Dysfunctional Pet Drugs

What a pleasure it's been doing business with this company. Though I'm not sure if they really are a company or just a guy in his mother's basement with pallets of stolen pet food.

Now that Ninja/Mr. Bitey needs special, kidney-friendly food, I have to find it online or else pay out the ass to buy it from the vet.

I found a couple of vendors - Pet Food Direct and another outfit, Discount Pet Drugs. Pet Food Direct was super easy - found the food, entered the vet info, checked out - package arrived a few days later.

With Dysfunctional Pet Drugs, I found the food, entered the vet info, checked out, and waited. And waited. In a day or so I got a cryptic email:

Hello,

You have not selected the food order option for shipping. Your shipping cost may go up. The shipping cost is $12.99 determined by weight. This only applies to pet food orders as stated on the website.

Please reply to this e-mail for your order to ship Shipping process will takes 7-8 business days for Food Items. If any questions us a call at xxx-xxx-xxxx

Thanks
Petrick

Never even noticed a "food order option" in the check out process, so I replied to ask for more information. I received this response:

Hello

We apologize
You have not selected the Food Orders option in Shipping method as below :

Via Food Orders
Your current invoice is as below :
[boring invoice info]

Please reply this email to ship out your order.
Thanks
David

As shown below. Below what? Where? There IS no "Food Orders option" to select below, you jackass! Nevertheless, I replied and approved the order for shipping. That was on February 7th.

I received this response the same day:

Hello

Thank you for sending the approval. Shortly, we will ship your order and send you the tracking number by email. Shipping process will takes 7-8 business days for Food Items.

Thanks
David

I'm still waiting for the email with the tracking number. Yesterday I sent an email asking for a status update. I received this response:

Hello

We apologize for any delay. Shortly, we will inquire your order from shipping department and inform you by email.

Thanks
David

When I didn't hear back from "shipping department," I sent another inquiry this morning:

Hi again…
Still waiting for a status update - or the product – really, I’d rather have the product I’ve already paid you for.

This is not good. My cat needs this food – I can’t just run down to the store to get it. Please let me know when this will arrive and why it’s taken so long. I have to say, I won’t be ordering from you ever again. This is totally unacceptable.

You charged me $13 for shipping which is already an astronomical charge, then the product doesn’t arrive for weeks.

How do you stay in business? This *is* a business, isn’t it, or were you going to donate the food? Because if you’re going to make it a charitable donation to my cat, that’s very thoughtful, but not worth much if it never arrives.
-J

I haven't received a response, but I did get a call from a wonderfully polite UPS robot letting me know that I'll be receiving a shipment tomorrow that someone must be present to sign for.

No idea if it'll be the pet food or a multi-million dollar check from an anonymous patron of snarky blog writing. To be totally honest, I'm hoping for the latter.

Update 2/25/10: Turns out, the UPS Robot Call was for something else. Still no word from DPD about where my order is. Complete and total failure.

Early Kidney Disease

In cats... anyone know anything about this and how to help treat it homeopathically?

The vet called this morning with results from the blood work done yesterday on the boys - Neo's was "beautiful" - love to hear that.

But Ninja, the 11-year-old wolverine they had to subdue with two powerful sedatives just to do an exam, supposedly has "early kidney disease."

That might explain the clumps of litter the size of a baby.

The vet said he should be switched to a low-protein diet - still canned food, but lower protein and a different balance of minerals to help the kidneys.

And to think I fed him that kibble shit for so many years. Sorry Ninjey.

I just read something online that cats dealing with kidney disease should not have any vaccines, though yesterday he was shot up with rabies and distemper vaccines.

Not sure if there's any merit to avoiding the vaccines, but it does seem ridiculous to put all that shit in his system when he's exclusively indoor and has almost zero risk of exposure to either pathogen.

I have the sneaking suspicion that most vets are just like most doctors. They do the same shit over and over again without really thinking about what they're doing or why they might be doing it, and the good ones are very hard to find.

They also want to clean his teeth. Not sure if it's worth the bother and the stress (physically and emotionally) to put him under and have his mouth scraped to hell. Anesthesia doesn't seem like a good idea at this point.

Every day brings a new challenge. We'll figure it out. If you have any info to share, please pass it along. Mr. Bitey thanks you.

El Retardo Strikes Again

He did it again – thankfully that doesn’t include biting me again.

The boy cats play/fight fairly frequently, sometimes very early in the morning, but something sounded very different this morning.

At 4:30 am I jumped out of bed knowing something was wrong – Gato Tardo and Neo had raced into the bedroom fighting, but I saw Neo still in the doorway while Ninja was somewhere else, hissing and meowling like he was dying. I thought a raccoon or another cat somehow found a way into the house.

On the other side of the bed I found him. He'd managed to get a claw on his back foot caught in his wooly “security blanket” and he panicked. He was hissing and fighting the blanket – and fighting with us as we tried to get it free.

While he was struggling Neo pounced on him - attacked him for real – almost like he wanted to put down the rebellion or take out a weak herd member. We got Neo out of the way and I scruffed Ninja as hard as I could but he still got free and almost chomped me.

He tore out of the bedroom and all through the house, finally stopping in the kitchen where he rolled over onto his back, as if to plead for help. I grabbed the kitchen shears and managed to cut the blanket near his foot and he ran off.

I followed him up to the loft where I talked to him to try to calm him down. As soon as he relaxed, the little shred of blanket that was left on his foot came right off.

It took over an hour to calm ME down and get back to sleep. We would like to trade him in for some Tupperware.

Cats Amaze Me

carpey flapjack

Because obviously I'm easily amazed. And I like shiny things.

I've spent a lot of time with our cats this year. Despite being around cats all my life, I still expect them to be aloof and cold, not needing any human interaction beyond feeding times.

And there are days when, if they had thumbs, I know they'd trip me so my head would crack square into the corner of a table and they'd no longer have someone nagging them about getting down off the counters or to stop stealing my socks and hiding them around the house, or to please cover the goddamn giant crap in the box.

But most days, they surprise me with how social they are. While they have bonded together somewhat as a tiny pride of living room lions, they still seem to prefer being with humans, or since I'm the one home all the time, me.

Neo, always a street-tough bulldog of a cat in my eyes, follows me from room to room, curling up near wherever I am. He doesn't have to be right on my lap like Nikita, but he's gotta be in the same room. He's a total badass yet he purrs the moment you touch him - that amazes me.


neo & nikita

With so much more observation time, I've seen much more of their personalities. They're all very different from one another - their only commonalities are bad breath, crapping in a box and loving ground up fish mush.

Ninja is the soft-headed gentle giant, content to play with a tiny carpet fiber or chase his tail on the couch. He doesn't rub his cheek against your leg, but instead gently brushes by like a fish in a lagoon, earning him the nickname Carpey.

He has a surprising range of expressions for a cat so mentally challenged. When he's happy the top of his head becomes rounded and fluffy and a ridge in his fur appears down his back. He's so at ease with the world he's totally comfortable sleeping flat on his back with his belly fully exposed. It's amazingly soft.

Because we see him as so, well, retarded, I was astounded one day when I figured out he was trying to tell me to clean out his crap box.

Like most cats, Ninja is particular about where he craps. The other two are fine with any box and any type of litter, but Ninja's gotta have it exactly the way he wants it or there could be trouble. Like a puddle of urine on the kitchen floor trouble. Or a box of books soaked in cat urine trouble.

As I sat here one day typing on this here computer dealie, he kept carping my leg and meowing softly - something he never does during the day. Normally right after breakfast, he's down for his all-day nap-a-thon - never up before 3pm when it's time to start bullying me into feeding them.

I watched him closely and he didn't look unhappy or stressed - he looked intent. We have two cat boxes in the closet behind me - that's the only reason he comes up here, except for bullying time.

Figuring it couldn't hurt to take a look, I grabbed a plastic bag and took the top off one of the boxes. Sure enough, it was due for cleaning. I scooped all the boxes and as soon as I finished, in he went to pollute it once again. And then he went back to his nap. Amazing.

I could go on and on about them, but if you have cats you know all the funny, weird things they do that make you wonder what planet they came from.

The scary thing is trying to stay on this side of the crazy cat lady line where I'm not talking to them like I know what they're saying back to me, but I gotta tell you, that line is getting blurry.

Very Restless Natives

Neo & Nikita

Since Nikita's last projectile pukey episode several weeks ago, the kids have been on a new feeding plan.

No longer do we leave kitty kibble out for grazing - cats aren't grazers by nature, though if you try to tell Neo (aka Medicine Ball) that, he'll slap your big human face.

They get two hearty meals a day - a bit of kibble and some very delicious-smelling ground up fish in a can. Mmm mmm mmm mmm MMM!

While this new routine is supposedly much healthier for them (they haven't yet told me if they feel more cat-like and better nourished), it's created another new routine.

Every morning the bed is covered in cats, starting around 6:30am. They assemble and parade all over everything until we get up, their way of letting us know it's TIME FOR BREAKFAST, BITCHES. NOW.

They've always been helpful in waking us up early in the morning, but now they do it with so much more purpose. You have to admire their tenacity. They will wear you down until you put some damn food in their damn bowls.

In the afternoon, as it gets closer to 3pm, they begin to follow me wherever I go, maybe just in case I have their food in my pocket - they'll be right there in case I decide to feed them on the couch, or in the bathroom, or on top of the clean laundry.

And as the clock approaches 5pm, the hour we decided best for their dinnertime, they collect around me like a tiny gang of cat thugs, staring at me and maneuvering closer and closer to me as time ticks down to the magical hour.

If I'm working on my laptop, usually standing up at the pub table in the bar, one will sit on the chair behind me, one will sit directly behind the laptop, and the third will sit on the bar next to the chair - each no more than 1 foot away from me.

If I do not acknowledge their presence, especially the one directly behind me on the chair, he/she will proceed to "climb" up my back and rest forepaws there until I turn around.

There are times I've given into them way earlier than 5pm, because they all have very sharp teeth and dozens of claws between them.

If they manage to trip me in just the right spot, I'm done for. And then David comes home late from work and finds them snacking on my face.

Ninja (El Retardo, Chimpee the Ass Monkey, Big Walking Rug, and a number of other nicknames)