PIckles

Pickles is a cat. He used to live across the parking lot at my condominium complex but his owners committed the unthinkable: they moved and left him there. I will not go into a rant about how I feel about people who abandon their pets - not at this time. Suffice to say, I feel pretty strongly if you take on the responsibility of sharing your life with an animal, you had better be prepared to make certain sacrifices as far as future housing goes. When I was getting ready to move from southern California to northern California and began searching for an apartment, literally the first words out of my mouth when I was calling about vacancies, was do you accept pets? If they said no, I said thank you for your time and went on to the next call.

OK, so maybe I wound up on a little rant anyway - back to Pickles. He is about 8 or 9 years old and he's absolutely adorable. Once we figured out that he had been abandoned, Roomie and I started leaving food for him. Eventually, he began spending his nights in our fenced-in patio. We tried to coax him inside but Pickles would have none of that - he would never come in. Last fall, Roomie panicked at the thought of Pickles sleeping out in the cold and the rain and purchased Pickles his own little house (OK, so technically it's a dog house). We lined his little house with pillows and comforters and blankets. Roomie also built him a little porch for the house so he could have his meals out of the rain as well and there was added protection from the wind and the rain. And Pickles loved it.

Now that it's summer again, the house has been packed away and Pickles has little beds all over our patio for certain times of the day and night. He likes to sleep on the pillow right outside the patio door in the early afternoon and also from twilight to about 10 p.m. Then he'll move to his little spread over by the patio table and curl up under the comforter there. He likes to sleep under the covers.

Last Saturday morning, Roomie came running in and woke me up at 7am. It appeared that Pickles had a fish bone or something stuck in his throat from the canned soft food that Roomie had given to Pickles. A trip to the emergency room vet followed - Pickles did not enjoy this trip. It turns out that it was not a fish bone but Pickles had two little growths on both sides of his mouth that were inflamed and needed to be removed. They sedated him and performed the operation - the growths were benign thankfully.

When we got back home with Pickles, we opened up the cat carrier and Pickles promptly left the patio. He spend the rest of the day punishing us for taking us to the "stabby place" as Max the pyscho kitty calls it, and wouldn't come home at all. Well, he would venture close to the patio and let us pet him but then he would zip away again.

Roomie was distraught - he's still sort of new to the whole cat punishment thing. He was certain that Pickles was never coming home again. I tried to explain to him that we were being punished for taking Pickles to the vet, even though it was in his best interests but Roomie wanted to hear none of it. He was certain that Pickles would never come back and would starve to death in his new hiding place. Well, Sunday morning when I woke up, Roomie came in to tell me that Pickles was in the patio sleeping.

Pickles is now eating soft food and you can tell that while his little sutures bother him a bit, they don't bother him nearly as much as those inflamed growths did. And he's almost completely forgiven us for taking him to the vet. :)