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A couple weeks ago we nearly lost Pippin. He flew out of Lisa's hands, soared down the stairs (we hadn't clipped his wings in far too long) and sailed across the living room right into the front windows. He went into shock and Lisa spent the next hour cuddling him until he recovered enough to start gripping his perch by himself. Eventually he turned out fine, with only a small cut on the bridge of his beak (in what would be a cuticle on a fingernail). That same day, my parents lost their dog Nikko. They don't know how she died. They just woke up and found her lying in her comfy sleeping position. She just went away in her sleep. Friday night Samantha had what seems to have been a seizure. As Lisa says in her post she just sort of fell over. She was asleep on the arm of the love seat I was sitting on, and suddenly slid onto my leg. She stumbled to the floor and staggered into a corned. She didn't respond to our voices or anything. She seemed to recover and we watched her for a few minutes, trying to decide what to do. When we finally decided to wait until the morning, it happened again. She was cleaning herself and seemed to lose track of what was going on. She paused in the middle and started staring into space, one paw vaguely pawing at the air slowly. Again, she was unresponsive. Lisa's post has more details, but the emergency vet had us keep her on watch for the weekend. She hasn't had another that we've seen, and seems to have recovered. We don't actually know what was wrong. The basic tests were clear, but we could spend hundreds of dollars checking her out. Hundreds of dollars we simply don't have. It was scary. Samantha is something like nine years old now, making her a senior, and Emma is eight. Pippin is six now, so has another quarter century ahead of him. Idaho is seven, which puts him as a senior piggie for sure. Arvid is four, and Pac Man Frogs can live to twelve in captivity. The new piggies, Rizzo and Marty are only about a year old. We're unsure of how old the turtles actually are (estimates have A'Tuin at 30 and Morla at 20) but they could live into their hundreds. You tend to forget how fragile animals are, really, especially when they are with you, day by day, unchanging and constant. Samantha bats the bathroom door open every morning and meows at me until I finish my shower and go downstairs with her. For no reason, as when we do go downstairs, she wanders off without me, but she won't go down until I'm ready. When she was a kitten, she was very nervous and wouldn't eat when she was alone. So for the first few weeks we had her, I sat beside her food dish and watched her eat. She would take a bite, look at me, and take another bite. Repeat until she's full. To this day, she still likes it if I watch her eat. She will die. Sure, indoor cats are known to live up to 20 years (or more in some cases) but odds are she will die much sooner than that. We didn't really know how deeply a part of our lives she was until this weekend when we thought we were losing her. Now we know. We'd be crushed. As a sort of a P.S., we are looking for a good home for Marty and Rizzo. Lisa's allergies are bad enough that we can't keep them any longer. They are both longhair guinea pigs. Neither are entirely comfortable with people yet (Lisa's allergies preventing us from working with them as much as they need) but shouldn't take much to get them there. Let us know if you can help us out. |
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from 8-Track Mind Tracked on October 20, 2005 01:45 PM |
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