Who you callin' fat?!
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Showing posts with label cats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cats. Show all posts
Friday, March 16, 2007
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Cats and dogs
Our orange tabby, Tom, has some sort of kitty itchies. He doesn't go outside these days (so fleas are not an issue), and I've changed his food to this super-natural-sensitive-systems kitty kibble; but, he still has a track of itchy bumps along his back. They're not nearly as prevalent or "angry looking" as they used to be, but it's become a ritual for us to spend each day with me giving him his cat spa/"daily scratch." I love having my kitty (in fact, both of them) on my lap (what's left of it as my pregnancy tummy protrudes), but I'm wondering what holistic ways I might try to eliminate his itchies. I know it has to be caused by something internal. My strongest instinct is that he's got allergies - to what, exactly, I don't know, yet. The other possible culprit is a parasite of some sort. So, yesterday, between tasks at my temp gig, I surfed the web to dig up info on possible causes and holistic treatments of kitty cooties.
I found a holistic vet that I might contact, and I came across multiple websites for animal communicators/psychics, including this one -- Marta Williams. What fun! Several years ago in Austin, a local women-centric film organization (Reel Women) organized a weekend film festival of indie films by women filmmakers. One of the shorts they screened that weekend featured an animal communicator who lived/worked somewhere up in New York state, I think. I don't remember the filmmaker's name, nor the name of her profilee, but I remember most of the film. I found it so damn interesting and entertaining.
I talk to my cats all the time. Hell, I talk to every animal I encounter. Ken thinks it's funny and sometimes embarassing. He'll try to shoo me along, away from the neighbor's barking dog, for instance, in an effort to quiet the noisy ruckus as soon as possible. And, I'm sure my mom rued this tendency of mine when I was a child, because of the number of times I was bitten or even mauled by a dog or cat that I expected to be friendly back to me. Oops. Scars can make for good stories, though - like the one on my right wrist, from the time when the neighbors' Great Dane chomped onto me to drag me into their house. That one wasn't really my fault - I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. They opened the door before they had control of their two giant dogs, and there you go. I think I was maybe in kindergarten. I remember that the dog was taller than me.
And, then there was another neighbor's badass beagle. This was first, maybe second grade, and it was my mistake, definitely. Bad ass beagle lived with neighbors around the corner from my house. But, it was approachable if you encountered it with one its humans, which I had experienced. I proudly boasted of this feat of actually petting the badass beagle while walking to school with my best buddies, Pat Guiney and Timmy T. Of course, they crowed that there was no way I could've gotten close to that dog, much less petted it, and that basically, I was full of doo-doo.
You know I had to prove them wrong. Needless to say, without one of its human pack there to "okay" my effort to pet him, badass beagle reacted to my entrance into his yard with a biting, clawing lunge at my face. I remember running home afterward and my mom reacting with alarm to the blood coming down from over my left eye and the claw marks that made vertical stripes down both my cheeks. Another small scar resides in the arch of my left eyebrow to this day. I'm probably lucky that the cheek scratches weren't deep enough to make me look like Seal, the pop singer.
Today, I've had sketchy fantasies of organizing a workshop weekend with Marta above for a group. She offers a deal like a Tupperware party, or one of those lingerie parties, where the hostess gets to attend for free if she can draw enough attendees to an event. It just sounds like a fun way to spend a weekend someday - learning and practicing the ways all of us experience communicating with animals, whether it's in images, words, " just knowing," or some combination thereof.
I'll have to add this to my List of Fun Ideas. Come to think of it, I need to start compiling a List of Fun Ideas. :) That'll be a different posting.
I found a holistic vet that I might contact, and I came across multiple websites for animal communicators/psychics, including this one -- Marta Williams. What fun! Several years ago in Austin, a local women-centric film organization (Reel Women) organized a weekend film festival of indie films by women filmmakers. One of the shorts they screened that weekend featured an animal communicator who lived/worked somewhere up in New York state, I think. I don't remember the filmmaker's name, nor the name of her profilee, but I remember most of the film. I found it so damn interesting and entertaining.
I talk to my cats all the time. Hell, I talk to every animal I encounter. Ken thinks it's funny and sometimes embarassing. He'll try to shoo me along, away from the neighbor's barking dog, for instance, in an effort to quiet the noisy ruckus as soon as possible. And, I'm sure my mom rued this tendency of mine when I was a child, because of the number of times I was bitten or even mauled by a dog or cat that I expected to be friendly back to me. Oops. Scars can make for good stories, though - like the one on my right wrist, from the time when the neighbors' Great Dane chomped onto me to drag me into their house. That one wasn't really my fault - I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. They opened the door before they had control of their two giant dogs, and there you go. I think I was maybe in kindergarten. I remember that the dog was taller than me.
And, then there was another neighbor's badass beagle. This was first, maybe second grade, and it was my mistake, definitely. Bad ass beagle lived with neighbors around the corner from my house. But, it was approachable if you encountered it with one its humans, which I had experienced. I proudly boasted of this feat of actually petting the badass beagle while walking to school with my best buddies, Pat Guiney and Timmy T. Of course, they crowed that there was no way I could've gotten close to that dog, much less petted it, and that basically, I was full of doo-doo.
You know I had to prove them wrong. Needless to say, without one of its human pack there to "okay" my effort to pet him, badass beagle reacted to my entrance into his yard with a biting, clawing lunge at my face. I remember running home afterward and my mom reacting with alarm to the blood coming down from over my left eye and the claw marks that made vertical stripes down both my cheeks. Another small scar resides in the arch of my left eyebrow to this day. I'm probably lucky that the cheek scratches weren't deep enough to make me look like Seal, the pop singer.
Today, I've had sketchy fantasies of organizing a workshop weekend with Marta above for a group. She offers a deal like a Tupperware party, or one of those lingerie parties, where the hostess gets to attend for free if she can draw enough attendees to an event. It just sounds like a fun way to spend a weekend someday - learning and practicing the ways all of us experience communicating with animals, whether it's in images, words, " just knowing," or some combination thereof.
I'll have to add this to my List of Fun Ideas. Come to think of it, I need to start compiling a List of Fun Ideas. :) That'll be a different posting.
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