Mary, queen of cats

As any pet owner knows, a collar and tag are essential pieces of equipment.  If your favourite, furred friend is a wanderer at heart, chances are they could get confused on their way home. As any cat owner knows, the tendency of felines to squish themselves into the darnedest of places knows no bounds.  Often the smaller the entrance, the better.

This leads to a bit of a concern regarding the cat’s collar – not only must an owner make sure the collar itself is stretchable, so it can easily slip off if their wearer is in danger of choking or worse, but it should also be ultimately able to tear or snap to get them out of a jam. That being said, the collar not being as fixed as it could be does lead to the more rambunctious feline losing more than their fair share.

And this presents a difficulty in and of itself – what about the tag?  One can only have so many collars around the house, especially with a cat that goes through them like most people go through underwear.  And of course there’s no way we would allow Mary out without a tag on her collar.  If she were lost and someone picked her up, they’d have no recourse but to deliver her to the SPCA, which (like many well-intended animal organisations) is animal welfare- and not animal rights-oriented, and largely a bureaucratic farce, so definitely not a place I’d like my girl to ever see the inside of.  This is assuming, of course, that those who find her have good intentions and aren’t just out to steal her for themselves.  And who wouldn’t want to?  You’ve seen her pictures, right?

To cut a long story short, the pain of having to have a set of pre-engraved tags, or having to rush about looking for an engraver and/or pet tags while her majestic-ness sits at home growing more inclined to pommel any people-flesh she sees exposed with her incredibly long claws while we sleep, is not conducive to a healthy cat-and-person relationship.

Imagine our glee (srsly, glee) at finding a little collar called the Rogz – it’s a little plastic tag doohickey that allows one to scribble/print down the relevant details and snap the tag together themselves.  Also handy if you need to change said details.  You can check out their site for more info (and no, we’re not getting commission from them, just appreciating the product), but the pic below gives an idea of what it looks like:

Plastic Rogz tags

The following images show Mary wearing her own Rogz tags – obviously they suit her rather… er… active lifestyle:

Cat and tag caught unawares

And from another angle

Waking with a camera up the schnozz

Cat, unamused.

Late last night, Mary came in with the left side of her face full of blood (there was even blood on the door and all over the floor). We did not immediately notice – she jumped on the bed, refusing to look at us when we spoke to her, and the side with the blood was turned away from us. I don’t know how stupid she thinks we are, but we immediately figured she was trying to hide something. Upon closer inspection, my partner found the left side of her face wet and when he looked at his fingers, it was blood. We cleaned it up and found a deep red hole about 2mm in diameter, just behind her whiskers. Our minds raced in all directions and our imaginations ran wild. From running in to something, to a snake bite, to a cat fight, to pellets guns crossed our mind. We cleaned the wound as best we could (and kept her inside for the rest of the night) but we would have to take her to the vet the next day to make sure everything was okay. Even though the puncture wound was too small for stitches, it was deep enough to form an ugly abscess if left untreated.

So today after work it was off to the vet. Mary usually behaves like an angel when she visits the vet. She is any vet’s dream patient.
The only way the vet could see the puncture wound was to shave the area. *Pwhaaaaa* Mary was not happy and both my partner and I and the vet had to hold her down. I have not seen Mary that pissed off in a long, long time (if ever). Because she struggled so violently, her whiskers were shaven off as well. We had a bald patch, half whiskered, fat faced, sulking, angry kitty on our hands and we could not help but laugh!

The wound, the bald patch and the short whiskers

The good news is no one tried to shoot her with a pellet gun, no snake tried to make a meal of her – with the fur shaven one could clearly see a scratch leading from/to the puncture wound: a cat claw. Mary got an antibiotic injection and the wound should heal nicely.

Back from the vet, straight to her brown paper bag

I don’t know how many times we have taken Mary to the vet for one thing or the other. I am sure if we had to add it all up, we could have amassed a small fortune. But there is simply no price on Mary’s health and well being. I said to my partner last night – I am so incredibly, incredibly happy to know we can afford to take her to the vet when she needs to go. We don’t have to worry about how we are going to pay or trying to treat her ailments ourselves because we can’t afford to get her proper care. We are tremendously blessed in that regard. He was of the opinion that even if we could not afford to go to the vet, we would still be able to get her care at places like the PDSA (People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals) or PUPP (Project for the Upliftment of Pets and People) or one of the clinics serving communities in need ( such as Mdzananda in Khayelitsha). Not that I never appreciated what these places do, but it kind of brought home how unbelievably important the work is they do. If we had no money for vet care and there were no PDSA or PUPP, Mary (and we) would have absolutely no choice. That scares me. As my vet said to me tonight: there is not (comparatively) that much cruelty going on in South Africa, but there is a lot of neglect. And in my opinion, neglect often stems from a lack of available resources. Simply because a person is poor, does not mean they are incapable of loving animals as much as we who are not poor.

There are heaps of organisations out there doing good for and by animals. But please – make a special effort to give your support to the clinics who give vet care to animals who would otherwise have no help at all.