is wont to do. You pick her up and notice a hard lump on her belly. Upon investigation, there's not just one, but several hard lumps, right about where the nipples are. You're just glad it's not a tick, you'd never hear the end of that. Relieved, you carry on.
The big day arrives and you still don't know what's going to happen. You take a poll of the house. No one else knows what it means either. You momentarily feel better, until your wife informs you that "spaying" means to remove the ovaries. You feel bad again, but then you realize that you don't have ovaries and you feel fine. At this point, if you were a bad person, you would ask your wife to take the cat to the vet rather than do it yourself. Good thing you don't get a chance to find out because your wife volunteers.
Your day continues as normal. Chat here, meeting there. An occasional email. You're in the zone. Then you get some news. Your wife is back from the vet. Winnie is pregnant! She's going to have eight-ish kittens! You're confused. You didn't have the talk with Winnie, but you assumed that her mom had. Also, "ish"? You don't remember being at the doctor with your wife and her OB saying "one-ish" babies. That must be vet speak. They also say things like "de-worming" that don't make sense either. Some quick googling of "cat gestation period" completely destroys your google recommendations but provides the helpful information that it's somewhere between 58 and 67 days.
Relieved that you've got about nine weeks before you have worry about it, you turn back to your computer. It slowly dawns on you. She didn't get pregnant on the way to the vet. Well, you're not sure, but your wife swears it didn't happen on the way. You also know it didn't happen under your roof, you don't stand for that in your house. Which means she probably showed up pregnant, almost four weeks ago. Which also means that your nine weeks is at best five weeks and you're about to go from zero cats four weeks ago to nine cats, basically any day now for all you know.
Got it?
So now you make the decision to send your wife out into the disease infected world to take a stray cat to the emergency vet for no real reason other than you never met this cat. They're not you and they know better, so they basically laugh her out of the joint, so you tell her to get cat food. You feel like you HAVE to do this because you're not sure what else to do. Your initial plan was to feed the cat what the baby is eating. The cat points out that even though it's starving, it's not eating that boiled cauliflower either, so you need a new plan. Thankfully, your wife is smart enough to remember that "What goes in must come out" and picks up litter during her run. You dump the litter into a tin foil roast pan, dump as much food into a spare bowl with some water (in a separate bowl, duh) and lock the cat in a bathroom. Crisis averted, you stay up all night trying to figure out what to do with the cat.
Side note - if you like vets (or human doctors) it helps to be sick. You get more opportunities and nobody judges you! Ear infections are a sure bet. They require medicine AND follow up visits. Double the fun!
So you still haven't decided if you want the cat, but you should probably have it spayed. I mean, you should, right? Bob Barker was always going on about it, so it must be a good thing. You don't actually know what that means, but you're pretty sure the vet does and that's the part that counts. The cat seems to know something is up. A few days before the vet appointment, her belly starts to get really fat. She might be eating the dog's food, you can't be sure, but you know she's not eating the baby's food because no one is eating that. One day in your office, she leisurely strolls across your keyboard while you're typing, as she is wont to do. You pick her up and notice a hard lump on her belly. Upon investigation, there's not just one, but several hard lumps, right about where the nipples are. You're just glad it's not a tick, you'd never hear the end of that. Relieved, you carry on.
The big day arrives and you still don't know what's going to happen. You take a poll of the house. No one else knows what it means either. You momentarily feel better, until your wife informs you that "spaying" means to remove the ovaries. You feel bad again, but then you realize that you don't have ovaries and you feel fine. At this point, if you were a bad person, you would ask your wife to take the cat to the vet rather than do it yourself. Good thing you don't get a chance to find out because your wife volunteers.
Your day continues as normal. Chat here, meeting there. An occasional email. You're in the zone. Then you get some news. Your wife is back from the vet. Winnie is pregnant! She's going to have eight-ish kittens! You're confused. You didn't have the talk with Winnie, but you assumed that her mom had. Also, "ish"? You don't remember being at the doctor with your wife and her OB saying "one-ish" babies. That must be vet speak. They also say things like "de-worming" that don't make sense either. Some quick googling of "cat gestation period" completely destroys your google recommendations but provides the helpful information that it's somewhere between 58 and 67 days.
Relieved that you've got about nine weeks before you have worry about it, you turn back to your computer. It slowly dawns on you. She didn't get pregnant on the way to the vet. Well, you're not sure, but your wife swears it didn't happen on the way. You also know it didn't happen under your roof, you don't stand for that in your house. Which means she probably showed up pregnant, almost four weeks ago. Which also means that your nine weeks is at best five weeks and you're about to go from zero cats four weeks ago to nine cats, basically any day now for all you know.
The lesson you should learn from this? Ask anyone who comes in whether they're packing or not.
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