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.

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.