When a Pussy Attacks

If you landed on my blog through a Google search expecting vaginas you should be ashamed of yourself. This blog post is not about the pussies you wanted to see. Also, there is just one photo of a pussy in this blog post and it is the one you see below. But I digress...

My husband and I share our house with three pussies. They are furry, sometimes cuddly but beneath their angelic and sweat demeanor there lurks a malevolent darkside. A darkside so iniquitous and vicious it’s best strangers approach our kitties with the utmost caution or face the dreadful consequence – being mauled! You see our furry critters are emotional unstable and dangerous little souls and every now and again their tempers and tantrums take me by surprise and I am left wondering, why do I share my house killers.

Our most notorious cat of the three is aptly named Killer Pussy. She is a savagely cruel killer. Remorseless, villainous and diabolical she saunters through our estate seeking out her victims. She has no particular preference, if it has a heartbeat she will kill it. She will also eat anything she can lay her little paws. Sometimes it is disgusting as we often find dismembered body parts strewn throughout our house. She leaves this as warnings to us not to fuck with her. It's a not so subtle threat really.

Her absolute favorite snack, apart from freshly killed meat, is a vitamin and catnip enrich cat treat which she gets every afternoon. I think she likes it because the catnip gets her high. She does have a bit of a drug problem but refuse to go to AA. So when the treats got finished, a couple of weeks ago, and the shops ran out of stock our little pussy was not amused! This sparked a tantrum as only a cat can do. All you cat owners out there can probably relate.

Killer Pussy was clearly going through catnip withdrawals and clearly needed to go to rehab but we could not afford it. Also, there are no catnip rehab facilities anywhere in the world which is a travesty.  Getting back to the point, Killer Pussy ignored us, she would sit in the corner of the bedroom sulking, scratch us when we picked her up and when her passive aggression failed to yield the desired result she went to Plan B – breaking stuff. Two broken plates, a torn curtain and a punctured pool lillo later, the shops eventually acquired her favorite treat just in the nick of time, as I suspect Plan C would have involved murder by suffocation followed by her eating our faces.

Killer Pussy's favorite activities, apart from sleeping, are plotting and scheming about how to break into our pantry (the food room as she calls it), furthering her nuclear ambitions, continuing her ill-suited affair with Kim Yong Un and setting her plan for world domination into motion. (If you failed to follow the last few sentences I don't blame you. For it to make sense you really should like her fan page. She is kinda famous on Facebook and Twitter. Just saying.)

Fur Monster was one of our oldest cats and she didn't like strangers and despised children (little humans). The fact that she was barren for so long and struggled to have kittens of her own may have something to do with her hatred of offspring. Whenever we receive visitors we always had to warn the guests of her violent disposition. Many children have been emotionally and physically scarred by her and many adults have too, with my late mom included.

A few years ago Fur Monster’s sister had kittens and my mom and her housekeeper wanted to see the litter/kindle. They went into my garden cottage while I was out. They didn’t make it past the kitchen. Fur Monster and her sister Sly Monster cornered them and held them hostage, literally, in my kitchen for well over an hour. Eventually I received a hysterical call from my mom saying “Your cats have attacked me! I’m in your kitchen! Can’t. Get. Out!!! Oh dear God have mercy!!! H E L P MEEE!!!” and in the background I could hear the housekeeper praying "Jesus, Mary and Joseph" and the cats hissing and growling. Careful hostage negations followed and both my mom and the housekeeper were released bruised, bleeding, traumatized and forever fearful. Fur Monster passed away two years ago and her ashes are kept in my study along with that of her sister - Sly Monster. I am now a collector of cat ashes as a true cat "lady" should be.

Cute Monster is the middle child and the fruit of Fur Monster’s loins. She’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic and the only thing she does well is eat, fart and sleep. She has never mastered the art of tree climbing and is still trying to learn how to play but without any notable success or improvement. The one skill she recently acquired is the much envied skill of paw-to-paw combat.

Seeing as she doesn’t know how to play nicely she settled for second best – fighting. She picks fights with her mother, her aunt and her adopted sister and she usually loses. Did I mention she isn't that bright? Every other day all hell would breaks loose in our house and it’s a cacophony of hissing, growling, screaming with fur and pot plants flying everywhere. Breaking up a pussy orgy of violence is near impossible and after two prior attempts and some loss of blood later, hubby and I decided to leave them to sort out their own shit. If it involves violence so be it! Most things can be resolved with some gratuitous violence anyway. Just look at America liberating countries through war. So why should our cats be any different.

Apart from eating and shitting in the garden the only thing our pussies enjoy doing together, as a family, is kill things. This is where our youngest comes in Lover Pussy.  And as his name suggests he is a gentle soul and is more a lover than a fighter.  However, he loves hunting and he's fiercely good at it.  He also usually leads the family hunt.  Like a ruthless pride of lions (which I swear they think they are) they stalk their prey on the African plains that is our garden. Many a bird, lizard, moth, butterfly and lady bird family have been broken up at the claws of our feline predators. So when a flock of weaver birds decided our leopard tree was the perfect spot for them to raise their families their fate was sealed unbeknownst to them and the bodies started to piled up!

Last Saturday we experienced the worst massacre since bloodshed Wednesday of 8 May 2007. It started at roughly noon. I heard a commotion in our back garden and didn’t pay it much attention until the commotion made its way to under the dining room table. Killer Pussy caught a juvenile weaver bird and was busy interrogating and torturing the poor thing North Korea Style, while the other two Monsters were watching. I tried to save the bird but Killer Pussy would have none of that and ran outside. We intercepted at the pool and I tried to pry the screaming bird from her fangs but she refused to loosen her grip and punctured two of my fingers.  I considered getting a tetanus shot but then realized the hospital would asked too many uncomfortable questions so I took my chances.

As I realized that the soon to be dead bird was doomed anyway and feeling like a horrible human being I let the murder continue. In the lounge I was close to tears as I heard the bird's screams become fainter as the minutes passed. The bird’s parents, family and neighbors all tried to save its life, but one-by-one they too were killed. At sunset the screaming stopped and our backyard was a scene of utter horror and devastation. There are now only four weaver birds and eight eerily empty nests left. Every day and every night our monsters patrol the leopard tree and soon the surviving weaver birds will be no more. They will be murdered in cold blood and we would have to watch and listen. Clarice have the lambs stop screaming? 

Sharing our home with temper tantrum prone killers, admittedly is not always fun. Especially when you need to clean up their crime scenes. But even though I sometimes pitch up for work with arms, legs and hands looking like I shoved them into the blender, I love my little monsters dearly and can’t imagine my life without them. Our backyard may be littered with the skeletal remains of countless avian victims, the bird population on the plains of Africa may be living in fear but my pussies are a delight to have and one day, maybe just one day, the birds will stop screaming.

You can like Killer Pussy's Facebook Fan Page by clicking HERE.

Till next time.

Conversations that make me sound crazy

Sometimes I have awkward conversations with friends that makes me sound crazy. This one is about our chickens:

Me: So our garden service informed me via sms that they quit.

Friend: How professional of them.

Me: I know right. And that right after I sms'd them to be careful because we have chickens now.

Friend: Maybe they have a chicken phobia.

Me: Bastards! Now we have to get a gardener who isn't afraid of chickens. I mean really. Who the fuck is scared of chickens?

Friend: Your chickens are cute. Not threatening at all.

Me: I know. I still don't get why people are scared of chickens. Especially two hens who I saved from a rapist rooster who tried to pull out their feathers.

Friend: A rapist rooster?

Me: Yes. They have been through so much already and now they also get discriminated against by people with chicken phobias.

Friend: Shame man. That's a tough life.

Me: I am serious! They are also even too scared to lay eggs. I would be too if I lived in constant fear of being raped and plucked. But now when the one hen lays eggs she makes this agonizing sounds. Think it is stretching her pooper of vagina. I don't know chicken anatomy at all.

Friend: You do have a point.

Me: I think they suffer from PTSD. Are there therapists who specialize in chickens? Like a chicken whisperer?

Friend: Only you would ask me that.

Me: There should be if there are dog and cat therapists. Or are chickens too low on the food chain for psychotherapy? They have feelings too you know.

Friend: If you find one I need one too. Long story.

Me: PTSD is tough on chickens. Especially ones who apparently are "scaring" people away from working in our garden.

Tears & Joy

This weekend was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster for us and not in a fun way.  It was an emotional rollercoaster in the sense that it made me feel nauseous, anxious, inconsolable, had me weeping like an emotionally disturb child and also made me feel blissful and optimistic.  And no, I was not on drugs or experiencing some adverse reaction from my prescription medication.  You see this weekend we had our baby shower and on the eve of this very special day our cat died.  The death of our beloved cat was a very traumatic experience and caused both hubby and I to have a serious of emotional clusterfucks, the timing of which could not have been anymore inconvenient.

Our baby shower’s planning started in November last year already.  So as you can imagine a lot of work went into it and there were quite a few helpers.  Hubby’s best friend from work decided to captain this ship and as one can expect from her she did a stellar job.  By Friday afternoon all was organized and all the preparations were completed.  So by Friday evening we were satisfied that the baby shower would go off without a hitch because all the i’s were dotted and all the t’s were crossed.  Unfortunately, as things go in my life, nothing is ever simple.  I have always said optimism has never served me well and this was no different.

On Friday evening hubby went to bed at around 9:30pm to get his beauty sleep for the next day and I stayed up watching television.  I have always been a night owl.  At around 10pm I heard a commotion coming from my study area.  In the study area is a large multi-leveled scratching post where our cats like to sleep.  As I rushed towards where the sounds were coming from I was horrified by what I discovered.  On the floor was our oldest cat surrounded by our other four cats and she was having convulsions.  She was dying.  Instinctively I rushed to our bedroom to wake up hubby and in a very distressed and high pitched voice I screamed “Mizou is dying! YOU HAVE TO WAKE UP!”  This is not the best way to be roused from your slumber.

I woke up my husband because I knew he would want to be there for her during her last moments.  As we got to her I picked her up and placed her on my lap.  She was still having convulsions, sounded like she was chocking and her tongue was turning blue.  She fought off death for what felt like an eternity but was in fact only a few minutes.  At 10:10pm she died.  Her death was sudden and completely unexpected.  As the stroke hit, she fell off the scratching post defecating on her way down.  Both hubby and I cried while her limp body lay on my lap.  She looked at peace but it was very hard to come to terms with what just happened.  Mizou had been with us for sixteen years and it was hard imagining our life without her.

We sat with her crying for a while.  She went blind a couple of months ago and both of us were very impressed with how well she coped with her disability.  At the time the vet did tell me that she was a prime candidate for a stroke as she had suffered from glaucoma, high blood pressure, was old and had weekend veins.  I guess I wanted to believe that she would live forever.  But she died.   At least we were all there comforting her in her final moments.  After a while hubby brought a blanket for us to rap her in.  I gently place her limp body in the middle of the blanket and arranged her to look as if she was only sleeping.

The morning of our baby shower people arrived early to start preparing the house.  I woke up that morning hoping that the tragedy of the night before was just a bad dream.  But it wasn’t.  The baby shower was supposed to be a happy occasion for both hubby and I but we were both heartbroken.  After I got dressed I excused myself and took Mizou’s remains to our vet to be cremated.  It was a very surreal experience standing there holding Mizou’s now stiffened body in a blanket waiting to be helped.  People in the reception area immediately knew, just by looking at me, what I was there for and it made everybody very uncomfortable.  For once I was the white elephant in the room nobody wanted to acknowledge or talk too.  I totally understood why.

After some red tape the vet’s technician came and collected Mizou’s body.  When he brought back the blanket we had raped her in I had to fight very hard to hold back the tears.  I was told that I will get back her ashes on Friday which I know will be a tough day for all of us.  As I returned home I tried to put a smile on my face.  It made me feel fake and disrespectful.  It also made me feel terribly guilty.  I asked myself how can I allow myself to be happy after what had happened.  But there was no way of postponing our baby shower at this very late stage and like Queen said “The show must go on.”

During the baby shower I tried to forget about Mizou’s death and tried terribly hard to just be in the moment.  At times I succeeded but mostly I was constantly on the verge of a panic attack or near tears.  I suspect this may have ruined almost all our baby shower photos.  I just knew that if I didn’t control my emotions I would do the ugly cry with snot and horrible crying noises; not exactly appropriate baby shower behavior.  I am not sure how I made it through the baby shower but I did.  It was only the next day when I fully appreciated the fact that we are going to have a baby and when it finally sank in and brought joy to my broken heart.

My mother-in-law and sister-in-law came by our house to see what we got for our baby shower.  We are having a family only baby shower after we get our child and they wanted to know what we may still need.  As we went through all our gifts I forgot about our loss and got very excited for the new life that we will be welcoming into our lives.  Hopefully it will happen soon.  It was also then when I had an epiphany:  Maybe Mizou passed away to create a space for a new life that is arriving.  We had to say goodbye to a very precious soul who we loved dearly to make room for another.  This filled my heart with peace, joy, love and hope.  This has been a weekend of tears and joy.  Hopefully the next time I cry it will be tears of joy.

Till next time.

Good news for a change.

So after my rant on Monday I have some good news to share with you.  I managed to rescue the bunny on Monday afternoon and brought him home.  And no!  I did not kidnap him.  It was done all legitimate and shit.  He was severely malnourished and practically just skin and bone.  Someone tried to shave him and did an atrocious job of it.  When he got home he looked and smelled like a bum and that is when the work began.

When he got home I immediately noticed that he wasn’t eating.  At first I attributed this to stress.  But as he became more relaxed I knew there was a bigger problem at play.  On Wednesday I took him to the vet for a full checkup and to be neutered.  That’s when we discovered that the reason he wasn’t eating was because he couldn’t.  It was too painful.  You see due to having been given the wrong food and, from what it looked like, no hay he had developed spurs on his teeth.  It’s rather nasty and looks like little needles that make eating painful:  As a bunny try to eat these needles stick into his gums and as you can imagine it is very unpleasant.  So the vet filed off the spurs and he was good to go.

The first obstacle we faced with this new addition to our family was his name.  I wanted to name him Kazimer which means “The Great Destroyer” in Russian.  Hubby refused that we name him that and as he, in a very annoyed Tim Gunn voice, told me “I don’t want anything in our house that is known as The Great Destroyer.  This is why we can’t have nice things!”  So we decided to name him Dimitri which means “Lover of Earth” in Russian.  Hubby made our bun less of a worrier and more of a hippie because he is kind that way.  A bigger problem though was socializing Dimitri with our other bunnies.

As you may recall we have two other bunnies and they are both neutered boys.  They have bonded and love each other very much.  Apparently it is very strange to have two male bunnies bonded in this way but I guess it is true that the gay do rub off and is indeed contagious.  But before you call Nigerians to stone me – I am being facetious.  Knowing that socializing a new bunny with a bonded pair is notoriously difficult I thought “How bad can it really be?”  Well the answer is really bad.

With the first introduction there was a big ass fight between our youngest and smallest bun and Dimitri.  Fur flew, water bowels where thrown and there were tantrums and lots of screaming.  Ok, so the screaming was done by me but you get the idea.  Consequently to the first introduction and fight there was three more introductions all of which saw me have mini nervous breakdowns and took a couple of years off my life.  I have also, in the mean time, employed several other sneaky tricks to ease them into accepting one another and the experts tell me that socializing them to the point where there are no longer fights could take anything from three weeks to eight months.

Dimitri is a gentle soul and has a very easy going personality.  He is very similar to our only male cat and I foresee that the two of them will become great friends down the line.  It took me two days to potty train Dimitri which also shows that he is super intelligent.  His favorite thing to do in the evenings is to chill with us on the couch and he loves cuddles.  This is a far cry from what he was use to.  He was kept in a chicken wire cage at an Angora breeder in which he could barely turn around.  He was only taken out of that cage to breed and to be shaved.  When he stopped eating the breeder was too stingy to take him to a vet and dumped him at a pet shop where, according to the vet, he would have died in three weeks from starvation if he wasn’t rescued.

It breaks my heart to know that there are people out there who doesn’t give a shit about animals; people who treat animals so badly that death would be preferable.  It makes my blood boil.  What I find appalling is the fact that bunnies are becoming more popular as pets.  People buy these cute little fur balls from a pet shop without knowing anything about them.  The have no clue about their diets, their health, emotional needs and what it takes to raise a happy, healthy and well rounded bunny.  Then at the first sight of problems they dump them.  My plea is that before anyone adopts or buys a pet first do your research.  Find out as much as you can about that animal and then decide if that pet will fit your lifestyle and if you will be capable and willing to care for that animal for the rest of that animal’s life.

Till next time.

Things that get my tits in a twist

I know... I know… You are going to say please just not another blog post about some kind of rant.  But I am sorry; I am going to rant because I am fucking piss off!  As most of you know I am an avid animal lover to which my ever expanding menagerie is a testament.  I love all animals.  Ok, that’s not entirely true.  I hate spiders, snakes and all worms with fur on them.  Well, technically they are insects and reptiles but apart from them I am like Noah but without a message from God or an ark.  I must also admit that I sometimes like animals more than I do people as animals have no malice, don’t start wars or are not responsible for gross violations of human rights.  This is why when animals are being abused, mistreated or neglected I lose my shit and this is exactly what happened this weekend.

You see this weekend hubby and I went to our local nursery to have a look at some plants.  In December last year hubby took out all the invader plants in our backyard and it now looks like a drag queen’s face who have been out in the rain smoking crack.  We decided to take out all the invader plants not because we had some kind of xenophobic plant attack but because the invader plants were taking over our back garden and killing all our other indigenous plants.  Invader plants are assholes like that and you should never ever trust a sword fern.  They are evil and very hard get rid off and difficult to kill!  So with our back garden looking sad and barren we decided that this weekend we will get some indigenous plants and start with our backyard’s rejuvenation.  Also, the plants that we need to buy must not look scrumptious to our bunnies and also not be poisonous to them either.  Quite a tall order I know.

When we arrived at our local nursery it was right in the middle of the heat of the day and they were busy watering their plants with their sprinkler system.  Good for the plants.  Not so good for us.  It is really difficult to do plant shopping when you are constantly being sprayed with water.  I was also wearing flip flops (don’t judge me) and I was busy getting grossed out by all the water puddles that were forming.  So I eventually told hubby that we should call it a day but first I wanted to have a look around the pet shop they have at the nursery.  This is where the problem started.

While walking around I noticed that the pet shop had their normal range of small rabbits.  All bundled into different cages separated by breed.  It wasn’t long before I spotted a bunny that looked really despondent and was kept separately in his own cage.  He was an adult French Angora rabbit and rather huge one at that.  He was sitting in his small cage with his back towards the outside; his cage littered with the feces of other animals that were there before him.  He had no hay (which is an essential part of a rabbit's diet and especially that of Angoras), no rabbit pellets but only what looked like dog food and water.  He looked depressed and when I acknowledge that I had seen him he turned to me and I could see he was also starved for interaction of any kind.  Rabbits are social animals after all.

Later that afternoon when we got home I told my husband that I cannot stop thinking about that rabbit.  Hubby also said that it upset him to see the rabbit being held in those conditions.  We then mutually decided that the next day we would rescue him.  Of course my husband’s conditions were that the rabbit had to be neutered and thoroughly get checked out by our vet to which I agreed.  On Sunday morning we returned to the pet shop.  Hubby warned me to not cause a scene or to go all PETA on their asses and that I had to be diplomatic which is sometimes hard for me as I suffer from foot-in-mouth disease.  After questioning the shop assistant about the rabbit’s history I learned that he was one year old and had belonged to a breeder who wanted to get rid of him because he was fighting with the other rabbits.  So it seems that if you are a rabbit at a breeder and if you do not behave or have served your purpose you are either killed or thrown away.  Great way to treat animals, ain’t it?

The sad part is that adult rabbits rarely get bought at pet shops or get adopted.  The general public always seems to go for the cute baby rabbits and the older ones are over looked.  The distressing reality is that when people buy bunnies as pets they know very little about them.  They don’t know what their nutritional and emotional requirements are or the fact that rabbits are high maintenance pets and are expensive to keep.  They are not suitable pets for children under the age of 8 and if you do want to keep them inside the house you need to bunny proof or else the bunny will destroy things.  When these people then wakeup to the reality that rabbits are more labor intensive than cats and dogs and more expensive to maintain they tend to want to get rid of them.  Some “set them free” and think that the rabbit will be fine.  What people don’t realize is that domesticated rabbits cannot survive in the wild and they will die.

After speaking the shop assistant and checking out the French Angora up close we were told that we would have to speak to the owner before “buying” him.  We ran into a snag and to make a long story short, if all goes well, we will be able to fetch him on Wednesday.  Only then will we be able to access his health and determine what effect having been kept by an unscrupulous breeder has had on his physical and emotional health and determine what kind of rehabilitation he may require.  Luckily our cats and bunnies are all very chilled and I am sure they will help him become the happy bunny he is destined to be, instead of an animal whose sole purpose is to breed.

I sometimes wish that all people who consider themselves to be “animal breeders” would be required to obtain a license from the SPCA to do so.  Also, I wish that the SPCA could inspect all the animal breeders to make sure that the animals are taken care of properly and that their living conditions are acceptable.  There are so much animal abuse and neglect going on in the world and I don’t understand how people keep animals if they cannot care for them.

Lastly, I also wish that people who adopt rabbits would educate themselves about these highly intelligent animals before they get them.  Animals are not your property that you own.  They are not things.  They are living creatures which you cannot just throw away when you are tired of them or when they misbehave.  When you buy or an adopt an animal that animal is your responsibility and the way you take care of and treat that animal says a lot about who you are as a human being and the respect you have for life around you.

Till next time.

I'm not denying that I'm difficult to live with.

This has been said by me innumerable times but for the sake of making sure nobody ever forgets it, I will say it again – my husband really deserves a medal for putting up with me.  I am no picnic to live with and should I have been accompanied with an instruction manual it would have come in volumes and would have read like an IKEA manual but without the illustration and it would have been printed in Chinese.  There are many ways one could sugarcoat this.  For example, I could say that I am complicated, emotionally complex and eccentric bordering on the ridiculous.  But that would just be blowing smoke up your asses.  The truth is I am one difficult bitch to live with and sometimes I do things that annoy the living hell out of my long suffering husband.  To help give you some perspective here are just a couple of my phobias, obsessions and eccentricities that drive him up the wall and why he deserves some well earned recognition.

One of the causes for my husband to be annoyed can be blamed on my OCD.  Not having to switch the lights on and off a 100 times or checking if all the doors are locked for hours at a time kind of OCD.  The type of OCD I suffer from is my germ phobia and the fact that I like routine and for things to be done in a certain way.  In this sense I am not that unlike our bunnies.  They too like routine and for things to be done a certain way and if you deviate from it they throw tantrums and are stubborn just like me.

This has caused me to hate spontaneity, to be weary of surprises and made me allergic to change of any kind.  I like things to be planned and organized or else the world will come crumbling down and we will all die.  Throw in a mild case of agoraphobia and you have the perfect storm that could kill a social life.  All of which drives my husband nuts.

You see for anyone to drag my ass out of the house for any reason other than for work or to buy life sustaining necessities is a daunting task.  I like our home and everything we need is there.  There really is no reason to leave the house other than for a natural disaster or possibly the apocalypse; even then I would be difficult about it because that too would imply impending change.  Besides, we only have one pet carrier and there is no bloody way five cats, two bunnies, a tortoise and a fish would all fit in there.  We would need a fucking Ark.  Also, do you even know how many life threatening germs are out there that could one day turn us all into Zombies?

So for us to go out is a rather big deal, but for some odd reason my husband does succeed in getting me out of the house sometimes.  We do go shopping in actual malls that are not on the internet, go to movies, visit friends, watch shows and also travel.  None of these things have killed me, yet.  But what annoys my husband is the fact that all these adventures are planned, even the “spontaneous” ones.

My OCD is not the only thing that drives hubby nuts, there also is my cooking.  I am a phenomenal cook, if I do say so myself, and I am also very talented at dirtying every single pot, pan and cooking utensil we have while I prepare a meal.  I never use the same tasting spoon twice because that’s just unhygienic.  I am also incapable of only cooking for just two people.  I blame the fact that I possibly lived through the great depression in a previous life and am now overcompensating by always cooking for an army.  So after I cooked a meal and dirtied as much as possible, I will also fill up all our Tupperware with leftovers most of which go to waste anyway. I know there are starving children in Africa. Don't judging me.

As if my OCD and cooking skills are not enough I am also a hypochondriac at the best of times.  I am a relatively healthy person apart from being allergic to the world.  Literally.  I should live in a hypoallergenic bubble.  However, when I do get an ailment I tend to self-diagnose with disastrous consequences and for this I blame WebMD and the internet in general.

I have been convinced that I was dying from exotic diseases more times than I think my husband would care to count.  In contrast there were also times I thought I was fine but was in fact dying. Like a while back when I thought I was suffering from severe constipation on an island holiday and it turned out I had double pneumonia.  There was also that time when I thought I was having a heart attack and it turned out to just be severe heartburn.  I tend to get it wrong most of the time and all the while hubby had to stand by my side through real medical emergencies and the ones that were not so real.  Even that one time I thought I was infected with the Ebola virus and nobody wanted to believe me.  It would frustrate most people.

And then there are the animals, as you all know I love animals and as a result not only does my husband have to share our house with a person with OCD, impeccable cooking skills and a hypochondriac, he also shares it with our ever growing menagerie.  You all should know by now about my obsessive search for a gay donkey and most recently I fell in love with another animal called an Alpacas.  They are ridiculous animals with one fabulous set of hair.  I mean really, who could resist an animal with buck teeth and a jerry curl?  The Alpacas could just possibly trump the gay donkey, and I am so getting one, just don’t tell my husband.

Hubby has threatened that if I get one more animal that we need to buy a farm.  So in response to his threat, now every time I go to the pet shop to buy supplies I send him pictures of kittens, bunnies and reptiles.  You know, so that he is never sure what he will be coming home to that afternoon.  I know it’s cruel but I am doing this with a plan in mind:  If I desensitize him enough to the possibility of a new animal joining our zoo then when I do get the Alpacas or gay donkey he will not be that upset, although the neighbors might be.  I am aware that my obsession with our ever expanding zoo is a problem, but animals make me happy and we can’t naturally have children and God knows we try.  If Brad and Angelina can collect children then who are you to judge my animal collection?  Besides we are adopting a child and I suspect this might just cure me of my zoo obsession.  The universe works in mysterious ways.

As you can see, it is a miracle that I am not single.  Finding a person who would be prepared to put up with all this shit is very difficult and I got lucky.  Very lucky! The only real issue I think my husband has that he really wishes I would part with is my obsession with horror movies.  I scare the living shit out of him by means of the horror genre at least once a week.  I do this probably in an attempt to convince him that living with me is not as bad as being possessed by Lucifer, being tormented by entities, kept chained in a basement by a serial killer or being kidnapped by aliens.  I mean compared to that sharing your house with a zoo and a somewhat eccentric blogger who believes that the Zombie Apocalypse will happen isn’t so bad, now is it?

Till next time.

(PS:  The Zombie Apocalypse is real people.  It will happen.

PPS: And when the Zombie Apocalypse does happen, stay the fuck away from my house!  I will cut a zombie bitch.  I really will.)

Blind kitty, soft kitty, little ball of fur…

Pets are like family members.  Or at least they are to us.  We share our homes with them and our lives.  Most times we also share our hearts with them.  I mean how can you not?  They stay with us through the good times and the bad.  They see us at our best and at our worst.  Through all this they stay loyal to us and never judge us (or at least not often that is).

I believe that if you have animals you have a great responsibility towards them.  After all, they did not choose to live with you, most time we choose them.  As such we have a responsibility to them to make sure that they are safe and that their physical, mental and emotional needs are taken care of.  So what happens when one of your animals grow old and sick?  What happens when one of your furry family member’s cycle of life creeps closer to its end?  What do you do?  This is what hubby and I had to face this week and sometimes it is heartbreaking.

You see Mizou, one of our oldest cats and matriarch of the house, who just celebrated her fifteen birthday in September with her sister has lately been having some medical issues.  A couple of months ago we noticed that her eye sight was failing.  She also developed incontinence and you could see that her body was growing old.  Fifteen is old for a cat, even though some cats can live well into their early twenties.  However with each breed it is different.  Not worrying too much about some of her symptoms, due to her advanced age, hubby and I decided to monitor her and if it got worse to take her to the vet for checkups.  And she did get worse.

About a month ago we noticed that she had what looked like blood in her one eye and the vet told us that she suffered from glaucoma and hypertension.  All of which were directly related to her age.  It was sad to hear that the vet could not really do anything for her affected eye and that she had gone blind in that eye due to the optic nerve being damaged.  The vet also indicated that she only had about 20% vision left in the other eye and that, in all likelihood, she would eventually lose her vision completely.  But we did not expect it to happen so soon.

When I got back from work on Monday I heard Mizou meowing in the back garden.  I called out for her but she did not come to me as she normally does.  Eventually I made my way to her and I found her standing in the backyard looking completely lost.  It was clear that she was disorientated and did not exactly know where she was.  I picked her up and immediately noticed that the eye which had the last 20% vision left had also now gone blind.  I felt immense sadness for her and gave her a reassuring hug and told her that everything will be ok.  “So what if you are blind now, it’s not the end of the world.  You still have many years left in you and we will make the best of it” I told her and she gave me a soft purr and a meow as if she understood what I had said.

I was told that we should go about our lives as we had done before and not to change anything.  Mizou will adjust to her blindness but it will take some time.  She will learn to make her way through the house based on her other senses and memory.  The only thing that we must not do is move furniture around or change where we feed her.  We should also move one of the litter boxes inside the house as she will struggle getting in and out of windows.  Watching her slowly move through the house, occasionally bumping into things is rather sad to watch.  We are not allowed to help her too much as she will have to learn to get around on her own.  Sometimes this is difficult and I literally have to stop myself.

It was advised that we voice train her and she picked this up right away.  Being guided by our voices seems to come naturally to her.  The other cats have not really noticed that Mizou has gone blind and they appear to be somewhat confused about what is going on with her.  The bunnies on the other hand were the first to pick up that Mizou is blind.  They no longer try and chase her and they are much gentler when they are around her than they were before.

My only concern with Mizou and her disability is how she will cope outside.  On Friday evening she almost walked straight into the pool and that was when she had 20% vision left.  Now that she is completely blind the garden poses quite a few risks for her, the pool and the pool net being just one of them.  Also, when our adoption is finalized and we finally have a baby in the house this will also have an impact on her: the pool will be covered with a net which could make it impossible for her to get out of the pool if she falls in being blind; and a baby won’t understand what blindness is and Mizou could accidentally get injured.  I guess there are a lot of “what ifs” here but I am sure that we will cope.

Good friends of ours also went through a traumatic event on Monday.  Their dog also went blind a couple of months ago due to a medical condition.  On Monday his condition deteriorated to the point where the vet told them there was nothing more that could be done for him and that it is recommended that he be euthanized.  This is the most awful news a vet can ever give you.  But it was what was best for him and they had to say goodbye.  I am fortunate that I have never had to euthanize any of my animals and I dread the day that I will be told it is our last option.  I’d rather pay a shit load of money on medical expenses in order to make sure my animals get the best medical attention there is and euthanasia is only the last resort.  But sometimes we must make hard decisions and what is best is not always easy to do.

Our cat has gone blind, has no bladder control and is old.  I guess this is what happens when you get old – you pee yourself and walk into things.  She has been in our lives for the last fifteen years and she loves us unconditionally as we do her.  I don’t know how many years she will still be with us but as longs as she is here I am going to make sure that her retirement is as comfortable as possible.  Just because she is blind and possibly may need a kitty diaper doesn’t mean that she cannot enjoy life.  I hope that one day when hubby and I are in the retirement home we will be afforded the same courtesy.  Wouldn’t you?

Till next time.

Being Face Raped by Nature

I don’t always complain.  Well, actually that it not entirely true.  I complain all the time, mostly to my cats because my husband has selective hearing when it comes to things like that.  This is also why I am not completely convinced that he will survive the Zombie Apocalypse without my help.  It is important to note that when I do complain it is not always about random or minor stuff.  The things I complain about are important.  Well, at least they are important in my mind anyway.  Seeing as spring has just arrived in the Southern Hemisphere and I always bitch about it on my blog (you know because spring almost kills me every year) I decided that this year will be different.   Why you might ask.  The answer is simple, I decided to try and ignore it.  But as luck would have it, just because I am ignoring spring doesn’t mean it will ignore me.  Denial is an ineffective son-of-a-gun that way (see how I didn’t use a curse word right here.  I am so making progress on my potty mouth).

This year I think I may have discovered the allergy medication combo that works for me.  I mean really, it only took me about eight years to get it right and I should totally be getting a prize or something for this achievement.  I am also happy to report that I have not contracted my annual pink eye at the start of spring this year and even though I do sound like I have the flu, most of the time, I am not rupturing internal organs due to hay fever induced sneezing.  However, just because my allergies have calmed down this year with the aid of charmed pharmaceuticals, air purifiers and the avoidance of all things pollen related, doesn’t mean that spring has’t tried to kill me twice this season already.  It seems that if Mother Nature can’t torment me with pollen, seeds, grass and dust she will find new innovative ways to try and get to me.  The first attempt she made was with our pool.

Seeing as we may be “with child” soon hubby and I started taking measures to ensure that our house and garden aren’t deathtraps for children.  This is not something that bothered us before but when you have, or are about to have, children you understand that maybe other people weren’t so crazy after all.  The first thing we have done is to cover our pool with a net.  There are way too many children that accidentally drown in pools and all households with small children should have their pools covered.  It took me four hours one Saturday afternoon to put that Chinese puzzle from Hell over the pool.  Four hours without the help of anybody!  I have never cursed that much in my entire life but after it was done I felt pretty butch and damn proud of myself for accomplishing what I thought was the impossible.  However the next day it felt like I was ran over by a train and then trampled by psychotic donkeys, but at least our pool was secured.

However, having a net over your pool does have some rather obvious disadvantages.  Firstly, if you are not careful you can trip and fall and almost land on a bunny (I am still not forgiven for that just so that you know) and secondly, cleaning the pool becomes a bitch to deal with.  With the start of spring one of our evergreen hedges started the shed its winter leaves and all of it ended up in the pool.  Not being able to skim them off the water, due to the net, most of them ended up in our pool gobbler and weir.  Also getting to the pool gobbler and weir was now also difficult seeing as the pool net restricted access to both.  I guess you can see where I am doing with this.

So one afternoon I get home from work and as I walk past the pool I noticed that it sounded like the swimming pool pump was struggling.  I switched it off and then checked out the pool gobbler and weir.  Both were filled to the brim with leaves and needed to be cleaned.  However getting to them and taking them out was a problem as the net was cock blocking me.  To make a long story short, I ended up “accidentally” breaking the weir cover and some pool gobbler connector thingy (I don’t know it’s called) which I replaced the next day.  But not being very mechanically orientated I could not reattach the pool gobbler correctly.  Frustrated and feeling like a monkey trying to solve a puzzle for a treat hubby eventually found me sitting next to the pool gobbler looking completely defeated and poking it with a stick.  Apparently, and I take his word for it, I forgot to attach something called a washer (which looks like a cock ring, just smaller) to the system and that’s why it didn’t work.  After pointing and laughing at me he fixed it and all was back to normal on the pool front.  But then blow number two came.

Last week was hubby’s birthday, and as is tradition, I always send him flowers to his office.  Flowers I like to call hypoallergenic flowers.  You know the kind that doesn’t try to face rape you with pollen.  Pollen is nothing other than plant sperm and I do not like being sexually violated by nature.  It just wrong people and there should be laws against it!  As fate would have it, I was not the only one who sent hubby flowers that day.  Our hairstylists also sent hubby a spring bouquet the extravagance of which outshone my flowers much like a Dita Von Teese burlesque show outshines Candy the stripper from Teasers.  Unfortunately, our hairstylist temporarily forgot that pollen equals a slow snot filled eye infected death for me.  And their bouquet screamed pollen!

At first it wasn’t a real problem but as some of the flowers started to open and ejaculate their pollen into the air I felt like I was in Syria and the victim of a chemical weapons attack disguised as spring flowers.  It became so bad that when I parked my car and started walking towards the house I would smell something that smelled like incense, wondering when the hell be burned some.  It was only yesterday that I realized I actually smelled the flowers and not incense.  So this morning, after a somewhat rough couple of days, I asked hubby to banish the pollen face raping flowers to his reception area of his studio.  I still have to walk past them every day but at least it is not ejaculating all over the house anymore.  Flowers can be such sexually inconsiderate assholes!

So even though my allergies are sort of under control this season and having survived two attempts to steal my spring joy I have managed to prevail.  I am looking forward to summer and some lazy days lounging next to the pool with cocktails.  Luckily the worst of spring in our garden is almost over and I just have to make it through three more weeks of pollen.  That being said, winter also wasn’t too kind to me this year and I managed to gain 5kg’s.  During winter I can cover up my flab but with summer board shorts only covers so much.  So perhaps instead of bitching about spring and the torturous process that is adoption, I should focus on shedding that extra winter weight.  I don’t want to look like an albino whale lying next to the pool, now do I?

Till next time.

This Will Not Save You In a Zombie Apocalypse.

Sometimes throwing money at a problem really is a good idea to solve it.  However, when you are in the midst of a tough economic climate, as we all are of late, this is not always possible.  But in certain circumstances your failure to do so will end up costing you a lot more that you might have thought.  And to make matters worse you will end up realizing it was all your own fault to start with.  This past weekend hubby and I decided to take on some long overdue projects around the house, and in an effort to save some money we decided to do it ourselves.  As most of you know, we do not have the greatest track record when it comes to DIY and this time was no different.  This is how giving our guest bathroom a makeover and overhauling our garden’s sprinkler system ended up having us in dire need of a Plumber and Electrician and why we may possibly not survive a Zombie Apocalypse.

Let me first start off by saying that hubby is very handy with power tools.  He even knows what types of drill tips to use on different surfaces.  I on the other hand have no clue and never bothered to actually give a shit.  All I know how to use is a hammer and a screwdriver and that should be sufficient to save our lives if there ever is a Zombie Apocalypse.  After all, in an Apocalypse there won’t be any electricity so a drill will be pretty useless and won’t make much of a weapon.  And if that is all you are going to rely on you will die and in your final moments you will seriously envy my self-defense skills with a screwdriver and hammer.  But I digress…  Let’s get back to our DYI.

Seeing as I have always been brutally honest with you on my blog, I should admit something.  I cheated.  I did not install the new sprinkler system all by myself.  I hired a guy to do it for me.  Did you really think I would do something like that all on my own?  Gawd, it’s like after four years you don’t even know me!  I did however take him to a “Farmer’s Outlet” to go and buy all the material.  It being early on a Saturday morning and me being slightly hungover from one too many glasses of Chardonnay the night before, I found the whole experience rather daunting.

Apparently real farmers shop there and me standing around pretending to Facebook or Twitter on my iPhone with my sunglasses on in the middle of the shop did not really help me fit into the setting at all.  Also, apparently it is rude when a shop assistant in Khaki clothing asks you if he can “Help” you to screech out the word “No!”.  But in my defense the fucker snuck up on and startled me and when he spoke I thought he was a member of some kind of far right militant group who was about to kidnap me.  I mean really, who wears Khaki anymore these days?  It’s so 1980’s Apartheid era, don’t you think?

About thirty minutes later, in a shop that made me feel like I was in a bad version of the Twilight Zone, we had all the supplies we needed.  We headed home and he started with what seemed like the digging of trenches around our garden.  I remember thinking how cool it would be to have a moat around our house and how useful that would be in a Zombie Apocalypse because zombies can’t swim, but then realized it would be totally impractical.  So I left the guy to do his thing, went inside the house and caught up on some of my television programs.  In the mean time hubby was out shopping for all the new additions for our guest bathroom’s makeover.

Sometime during the day I got called by the sprinkler guy who profusely apologized for severing some electrical cable in the garden.  Being a tad confused seeing as I did not know that there were electrical cables under the ground in our garden and also thinking that it was dangerous and a health hazard I just looked at him for about five minutes not knowing what to say.  Eventually, we figured out that the electrical cable supplied power to our garden lights and I told him not to worry about it and to just finish installing the new sprinklers.   I also cautioned him to try not to cut off any other yet undiscovered health and safety issues in our garden.  He eventually finished without unearthing any more dangerous and potentially lethal garden traps of doom.  We tested the new sprinklers, they worked fine, I paid him and then wondered how much an electrician would cost to come out on a Sunday.  In the mean time a more serious issue was about to develop in the guest bathroom.

Hubby decided that seeing as the style of our guest bathroom is a bit outdated and old that he might as well stick to that theme and hang old classic mirrors in the bathroom.  He also picked out some old painted pictures from the early 1900’s of my deceased ancestors to accentuate the theme.  No wonder our house gets so many ghostly visitors.  So on Sunday afternoon hubby started drilling holes into the tiled bathroom walls.  All was going well until hubby walked into the living room with a concerned look on his face and the only words that he spoke were “I think we have a problem”.  And he was right.  We did have a fucking problem.  He had accidentally drilled a hole right into a water pipe in the wall.

Water was gushing out of the hole in the wall and it did not take long for us to determine that he in fact hit the hot water pipe.  He had inadvertently created a steaming waterfall right above our bathtub, which would have been romantic and whimsical if that was indeed the look that we were going for.  But it wasn’t.  So now we had two problems:  A severed electrical cable and the Victoria Falls, that was heated I must add, in the guest bathroom.  To make matters worse – it was a Sunday!  So calling out a Plumber and an Electrician would have cost us a fortune.  So we did the only thing we could.  We turned off the geyser and the water and pretended like nothing had happened.  But denial can only last that long.

On Monday I had to take the day off to deal with our DIY mishaps and get in the professionals to help us fix our mess.  Luckily hubby uses a handy man at his work that is not only good with plumbing and carpentry but electrical work as well.  So at around 9:30 he pitched up and I had to explain to him that not only are Hubby and I hot messes but we had a little fuckup in the bathroom and in the garden.

He gave me that look that I am sure means “Thank God for people like you.  Without you I’d be out of business!” and he started digging in.  He removed the tile through which hubby had drilled into the water pipe, fixed the hole and patched back the tile, then he proceeded to the garden to work on the case of the severed electrical cable.  It took him quite a few hours longer to fix the electrical cable and he did concur that the cables weren’t safe.  He did something or another to make sure that our garden doesn’t kill us and left and we got his bill several hours later.  His fee was reasonable and we were more than happy to pay him because we really should be punshed for our own stupidity and we should be ashamed of ourselves.  Which we kind of should be but in reality are not so much.

So this weekend ended up costing us a lot more than what we anticipated but at least we learned a few valuable lessons:  1) If there are any electrical cables buried under ground in your garden make sure you know where they are or you could die and 2) Always make sure you know where all the water pipes are in your walls before drilling any holes.  Neither one of these two lessons will help save your life in the event of a Zombie Apocalypse but they will save you a shit load of money.  Which is always a good thing.

Till next time.

How many are too many?

My husband is understandably anxious.  You see my obsession with getting a alpacas and/or a gay donkey must by now be haunting his dreams.  Waking up in a cold sweat after dreaming that our property was transformed into a fully fledged zoo, us drowning in animal dung and being in violation of almost all municipal bylaws relating to animals would stress out most people.  But not me.  I get super excited by the mere thought of it.

Look I know I may have a problem.  Even my therapist told me last week that he does not feel he is equipped to treat me.  Not many are, but what is wrong with loving and collecting animals, especially when you take better care of them than most people do their own biological children.  It’s not like I am harming anyone, apart from my brother-in-law who no longer comes to our house because he is allergic to the bunnies.  But there are pills for that and I have a stockpile seeing as I am the one who is allergic to planet earth and sometimes people.  After having had some time to reflect on my ever expanding menagerie while cleaning the bunny mansion I did ask myself the question – how many animals are too many?

At first when I started writing this blog post I decided to coherently interrogate this issue in order to come to an objective and logical conclusion.  Then I got bored.  So I decided fuck it!  Objectiveness and logic are for pussies.  So I decided to deal with this blog post by way of example.  You see it is very difficult for some people to see the world through my eyes because I sometimes have a more, how shall I put it, unconventional way of looking at things.  For example, where some people think the crooked teeth of a alpacas are ugly, I find it an enduring quality.  Some people are disturbed by the amount of poop bunnies can generate, I see it as a business opportunity.  Bunny poop really is a great fertilizer after all.  If you don’t believe me I will send you some in the mail or you can just buy yourself a bunny.  But I digress…

As you my dear readers know by now hubby and I have five cats, two bunnies, a tortoise and we may still or may not have a fish.  It is difficult to tell with the fish as we rarely see him because he lives in a constant state of fear and is always watching out for Killer Pussy who wants to eat him.  I won’t lie; having so many animals is a lot of work.  The bunnies alone have three litter boxes.  The cats also have three litter boxes and the garden and sometimes the bathroom sink.  Our oldest cat has also recently developed urinary incontinence and has peed on the floor a couple of times.  Don’t judge her, she is old.  So many Saturdays we are knee deep on bunny poop, pee and cat shit.  But I don’t mind because I love them.

However, our animals do sometimes do things that annoy me.  Every so often I come home from work to find a massacre has occurred in our bedroom.  One or possibly two of our cats like to catch birds and kill and then eat them on our bed.  It usually looks like a scene out of a horror movie but instead of human bodies it is birds.  The whole of the bed would be covered in feathers, blood and the odd organ or body part.

One time, not so long ago, I came home to find three birds murdered in this way at the same time.  What made that worse, apart from the fact that there was more than one, was the fact that whoever killed them then went and strategically hid body parts around the house.  It took me two days to find them all.  There were body parts in my study, all the bathrooms, my slippers, work shoes, on the couch and the kitchen to mention but a few places.  It took me about half an hour to vacuum all the feathers up which clogged up the vacuum cleaner which I had to clean multiple times.  I gagged a few times while the cats watched me and judged me.  Probably thinking “What the fuck is his problem?  We come bearing gifts and he says thank you by screaming at us and throwing up.  Ungrateful asshole! ”But it not just the cats, the bunnies are a whole different story.

Bunnies are adorable and their personalities are really comical, but this is just a ruse.  You see bunnies are super intelligent animals and super destructive and this combination can cause you some real headaches around the house.  They hide behind their adorableness whenever they are in trouble and they know when they are being naughty or doing something wrong.  They know but they don’t care and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.  When you tell at them “NO” they will ignore you.  If you shove them away from chewing the carpet they will jump onto the couch and chew on the scatter cushions.

Bunnies are stubborn.  So you learn to compromise by providing them with acceptable alternatives to their destructive behavior.  Instead of chewing on the carpet they are allowed to chew on those Ethiad Airways blankets we stole.  Instead of chewing on the scatter cushions they are allowed to chew on toilet paper rolls, scrunched up papers and a variety of other toys.  At any given moment our house looks like we have a toddler living with us as there are acceptable chewing toys scattered throughout the house.  It beats having to rewire the surround sound system, replacing iPhone chargers, buying new remote controls and a new carpet.  However, it is not just their destructive behavior that makes them high maintenance pets; their potty training also posed a challenge.

It took us a couple of months and getting peed on a few times to potty train our bunnies.  They are now exclusively using their litter boxes to pee and decided that hubby’s chaise is their new communal latrine used for pooping.  It’s not a perfect arrangement but it beats them shitting on the couch.  Unfortunately the odd accident still happens.  Like last week when one bunny was playing on a scatter cushion next to me and all of a sudden he stood still as if he had seen a ghost.  Then I saw that he was peeing and he had this “What the fuck did I just do?” expression on his face.  Clearly it was not an intentional pee but it was an uncomfortable situation for the both of us and the scatter cushion.

And then there is the tortoise.  She is stoic, opinionated and a Diva.  Of all our animals she is the least work.  She goes about her business, don’t particularly pay attention to anyone and pretty much ignores us unless it is dinner time.  She has her routine which she made clear from the start is not to be fucked with.   The only issue we have is when she needs to take her vitamins.  Then her Diva shows.  Most times she refuses to take them even if they are hidden in her food.  She would eat around them and if one should end up in a mouth full she would spit it out.  So I had to resort to force feeding her.  It really isn’t very pleasant for either of us, but it is good for her and she knows it but she doesn’t need to like it.  At least it only happens once every two weeks and when it happens we both feel a little dirty and ashamed afterwards.

As you can see I love my animals.  I must admit that when I had my initial epiphany on extreme menageries I was high on white vinegar fumes and possibly wasn’t thinking clearly.  After all bunny pee is potent shit and the pee-vinegar combo can have an intoxicating effect.  My conclusion is that you only have too many animals once you can no longer afford them and no longer have room in your heart to love them.  Hubby can also relax because I will never do anything that is not in an animal’s best interest.  When I do get my alpacas and gay donkey we will have a property with the space to accommodate then.  My Zoo will happen one day and it will be the gayest zoo in the world!  Admit it; you are going to be so jealous.  Now go back to work and stop looking at kittens and porn on the internet.  Or better yet, go feed your cat.

Till next time.