Pet Sitting

Chimi

Normally, when my in-laws (one of which is a Veterinarian) go away on vacation, their dogs stay at our house and I take care of them without any issues and my wife goes and cares for the cats, birds, plants, etc. at their house.  This past weekend, however, my wife & sister-in-law went to join their parents on vacation and I had the pleasure of having to take care of not only our 2 dogs & 2 cats, but 2 of my in-law’s 3 dogs, 7 cats, & 4 birds.  You’re probably thinking that this shouldn’t be any big deal, right?  Let me explain.

Two of their seven cats are outdoor cats and weren’t any problem at all.  The others are all indoor cats, some of which have medical conditions requiring special food and/or medications requiring that they eat in separate rooms to avoid them eating one another’s food and possibly getting sick or dying.  Here’s where the fun starts for me.

Three of the five indoor cats are always downstairs (at least while their owners are away from home), but ONE of those (Zip) has to eat upstairs in the bathroom and then return downstairs after eating according to the long list of instructions that describe what each cat eats, what (if any) medications they need, and where they are required to eat in order to maintain their normal routine as much as possible.  So I feed the two downstairs cats (Maddy and Chimi) and manage to catch and force the cat Prozac down Chimi’s throat.  I had assumed that catching Zip was going to be a pain in the ass but it wasn’t an issue at all since he was rubbing against my legs very excited that he was about to be fed.  When I got him to the bathroom upstairs, he was none too thrilled about staying in there though.  I managed to squeeze out of the bathroom without him escaping and moved on to feeding Rava and Raven.

Rava is the other cat that needs the kitty Prozac and on top of that, he’s not supposed to eat dry cat food because of a digestive issue he has.  I’ve been told that if he eats dry food, he could get ‘blocked up’ and potentially die.  This isn’t supposed to be an issue because Raven usually eats in one of the bedrooms and Rava eats in the living room.  The first thing I need to do then is lure Raven into the bedroom with her food.  There’s just one problem though……..

Raven

You see, Raven (the little bitch of the bunch) and I already have a love/hate relationship due to a previous incident in which she ate a pill that either my wife or I dropped on the floor.  In an effort to get her to vomit up the pill, a friend (another Vet) and I tried to force her to ingest hydrogen peroxide from a syringe.  I was the lucky one that got to try to hold her still while wrapped in a blanket.  Needless to say, she didn’t like that and proceed to shred my hands and forearms to a bloody mess.  I was hoping that she loved her food more than she hated me and that she’d just follow me into the bedroom like she does her owners and my wife when she feeds her.  Well, she must have had a flashback to the peroxide incident or something, because she didn’t want to follow me into the bedroom with the food.  In fact, she wanted NOTHING to do with me.  I had to chase her through the house from living room to kitchen to dining room back to living room under one sofa to under the china cabinet, under the other sofa, back to the kitchen, etc.  Trying to think of other methods of luring her into the bedroom, I remembered that there’s only ONE thing I know of that this cat gives a shit about…….THE LASER POINTER!!  I go and find the laser pointer only to find that the batteries are extremely weak.  I tried it anyways.  It worked in getting her approximately half way there and then the batteries completly died.  At that point both she and I knew that the chase was on again. I finally ended up nabbing her in the dining room when she tried to dart between a cabinet and the wall but didn’t fit.  I had left the bedroom door open hoping that at some point during the chase, she’d run in and I’d just close the door and go on with feeding Rava behind the couch, but no such luck.  I was rather pissed by the time I caught her.  I put her in the bedroom with her food and put Rava’s food behind the sofa so he could eat in private.  Now it was time to get Zip out of the bathroom and put him back downstairs.

In an effort to avoid another chase all over the main floor of the house, I needed to grab Zip and carry him downstairs.  Well, for whatever reason, he decided to spaz out too and not let me pick him up.  He decided run laps around the bathroom from behind the toilet into the back of the tub behind the shower curtain, out the front of the tub and back behind the toilet three or four times before I was finally able to grab him and put him downstairs.  At this point I was even more irritated and decided to go outside and calm down before going back to check on Raven and Rava.  I took this time to call my wife and describe how much fun I was having.

After the phone call, I went back into the house to see if Rava had eaten and to let Raven out of the bedroom.  Little did I know that in the time I was chasing Raven around the house, Rava had slipped into the bedroom un-noticed.  I opened the bedroom door to find BOTH cats and an empty food dish.  Rava ran out and Raven ran to hide under the bed and wouldn’t come out.  I tried to spook her out but had no luck after several minutes.  I decided at that point that the best thing to do was to leave a litter box, food and water in there with her and then come back that evening to check on her and make another attempt at getting her out of there.

I had made a trip to the store with the plan of buying new batteries for the laser pointer.  I decided against it when I found that they were nearly $4.00 each and the laser pointer required THREE of them.  When I returned later that evening, I made sure to have my Maglite flashlight with me so that I could easily see under the bed, and into all of the nooks and crannies of the room.  I opened the door to the bedroom to find that neither the food, water or litter box had been touched since I was there earlier.  It was at this point that I began to wonder if I’d scared her to death (heart attack, etc.) because there was literally no trace of her in that room.  I was CONVINCED though that she was in there because I physically placed her in there and didn’t see her run out at all during the fiasco that had taken place earlier in the day.  I continued to look and look throughout the room moving things around and shining with the flashlight only to find nothing.  I left there again tired and upset that I still hadn’t located Raven.  I wondered how I would explain the potential death of one of the cats to my wife and her family.

When I returned to take care of the cats, etc. the following day, there was still no sign of Raven in the bedroom.  The food, water and litter box STILL were all untouched.  At this point I was nearly certain that she was dead somewhere in that room and that I just hadn’t found her yet.  When I went to the living room to locate Rava for his feeding and to give him his Prozac (or whatever it is), I found BOTH of them hiding under one of the sofas.  I was extremely relieved and went about with caring for the remainder of the pets, happy that my wife would be returning home that evening and would be caring for them until her parents return home.

I’ll be armed with a charged laser pointer and ready for Raven and Zip next time we visit my wife’s parents!!