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Samson

Samson came to us at 9 ½ years of age. I had known him since he was only 9months old, when he came to see me for his first grooming appointment. Samson was owned by an elderly couple who had never had a cat before. They purchased him from a breeder in South Georgia, and when they went to pick him up the kittens were living on the front porch, free reign! Probably not much of an actual breeder I would suspect. Nonetheless, Samson, a “purebred Ragdoll” was one of the coolest cats I have ever known. Every time they brought him in for grooming, he was a MUSH! He would willingly lay on his back for his stomach shave, I could comb him out, trim his nails, shave his tush all on my own without needing any assistance. He purred through the whole thing. In fact, most of the time, he brushed himself!

Meeting Soren, just introduced!

Exploring his new digs, first few weeks home!

Guess he was feeling pretty "safe" in his safe room!

His parents and I really got to know each other over the years. After all they came in four times a year for a while you wait grooming appointment and visited us in between for medical visits and food pickups. I made it abundantly clear that if anything ever happened to them that I would gladly take Samson and provide him with safe haven. One day, when Samson was about 8 years old, they broke the news to me that his mom had been diagnosed with stage four stomach cancer. She did not have long to live, took a few trips, visited with dear friends, planned her own funeral, and basically had a goodbye gathering before she started to feel really bad. Samson was by her side, like a good little nurse, once she became bedridden. The story is just so sad, when she passed her husband was lying beside her in bed holding her hand and Samson was right there beside her until her last breath. I wasn’t sure what his dad would do, but he kept Samson and tried to do right by him for a year and a half. Then I got the call.

He was a sloshy guys! A MUSH!

Samson’s human, his dad, called the clinic one day and as soon as I was told that he was on the phone I knew why. He told me that he had had a heart attack a few months back and an ambulance came. The doors to the house were left open and all he could think about was what if Samson got outside? He also said that he thought he missed a woman’s touch and that he wasn’t enough for him. I completely understood and told him to bring him to me. Now, this was a bit of a crapshoot mind you, Samson had lived as a single cat his entire life and had never lived with a dog. We had about 9 cats when we brought him home (I think, maybe 11?) and we had Elsa, the Bernese Mountain Dog. This could have proven to be a recipe for disaster, but did I mention how amazing Samson was? He was cool as a cucumber!

The cat loved hard surfaces, sinks, cardboard, no fuzzy beds for Jams!

As per usual Samson was set up in the “purple bathroom”, the room where all animals start and end life in this house. Soren was the ambassador of happiness and welcomed Sammy Jams with open paws. Samson did not eat wet food, cat treats or human food. He was raised on Hill’s t/d his whole life and that was really all he liked; positive reinforcement was a challenge is my point. Oh, yeah and he also “didn’t play”. And well, he didn’t really play a whole lot, but with time we got him interested in and acknowledging some lure toys, mostly liking the stick end and not the attachment. So, for the introduction to the other cats, we got creative, one thing Samson could not get enough of was brushing, so every time he would see the other cats, he was brushed! We put up these baby gates and would play and offer treats to our guys and brush Samson’s little cheeks! Thankfully, he was incredibly easy going and this worked like a dream. He introduced himself to the household quite quickly. It was eating here that was going to be a challenge!

"Can I get some service in this place!?"

We have fed exclusively out of foraging toys for 17 years now. And remember, he didn’t like wet food or treats. Cats typically will not work for food out of food puzzles that has been free, so filling up a food puzzle full of Hill’s t/d was not exactly going to teach him to forage. So, even though Samson was getting along with everyone way quicker than expected, he went to bed in his own room each night so he could learn how to eat in this house! Boy oh boy did I make it easy for him and all of this became excellent fodder for my foraging lecture!

This is Jams, "ordering drinks at the bar!"

Overstuffed foraging board, SUPER easy!

Same foraging board the next morning! He was getting it!

Attempting to offer wet food and an easy foraging cup-open!

I would put Jams in his room with loads of food puzzles, gushing with kibble. I left my Foraging Cups “open” and laid on their side so he could easily extract food with his paws, I gave him super easy muffin tins with a few balls and mice as obstacles (counted the pieces of kibble in each well to monitor use!) as well as other, overstuffed, stationary foraging boards gushing with novel kibble and some treats, just hoping. I even left a plate of wet food for him each night, just to see if he might take me up on it. He didn’t. I would take photos of the foraging boards the night before and then compare in the am to see if he engaged with them. It is imperative to remember that you absolutely cannot force a cat into eating how and what we want them to eat, that is a great way to make your cat very sick. In as quickly as three days without eating, fat can mobilize to the liver causing hepatic lipidosis, (a.k.a. fatty liver disease), this results in your cat’s skin turning yellow and is very serious. We had to take our time and ensure he ate each day.

Learning to ride a skateboard WITH Willow.!

You start on a rug so it does not roll and they build trust!

His interpretation of balance beam use.

But he got it! Boy, did he get it. In fact, Samson became what I would call a “master forager”, chirping and brrrping and purring all the way! It was so incredibly precious to see him light up, engage and be a cat! Samson became the super star of my Fundamentally Feline YouTube channel; he is still featured in my talks and pics of him doing all kinds of amazing and adorable behaviors are plastered across my social pages. This cat did find ONE wet food he would accept as a treat, Hill’s a/d! He learned to ride a skateboard at the age of ten with a/d as his reward! Once we found this as a tool, we could teach him anything! His repertoire of tricks included go to mat, go to stool, sit, shake, hi-five, give ten, spin in a circle, run through a tunnel, thrash on his skateboard, sit up and we even used clicker training to acclimate him to his asthma inhaler later in life when that developed. No surprise, there is a how-to video for that, starring Jams!

Testing out one of his new daddy's scoops!

This was NOT an unusual scene to come home to. So naughty!

Sammy Jams decided that living on the countertop and the adjacent kitchen table was to be his home base. This was awesome as Jake missed having a Sous Chef after Kodiak Bears passed away and we adored having him front and center. It also meant a bigger hole was left when he was gone. Jams filled the Sous Chef shoes nicely, complete with a set of naughty attention seeking behaviors…he truly enjoyed knocking everything off the counter. This did not start immediately. He let us get good and comfortable. And at first it was little things, soft things, unimportant things. Gradually, overtime he upped his game. He was free to do whatever he wanted, could’ve gotten in our laps while we watched TV, instead, he enjoyed sitting on the counter, glancing over at us innocently, giving us one of his classic Samson, “brrrps” and just ever so slightly pushing the treat jars off, then my water bottle, then he really kicked it up a notch and moved on to full sized canisters of sugar and flour! Keep in mind, he didn’t want the cat treats, wouldn’t eat them if they were free, this was truly attention seeking behavior and we did try to secure items to the countertop so we could more effectively ignore him, but he literally started trying to move the entire coffee maker! One night we came home from being out to dinner and the floor was just littered with stuff, he was busy in our absence! Naughty, naughty Jams!! Not gonna lie, we freakin’ loved it.

Tonka and Jams.

The last straw was Kodiak’s urn, yep, guess Samson decided, “I have replaced you as Sous Chef, you must go”. Yeah, that’s right one of our cat’s urns is on the kitchen counter, what? That was his favorite spot, best place for it! And by last straw, well, I don’t know what I mean, except that we glued what we could back together, got a new urn for Kodiak Bears and literally fixed all canisters to the counter with museum gel! He did try knocking the ENTIRE DISHRACK off the counter a few times but quickly gave up on that.

Soren, the welcoming committee, and Jams.

Strollin' Jams!

Samson's kitchen table set up. Whatever he needed!

I can’t say enough good things about this cat. He got to really be a cat while he was with us. He learned to ride in the stroller and that was pretty bee’s knees, he even came out on his leash and harness and enjoyed a good roll in the bazillion pieces of yard debris leaving his fur in shambles. The only toy his dad told me he liked were sparkly puff balls! We would toss them to him, and he would bat them back to us using both of his precious giant fuzzy mitts! This was a great game and one I wish I had more of on video. He loved the cat tunnel and cardboard boxes were well, his jam. This cat could not get enough, if only he were here to have helped with the CNN piece on cats and cardboard boxes. He would’ve been perfect. Our kitchen table was set up exclusively for Samson, complete with FOUR cardboard boxes on each corner and a Catit Self Grooming station in the center, because he could never get enough cheek scratching sometimes, we had to let him take care of that on his own. I didn’t even give him bedding when I brough him up to the clinic for blood work, he preferred the hard cage floor and a cardboard canned food tray, by far! Damn bedding was just in the way.

At the clinic, we brought his box for exams!

Sparkly puff fun.

Foraging is exhausting!

So many photos of him in this position!

This is how he was most comfortable and he did permit belly rubs!

His dad came to visit him at the clinic twice when he came in for rechecks and one Sunday, he even came all the way down to our house to see Samson in his new habitat! It was sweet that he made the effort to do that and see that he was safe and thriving with us. Samson did not have a dramatic display to these visits. It was a little sad, but it also helped me feel good in that I think Samson was pretty happy here and had truly settled in. His first human dad passed away a few years after he gave Jams to us. I think Samson was about 11 or 12 years old. I used to send him photos and videos of all of Samson’s adventures and he really seemed to enjoy them. Then I stopped getting replies…one day I called, and a friend answered, Samson’s previous human dad had made the right decision in giving him to us when he did. That was the last time I spoke to him, he was in hospice, and passed shortly thereafter. I can only hope that someone will do for me what I did for Samson when it is my turn to leave this world. I hope to time it just right and not leave anyone behind, but that is near impossible to predict.

He was beyond squaeezable!

One of the first ways that you know that something is amiss with your cat is a change in behavior. All of a sudden, Samson started coming upstairs, A LOT, and even started sleeping with us. He never did this the first few years. We loved it, but it gave us pause. We would even say to him, “Jams, you dying? You got a tumor? Why do you love us more all of a sudden”? He would “brrrp” and purr and make his ginormous biscuits on us as his answer. He still engaged in all of his normal behaviors he was just now sleeping in bed with us. Hard to complain, but I now believe this was the start of a problem we never actually diagnosed.

Our cats are weighed every month, I’ve been told I can tell they have lost weight when they have only farted! Samson’s weight was stable. He had developed asthma over the years, and we had that under control, but he had other weird, not descript things happen. Even the asthma diagnosis seemed like we were reaching to fix a cough that was not 100% asthma. He would have really thick mucousy, yellow discharge from one nostril, only the one. I would get it cleared up, but it would recur. In the early stages of weirdness labs were beautiful, X-rays and ultrasound normal. It was hard to be alarmed.

Mommy and Me day! Off to the office.

Part of the Royal Canin photo shoot for the article I authored in their magazine!

He just continued to get weirder. His kidney values started creeping up, ok, no big deal, we can treat that! Then he started having accidents on the bed but we could not pinpoint why, waterproof blankets on the bed it is, we’ve been here before (Vader), nothing we can’t handle! Then he started getting weak, hard time even standing up, this became a little dangerous as he lived on the kitchen counter and table and we didn’t want him to fall, but it was also a good sign that he was still in his routine and wanted to be in these places. Then, what seemed to be neuro issues started. He would try to squeeze himself into weird spaces, he was incredibly lethargic, body temperature having a hard time regulating. We were hospitalizing him at home in the giant breed dog crate, he was on an IV catheter here at the house and I would wake every few hours to check on him and turn him over. I did this for many nights. I would express his bladder to lessen the mess but ultimately, I had to bathe him daily and blow him dry to keep him clean and warm.

We had an appointment at the neurologist, but the morning that I awoke to bring him, his temp was low and he was not stable enough to undergo any diagnostics there. We were frantically trying to treat what was possible acute kidney failure that came on like a bolt of lightning and or some sort of brain tumor that was setting a cascade of other weirdness’s throughout the rest of his little body. We had to call it, he could stand or eat on his own, the dignity was gone. It wasn’t fair. Nor was it fair that we only got to love him from age 9-1/2 to 14 years. We missed out on so much and he was ripped away from us far too soon. He had so much left to do here!

We let Samson go that night, we said goodbye in his favorite spot on the kitchen counter.

We miss you so much, Samson! What did Samson teach us? Do NOT underestimate your cats! Cats CAN be trained, senior cats CAN learn to forage, walk on harnesses, and take stroller rides, sometimes single cats CAN mesh into a multi-pet household and thrive (though he was an exception and not the rule) and you can absolutely train an old cat to learn new tricks.

There are now TWO cat urns on our kitchen counter. As it should be.

He was King.

We loved you so much, Samson!

This is the pic I sent to Jake the day I brought him home. There was no asking, but I at least introduced them first!

Fluffy

Fluffy, Fluffernutter, Flufferschteen, Schteen, Butters, you name it, we called him pretty much anything but Fluffy. Still cannot believe we had a cat named Fluffy. But here goes…

I knew Fluffy for a looooong time. I was his hair stylist for many years! He came to see me at my previous clinic as well as the one where I work now. He and his litter mate were both patients. Fluffy was grossly obese. If I remember correctly, he was 29.25# the day he was relinquished to us (to me-basically). He would get lion cuts a few times a year and in-between the clients were encouraged to bring him in for sanitary shaves because this cat had not seen his own rear in years! This rarely happened. He was always so caked with feces and dried urine over his prepuce and anus. It was so sad, and he was so itchy not being able to satiate the itch and effectively groom himself.

The day he was relinquished.

Fluffy and his brother Reginald were super sweet cats. Both were huge but Fluffy was spectacular! It always bothered me that Reginald got a “real” name. They never really wanted to keep Fluffy, and I guess that showed in the lack of originality. Both cats were indoor/outdoor, and I recall that Reginald ate some lilies outside the home one day. Odd because they had been planted and blooming there his entire life, but this one spring he decided to munch on them needless to say we treated him for acute kidney failure and he lived!!! He is the ONLY cat that I have known that has had Lillie poisoning that lived, the only one! It was remarkable.

Relinquishment day before photos.

One of his first few days home, really wish this pic was lighter!

Still caged at the clinic here. Wondering why he has to forage for his food.

I never thought the day would come, but one day I got the dreaded call. Fluffy was urinating outside of the litter box and they were going to have none of that. He also scratched on the furniture. I tried. I tried to help and educate, but the things Fluffy needed to be successful were not going to be provided. Let me tell you this cat did not have a “behavior problem” this cat had a “humans problem”!!! He was completely set up to fail. Grossly obese, feces matted to his rear on the regular and would anyone like to guess how big this cats litter box was???? It was 8 ½ x 11!!!! It was one of those tiny pans we use in a cage at the clinic for the day if a cat is dropped off. He wasn’t “eliminating outside the box” it was all a case of simple logistics and he was simply over shooting the pan. He was IN THE BOX, it is just that his pee and poop were going over the side because he was well, GIANT!

I love this photo of him.

Anyone want to take a guess as to where this cat’s scratching post was located and what it looked like? It was in the basement right next to the litter box, and it was about 18 inches tall. The end! Bring him to me, there is nothing wrong with this delicious, scrumptious muffin except that he lives in YOUR house and you refuse to meet his environmental needs!

Big boys club! Hitch, Fluffy and Bears.

Fluffernutter was perfect in every freakin’ way! This cat had nothing wrong with his urine, he used the boxes provided perfectly right up until the day he died and he was so sweet. I am a BIG fan of spaying and neutering but OMG if he and Peaches could have had kittens. One can dream.

Look at how well he fit in!

First on the agenda, weight loss! I will say that he is the first cat (at the time) that bit holes in his foraging toy instead of manipulating them as intended to acquire the food. He was a brute and we thought it was hilarious but he did eventually get the concept and stopped chewing them up like a puppy. When G.G. and Crusty came home that one Thanksgiving week, so did Schteen, and well, he stayed too. They were all just so easy and happy and grateful. How could we not? Plus, I had loved him for so long. I was glad he was mine, finally.

He was not small.

The largest cat we have ever had.

Butters made it to 19# without even doing anything drastic. We opened four 5.5oz cans of wet food twice a day at that juncture in our feline husbandry, and much of that was Hill’s w/d, a weight loss food. Then, all his dry was in food puzzles and not bowls, voila, he lost weight, the healthy way and without frustration and he also became an indoor only cat which for most that would have resulted in weight gain, but not when they are working for their dry food, enriched and playing etc. Makes a difference when one does not rely on any one thing to achieve that weight loss.

Look at that sweet face, he can pee on my floor anytime!

I absolutley love this photo!

We made a half-hearted attempt to make him a full-figured spokes cat for Revolution, the plus size, back the day, he did not become rich and famous, but it was fun. He got to try out our cat stroller and he loved it. So often I am told, “oh, he doesn’t play” and I just love it when I get them home and comfortable, and they actually start to enjoy playtime. That was true for all three of these clinic cats, despite being older, got them all playing. We also continued to maintain his linocut regularly, it helped him “feel” thinner! Ha!

Zoetis really missed the boat with this spokesmodel!

Hanging with his PWC peeps in the sun.

Strollin'!

Cozy time Schteen!

Stunning little guy.

Fierce killer.

Fluffernutter did succumb to cancer and was taken from us far too soon. We tried very hard to save his life, but he had something really weird that we were never able to precisely diagnose, and it made him terribly anemic and weak. Sad to see for such a big, tough guy, but he was always a sweet little teddy bear on the inside.

We never really called him Fluffy; we don’t think he cared.

Playing!!

At least he was happy here for a while, loved and accepted.

Mr. Seymour Crusty

One of his cleanest and most handsome pics

Don’t laugh, but Crusty was found with a Fritos bag on his head! We affectionately referred to this as him being an “original forager”, bringing a real life meaning to what we know to be all about toys and enrichment at our house. He was foraging for his life. I’m sure licking the contents out of the bag was delicious!

G.G. and Crusty, "Early bird special at Denny's"

A local rescue woman brought him to see us at the office because he was a such a mess she didn’t want to take him to one of her many “regular vets”, Crust needed cat people! Let’s see if I can recall his myriad of issues, a mouth full of horrible teeth which resulted in full mouth extractions, he was FIV+, he had Pododermatitis on all four feet, a condition seen with FIV+ cats and interestingly more common in male cats as well. He had the Feline Herpes Virus, no surprise when you look at his pics and runny eyes and nose. His body was covered in scars. You can see in all of his photos, even at his most handsome and with hair styling by Moi, he looks a bit motheaten and splotchy. Feet chronically stained from his eye discharge, and well, he was old, old as crust! This is how he got the name, old and crusty, but then we didn’t want his name to be too derogatory, so we added the “Mr.” and “Seymour” and see, now his name was fancy and fun!

Supervising Yukon's Laser treatments.

This pic taken while still living the life of a clinic cat.

Snuggled up to Yukon's bloomers!

Remarkable interest in dogs after life on the street.

This cat was something else. Super timid with people at first, he was a “cats’ cat” and that became ever so much more evident as he healed and we introduced him to G.G. They made the cutest little senior citizen couple! He was not exactly adoptable. I mean, to the right individual, but he needed to be with other cats and with a whole host of medical issue we were not exactly advertising to place him. He became a staple at the clinic, and he was even ok with dogs. I brought Yukon, our German Shepard up for cold laser therapy pretty regularly for a while, and you can see that Crust happily nestled into the tail fur and supervised my treatments!

After dinner activities at the senior center with GG and Crust!

Peek-a-boo Crusty!

He, along with G.G. and Fluffy (I know!), were the three clinic cats I brought home that one Thanksgiving week and never brought them back. To see them blossom in a home, enjoy the fireplace, sofa, screened porch and to sleep in our bed, how could I possible return them to clinic life at their age? Now clinic cats were not exactly destitute at our practice, they lived the lap of luxury compared to most, but it was still a “harder” environment. No rugs, no soft furnishings, no bed or human to sleep with and they deserved that.

He was a "classic" kinda guy!

Strollin' Crust!

Crusty fully took advantage of all of the amenities! He really settled in, let his guard down and played a lot for a senior cat with medical problems. He even got to go for stroller walks! A far cry from fighting for his life on the street. He practically lived out on the screen porch and being a cat’s cat, he had SO MANY friends here. I have always found males to be a bit more easy going and accepting of others and this could not have been more true in our home. We had an overwhelming number of boys and he could often be found in the cuddle puddle. In preparing for this post, I was reminded of many videos of he and Hitch wrestling together, grooming each other, lots of mutual grooming. He was in heaven!

Makes one wonder what he thought of all of this?

Cuddle puddle

Still choosing to hang out with his clinic cat friends.

Cuddle train.

Cuddle puddle.

Boys club!

He and Vader became buds too.

Screen porch time!

While he was living with us, he also developed diabetes (Yay! He became my THIRD diabetic cat AT THE SAME TIME!) likely subsequent to the steroids used to treat his pododermatitis. He also developed heart disease and chronic kidney disease. So his laundry list of medications and treatments grew.

We love how much he played here!

Killing blue mouse toy!

I have no idea how old Crust was, we guessed maybe 15 years or so. Who knows how old he was when he passed. He’s one of those cats with lots of secrets we will never know. I got the call while I was at work, Jake came home from work and found Mr. Seymour Crusty had passed away. He looked to have fallen asleep quite peacefully in a soft, fuzzy, plush bed. His little heart just gave out. We understood this might happen but we always hope to be with them to help them leave us and be there to say our goodbyes. It doesn’t happen often, but at the time he was the second cat we found deceased and did not plan for. This is never a good feeling. Looking back on all of the photos and videos though helps us know we did right by him. He had a nice retirement here with us. We have no regrets. We like to think he enjoyed our snacks more than Frito crumbs!

He loved the sun, as most senior cats do.

Classic photo of him, just a wee bit of snot coming from his nose!

Yukon

Yukon during his professional photo shoot! Soakin' up the love.

Yukon was yet another animal found by my previous employer. She was pretty good at filling up our household! She lived far from the clinic in North Georgia and found Yukon laying near a tombstone in a graveyard in Elijay, Georgia, on Yukon Road…All of the first three dogs were named after the streets they were found on. Yukon was emaciated, absolutely covered in ticks, not neutered, no collar, no microchip, nothing. My rule of thumb has always been that if it is obvious that some effort was made to take good care of them, meaning they are spayed and neutered, in relatively good health and have some form of identification, then we would always try to find the original owner. In Yukon’s case, as with so many, it did not look as though returning him to where he came from was in his best interest. We like to think it was one of those tragic stories where he was laying by my master’s grave, but we will never know. He was a young dog, barely a year old and was likely just lost and happened to be resting there.

First week home all scrawny and moth eaten fur.

Yukon and Jake in front yard 6-2002-1 (Copy)

Look at how gross his ears were!

Now, of course we didn’t “need” him, but clearly, I LOVE BIG dogs and Grant and Maple were not exactly big, so I saw this as my chance to finally have a BIG dog! A few of the other staff were interested in adopting him as well, but I had first dibs, and it didn’t take more than a meet and greet with our crew to know we were keeping him. Oh, that first night home…the TICKS!!! They just kept falling off of him, it was so gross. The dog must have had 100 plus ticks on him.

We joke that this was as close as either got to being caged shelter dogs.

Yukon and Grant became fast friends, in fact, Grant was the only dog that Yukon would wrestle and play with. No matter how many friends’ dogs we introduced Yukon to, he would not spar with any of them. Being a German Shepard, he was easy to train, and all three dogs learned basic and advanced obedience as well as agility training, we even dabbled with a splash of nose work but didn’t stick with it. Yukon loved big soccer balls from the start! We regularly purchased new ones as his jaws were so enormous, he could put his whole mouth around the ball and just puncture it! We went through a lot of soccer balls. He also liked to catch Frisbees! For such a big guy he was quite active and agile. He got along great with the cats, and they loved to snuggle into and groom his fuzzy coat.

At the grandparents for the holidays.

A sleepy pack.

At a friend's house visiting with their doggie friend, Cosmo.

Fireman Nilius to the resuce!

All three of these dogs traveled home with us to visit family, it was amazing to have such a substantial pack of dogs and they were all welcomed wherever they went. It was really nice. Yukon was definitely the “good boy” of the two big boys however, and he got to go do a few things that Grant could not because Grant was naughtier! For example, he enjoyed the Atlanta Dogwood festival, Grant would have lifted his leg on every booth and piece of furniture and art for sale, but Corny was a perfect gentleman! He had many nicknames, Yukon Cornelius, Corny, or Nilius, the nicknames are endless here at our house. Remember Yukon Cornelius from Rudolph? Totally him, “sniff, sniff, sniff, nothing!” Haha!

I could walk all three of these guys in a perfect “heel” on my left and push the cats in the cat stroller at the same time! We taught them “left” and ”right” training commands and we would all turn a corner together it was quite cool to see! They were quite the team. Very intimidating crew and when our friend’s Old English Bulldog came over for us to pet sit, watch out, no one would enter our yard with these dogs! We were safe.

Yukon was also a really good patient. I can recall one day, just playing in the yard he sliced open his back paw pad on a slate flagstone on our sidewalk. Oh, the blood shed! This was my chance to learn to suture! I did as much as I could on my own to save money and to avoid carting the 100# dog up to the cat practice! The vet I worked with was like, “oh you can do it!” She literally folded up two towels, we took some old suture and she quickly reviewed “simple continuous” suture pattern. I did it side by side with her and then brought my example home and sat it beside me while I worked. We gave him some pain meds, cleaned the wound, and stitched him right up! What a very good boy!

So well behaved on our walks.

Performing minor surgery at home in the living room!

What a team! They have all just had their monthly bath and blow dry!

I remember one day when Jake was mowing the grass in the backyard, a very brave UPS driver tried to deliver a package to our front door, the dogs were all on the back deck, until they weren’t! Jake looked up to see a man, outside of the fence of the front yard who had taken his shirt off and was waving it like a flag. Jake stopped mowing the grass and could hear the dogs barking. The three of them had pinned the UPS man on our front step. They didn’t bite him, but they sure as hell were not letting him leave! Jake came up to the front to diffuse the situation and the UPS man safely exited the yard. The guy who had take his shirt off was standing there talking to them and Grant came up and snatched the shirt out of his hands and started running around the yard with it playing keep away. They were a mess, but I never feared being alone in this house while those three beasts were on the job.

One morning, when he was only four years old, he went out the back door to pee, laid down and would not get back up. We hadn’t a clue what was wrong. He was to become the first of our dogs to have a major issue. I rushed him over to the super folks as Northlake Veterinary Surgery, at that time, they were still Northlake Veterinary Specialists and had an internist on site. Yukon’s ultrasound showed a ruptured splenic mass, and he needed emergency surgery. He was the first of what has become an absolutely horrible trend of ruptured spleens. It is a big dog thing, and we have lost multiple dogs to this now. So, he had surgery, and the biopsy results came back as an “undifferentiated sarcoma”. It was explained to me at the time that this meant the cancer cells were so immature they had not yet turned into a definitive type of cancer, so we had no idea what we were dealing with, how to treat it and he was given 3 months to live.

We have used this crate to "hospitalize" dogs and cats when needed.

Note the IV catheter, we have done some pretty intense nursing care here at home.

Yukon orange soccer ball 7-2002-1 (Copy)

We spoiled him, he got all the frisbees and soccer balls we could buy, fed him the single most expensive prescription food Hill’s makes called n/d (neoplasia diet), we took hikes, went on our walks (he would carry the frisbees ALL THE WAY back home after we went to the field to play, so precious). And the months and years passed…we really do not know what happened, but we suspect we either got stupid lucky which is not our luck, or the samples got screwed up at the lab. Yukon lived to be about 11 years old with a whole host of other problems that got him. Grant later had a ruptured spleen and due to our success with Yukon we proceeded with Grant’s surgery with hope, but he only survived a few days post op.

Yukon had a chance to get old, not that I am convinced that is all that awesome, but it was better than being ripped away from us at age four! In his senior years he developed Degenerative Myelopathy (DM) an extremely common condition of German Shepard Dogs affecting the spine, this would slowly paralyze him over time. Our wonderful surgeon said to me regarding exercise and taking it easy. “If you were Yukon, wouldn’t you rather go out catching your frisbee versus living sedentary in a bubble?” Ok, ok, that made sense, we continued to play on! We were going to let him go out with a bang and a splash of acupuncture, Chinese tea pills and a whole host of other potions and antioxidants and joint support. You name it, he got it. There is a reason we didn’t go out and do much with our friends during these 20 years, we were busy nursing a home full of broken pets and that is where every dime went too!

Wearing his Help'em Up Harness and Piddle Pants. Looking at this pic you can see why we forged on with care!

Via agility training they learned to jump and climb.

Majestic!

Passers by were in awe, we did these jumps on our daily walks!

But wait, there is more. Yukon developed ASS CANCER! Yep, that’s right, at this point, no holding back and being appropriate. It is a good thing he was such a cooperative patient because the vet visits and at home blood draws for rechecks, wow it was a lot. I will spare you the photos and boy do I have some doozies! I literally biopsied the mass at home, I applied lidocaine to the area, lanced it and squeezed out a whole bunch of delicious gunk (you vet techs out there get me, we like gross things), and sent off the sample. I forget what type of cancer it came back as at this point. It didn’t matter, he was eating and drinking and maintaining his weight, he just couldn’t easily defecate on his own once the masses got so large as they were obstructing his anus. So, guess what I did every night for 9 months? Came home from work, put his back legs in the bathtub, scooped out his poops and flushed them down, washed his tush and put on fresh pants! I swore I would not put him in piddle pants, but you can see from the photos that I could not avoid it. He was still playing with his soccer balls and could still catch a frisbee, how could I euthanize him? He struggled to stand up but once he was up, he was good to go! The Help ‘Em Up harness is a miracle device if there ever was one, it’s comfortable enough that they can stay in it long term, sleep in it and it is easily washable.

Cold laser treatments, note Mr Custy laying on his tail, little did they know they would soon live together.

The Three Musketeers.

Our annual Fall hike to Red Top Mountain

How could we not keep going with this degree of quality of life?

Robust an at his healthiest.

On top of the world!

In writing this, I have of course reviewed old photos and videos. I have videos of all of the cats gathered around him on his last night, being headbutt by Mammas and Wiccas, a belly flop by Peaches, Hitch laying by his side, but I just don’t have any great pics of him with the cats, they were all friends though. Yukon was an amazing and handsome boy, and we were so lucky he was ours. I admired his resilience and devotion to our family. We miss you Nilius.

The whole team. Maple, Grant and Yukon.

So cute. Watching mommy for commands.

Freyja

Probably about 16 or 17 years old here!

Freyja was honestly one of the kittens that drew the urge to keep the whole litter, I just thought she was so scrumptious. She grew up to be, what I think, was our most beautiful cat we have ever had. She lived up the goddess’s name we bestowed her. Our best friends nicknamed her Sasquatch! They would pet sit for us and leave us notes (remember, she was around before smartphones) or send texts that they had a “Sasquatch sighting!” I always thought this was hilarious but also tells you how elusive she was. She had no shortage of nicknames that is for sure. One that stuck the most, was “Bloomies” or “Bloomers”. You see, I have a thing for calling everyone some variation of “pants”, Leftypants, tortiepants, you name it. Freyja was too classy for pants, she wore bloomers! She also shopped at Bloomingdales (she told me), “Bloomingdale Blooms” was not a rare thing to hear me shouting around the house! I do realize that I am mildly insane, but hey, it’s fun to have nicknames!

Our dear Freyja. Her name means the goddess of love and beauty in Norse mythology. If you have not gathered by now, I’m of Swedish and Norwegian heritage so we have a bit of Scandinavian flare with some of the names we have chosen over the years. Freyja is the last kitten to feature in the “Mammas and her babies” category. I am sharing everyone in the order that we adopted them!

Freyja was a shy kitten and remained a shy cat for most of her life. This is a good life lesson for all of us. You cannot necessarily make a cat be who you want them to be. I adopted these kittens at barely 4 weeks old and they were all so different, every single one of them! Loads of commonality too, so much so that I do think there was only one father, plus the color patterns makes sense, and lead to just the one dad. Still, so much personality variation and I raised them all the same, offering the same experiences. I think it is important to learn to love your cats for who they are and the unique qualities each one offers.

You had to sneak up on her for good pics!

Full blown Sasquatch mode right here! Look at that lush coat.

She was a screamer like her siblings, the whole family was so vocal. I can recall all of the typical young cat naughtiness she embraced like getting in the fireplace, shy, skittish, super fun to bathe! If you even made eye contact with her downstairs she would bolt, you definitely could not bend over and pet her or pick her up! No way! However, she did always seem to know that when you were on the toilet, fresh out of the shower or horizontal in bed and that meant you were safe. She would get on our chests and embrace shoulder scratches and drool little drool drops right into our mouths if we weren’t careful! Such a wonderful purr and cooing, it was a special gift. I was the only one who could medicate her and trim her nails her whole life!

Chillin' in her condo. Look but do not touch!

Captured a pic of her playing! A rare photo indeed.

Some pics are not the best because so elusive!

It was as a senior that we really got to know and appreciate her. She gradually started to lose her hearing and it was actually a good thing! We had a new cat! She was far less noise phobic, she started to come downstairs to “meds time” wondering what all the fuss was about, she started to allow us to handle her and once in a while she would grace us with her presence of the sofa. If Freyja came to see you , you did not dare to breathe or move a muscle, it was a special gift and you embraced it! I even trained her to a leash and harness at 18 years of age and she enjoyed our “supervised yard fun” time. It was amazing!

So many words! "You're doing it wrong!" Is what I'm sure she is saying!

Waiting for our bi-cavity ultrasound at the internist's office!

At the vet for lab work recheck.

She lived almost exclusively upstairs at the top of the “treehouse” (the vertical space treehouse we built in our master bedroom) until she lost her hearing. Then she decided she needed a change of scenery and decided to join the family. It was awesome. She pretty much set up shop on a cat condo right in-between the kitchen and living room, she was in the heart of the action for her last 4-5 years of life. She would bark orders at us from the top of the condo, it was glorious! She demanded a lot of room service and we obliged, we were a very dedicated staff. This also led to us missing her more than we ever thought because she blossomed into such a big personality!

Enjoying meds time with a syringe of yummy food.

A "Mommy and Me" day at the office!

Still puzzlin'! Foraging right up until the end.

"Did someone say sparkly puff?"

This cat played with interactive wand toys and foraged for food up until a few weeks before she died. She was also a fierce hunter of sparkly puff balls and “called” while carrying through the house. This is a behavior that we sorely miss and loved the sound of her “calling” us to a meal with her prey. She also truly loved our dogs, groomed them, and even herded them! It was pretty hilarious to watch 20 year old, 7# Freyja, tell 100# Sebastian that he needs to move, “no, over here, never mind go over there!” And he would go! She had a lot of opinions! Her quality of life was outstanding. Even at 21 years of age, the top of a six-foot-tall cat condo (complete with heating pad) was where she lived. Needless to say, I start joint support very early in life, she started around age 12, and never showed a single symptom of arthritis or stiffness.

Freyja loved all of her doggies. She groomed them and taught them well!

Freyja blooms knew every single animal that I have cared for in my adult life. She was strong, survived so much, including our housefire, and had great quality of life well into her geriatric years. She is dearly missed, but we hold no regrets with this one. Others have left us feeling robbed and heartbroken. Some we did so much for and still lost them so young. Twenty-one years, 5 months and 10 days is a pretty good run that we can accept. She will always be our beautiful goddess.

Her last day with us, since 4 weeks old. We had a good run. She was finally tired.

How lucky are we to have these amazing and gorgeous animals that someone else just threw away?

Zinnia

The very first Fundamentally Feline profile pic was this beautiful girl!

Professional photo shoot was a challenge because she was shy.

She freaked out in the trap! Hardcore. Again, not knowing then what I do now, Jake and I were freaked out too. She thrashed around in the trap, bloodied her nose, we were afraid to open it because she was like a wild animal. But we couldn’t possible leave her in that trap all night, or could we? No. So we let her out in a bathroom, instinctually I have always been super paranoid about disease and fleas, etc. (perhaps a precursor sign that I was born to work in feline medicine!) She bolted around in there, but calmed down considerably quickly. Insanely, I gave her a bath, because that seemed like a swell idea at the time! We made an appointment at what was soon to be my future employer and brought her up to be tested for the communicable feline disease, treated for fleas, spayed etc.

Zinnia is the reason I am here, or Z, as we have affectionately called her for years. She started it all. Sure, I had cats before Zinnia came along, but she is what gave me my start. She presented challenges that forced me to learn more about cats and their behavior; she provided circumstances I had never dealt with before, she got me my job at my first feline veterinary practice, she was the first face of Fundamentally Feline and here is her story.

We were still living in our apartment at the time we started seeing her outside our window. All too commonly people move and just leave their cats behind. It was always dark when we would see her and we were novices, so we though she was huge, likely male and maybe even a long hair. I called the vet practice where we already took our 4 cats and they allowed us to borrow a humane trap. They taught us how to use it, suggested what to bait it with, and emphasized patience, that apparently some cats are “trap smart” and it could take weeks to catch her. Well, turns out she was pretty hungry because we laid a trail of canned food and had her in 15minutes!

I got the call that she was all done, got through surgery fine and was ready for pick up. When I go to pick up I was informed that she was pregnant but not too far along, so they spayed her anyway. Given my beliefs and the homeless pet population, I was fine with this. I was surprised at how very routine it was to do so, and how nonchalant everyone was about it though. I later learned how commonplace pregnant spays were and how necessary.

As I was returning the trap, discussing post op protocols and her follow up vaccines visit, the office manager turns to me and says, “you want a job?” I said, “are you kidding I have wanted to work here for years!” I had no experience and was about to graduate from art school, and here I am considering a job as a vet tech. So, we set up an observation day so I could see what I was getting myself into and I guess the rest is history! (I met cat #6 on my observation day, but that is another story!)

Kitchen and dining area was her headquarters.

Supervised outside time towards the end of life.

So then it was integration time. We had 4 male cats already, two pairs of brothers. So Zinnia was the “odd man out”. She was pretty “pissy” but all and all the intro went ok. Knowing what I know now I feel certain that Zinnia was likely someone’s only kitten, and was what we call poorly socialized. She likely grew up isolated from her our species and did not understand all of the social cues that most kittens learn from their litter mates in the first few formative weeks of life. I have always been a believer in adopting in pairs, just because it seemed like the right thing to do, but Z confirmed this! So she coped.

Then we moved. Shortly after Zinnia settled in we bought our first house, our only house thus far, and the house that has landed us on Animal Planet and in magazines for the feline accommodations we have made for it. It was good at first, more space for successful avoidance with the boys. When #6 came along that wasn’t so bad either, that was Peaches and she loved everyone. But by now I had started my job at the clinic; in fact, I started there the day after we moved into the house. The influx of stray and down on their luck cats in need of homes, blew me away. I set out to save the world, and well, adopted way too many cats too quickly.

So, within two months we went from 4 cats to 5, to 6 to eleven! In came Mamma and her babies. Our first foster failures and Zinnia was pissed. I do not know if there was any psychological impact on her having recently aborted her kittens, or if I just had a few too many bitchy females. Regardless, I had two females that hated each other (Mammas and Z) and some males that were happy to join in the fun, and some kittens who were about to grow up to be little hoodlums! Well, actually, they were amazing, but Zinnia never did take too kindly to them. The trouble shooting began.

As time passed by I somehow thought it was a good idea to have even more cats. And, well, it was! In fact, it was the best experience of our lives, except for poor Zinnia. You see, she was really the only one that wasn’t having a good time. It became imperative that food, water, litter, vertical space was provided in every room of the house, but most especially in Z’s favorite places. Everyone would come to use everything, but it had to be right for her. You see, successful avoidance became the goal. I didn’t need her to be cuddled up on an armchair grooming one of the kittens, but I needed her to be able to get to all of her basic needs without being attacked in the litter box, kicked off the top of a cat condo, etc. I think that is the big take home message. When you have cats that do not love each other, why do we make it so hard for them? They should not have to share a food dish in the kitchen or one hooded litter box in the laundry room, through a cat flap! It is ridiculous the obstacles we humans make these cats cope with and then we get upset when they don’t comply!

Zinnia, taught me about what I now call Tarzan syndrome or only child syndrome. Cats learn the majority of their social skills with other cats by 9-12 weeks of age and if not around other cats during that formative time, they tend to be aggressive with their own species. Zinnia was defensively aggressive towards the other cats and often provoked the fights she was in due to her lack of confidence around them. She taught me that sometimes you have to adopt cats for your cats and not cats just because YOU want them. She taught me about providing an environment of plenty so we make successful avoidance feasible. Z is extremely senior now and my number one priority. No other animals will come into this house to stress her out. I am rooting for her to outlive just as many as she can so she can enjoy herself. She is a happy cat, but I think she could have been happier had I known then what I know now. Hindsight is always 20/20 isn’t it? I am better for it now and better equipped to help others with cats just like Zinnia who have found themselves in this situation. Thank you Z.

I quickly had to take a much deeper interest into how to properly meet the needs of a multi-cat household. This wasn’t about filling the food bowls and scooping boxes anymore. Thanks to Zinnia’s poor feline socialization skills and my overzealous need to save every cat on earth I developed a profound interest in environmental enrichment. This wasn’t really what I was hearing it be called at the time. Life became all about increasing the vertical space in our home to increase square footage and giving the cats lots of cool stuff to do. I later learned that was all called EE or Environmental enrichment!

A very senior lady, about 17, enjoying the fire.