Cassie in Costume

Allow me a short interlude as I entertain you with pictures of Cassie in costume:

Happy New Year!

Remember that last post I wrote, all about how a few chewed up Christmas ornaments didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things?

Well I had to think really hard about that when I walked into my house one night after work and discovered the wreck of our Christmas tree and all of its ornaments flung hither and yon, from here to hell, all over the place. I wandered in a daze into the heart of the mess and winced as glass crunched under my foot. Beaded garland lay in chewed strands on the couch. My husband's wooden Santa that he'd had for years was a masticated pile of sticks. The silver star that had so proudly crowned the top of our white tree was a scratched wreck. And in the middle of it all, Cassie wagged her tail and tried to kiss me hello.

Okay I admit it, I was mad. Beyond mad. Angry. Unable to think clearly I whipped out my cell phone and took a picture, then texted it to my husband with a few expletives typed underneath it. He responded with this sardonic phrase: "It's the most wonderful time of the year!"

I laughed. I so did NOT want to laugh. But I did.

I laughed even more when I discovered that 24 candy canes, in all their plastic wrapping, had disappeared. Cassie's breath was very fresh that evening.

A friend of mine recently said that animals have much to teach us. And they help us alter our expectations of any given situation. Who says that Christmas means having a beautiful tree, full of pristine ornaments that no one can touch? Who was the moron who put food on it in the first place? And so some of the presents got chewed up a little...they were still okay, even the box of tea I bought my mom.

So I laughed. And I swept up the glass. And I vacuumed. And I tossed all the non-destroyed ornaments into a box and stuck it in my office. I was able to put the tree back in an upright position and unbend all the branches that stuck out at wrong angles. And then I poured myself a drink and sat on the couch with Cassie snuggled into my side.

The Gift

I came home from work the other night to find two more ornaments from the Christmas tree chewed to pieces in the middle of the living room rug.

"What is this?" I asked Cassie in a stern voice, pointing at the plastic shards of a blue icicle. Yes, I know that if you don't correct a dog immediately after they do something like this, they quickly lose the memory, since they have no concept of time, and they have no idea why you're yelling at them. I just wanted to see how she'd respond.

She responded by wagging her tail so hard it seemed like it would fly off her rear end. She gave me her biggest shark smile and tried to leap into my arms to lick my face.

While it irritates (and okay, sometimes really enrages) me to come home and find destruction of one sort or another strewn about my house, I get over it pretty quickly. I understand Cassie's limits (she hates being left alone, she gets bored easily, she acts out when she hasn't had enough exercise), and I also understand that Kurt and I are the leaders of this pack and it's up to us to take precautions, such as placing the "good" ornaments higher up on the tree where she can't reach them or making sure the Christmas cookies are covered in five layers of tinfoil and set up on a top shelf. As dogs go, Cassie's a really good one.

And last year at this time we thought we were going to lose her.

The problem arose in August 2008, when we brought Cassie in to have some fatty tumors removed. One of the tumors was about the size of a tennis ball right in her armpit, and we feared that if it grew any larger it would disturb the nerves in her leg. The vet drew blood and gave her a checkup before giving us the green light for surgery. It wasn't until after the surgery that I learned Cassie's "liver levels" were high. This worried me, but surgery was so hard on Cassie that I was distracted with her post-op care. We learned that she didn't react to medications well at all and we even had to resort to the dreaded "cone" because she wouldn't leave the incision in her armpit alone.

Talk about stress! So we were ready for a fun, relaxing holiday season when November rolled around. We got through Thanksgiving, set up all our Christmas stuff, and I made plans to travel north for a creative writing residency in the new year. Then, we noticed Cassie was drinking a lot of water. Like, a gallon of water every hour. She needed to go out and pee non-stop. This was weird enough, but then...she stopped eating. Cassie NEVER stops eating. She would eat all day long every day if she had the opportunity. Along with the constant water-drinking and non-eating, she would drag herself to the couch and lie there in a lethargic stupor.

At first, when we got her back to the vet, he suspected a urinary tract infection because of all Cassie's water inhalation and her constant peeing. We were sent home with an antibiotic and some acidophilus supplements. They also drew more blood, and a few days later we got a disturbing call: Cassie's liver chemistry was even higher than it was in August.

"Did she eat anything toxic that you know of? Drink anything poisonous?" the vet questioned, and when we answered no to everything, it was clear that he was stumped.

The next course of action the vet decided on was to prescribe Cassie some Metronidazole. A description of this drug is as follows: "Metronidazole is an antibiotic which is commonly used to treat protozoal infections and anaerobic bacterial infections. It also has anti-inflammatory effects in the bowel. Metronidazole is bactericidal; it kills bacterial microorganisms by disrupting their DNA. It is rapidly absorbed from the GI tract, metabolized by the liver and excreted in the urine and the feces..." (Forney).

Okay, I thought. It's not a UTI after all; the vet thinks she ate something that's causing a bacterial infection. We can handle this. The drugs will wipe out whatever is making her sick and she'll get better. I feel it prudent to tell you that I have issues with the use of Metronidazole in animals. In a future entry I will discuss how I'm sure this drug caused our cat Piper's epilepsy. Suffice it to say, "Metronidazole is not FDA-approved for use in veterinary medicine, although this drug is commonly used in dogs" (Vetinfo). In spite of my misgivings, we went ahead and started giving Cassie the pills; after all, the vets are the ones with the degrees, right?

Cassie got worse. She started whining whenever we looked at her. "Try to get her to eat something, anything," the vet advised. We cooked her chicken. We tried steak. She didn't want any of it. Desperate, I handed her a slice of bread. She took it in her mouth and wandered off into the living room, where I later found the discarded bread on a couch cushion.

Her next blood panel showed sky-high liver chemistry. Like in the danger-zone. Cassie was essentially going into liver failure.

"I want to get an ultrasound of her liver, make sure there's nothing there," the vet told us.

"There" was the vet's polite term for "cancer." In a daze I went about my days. I attended my work Christmas luncheon like a zombie, talked endlessly about the problem to anyone who would listen, couldn't relax when I was home. You must understand that Cassie is my first dog, an experience that has been full of love and frustration and life lessons and deep, deep bonding. Cassie is my baby, whether she is human or canine. The possibility of losing her felt like my heart was being ripped from my chest. It hurt. It hurt to see her suffer. It hurt to be so helpless. I remember sitting in the living room. Cassie dragged herself to the love seat, where Kurt was, and climbed into his lap. It was obvious she wanted comfort. He held her like that as she fell asleep, and the strain on his arms wasn't that much since she was rapidly losing weight.

A few anxious days later Cassie received her ultrasound, which showed no cancer. Another blood panel finally revealed that she tested positive for leptospirosis, a bacteria that is spread to humans and canines through infected animal tissue, urine, or infected water. Many of the symptoms include excessive drinking, loss of appetite, depression, and liver failure. We live near the Illinois Prairie Path, and along an open section called Wild Meadows Trace, we allow Cassie to run and explore off the leash. It is very likely that she decided to drink from a stagnant puddle and picked up the leptospirosis from there.

We stopped the Metronidazole and started Cassie on an aggressive round of the antibiotic doxycycline, along with intravenous fluid. By Christmas Day she was eating, sleeping, perking up, and even enjoying her new bone from Santa. We were many thousand dollars and sleepless nights later, but my baby had recovered. When some of the terror and anxiety lifted, I began to wonder. Did Cassie have leptospirosis all along, and we made it 100 times worse by feeding her Metronidazole? After doing some research I discovered this: "Due to its tendency to disrupt the liver process and cause liver failure, [Metronidazole] should be avoided or used with extreme caution in animals with preexisting liver or kidney damage" (Vetinfo). When I brought up my theory to the vet, I was shot down and told they hand out this drug "like candy." My response: that doesn't mean it's safe.

Here's what I know for sure: I will never, ever agree to give this medication to one of my pets ever again, and if by some weird act of God I'm required to take it, a lot of heavy thinking is going into my decision.

When all of this was going on last Christmas, all I wanted was for my dog to be healthy again, to have just a few more years with her. I got that wish, and I have to say the experience has changed my outlook a lot. I haven't even thought much about presents this year. What I really want is to be safe at home, baking cookies and looking out the window with Kurt and Cassie, watching the snow come down. To be in the company of my healthy, happy loved ones is all I want today, and tomorrow, and forever.

This is the best gift. And I will keep on remembering that, even when I come home to sixteen more chewed-up ornaments on the floor....


Works Cited:

~Barbara Forney, VMD. "Metronidazole For Veterinary Use." http://www.wedgewoodpharmacy.com/monographs/metronidazole.asp

~Canine Leptospirosis. http://marvistavet.com/html/body_canineleptospirosis.html

~Vetinfo. "Controlling Parasites With Metronidazole for Dogs." http://www.vetinfo.com/controlling-parasites-metronidazole.html

Joy

It took me a long time to find joy.

And now I find that it's the simple things--a scented candle, a hot cup of coffee, a good book, a certain slant of sunlight--that inspire my happiness. It also comes from giving to others--finding that perfect book for a second grader who is so overwhelmed with happiness she can't speak, cracking a joke with an elderly man at the copy machine, making myself count backwards when helping a difficult patron, knowing everyone has their pain and their heartbreak and their own ways of dealing with it all. I do believe in karma.

With my little family--my husband, my cats and my dog--and in my little red brick house is usually where I want to be most. Up until a few years ago, I'd be hard pressed to tell you what I found uplifting. Now the easiest way for me to describe joy is to look at Cassie when she's running--her pure, unbounded enthusiasm at just being alive and able to race all over the earth.

Having a dog has taught me many things, such as, a little mud isn't gonna kill me. It's also taught me to love my family with all my heart, to relish my meals with every ounce of my soul, to fiercely protect my pack but to meet new friends with openness, to fling decorum to the wind when I sleep, to treat each day as an adventure. And to really, really love exercise.

Almost Giving Up

We brought Cassie home from a local pet store when she was 10 weeks old. Three days before we purchased her, she had been drugged, stuck on a plane, and shipped to Illinois from some unknown location in Arkansas. At the time we had no idea that buying animals from pet stores was not really legit. If the animals sold were harmed or produced from puppy mills, they wouldn’t have "papers," right? And papers encased in a baby blue folder were just what the teenaged worker at the pet store handed me after I shelled out $750.

All the papers said, really, was that Cassie was a female weimaraner pup from Arkansas and that she met the AKC standards for the breed. Nothing else.

We had much to learn about rearing a pup, and not just behavioral training. I remember standing in the backyard with our new baby, watching her totter around on her fat puppy legs. The neighbor who lived kitty-corner from us (and who had some really obnoxious, non-friendly Rottweilers) asked what breeder sold us Cassie.

“Oh, we didn’t get her from a breeder,” I said. “We bought her at a pet store.”

The woman clung to her fence and looked aghast. “A pet store! Shame on you! Don’t you know those animals all come from puppy mills? You just supported that horrible practice!”

Confused, feeling guilty and not really sure why, I scooped up my puppy and brought her into the house.

We were lucky. Cassie had no health problems—strong heart beat, all her limbs worked, all her internal organs functioned, and she already understood that when she went outside, she should poop. The only physical issue she had was kennel cough, easily treated.

Something worse was wrong with Cassie.

When we put her in her crate and went to work, she screamed all day long, to the point where neighbors thought she was dying and tried to break into the house. While in her crate, she peed all over her blanket and pillow—repeatedly. If we gave her water, she spilled it. If we slipped in a treat, she crushed it under her paws. We tried playing classical music for her while we were gone, and when that failed, we turned to country. Even Shania Twain didn't soothe her.

The problem extended outside of her crate. If Kurt and I happened to be standing outside and Cassie was inside, she would scream and howl and throw her body at the windows, trying to reach us. Once, when Kurt was shoveling snow, Cassie scaled the fence around our backyard so she could get to him. She wouldn’t go outside unless one of us went with her, and at night, when we put her back in her crate and went to bed, she whined all night long.

Cassie had separation anxiety.

From what I understand, this is somewhat common in Weimaraners, being that they are incredibly intelligent companion animals who want to be with you ALL THE TIME. But I also had suspicions. Suspicions that Cassie had been taken from her mother too early (she suckled in her sleep the first month or so that we owned her). Urinating in her crate was what she knew how to do, having spent much of her life in one. When she was small enough, Kurt and I took turns holding her against our chests, where she would fall asleep to the vibration of our heartbeats. It was almost as if she craved the physical and emotional contact and feared with every inch of her being that it would be ripped away from her again, at any moment.

That was nine years ago. We worked diligently to help Cassie get over the anxiety, and she is much more mellow at nine years of age. It’s easy to forget how hard it all was, coping with a dog so needy and seemingly so unhappy. And with her separation anxiety came all sorts of behavioral issues—she’d scratch up the door if one of us was on the other side of it. She ripped out the screen in the backdoor in her hysteria trying to get back in. We couldn’t travel because we couldn’t leave her with anyone else. Add all that on top of regular puppy mischievousness and the Kallios were headed for a nervous breakdown.

One afternoon, I sat on the floor in the loft, on the phone with Kurt. We’d been hinting around the idea that maybe we should throw in the towel and give Cassie up for adoption. Give her to the Weimaraner Rescue, to someone who could handle her better.

“I think it’s the best choice,” Kurt said, and I agreed.

As I hung up the phone, Cassie looked up at me with her bright blue puppy eyes and I started to cry. She was already beginning to lose some of her initial terror—she wagged her tail when we got home; she brought us her toys to hold while she tugged on them, and when she cuddled into you, she did it with her whole heart. Nothing this creature did was half-hearted, and here we were, about to give up on her.

I pulled her into my lap and made the decision that we were hers and she was ours—for better or for worse. I vowed to find a way to make everyone happier, healthier and better.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with puppy mills, they are basically warehouses for mass producing dogs. The puppies are seen as commodities, not as living breathing creatures, and they are treated as such, crammed into small cages which are often piled one on top of the other. Food is scant and vet care is debatable. When females can no longer breed, they are usually killed. These puppies are either sold to pet stores and, more recently, online, and many buyers end up with an animal that has never socialized with humans before; there can be behavioral, temperament, and physical defects. The latest trends in dog breeding, the “designer” puppies like Maltepoos, Chipins, and any other hot new mixed breed of the moment can rack up anywhere between $800 to $1000 a pup for mill operators. And, much like dog fighting, even with growing awareness out there, puppy mills continue to operate. According to an April 13, 2009 article in Newsweek, there are between 5,000 and 10,000 puppy mills in the U.S.

Now that I know about puppy mills and pet stores, I can better understand my neighbor’s horrified comment all those years ago. But I no longer feel guilty. I feel that Kurt and I saved Cassie from an unknown fate. We bettered her little life, but what’s more important is that she bettered ours. For that, $750 was a small price to pay.

Works Cited:
Smalley, Suzanne. “A (Designer) Dog’s Life.” Newsweek. 13 April 2009. 52-55.

Whatever Lola Wants...

You may recall, from the last post, that I’ve never owned a female cat, mostly because I’d heard horror stories: boy cats were sweet and cuddly and loving; girl cats were psychotic. Lola is my five-pound, all-black female Cornish Rex. And I am convinced that if she had the chance, my tiny girl would go completely feral. By fate (accident?) we ended up with Lola, and now, I have to admit there’s something oddly delicious about her ferocity.

The breeder didn’t even know Lola was in the mother cat’s womb; she was a two-ounce blob that popped out after all the other kittens. Obviously Lola was the runt of her litter, an experience that gave her street smarts. To show her displeasure, she growls deep in her throat, accompanied by very bitchy hissing. When her brother Piper invades her turf, she is not above smacking him in the eyeball (she’s also attempted to do this to the landlord's wife). She catches flies in her mouth, nasty putrid ones that are so big she has to chew with her whole head to get them down. She will fight us tooth and nail on the rare (and horrifying) occasion that we have to give her a pill; even restrained in a towel, clamped in my arms, she will still fight opening her jaw, and when one of us finally does manage to pry it open, she glares at you with a hatred so deep you feel your skin withering off your very bones.

We do not let our cats roam the neighborhood, as much as they desire it. In the spring, when we start to open windows, they both crouch on the sills and howl to get out. When we can't take the yowling/screaming/caterwauling anymore, we let them romp in the backyard, where they eat grass, crawl under the deck to smell gross things, chase butterflies, and barf up that grass (usually later, on the bedspread). All of this outdoor activity is supervised. If you don’t keep an eye on them, they will disappear--this includes the dog, Cassie.

[Tangent: Since our yard is not fenced in, we’ve had many escape attempts. Recently, Cassie went outside to do her business, looked at me over her shoulder, and proceeded to creep through the copse of trees and bushes at the west end of the property. In spite of all my yelling at her to come back, she kept going until she appeared in the Hispanic neighbors’ backyard--one street behind us. The poor folks were having a barbecue and I guess Cassie couldn’t stand the scent of charring meat, so she invited herself. As Kurt ran through the yard to retrieve her, I cringed at the sounds of our poor neighbors' startled yelling. Needless to say we weren’t offered any hamburgers. Another time I turned my head for three seconds, lost Piper, and found him a block away in somebody’s open garage. I retrieved him while barefoot and in a nightgown. The point here is, we never leave the kids outside alone].

Early last Friday, I was feeling pretty generous, so I allowed Lola to come out with me and Cassie. We all moved to the driveway, into a patch of sun. I must stop here and explain that we possess a very long, very narrow driveway. The neighborhood came into being in the 50’s, and I often wonder how the old timers backed their gigantic sedans out of these suckers without scraping along the side of the houses. Anyway, there was Lola , rolling on the warm concrete, letting out clipped cries of delight. Then, all of a sudden, she surged to her feet, put back her ears, and shot off down the driveway like a bat out of hell. Her target: the squirrel at the curb.

I took off after her, my mind filled with visions of Lola darting into oncoming traffic. And worse, the damn squirrel was bigger than her; I could only imagine a bloody altercation with claws and teeth and a visit to the ER vet. Luckily, before she reached the squirrel, Lola’s attention was diverted by a group of starlings hanging out in our neighbor Tom’s front yard. She changed course to dodge into the thick of the birds. When they scattered into their air, squawking in disapproval, Lola stopped and looked all around with her eyes wide, almost as if she were thinking, “How the hell did I get over here?” I scooped her up before she could sprint any farther down the street and shuttled her back inside.

When we lived in an old ramshackle house the next town over, Lola used to bring me presents. I'd never before lived in a house that had a rodent problem, and the male cats of my childhood were apparently too domesticated to hunt for their people. I will never forget that first surprise Lola brought to me--Kurt and I were sitting up in the loft (the warmest place in the 8-roomed house) watching TV, and Lola kept yowling and rubbing against my legs. When I finally looked down, I saw the body of a tiny mouse already in the throes of rigor mortis, its brown fur blending almost perfectly with the mottled shag carpet. I was less than pleased at the time--in fact, I think I climbed up on the chair and screamed until Kurt removed the carcass. Lola repeated this gesture many times while we lived there--sometimes the mice were half her size.

Lola has a soft side. Most of the time, she is a little lover and will melt into me when I'm sitting on the couch. But when she's had enough, or when she's overstimulated, look out. The ears go back, the claws come out, and the hind legs start kicking. I admit I usually panic at these times, yelling to Kurt, "Get her off me! GET HER OFF ME!" She's five pounds but she will rip your face off if she needs to. I have no doubt that if an owl or a hawk swooped down on her to carry her away, she'd take the bird's leg with her on her way back to solid ground.

I never knew I could love a little creature so tremendously. Lola is with me constantly, attached to my hip, or "my herpe," as I fondly call her. She sleeps curled into my right armpit at night, under the blankets, and every once in awhile she'll stretch out a little paw and touch my face. She comes when I call her. She tells us what she wants and needs. She is a force to be reckoned with, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Except for when I'm eating tuna fish.

Raisinette and Mellow Fellow

In the last post, you learned how we came to own a weimaraner pup. But let's go back in time and meet the rest of her pack.

When Kurt and I moved in together, I knew we were going to get a kitten. It had been many years since I had a cat around the house, and it literally, physically hurt. I needed to have one sitting on me, lying on my chest, purring, kneading, doing kitty things. It's in my blood (yeah, yeah, Crazy Cat Lady is in my future).

We weren’t planning on getting a fancy cat; all the ones from my childhood were dubbed “alley cats” that we either bought for ten bucks from crappy pet shops or took from friends. AND we wanted only a male, because females were mean (or so I'd heard). One random afternoon in February, almost eleven years ago, we went to a huge cat show. We saw the typical breeds--Persians, Maine Coons, Burmese, Siamese. Then we came across a table with the strangest-looking creatures--they had soft, wavy fur close to their bodies, wedge-shaped heads, gigantic ears, long, long limbs, and features seemingly sculpted after Egyptian cat statues.

"What the hell are those?" I asked Kurt. He was equally repelled and fascinated , so we approached the breeder.

"These--" she began proudly, holding up a calico one--"are Cornish Rex."

She allowed us to pet and hold a few of the cats, which came in an astonishing array of colors. The fur was exquisite to the touch, like crushed velvet. The cats, for all the bustle and noise of the crowd, hardly seemed bothered and let us handle them. The breeder handed us her card and told us that she was expecting a litter in April if we were interested.

We were.

In case you are unfamiliar with the Cornish Rex, allow me to enlighten you. The breed originated in Cornwall in the 50’s, when a barn cat delivered an odd, curly-haired baby. The owner decided to breed the mutated kitty back to its mother, and lo and behold, the Cornish Rex was born. There was apparently a lot of refining and crossing with other breeds like British Shorthairs. The Cornish Rex made it to American shores in 1957, where more refining was done with Oriental Shorthairs and Siamese. The result is a beautifully-bizarre cat with sharp angles, smooth fur, gnarled little whiskers, gigantic eyes, bald pointy ears, back legs longer than the forelegs (the American Cornish Rexes have a torso that is said to be the kitty equivalent to the greyhound). Their temperament is manically friendly—they want to be with you all the time. They are playful well into adulthood, affectionate, run and leap like Olympic gymnasts, and—no lie-are extremely talkative. No, just because they are missing most of their hair does not make them hypoallergenic, although they don’t shed much and they don’t produce as much dander as their full-haired brothers and sisters. Yes, they look weird and totally take you by surprise when you first meet them.

It was an odd experience, ordering a cat the way you might order a pizza: one male, blue-point if possible. Keep in mind I was still operating under the impression that female cats were insane, that they went into heat and shredded your body with their claws, that they avoided any sort of loving touch and instead wanted to rip off your face. Our male cat was due to be born in April; after a couple months, we could go to the breeder’s place and meet him; in August we could pick him up and take him home.

The breeder, “Diane,” lived in St. Charles, a lovely western suburb of Chicago that seemed to take three million years to reach. Finally we turned down a winding road and stopped at a long , low ranch set on an acre of wooded property. We parked, and as we walked up the front sidewalk, a little wedge-head popped up in a side window. Diane let us in and walked us through the kitchen, where we passed approximately fifteen Cornish Rex lounging in various areas—along the back of the kitchen sink, hanging from the spice rack, lying on a floor rug, etc.

Diane told us to have a seat at her sturdy dining room table. We watched as she moved to the couch, leaned over, and scooped up an armful of kittens. After she dropped the first furry batch onto the tabletop, she went back to the couch for another armful. Soon the table was swarming with multicolored kittens, all of them friendly, all of them full of piss and vinegar.

I was delighted and a little startled. I’d never seen so many felines, let alone so many goofy-looking felines , all in one place. I reached out to pet the warm little curly bodies, getting acquainted.

“We had three blues,” Diane told us, from her seat at the head of the table. “But we decided to keep the male for breeding purposes. The other two are females.”

She reached over the moving mass of fur to point at two blue-point kittens who had plopped down for a nap. They were lovely, but—they were female.

“And then we have Mel, that’s short for Mellow Fellow,” Diane continued. I shifted the large mama cat who had launched herself into my arms and looked to where Diane pointed. In the center of the table sat a cream and white kitten, ears too big for its little head, one eye squeezed shut, the other open wide to reveal a copper colored iris.

“He’s a sweet boy but he has a big mouth, just like his papa.”

Our attention was diverted by a tiny black kitten who ran up on little horse legs to Kurt. She stretched out her neck to sniff Kurt’s mouth, then she climbed up onto his shoulder.

“And that’s Raisinette. She’s only two pounds, the runt.”

Raisinette started to lick the back of Kurt’s ear. When Kurt gently pushed her away, she climbed to his other shoulder and went to work on that ear. Some deep desire made me reach out and take the tiny kitten off Kurt. I curled her up in my arms like a newborn, and she blinked up at me, eyes golden and enormous.

This is the one, I thought. But NO! SHE’S FEMALE!

We ended our visit with promises to be in touch, and then the great debate over which kitten to take ensued. Looking back on it, I realize that my decision had already been made—I was in love with the scrawny black female, and I knew we would get her.

As it turned out, Raisinette was Diane’s favorite. The breeder was close to tears as she gave the kitten a final kiss and handed her over. Gripped by a wild impulse, I decided to take Mellow Fellow too, to keep the baby company.

By now, I’m sure you realize their names did not stay Raisinette and Mellow Fellow,which, let's face it, were pretty stupid. Almost immediately they showed their personalities and pretty much named themselves. To this day, whatever Lola wants, Lola gets, and the cat with the copper eyes never shuts up; he never pipes down; he is Piper.

Those rumors about females? They turn out to be true—to a degree. More on that later.

Works Cited:
Fogle, DVM, Dr. Bruce. The New Encyclopedia of the Cat. New York: DK Publishing, Inc., 1997.