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Concerning Cats

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The most important thing to learn from my experience will be the first and the last thing I say in it: if your pet has a sudden change in behavior, get help immediately. Don’t walk—run to the nearest vet and figure out what’s going on.

It all started in March. For the two years that I had been living with my fiancée and her adorable, feisty furball India, I was greeted at the bed by a head-butt and a purr every evening when I got home from work. Head-butts and purrs usually lead to a happy kitty having attention lavished upon her. So when I came into the room for a week straight without being greeted, I was worried. What was even more concerning was the fact that she was sleeping alone under the desk, rather than nestled between our legs like usual. Well, everyone has an off-week, right? Besides, it was a particularly warm week; I figured that India just didn’t want to heat herself up any more than absolutely necessary. But when I got the chance to break out the laser pointer, then the catnip mouse, and then a long colorful shoelace with no response, some small voice of panic inside of me welled up and shouted that something was wrong.

A quick Google search told us that severe lethargy in cats can be capital-B Bad. Or it could mean nothing. But when it comes to the lives of pets (a.k.a., family), always err on the side of caution.

It was already after-hours at the vet when we were incited to action on Friday night, and our normal vet was out of the office for the next week on vacation. So, we found the next closest vet with the next closest appointment—I worked from home Monday so that I could bring India in as soon as the clinic was open. (My boss and coworkers were extremely understanding throughout this process, allowing me to work remotely. In any case, it wouldn’t have stopped me from getting India the attention she needed.) Into the carrier and off to the vet we went!

When your cat is healthy, you don’t necessarily pay attention to things like their urination or defecation. This is especially the case if you have a closed litter box and clean it on a regular schedule instead of checking daily. But these are things that the vet wanted to know, and they were answers that I couldn’t readily produce. As an indoor cat, we thought that the vectors through which India could be hurt were minimal. They told me to keep an eye on her and bring her into our normal vet as soon as possible since blood tests and x-rays showed no problems.

Rallied by the “all clear” that I received from the first vet, we thought that maybe India was just feeling a bit older and didn’t feel like moving around as much in the heat. Regardless, we got an appointment with our vet and brought her in together. Once again, blood tests and urine tests were performed, and everything came out as “normal.” Our vet asked us about a few common household chemicals and whether or not India had been around them. Of course, she hadn’t. The vet thought that maybe she had gotten into something and just needed her system flushed, so we left her at the clinic overnight to get some extra observation and IV fluids, and were hoping to pick her up the next day.

After observing her overnight, the vet decided that they wanted to keep her an additional night. On the phone, the vet asked us once again if there was anything that she could have gotten into. “We don’t even have human food where she can get to it. The only things that she can easily get to are her food and water. She gets a catnip toy when supervised, and we give her flea medicine to her every month…” The vet took some notes and said that she would get back to us the next day. We picked her up two days after dropping her off, and the vet gave us the likely culprit: her flea medicine.

Our vet had gone through the flea medicine’s ingredient list and had done research on each item. The “organic” and “green” flea medicine that we were using (stocked at a small child’s eye-level at Safeway and Petco) contained an ingredient that was so toxic that humans were required to wear skin- and eye-protection when handling it. This wasn’t the typical “IRRITANT” label that anyone who has used sunscreen is used to. As for the products claims of being “green,” our vet helpfully pointed out that arsenic and cyanide are “natural and organic” as well. If the medicine’s ingredients can cause such severe harm in humans, how much worse is that damage for a being that’s a tenth of our size? Quite a lot worse, as it turns out.

Had we had any previous indications or reactions, we may have looked online and seen the hundreds of reviews of this particular product, many claiming that their pets were poisoned almost to the point of death (or were sadly killed) by this product. Since this happened as a result of the build-up of over a year’s worth of applications, we never suspected that something that hadn’t caused her any issues before was the culprit of her sudden health problems. How were we supposed to know that counterfeit and bogus flea medicines are some of the pet industry’s top money makers? The vet informed us—our mouths agape—that some popular flea medicine brands are counterfeited so convincingly that grocery suppliers often can’t even tell the difference, leading them to be stocked at your friendly neighborhood corner store.

For a week after we got her back, we had to give her daily subcutaneous fluids to help flush out as much of the poison as possible—this meant we had a giant bag of saline hanging from our ceiling fan, and every day started and ended with one of us holding her down while the other shoved a needle of cold fluid into her neck. We’re now almost three months after the fact, and India still hasn’t recovered. Because of her lethargic response to the poisoning, not moving around caused severe muscle atrophy in her hind legs and she now has a hard time getting around and doing normal kitty things—holding herself up in the litter box, jumping on anything, walking across the room. We have done everything we can to make sure that she’s comfortable and happy, including replacing her litter box with one that has a lower wall so that she can get into it easier and adding a set of kitty stairs to our room so that she can get off the bed easier. We’ve taken her to a feline physical therapist, and now have a set of rehabilitation exercises that we perform with her morning and night.

Even though we’re still working through the mechanics of this ending (and it isn’t exactly the happiest), we now have a story to share with all pet owners: only trust the flea medicine you get from your veterinarian, and if your pet has a sudden change in behavior, get help immediately.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Photo by Sara Slattery

Health

A Healthier Alternative to the New Year’s Resolution

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Happy New Year, everyone. Please allow me to state my unpopular opinion: I consider New Year’s resolutions to be the devil. Yes, I realize that resolving to accomplish certain goals every January can really help people have a positive outlook on their futures and motivate themselves, but: 1) People very rarely have the wherewithal to stick with them (which is the most obvious drawback) and 2) New Year’s resolutions cause you to reflect upon the past year and think of all the shit you did not accomplish. As in, “Oh God, there goes another year and I didn’t change careers / put myself out there in the dating world / lose ten pounds…” You fill in the blank. Woe is you. You messed up this year, huh? But that’s okay, because next year you will do all those things! Right? Right! Except there’s a chance you might not. Because point #1.

But what if, instead of making New Year’s resolutions, we did Past Year’s reflections? I think this method is a healthier, glass-half-full approach to prepare for the next 365 days. Sure, there are some things you wish you could have done this past year, things you really hope you’ll do next year. But why not catalog all the really cool, life-changing things that you did do? It can feel like time is speeding up in all sorts of odd ways as we age, and it’s easy to lose track of the milestones as the year flies by. Reflecting upon the past twelve months reminds me how long a year actually is, and I wind up realizing that I have made progress as a human being.

Ready? Awesome, I’ll start, and I’ll start by being perfectly honest. This past year wasn’t one of my favorites. There were a lot of personal hurdles to confront family-wise, work-wise, self-wise, money-wise, pet-ownership-wise… pretty much all of the wises. But every time an obstacle cropped up, the way I ultimately chose to deal with it was with the pat on the back I gifted myself. I might not have compiled all the Facebook-friendly accolades that usually qualify as “milestones.” This year, mine were quieter and more personal but no less valuable.

Sure, there were a few big moments: I moved in with a significant other. We adopted a rescue dog and showered her with love. I left my Hollywood assistant job and launched my freelancing career, ignoring how much the prospect terrified me. I finished writing my first book. Then I rewrote it. And rewrote it again. (I’m still rewriting it again.) So, yeah, these are big, important things! But the moments in between these big, important things, when life was definitely not throwing me a Get-it-Girl parade, are the moments in which I feel I grew the most. And they’re the moments I think I’m proudest of.

I learned how to enrich my relationship with my family from afar when someone close to me confronted a health crisis. There was a lot of flying back and forth to New York for a few months, and I had to really weigh the pros and cons of my life on the opposite coast. That was scary. So was the realization that the healthy status-quo of your parents is not permanent by any means: it’s something we all know on a very basic level, but it’s different when you really start to know it. I’m not proud of how much I yo-yoed emotionally during that time. But I’m proud of and happy with my decision to stay on the West Coast. By even suggesting that I’d move back East, I was giving my family the impression that the situation we were in might be worse than it actually was. They wanted me to keep on keeping on so that we could establish a new normal. So I did. And they did, too. That was a huge thing to have learned. Life is full of establishing “New Normals” when something doesn’t go as planned.

Another “New Normal” (and yes, I’m sensing a pattern here) that I had to establish was in regard to my dog Sydney—the peanut butter to my jelly, the Hobbes to my Calvin. Sydney underwent major surgery on both her eyes and went completely blind due to glaucoma. I had to teach her how to “see” her world in a new way, and boy… it was tough. For weeks, I couldn’t even get her to walk to the front gate of our apartment complex. But every day I set a goal for the two of us to accomplish, however small, and every day, she achieved that goal with my help. Eventually, “Today, we’ll take five steps to the water bowl” turned into “Today, we’ll run up the stairs for a treat.” And I also finally paid off that enormous vet bill. We definitely have a new normal in our household, but I don’t think I’ve ever learned so much about patience as it relates to adaptability in all living things.

“Patience and Adaptability” could totally be the theme song for my recent career move as well. After several years of working different assistant jobs throughout the entertainment industry, I decided to strike out on my own and start freelancing as a writer. I prepared for it. I gave myself a financial cushion. I pulled together a portfolio that I was proud of. I forced myself to take on projects that I didn’t really think were up my alley, just to see if I could broaden my range. Yes, I was super nervous and had daily panic attacks for a month or so. And yeah, money is tight when you do this. It’s unpredictable. But like I said, patience, adaptability, and establishing a new normal have been my jam for 2013. And I’m happier. I might not be exactly where I want to be career-wise at the moment, but I’ll be damned if I’m not pleased as punch with my decision to go for it.

And what’s that they say about long-term goals? That they’re long-term, right? Patience and discipline pays off, little by little. Before you know it, a year has gone by, and that “little-by-little” has started to look like pretty awesome progress. I think pursuing long-term career goals is a lot like climbing a tree (which 8-year-old Liz was definitely the authority on). You don’t realize how high you’ve climbed ‘till you look down, and by then, it’s usually a lot easier to keep climbing than to try to make your way back to the ground. The only difference is that once you reach the top of your career-goals tree, you won’t be yelling for your dad to come out with the ladder and help you get back down before it gets dark out.

To those of you who are suffocating yourselves with New Year’s resolutions in light of all the things you think you didn’t accomplish in 2013—cut yourself some slack. Reflect upon this past year and take stock of how you changed personally. I feel great after writing this, much better than I would have in February 2014 after realizing that I hadn’t even scratched the surface of whatever my New Year’s resolution was. Even if you had a tough year and you don’t think your milestones actually look like milestones… look closer. Not all progress is heralded by 100 “likes” and a tornado of congratulatory texts.

Move ahead with each passing year, but don’t beat yourself up over goals you were unable to accomplish when life got in the way. If you did your best with the circumstances you were dealt this past year and you know it, then guess what? You just won New Year’s.

Relationships

How and Where to Find Your New BFF (of the Canine Variety)

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When my spritely Papillon, Sydney, came into my life, I was a 19-year-old college sophomore to whom nobody should have entrusted a puppy. Ever. And yet, there she was. She was mine. The breeder very happily sent her home with me (with a hefty $600 price tag on her impossibly tiny head).

“DO NOT WANT, GET ME OUT.” “For the love of God just hold still and let me Instagram this moment.” (That’s just the kind of parent I am)

Sydney and I have been through a lot together: three different New York apartments, college (and everything that came with it), a semester abroad for me / a semester at my mom’s house for her, a college graduation, a cross-country move, and the subsequent three different LA apartments that accompanied said move. For a 19-year-old who probably should not have owned a puppy and a puppy who had no choice but to be owned by a 19-year-old, I’d say we did a pretty decent job!

Seven years later, this past June, my boyfriend and I welcomed a second dog into our home: an off-the-charts-bonkers Siberian Husky mix named Avery whom we rescued from a local shelter. Even though she came to us saddled with phobias we couldn’t even begin to translate into humanspeak (fear of mirrors, fear of stairs, fear of every single sound effect in Grand Theft Auto), working with her has been one of the most rewarding experiences we’ve ever had. Seriously, I think every single dog on the Pacific coast heard me squeal with glee when she finally sat on command.

The great pet-ownership debate generally revolves around the morally weighty “Breeder Puppy vs. Rescue” question. That’s what most people ask me about right off the bat: “I’m thinking of getting a dog. Did you get yours from a breeder or a shelter? What would you recommend?” Well, now that I have owned both a breeder puppy and a rescue pooch, I have to say that I don’t think there’s a clear “right” answer here. There are advantages to both! But if you’re unsure of which route to take, here are a few pros and cons I’ve gathered over the years about each adoption option:

Pros – Adoption

  • Obviously, #1: You are saving a life! Name a feeling that is better than that feeling. See? You can’t.
  • There’s a chance your new BFF might come home with some basic training knowledge, depending upon his history. We really struck gold in this department: Avery came to us completely potty trained.
  • It’s incredibly cost-efficient. It was $90 out the door for Avery, which included shots and her spaying fee. When we took her to the vet for her first checkup, the office visit was free of charge because she was a rescue! All we paid for was one additional booster shot and heartworm prevention meds. I jokingly/lovingly refer to Avery as our “discount Husky.” This is why.

Cons – Adoption

  • There is really only one major downside to adoption, which is the mirror image of the one major upside to breeder acquisition: because you don’t know this dog’s history, you don’t know everything about his personality. Now, if you get a puppy from a shelter, you’re in better shape than if you, say, adopted a 3-year-old dog. But more likely than not, you won’t know what sets this dog off. You don’t know what her nervous ticks are. Those things won’t reveal themselves during that first euphoric visit at the shelter as you loudly proclaim, “YES, THIS IS DEFINITELY MY DOG!” By the time her bad habits rear their ugly head, you will likely have bonded with your new buddy too much for any of them to be deal breakers. But even after you enroll the dog in obedience classes, you must display the patience of a thousand Buddhas. An adult dog whose origins are a mystery to you, and who already has ingrained habits, will take longer to train than a brand new puppy. That’s just science! So be prepared to wait a while for that first, magical, “Sit! GOOD GIRL!”

Pros – Breeder Puppies

  • So, here is the one significant pro about purebreds: you (mostly) know what you’re getting with this puppy. You’ve met its parents, or have at least seen lots of pictures of them winning blue ribbons at dog shows. You’ve researched the breed. This dog is a highly impressionable eight weeks old when he comes home to you; he’s a perfectly blank slate! Yes, you have to train the puppy. ASAP. But puppies are people-pleasers and generally learn pretty quickly if you work with them consistently. In my personal experience, I think getting a puppy from a breeder is a wise choice if you either a) have a family or b) are considering starting a family sometime in the near future. Dogs with kids are unpredictable. Kids like to scream and pull tails and put tutus and tiaras on dogs (or so I’ve heard). At least with this blank slate of a puppy, you have a chance of getting it to behave appropriately around your children with early obedience training. So, if family is a major factor in your decision-making process, that might outweigh some of the cons I’m about to rattle off about purebred puppies.

Cons – Breeder Puppies

  • They’re disturbingly expensive, and I’m not just talking about the price you pay for the puppy herself (though that can get really pricey too). Purebred puppies typically cost upwards of $500. I’ve even seen some of those crazy designer hybrids going for like 2k! (Bich-Poo, anyone?) Then, remember that the puppy is going to need to another round of shots at the vet (sans that sweet rescue discount!), and will eventually have to be spayed or neutered. You could be looking at $1,500 minimum just to get your puppy physically up to speed! Woof.
  • And then, there’s training the little bugger. Even if the breeder worked with the puppies every day, chances are he won’t know to go potty outside all the time when you bring him home. This takes insane amounts of dedication. I am not proud to say that it took me several years (yes, count ‘em, years) to get Sydney fully potty trained. Why? Maybe because I was a college student with a wackadoo schedule that the dog couldn’t even begin to predict. Nothing was consistent, and dogs need consistency if they’re going to fully commit to housebreaking. Otherwise, one can just imagine the internal struggle: “Hmm, she’s not home. She should probably be home. Is it a good idea to pee on the floor now? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Okay, I’m peeing now.”
  • Another thing I learned the hard way: Purebred dogs have some really bizarre health issues that can unexpectedly crop up due to centuries of inbreeding and things like that (creeptacular, no?). Even if the breeder is highly reputable, these things can absolutely still happen. When Sydney was five, she suddenly started going blind and nobody could figure out what was happening. It turned out that she had a very severe case of glaucoma, and after spending exorbitant amounts of money at a veterinary opthamologist, we concluded that the illness was probably caused by nothing but genetics. There was nothing we could have done. * Therefore, because of things like this, I highly recommend getting pet insurance for your purebred puppy! I had it at one point, thought it was too expensive, and cancelled it. Now, I wish I’d held onto it, knowing what I know now about Sydney’s health. I signed up for a new plan last year that will hopefully cover any crazy unforeseen future issues!

*Sydney is in fact totally blind now, but she can hardly tell the difference! Dogs can teach us a whole heck of a lot about adaptability. Dogs pull it together and get on with life. It’s pretty admirable! I’m super proud of her, to say the least.

Addendum: Breeder pups

Not all brand-spanking new puppies are purebreds. There is indeed such a thing as a backyard breeder: for example, a neighbor whose beagle ran away and got pregnant and now has six puppies to give away. You might find out about these puppies on Craigslist, at a local vet’s office, or just through word of mouth. Backyard breeders are generally discouraged, though, because the American Kennel Club looks down on the practice (I mean, it’s usually people who didn’t get their dogs spayed and let them just go get preggo, so obviously that’s a big issue). However, those puppies are the same ones who might wind up in a shelter if people don’t take them home right away. So if you hear of someone locally who has a few puppies to spare, it might not be the worst idea to check them out. That way, you get that impressionable 8-week-old puppy you’ve been searching for, you save a lot of money, and you rescue a pooch that might eventually land in a shelter. These “breeders” are under the radar though, so it might take you longer to find this kind of situation. I personally have never found a puppy this way, but I know it’s an avenue that exists!

Do not let the perfect pose deceive you. You’ve seen America’s Next Top Model. You know how many takes wind up in the trash. Avery, you wanna be on top?

So, here’s the thing: if you don’t have a family situation that warrants a more predictable dog, I would strongly recommend heading over to PetFinder.com and finding the peanut butter to your jelly at a local shelter. I think if I had it to do over again, I probably would have gotten both my dogs at shelters. But then again, Sydney was and still is the perfect dog for me. I wouldn’t change a thing about her! So perhaps the moral to the story is this: in the end, the perfect dog for you is the one that best suits you and your lifestyle. As long as you’ve thought long and hard about your needs and don’t jump the gun, the right puppy is out there for you!

Here are a few helpful, awesome links that have assisted me throughout my pet-parenthood:

  • http://PetFinder.com  — This is how we found Avery! It lets you sort through shelter pets in your area by size, breed, age, etc, so you get exactly what you’re looking for!
  • http://www.akc.org/ — For purebred puppy searches and breed information. Any reputable breeder will be registered with the American Kennel Club. So if you’re looking for, say, American Eskimo Dog breeders in the Chicago area, you can find them on this site!
  • http://www.andreaarden.com/ — Andrea is a New York-based dog trainer with whom I briefly worked back East. She’s very well known and highly knowledgeable! Even if you’re not in the NY area, her blog is full of great pointers for all kinds of behavior problems.
  • http://www.karmadogtraininglosangeles.com/ — A really fantastic LA-based group of dog trainers who are currently working with our discount husky. If you’re in Southern California, you might want to check these guys out! They have great rates for both group sessions and private sessions, and also do board-and-train if you want to go on vacation and come home to a well-behaved dog!
  • http://www.petinsurance.com/ — VPI Pet Insurance is the plan most vets recommend and has some really reasonable rates, even if you only want it for emergency situations. You won’t use it all the time, but you’ll be glad you have it the day your puppy eats a pair of underwear and you receive that inevitable mind-boggling vet bill! **

**Yes, puppies eat underwear. All the time. Or they try to. Dirty laundry = heaven on Earth. At the very least, they will humiliate you when you have friends over by trotting out of the bedroom with a pair of racy unmentionables pulled fresh from the hamper. This is a true story.

Happy puppy-hunting, boys and girls!