welcome to petacular: the new PET thread

[mixed cats]

Linus has gotten super cuddly lately. It is awesome, except for the gooey face.

[Greg Nog]

Just washed the cats' food and water bowls, and added some ice cubes to the water bowl.  Caliban seems pretty down with this development!

[mixed cats]

The cats play with them.. My ferrets would take them out and try to hide them!

[diesel_powered]

Whenever I get ice, the cats come running to catch any strays that may escape the toy side of the food and toy dispenser.

Also, judging by how glued they are to me now, the cats became worried that I left for good sometime during the 30 hours I was gone this weekend.

[ralphvirus]

So, I don't really post around here anymore, but I do hang about in the shadows quietly...in any case, I got a dog in December, and her name is Salem and she is unstoppably adorable.  I don't know if links to my facebook page are gonna work here, but we'll try a few anyway.







She's a rescue from Northeast Animal Shelter, a big no-kill shelter in Salem, Mass.  NEAS gets truckloads of dogs from shelters across the southeast who cannot find homes for all the dogs that they intake.  Salem is originally from Virginia, and is part Jack Russel, part Beagle, we think, though who really knows and we don't really care.

[milesofsparks]

what an adorable pup!  do you know how old she is?

[ralphvirus]

what an adorable pup!  do you know how old she is?

Yeah, she's about 11 months right now.  Her birthday is June 18.  She's allergic to chicken and beef and just went through a month long mite treatment that was causing a bad rash on her back legs.  She's very quiet and barks only when I get her really riled up.  She's had a tough life, but doesn't act like it at all.  She's spoiled completely rotten (by me) but is remarkably well behaved despite it.  I've been waiting for almost 10 years to get a dog (couldn't due to various living arrangements) and she has been worth the wait and then some. 

[elpollodiablo]

Yay for adopting rescues! Folks who do so are the best kind of people.

Also you should post more.

[Greg Nog]

That is an excellent little lady!

[dumbfish]

Big feet for a girl her age.
Shots one and three are way huggable.

[Maaik]

AWWWWWWWWW

[ralphvirus]

Big feet for a girl her age.
Shots one and three are way huggable.

She's only about 20 lbs and I don't think she's getting much bigger than that.  Here's a few more.

[G.C.R]

Mr virus! I want to hug your puppy. The eyes squeezed shut photo is gorgeous.

[clare]

Awww, she's lovely! I like a snuggly dog (though not mine - he weighs about twice what Salem does, but still thinks he'd like to be a lap dog sometimes - I mean, I love him, but not snuggled on my lap)

[coldforge]

my cat is kneading my throat currently

[milesofsparks]

my cat is kneading my throat currently

you mean trying to strangle you with tiny paws?

[mixed cats]

This morning I woke up to Linus peering in my face intently and poking me in the eye with his paw. Thanks for worrying that I was dead, buddy.

[bethany_m]

This morning I woke up to Linus peering in my face intently and poking me in the eye with his paw. Thanks for worrying that I was dead, buddy.

I lived with cat that did that every morning when she wanted to be fed.  She didn't poke me in the eye, just poked my cheek with her paw when she wanted me out of bed. It was both cute and annoying.

[dumbfish]

My girlfriend's cat does the same, a series of quick chin-taps. It's cute if you think they're politely asking for the day to get started, less cute if you think they're checking if it's safe to begin feeding.

[mixed cats]

Linus' expression defaults at "concerned" when he's not squinting:

so it's hard to suspect him of malice!

[Greg Nog]

EEEEEEEE

[Greg Nog]

So the ladyfriend works as a vet tech at an animal hospital's emergency room, and treats pets and whatnot.  Occasionally, people will also bring in injured wild animals, which is what happened the other day; someone found a tiny baby wild rabbit that seemed to be half-dead, and didn't know what to do, so they dropped it off at the animal hospital and left. 

Naturally, with no one to pay for its care and with it being a wild animal, everyone at the ER was of a mind to euthanize it.  But my ladyfriend was like, "I'll take it!  Maybe I can nurse it back to health, and then either find someone who wants to adopt a bunny or turn it loose into the woods again, depending on how human-friendly it ends up being."

As it turns out, the bunny's a dick!  Which is good, as that bodes well for its eventual release back into the woods.  In the meantime, though, it's got a warm shoebox in which to become more vivacious, and kitten-milk-replacement being fed to it every few hours by rubber-tipped syringe. 

So the bunny seems to hate the kitten milk, and my lady was like, "Here, try this, maybe it tastes awful."  I was like, "I have no idea what kitten milk's supposed to taste like, but I guess I can see if I find it palatable?"

As it turns out, kitten milk fucking sucks!  It tastes all dusty and sour and nasty!  Between the little dude's response, and the fact that rabbit milk is supposed to be more dense than cat milk, we ended up mixing a bit of heavy cream into it.  The rabbit seemed to like it much more that way.  We also gave it a tiny bit of lettuce, just in case the bunny wanted to gnaw on something green.

Anyway, here he is, in hands to show scale:



And here he is being fed:

[Greg Nog]

Oh, and since the once-and-future wild rabbit isn't technically a pet, I will also add a photo of Caliban Party Ghost wearing the lady's headband:



HE LOVES IT

[milesofsparks]

bunny!  and Caliban is getting big!

I thought the deal with kitten milk was its lack of lactose, with a few additional vitamins and whatnot.  can bunnies digest lactose?  you could try Lactaid.

[jess]

Kittens can digest lactose (all milk, including cat milk, has lactose), so I assume kitten milk substitute would have it. Adult cats can't. I think you are thinking about the stuff sold to people to feed their adult cats, not stuff meant to feed kittens without mothers.