How about a little cat stuff today?
It's been about a year since i got Isaac, a year filled with trials, tribulations and more insanity than any man should have to deal with (have i ever told you stories about my insane german friend? RO'C, i know you remember stories about him).

Anyways...the long and the short of it is that i probably like the little guy more than a little bit and i wouldnt' want him to go away even if someone say, offered me $20000 for him and was going to give him a good home.  So....go ahead and try that.  Go on, i dare ya.  But when you offer, come cash in hand cause i want to be REALLY tempted.

but the purpose of today's entry...it having been a year, it was time to take him to the vet for his yearly.  Already i am showing how much better a pet owner i am than my parents ever were.  we never once in my entire life, of all the cats we ever had, took one to the vet. Never. Ever.  Of course they also ran away before they could ever grow old enough for it to be a real problem. 

So anyways, i thought i'd share the following two emails that i sent out about the vet trip...

Isaac’s trip to the vet was not bad at all.
He was whiney and didn’t want to be held so much but wasn’t trying very hard to get away.
He was squirmy when the vet tried to listen to his heart (she thinks he has a murmur).
He weighs 11.2 pounds.  I won’t know how much he weighs again for another year.  

The vet did have one very unfortunate thing to say…
It is important to keep the tartar down on cats cause if you don’t, it’s a breeding ground for all these things that cause things like urinary tract infections and etc.
So…she was saying I don’t need to go to the lengths that his last vet was saying, with a putting him under and doing a full cleaning…that with some regular care he should be ok.  So she gave me some samples of these treats that help clear it up a little, like milk bones do for dogs.
And, um, I should brush his teeth…(every time I even think that I duck instinctively)  So I got some free samples of toothpaste as well.
Ummmm. I’m gonna sell tickets for the first time we try that.

Right now he’s hiding under my chair but doesn’t want to talk to me.

and then shortly after this one...

Ooookayyyy.
We just had our first experience with the tartar treats.
They are just slightly smaller than a marble and round and of course, crunchy.
I went to give him two….first I had to coax him out from under the bed.
This done he came over and sniffed them.
Then he pulled away. Then he sniffed them again.
Then he put one in his mouth…it seemed too big so it dropped out again.
So he tried the other one. Same thing. They sat together on the floor.
He sniffed them again. I think he liked them for the brief instant he had them in his mouth.  

Then he, um, inhaled them, both, at once, no chewing. I didn’t know he could do that.

 Way to subvert the entire point of the treat.

so...uh...yeah...fun in the sun.

on a good note though, this vet trip cost half what it would have from his old vet and my veterinary assistant for today told me that she thought that this clinic was expensive for Vancouver.

at least its another year for the next one....
you know, except for the impending doom of the teeth brushing.