Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Pet shops should be banned

Will I ever live to see the day when animals have rights? It actually horrifies me going into a pet shop and I'm surprised that they are legal. Perhaps I'm simply too sensitive, and have unrealistic expectations on how living creatures should be treated.

Seeing birds in cages breaks my heart. Imagine if you had wings that you could never use? Imagine living in a cage for your whole life? I don't think that people see animals as anything more than  animated colourful objects to add to their homes.

I know that many people love animals and keep them in their homes because it brings them joy and that they do take care of them. However, I still can't believe in my heart that any bird could ever be happy living in a cage when it is denied the ability to fly. When I was four years old my mom had a budgie and I hated seeing it in it's cage. I felt that it communicated to me that it wished to be released. So I opened the cage and it flew away. Sadly it went out the window and was never seen again, which is really quite cruel as it wouldn't have had a chance to ever survive outside. Especially not in the winter.

But I digress. I honestly believe that pet shops should not sell live animals. Imagine if you could go to the store and buy a person? Oh, there would be outrage! Imagine seeing a baby in a glass cage with a metal floor and it was banging on the wall screaming for some attention! This would never happen in the Western world. Why not? What is so different from a human and an animal?

What makes us God? What gives us the right to abduct innocent animals from the wild and place them in cages? What gives us the right to abuse them, torture them, eat them, experiment on them, buy them, sell them, and throw them away when we don't want them anymore?

How are so many people unable to have compassion for animals? I suppose given how we treat each other it isn't surprising that we treat animals the way we do. But we do set a basic standard for human rights and we have organizations to help people such as the United Nations and Amnesty International. There are many organizations that aim to protect animals, but ultimately most people eat animals so until that changes people probably aren't going to be able to see animals as being equal to us.

Animals should be allowed to live a natural and normal life without us killing them. There should be ways to test medications without killing and torturing animals, isn't that a bit primitive in this day and age? There has been a lot of research that shown that many animals that are tested on will not respond to drugs the same way as humans (duh, we're not the same species!) which could cause delays in cures. How is it that we can't have computers doing the testing? Then in final stages test on volunteers.

Most people live in a bubble and are completely unaware of the gross and disgusting way animals are treated across the planet.

You like to wear fur? Did you know that the animals are often abducted from their wild and natural home, and then while they are still alive they get to have an electric probe shoved up their ass so that they are electrocuted from the inside out. Apparently this preserves the fur. Would you ever do that to your baby? To your mother? To your house cat or dog? Then why would you ever wear fur? I can't believe it's legal.

You like to eat meat? Love to eat chicken? Wow, if only you knew how these beautiful creatures are treated!!! Baby chicks are thrown into the garbage if they are male because they can't lay eggs, so are therefore worthless.

Have a look at the  PETA website if you have balls http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/chickens.aspx. If you eat animals, then you are a cruel abuser. Only instead of doing the damage yourself you are paying people to do it for you. That makes you no better or worse than an assassin. Only instead of just putting a bullet into the back of someones head, you condone allowing the creature to be brutally treated for its entire life and then finally at the end of it's miserable life, murdered.

Buying pets from the pet store is also cruel. You are now supporting puppy mills where dogs are imprisoned in a cage for their whole life and their only purpose is to breed. There are so many dirty and overcrowded mills that there is no way to know where your new little puppy has come from. The SPCA work really hard to save animals and we owe it to society to support them and to buy animals form them instead.

Oh, but you mean you can't get a pure bred? Too fucking bad! Do you only hang out with pure bred humans? Someone that you can trace their genetic history for centuries to prove that they are 100% German, or whatever? That would be racist.  Well so is rejecting a beautiful animal waiting to be loved just because he or she doesn't have the right genetic make up. We love people of all colours shapes and sizes and we should do the same for animals. Worst of all, pure bred animals often have genetic defects and are more apt to develop debilitating illnesses when they are older.

Seeing cute little bunny rabbits at the store makes me sick! Do you know how many people abandon their bunnies once they aren't so cute and little anymore and are chewing on their furniture? The average time a person will keep a rabbit is about year, after that they get dumped at the SPCA. They aren't pets for kids contrary to what most people believe. http://www.rabbit.org/easter/ . Do your research!

What makes me more angry and sick than pet stores is seeing lobsters at the supermarket!!!!!!!!!! How anyone can walk past and not feel like they are about to burst into tears is beyond me. I see them in the tank, and know how cold that water is, and see their poor little claws held shut with rubber bands, and how they are all piled on top of each other like they don't even matter at all! Each and every lobster has a right to live! People buy them, and then toss them into a pot of boiling water WHEN THEY ARE STILL ALIVE!!!! How would you like to see your best friend or your mother tossed into a pot of boiling water while they are still alive! Why can't we see the cruelty in that?

Friday, March 23, 2012

My cat has crystals

My beautiful and amazing feline companion has crystals. I've feared the illness since we got him, and prayed he'd never get it.

I changed his diet about a month ago to something called California Natural. It had a lot of the same ingredients as the Science Diet Natures Best we were feeding him before. The first ingredient was chicken, and it looked to be a good food. I should have done the research, not that it probably would have made a difference as I did read a bit about the food after we bought it and I couldn't find anything negative about it.

I also stopped giving the cats wet food for about two weeks as I had run out and was too lazy to get more. So really, I'm pretty sure that this illness could have been avoided and I feel pretty guilty. On top of that, I have been neglecting the cat litter for the last few months. We have two cats and two litter boxes and I have only been emptying them once a week.

My other cat seems fine, and I am now cleaning the litter box every day making sure that he is peeing as I am now paranoid.

My wonderful cat friend Gayden has now been at the vet for a week with a blockage. They had to hook him up to an I.V and had a catheter in him for a few days. He is peeing on his own now which is good, but he has great difficulty doing it, it takes him ages to get even a squirt out and he does not do nice long streams.

So therefore he can't come home, as he is really not better yet. The whole thing has been an absolute nightmare, for the cat and for us. I was so sick with worry that I couldn't eat and started losing weight. But worse, seeing what my little fur friend has to go through breaks my heart.

He spends most of his waking hours shifting from his bed to his litter. Yesterday he just peed wherever as I guess the feeling of needing to go pee doesn't go away and nothing was happening in the litter so he just stood in his bed instead. So so sad. He's normally so clean and would never pee outside his box at home.

I can tell he's really frustrated at his situation. The first few days he was calm and affectionate, but you could tell he had discomfort. Now he's still friendly but when we visit him he spends the whole time either eating (we hold the bowl to his face as it's hard for him to eat wearing that protective plastic hood) and peeing in the litter (or rather, squirting small amounts).

He should be a lot further along in his recovery and sadly it's just taking a long time. I really hope that it isn't an infection!

It's also proving to be extremely expensive. The initial treatment for the first couple of days was estimated at approx. $2000. Then after that, it was going to be $250 a day. So as of today we're at about $3500. The vet said last night that he's going to need a few more days and maybe as long as another week! That would bring the total to over $5000.

As I said, it's been an absolute nightmare.

I really really miss him so much! The house feels so different without him here. I have another cat, Calvin, who's the same age as Gayden but he's not quite as friendly or spunky. We actually got him as a companion for Gayden as he was so demanding and needy we thought a friend would help.

When we first got Gayden, he was a few months old. My mom's neighbour found him in a cardboard box on her back porch. She was the neighbourhood cat lady and had about 15 of her own. She had a huge heart when it came to animals (and people too) and she would never turn an animal away. She used to even take in strays and get them treated at vets and then re-home them. She called my mom up one day and told her that she had a little kitten that I might want.

To be honest, I really didn't want any pets! I had a dog for 13 years when I was younger, we got him when I was nine years old and when he died it was the most devastating thing I had ever had to deal with. I cried every day for three months, and to this day 13 years later I can STILL cry about it! I didn't cry that hard or for that long when my grand mother died. So I was pretty reluctant to go through that again, as I get overly attached to my animals.

I was also enjoying my life without pet fur. For all of my teen years black clothes always looked terrible on me because they would be covered in fur. I liked that my house stayed cleaner longer and that there wasn't any fur anywhere. Plus, I hate cat litter. I find it really gross having to clean it.

My boyfriend wanted cats. He said that he really missed having cats and couldn't understand why I didn't want any. When I told him about my reasons he said that he'd clean the litter. Famous last words.

We went over to visit the kitten and when I saw my boyfriends face as he held the kitten in his hand, I knew we were going to get it. We didn't even need to talk about it, it was so natural that he'd come home with us. Love at first sight I guess. We went to the pet store and got all the supplies we needed and then took him home with us.

The first thing we noticed about this cat was that he had an insane amount of energy! I had never had a kitten before, so this was all new to me! He would run around and around chasing whatever we provided for him until he would start panting and then just collapse from exhaustion! I actually thought he might just drop dead, as I had never seen a cat pant before!

He became quite attached to us quickly and soon he was following me everywhere. Like, I'd go to the bathroom upstairs and he'd follow me. I'd go back downstairs, he'd follow me. Wherever I went, if I stood still long enough, he'd be there right beside me.

Most people just think of cats as animate objects. Cute, cuddly, decorative pieces of home decor that you can interact with. They are, however family members!

Gayden has the most adorable little habits that entertain me, fill me with love and at times annoy me. He faithfully greets me at the door every time I come home from where ever I've gone, even if it's only a few minutes. Sometimes he's not at the door when I get home, because he's somewhere in the house sleeping, but within a few seconds he'll appear looking a bit disheveled like he just woke up.

He still follows me around the house a lot. Whenever I have a shower he runs upstairs to see me, and when I get out he likes to lick my toes and rub his body against my legs. When my boyfriend gets home from work he gets very excited and jumps up on the dining room table to get a rub on his back. He loves his rubs. At night he has a good night ritual where he runs upstairs when we are getting ready for bed and he jumps into the bath tub. This is because one time when we got back from a long vacation he was shedding a lot of fur so I got him in tub and gave him a crazy rub down to get rid of the excess fur. Well, he absolutely loved it! He was purring like crazy and ever since he waits expectantly in the tub for more rubs.

He also got very interested in a plastic syringe I had to use for my teeth, it squirts water and he very much wanted to play with it. I would squirt water in the tub and he would try to catch the water streams, then try to swat the syringe out of my hand!

We got him to ride a skate board. He just simply got on it and it moved and he stayed. It's pretty adorable. Then we slide him back and forth across the room and he just lies on the board looking down at the wheels as if trying to figure out how it all works.

If he was a person, he would definitely be a scientist. He loves to learn things and figure things out. He is the most incredibly patient being I think I've ever met. I give up easily and get frustrated. As does the other cat, Calvin. Provide Gayden with some sort of mystery to solve, something he needs to open, and his eyes light up and he gets to work. He takes little breaks and attacks the problem from many different angles. He thinks outside the box.

We had a squirrel in the house once, well in the walls that is. I couldn't figure out where it was but I was sure it was above the kitchen ceiling. Gayden knew exactly where the squirrel was. He sat in the bathtub and stared at the faucet. I thought he was being weird, I couldn't figure out why he was doing that, thought he'd got it all wrong in his head about what was going on. As it turned out, there was a large amount of space under the tub, almost the size of a small room and that was where the squirrel was.

Gayden opens the kitchen cupboards, which is both adorable and frustrating. He simply stands on his hind legs, puts his paws on the handles and leans back. It's pretty crazy. So we had to make "locks" out of coat hangers to keep him out. He's like a magnet for any cupboard that's open. Whenever open my bedroom closet he's there. Especially if I am trying to figure out what to wear, he'll use the opportunity to try and go inside.

He also walks on a leash. Not very well, I must say. He used to, when he was about six months old. We used to run around outside and he'd run with us. Then we got the other cat, and leash trained him and since then for some reason when we go outside with him on a leash he just likes to sit there. However, if we take the leash off he runs off at full speed. Very sneaky. Though he's pretty predictable about where he'll run to so he's pretty easy to catch.

One of the strange things about this cat is how bad he is at jumping. He's a bit chubby, but not to the point where you would think he would have trouble moving. However, he really has trouble jumping to high places. Calvin is like a gymnast, he moves with such grace and ease. Gayden is super clumsy and just sort of flops around.

He has such a huge person(cat)ality. Sometimes he just lies on his back on the floor stretched out. He knows that I make a big fuss over how cute he is when he does it. He usually does it when he's beside himself with boredom, which is about every day.

That's part of the problem. They are indoor cats, and it's really hard to keep them happy and busy. Let's face it, they are prisoners and sometimes I let them go outside supervised for a few minutes, but then it's back into the house. They really don't get a lot of exercise. Calvin is quite good about only eating what he needs for fuel and then doing some sprints throughout the day. Gayden on the other hand would just lie there and eat all day if you let him. He just really likes food. It takes his mind off of how bored he really is.

I feel like I've let him down, and not been the best owner I could possibly be. I let my cat get chubby, I've ignored him when he's been bored even though I have owed it to them to try and make their lives more enjoyable. Now the poor little guy is sitting in a cage hooked up to an I.V unable to urinate properly and just squirting all over the place. Today is the 10th day in that cage. I miss him so much.