Pets!

[Esperath]

Rilemona

[beatbandito]

One of my rats has a tumor.

She's about two years old and the lump is about as big as her head, on her stomach. I feel pretty terrible that it was able to get to that size without me noticing, but worse that I'm not sure what to do about it. I've read some people had vets do the surgery for under a hundred bucks but I don't know any around here that will even let you talk to the receptionist for that little.

She seems to be doing okay and not in any pain, but I'm not about to let this go longer than it needs too when she's young enough for the operation to not be a risk to her health.

[nosimpleway]

Rats are amazingly hardy and adaptable as a species so it's kind of amazing that any individual rat is basically a tiny pile of asthma and tumors by adulthood. But yeah, rat surgeries are kind of expensive, since they're a lot of tiny fiddly parts inside. Maybe cutting out a tumor is easier?

[Esperath]

Rats rarely live past a year in the wild.

[nosimpleway]

Yeah, but two to three years is normal in a cage in the living room. I guess that's why their health collapses so quickly as they get old.

[Esperath]

Yeah, I'm just saying that it's not surprising that old-age diseases show up in captive rodents. They almost never live that long in the wild, and that's past breeding age anyway, so there's no selection pressure against those diseases.

[Thad]

Today I was partway through making a chicken sandwich when some of my family showed up to help with some yardwork. I went outside to talk with them, and when I got back my plate was empty.

The dog has learned to eat things off the island in the middle of my kitchen, where I prepare my food. I should have remembered this, as a few weeks back she ate an entire package's worth of just-cooked turkey bacon.

Anyway, after that I instead fixed turkey burgers for lunch. And then my wife and I had to run some errands. I did not believe that I had left anything edible on the island. It turns out I was mistaken.

There was a nearly-empty package of crackers that still had four or five crackers in it. There was also a plastic grease trap under the George Foreman grill where I had prepared the turkey burgers.

Both the wrapper and the grease trap were on the kitchen floor when we got home.

I'm a little surprised the dog has not exhibited any symptoms of tummyache.

[Mongrel]

Speaking of bad mealtime behaviour, Jake and Elwood normally get along alright, but Elwood has really developed a nasty habit of trying to tear the absolute crap out of Jake right before mealtime.

We know they were rescued as young kittens from a hoarder house and can't self-monitor their eating the way many cats can (they will gorge themselves until sick and then eat more, given the opportunity), so the fact that they still have severe issues over food security is pretty obvious. But even that doesn't fully explain the mealtime viciousness. Once the food is actually down, they're pretty good about eating their own portions and not trying to steal from each other (though this took some mild enforcement for a while), but the last half-hour leading up to mealtimes gets pretty risky some days.

[Mongrel]

Every time Jake gets out on the balcony, if he finds a maple key, he eats it and then gets sick. We tried to sweep for the damn things, but somehow either we miss them repeatedly, or new ones appear (it's December! There shouldn't be any new seeds, dammit!).

So whenever Jake's been sick on maple keys, Starr comments "Jake's Maple Story has an unhappy ending"

[Thad]

It's going to freeze tonight, so we put sheets over our garden and a couple of saplings in the backyard.

Apparently they are pretty convincing ghost costumes, because Artemis is terrified of them. I let her out at night and she started barking at them.

I tried to get some video but it's pretty dark out there.

[Thad]

Artie hates fireworks.

But not as much as she hated those sheets.

It took her like 3 days to accept that those sheets were not going to attack her.

[Esperath]

Ramona with a psychedelic raspberry.

(Also, it's an animated GIF, so let it load)

[Grath]

Puppies. Except not that much puppies.

[Thad]

dog

yes, if you come get me at 4 in the morning because you didn't want to piss and shit when I took you out at 10:30 at night to piss and shit, I will let you out to piss and shit. i think we can all agree that is in everyone's best interest.

that does not actually mean i want to play with you.

stop bringing me toys. i am going back to bed.

[Esperath]

shark attack

my cat sweet cat

[Esperath]

my cat aggro cat

[zaratustra]

So a few months ago the cat stopped pooping on the litterbox because the litter brand was no longer of his liking. For a while he went to poop outside, but now he just poops on top of whatever.

All my stuff is being pooped on or being thrown up on, my wife is too disgusted to do anything about it. so now I have to figure out how to litter-train this little shit again on nights and weekends.

[Esperath]

[Sharkey]

Dog gets in the way while I'm baking bread so I'm all "Whom do you serve, my fighting Uruk Hai?!" And she's like "I dunno, but I have to poop."

I'm a little sad because I'd get way more mileage out of Saruman quotes if the Sharkey parts made it into the films.



Meanwhile, I could put together a pretty large scrap book of her turning her head at the exact moment I take a picture. It's like she has some kind of insane camera avoidance spider sense. Nine times out of ten she's going to come out looking like she watched the videotape from The Ring.

[Thad]

Meanwhile, I could put together a pretty large scrap book of her turning her head at the exact moment I take a picture. It's like she has some kind of insane camera avoidance spider sense.

Mine too, but I think it's more because she just never fucking quits moving.