Undead.

I watched Pet Semetary last night.

Sleeping with Cats.

The cats sleep wherever they want. Sometimes that's on me.

The Hellions are fine, but occasionally Evilcat decides to sleep on me. Sometimes she suddenly gets offended and claws my face. That's a fun way to wake up.

Sometimes she doesn't seem to notice or care that I'm not Z.

And then we both wake up and come to the same realization at the same time.

The Cat Room.

The tiny dining room off our kitchen is the Cat Room. It didn't start out that this, and it's really all a matter of coincidence. We never intended to have a designated cat room, it just turned out that way.

We never really eat at the dining table, the room itself is super-tiny, and trying to fit more than a couple of people in there is a little silly. We do, however, feed the cats on the table, and although it is tiny, the dining room has two extremely sunny windows that are usually open. Evilcat's litterbox issues and pawprints on the table led to a few more additions.

The stools we keep under the table turned the tablecloth into a perfect place to hide. When the dogs decided to start raiding the litterbox, we put a tall babygate across the door and ended up with this:

It's a perfect dog-free cat habitat, complete with food, water, litterbox, places to hide, and sunbeams. Someday I'm going to add some shelves so they can climb/fall a bit. Yes, the dining room also has a doorway with a rounded top. It is way too cute. (When I'm outside I like to poke the cats through the window screen.)

When Evilcat Almost Died

The end of 2009 sucked for us. A lot. Z got sick, I got Swine Flu, my horse colicked, cars broke down, and we had a disaster a week for almost three months. In the midst of all this, our townhouse was going into foreclosure and the owner was desperately trying to sell it, so we had realtors attempting to show the place and occasionally trying to break in. We were house-hunting and then packing and moving while trying to cope with everything else, and that is probably why we didn't realize that Evilcat had stopped eating until she was very, very sick.

When Evilcat collapsed in the middle of the night we realized something was wrong and rushed her to the state-of-the-art emergency vet. They got her stabilized and hydrated and then came in to talk to us.

Evilcat's food strike had led to fatty liver syndrome, and the only cure was to get her to eat. Although we could convince her to eat one bite from a freshly-opened can of food, it wasn't enough. The vet wanted to surgically implant a tube that would extend from her stomach to an opening in her neck, so we could tube-feed her for the next 8 weeks. This sounded like a recipe for horror and disaster. I had just begun a two-week vacation from work, so I decided to try force-feeding her.

It took a little bit of adjusting, but I quickly figured out that she couldn't spit out wet cat food if it was watered down sufficiently and squirted into the back of her mouth via syringe. If I gave her more than a teaspoon at a time though, she would puke it back up almost immediately. In order to get a can and a half of food into her every 24 hours, I had to pry the cat open and shove food down her every 30 minutes around the clock. For a week.

My sister and her newborn baby got more sleep. However, Evilcat's strength returned, and soon she was able to fend off my attempts to cram calories into her. Fortunately, this was also when she started eating on her own again. Clearly evil is directly proportional to health. Evilcat has made a full recovery, but Z is now convinced that she is on the brink of death every time she ceases her ferocity for a moment.

Tablecloth

We have a dining table. Actually, it's a tall bar table. The height makes it utterly dog-proof, so it's the perfect place to feed the cats. We never eat at the table anyway, so it's pretty much always set for cats.

When we moved we started having friends over and occasionally using the table for real, actual people. This mean we had to scrub the cat food and fur off the table every time we used it. I decided that tablecloths were the solution to this problem. We could have a cat-tablecloth, and then when people came over we could swap it with the clean people-tablecloth.

I ordered my tablecloths online, and they finally arrived. I immediately cleared the table and applied the cat-tablecloth. The cats came to investigate. You know what's stupid? A cat hiding under a tablecloth.

The jury is still out on whether or not the tablecloth idea is going to work.

Evilcat is Evil.

We tried a new kind of cat litter and Evilcat disapproved. She demonstrated her displeasure by pissing all over everything in the house. Pillows, blankets, dog beds, towels, laundry, everything soft in the house got pissed on. I spent an entire week doing laundry and then she peed all over everything again.

I decided to kill her. I headed for the bedroom to strangle the beast, where I found Z napping with Evilcat snuggled in his arms like a teddy bear and purring furiously.

Damn cat.

Chihuahua bloodbath.

Last week Tinydog picked the wrong cat to chase.

After the dust settled and all the unholy demons had been cast back into the pit of fire from whence they came, I noticed a drop of blood on my hand.

I noticed that the tiny tip of Tinydog's tiny ear was bleeding, and then Tinydog shook his head.

Of course we dashed to the bathroom to find towels or styptic powder or something to stop the bleeding. Tinydog continued to be mildly irritated by his injured ear.

At this point it is pertinent to mention that I have vaso vagal syncope blood phobia. You know that thing you see on tv where somebody faints at the sight of blood? Yeah, I have that. So there is a finite amount of medical attention I can provide before my blood pressure drops so low that I can't stand up. I ended up laying on the couch for an hour, clamping Tinydog's tiny ear against his tiny head, waiting for the bleeding to stop. Z kindly mopped up the buckets of blood off the walls, the floor, the ceiling, all of our bedding, the couch...

We learned some important information about tiny dogs that night.

1. A 6-lb chihuahua can lose approximately four gallons of blood without any ill effects.

2. Copious amounts of styptic powder will eventually stop a bleeding ear, provided the dog doesn't continue to shake his head.

3. There is no good way to securely bandage a chihuahua ear.

4. Despite their large size, chihuahua ears appear to be devoid of any sensation or ability to feel pain.

5. A soft Cone of Shame is the most effective way to keep a dog's ears from whacking against his head every time he shakes.

Tinydog, on the other hand, learned nothing.