Update, 9/20/4:
Well, today is the one-year anniversary of Pez moving in with us. Some time ago, we got her anniversary present: a SmartyCat SuperScratcher+ scratching pad by Worldwise. We had left the box shut till this point, and Pez rubbed against it and sat on it frequently.
This behavior is strange. We have catnip actually growing outside our house (we didn't plant it; it just showed up), and Pez has basically sniffed it and ignored it on our walks.
But this catnip (in the SuperScratcher+) is apparently something special. Today we tore the lid off the box and Pez knew just what to do. When I took the bag of catnip out, she bit it. Then she rubbed her whole body on the corrugated cardboard slab inside (to which we haven't even added the catnip, I might add). She scratched (herself and the slab). She drooled. She pressed her nose into the cardboard. She got the munchies, took a breakfast break, and returned to the box. After some more rolling, she settled down to rest on top of the pad.
I wondered if we should let her keep the lid too. I let her sniff it and she tried to bite it, so I put it on the floor for her. A while later she moved from where she was curled up on the box and went to visit the lid. She licked it thoroughly. I guess she'll need lots of water today.
The nice thing about this product is that it was fairly inexpensive at Target and is made of environmentally-friendly stuff. And maybe it will distract Pez from the frogs for a while, but I'm hoping it doesn't turn her into a druggie.
The granuloma cleared up nicely, by the way. I wonder if it came from eating shrooms that grew in my spider plant pots. We really need to do some replanting.
Update, 6/16/4:
Pez didn't have her biopsy that day; she had it two days later. The first thing was just another consultation.
Her biopsy said she had some sort of granuloma thing, so now she's on steroids.
Update, 6/7/4:
Pez's lower lip has been swollen for a while. She went to the vet and got some bubble-gum-flavored antibiotics, but her lip is still somewhat swollen, so tomorrow Dan and I will take her to have a biopsy-type thing.
Right now she's jumping at the window, trying to get some kind of critter.
Update, 4/19/4:
Pez had her first walk outside on her leash today. I think she did great!
Update, 4/14/4:
I don't know what Pez's fascination with spider plants is, but she is definitely fascinated. When she's hungry and I won't feed her because it's not time yet, she munches on my spider plants (and gets sprayed with water because she's not supposed to do that). When she's at my parents' house, she curls up in the flower pot right on top of one/some of the spider plants (see Dan's pictures of this in the gallery).
Update, 4/1/4:
Here is where you can check on Pez's vet's progress.
Update, 3/26/4:
Pez's vet was in a bad car accident. We hope that she recovers soon. Pez and I like her very much.
Comment, 2/27/4:
Pez (bottom) looks like a cross between my first cat, Krissy (top left) and Bill's first cat, Smokey (top right).
Update, 2/15/4:
Pez is now pretty tolerant of having her front nails trimmed and her caps put on. She's still not much for having the back claws trimmed, but it's worth the chomping to avoid having to hear the sound of claws catching in our upholstery.
I gave her a bath (her third or fourth since she moved in with us, I think) a couple of days ago. She was very good. Afterward I toweled her off in my lap as she alternately purred and shivered. She took a followup bath (read: she cleaned herself this time) there in the towel, and then she meowed at the door so I'd let her out.
Update, 2/4/4:
Pez's worms are gone. Our biggest problem with her now is getting her not to bite. It's hard to carry a bottle of water wherever we go so that we can spray her when she bites. She also eats the plants and gets on the ledge--these are also forbidden activities. The Contact paper on the ledge is not much of a deterrent.
Pez loves to watch the birds outside. She chatters at them often.
She's bigger than she was and has made trips to my parents' house. She doesn't like the long rides much, but she does like having a bigger house to romp in. She got turkey on Thanksgiving and Christmas, too, so that was nice. Santa brought her a remote-controlled mouse, some nice rattly mice, and I don't know what else; my parents gave her a soft new blanket and some shiny pom-pom things to bat around. And maybe some of her little jingly things & rubber things too. I don't remember exactly when she got all this stuff.
Pez is a fabulous jumper but lacks confidence in her jumping ability. She is sometimes referred to as the Cheese Fiend because one taste of cheese (from an unsupervised microwave macaroni box which no longer had any noodles--just a bit of cheese) had her hooked.
She doesn't follow us around quite as much as she did--maybe now she actually believes that we'll come back.
Update, 10/23/3:
Giving pills to Pez wasn't that bad. She didn't like it, but it wasn't murder or anything. I haven't heard from the vet's office about her stool sample, so I'm guessing the worms are all gone.
She's kind of getting used to living with us. We seemed to solve the frog-tormenting problem by putting Contact paper sticky-side-up on the things the aquariums are sitting on. I got this idea from a cat book Mom got me. There is one set of paw prints in the sticky stuff. . .and only one.
Update, 10/02/3:
Pez is in good health. She weighs 7.8 pounds and had two wormer pills and a shot. She gets more pills on the 10th. Never having pilled a cat, I'm a bit nervous about that, but we'll get through it. The vet's quote on Pez's information was "Looks great!" Apparently she got rid of her worms but gave them back to herself.
She's a little cranky and originally seemed to think that I was going to give her away, but she's lived through everything.
Intro:
In the interest of staying consistent with the frog page, I'll note that Pez is Felis domesticus and hope that I've spelled it right.
We found Pez at the Iowa City Animal Center. We actually went to see Kismy, who ended up going home with a different family that day, and I convinced Bill that Pez should come to live with us. A week later, I went with Mom to pick her up, and now she's here with us.
The latest development is that I'm pretty sure she has worms, despite the fact that her history from Iowa City says she had worm medication (although I don't know whether it was preventive medicine or an effort to get rid of existing worms). She's scheduled for a veterinary appointment on Tuesday, so we'll know then what the vet has to say.
Pez isn't that thrilled when we put on her nail caps, but they make us feel a lot better because we don't have to declaw her but also don't have to worry a lot about her scratching up our nice new furniture. We've learned that she really gets freaked out when we gang up on her, so the Soft Paw process is a one-on-one activity.
Did I mention that she didn't even protest when I put on her collar? Her tags are way too big, I think, but I don't know what I can do about it.
The frogs seem jumpy since Pez's arrival, but we hope they'll learn that we won't let her get them.
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