The "what's On Your Mind?" Thread -2018

[Willowy]

I cannot understand how anyone can live with an unneutered cat. I picked up a stray tom yesterday, and he's in my spare bathroom. He used the litterbox like a good boy. Now I'm in my bedroom on the other side the house, and all I can smell is tomcat urine. I might die . How anyone can put up with this odor for very long is beyond me.

I'm definitely picking up some Fresh Step non-clumping the next time I'm near a store. It's the only litter I've found that can dampen the tomcat odor even a little.

 

[1 bruce 1]

I'm going to assume you're about my mom's age and answer that way . TBH I think it's because people had much smaller social circles back then. If you didn't know someone personally, you never heard about them, and even for people you knew personally, it was considered rude to discuss their problems. Now you "know" a whole lot of people and hear about their every issue, because of the Internet.

Also, a lot of special-needs people were institutionalized back then. One of my friends had an uncle who probably would have been mainstreamed nowadays. But they sent him away when he was 3 when they could no longer pretend he was developing normally. Raising your own special-needs child "simply wasn't done" back then, according to her grandmother.

Or they just died because there was no treatment for what they had.

And a child's needs weren't taken into consideration at all. One of my mom's friends has a brother who is on the spectrum. His father beat the crap out of him every time he stimmed or melted down or otherwise behaved "abnormally". Until he was basically afraid to move. He learned to be very well-behaved. Also grew up with crippling self-image issues and C-PTSD, and attempted suicide quite a few times. . .but who cares, as long as he was well-behaved :/.

I think it's better now. Not completely, granted, but much better for those of us who can't pretend to be perfect all the time.

You know, I JUST watched a you tube video on this subject that left me in tears. "25 years after Willowbrook" for anyone interested. The families spoke about this very thing. Back then, it was just "what was done". Family members, friends, doctors, and priests/preachers would encourage that because it was felt that they (the special needs child) would be better off in a place that could cater to those needs.
The survivors and their families broke my heart, particularly a young man that was sent away at 3 years old after being misdiagnosed as mentally handicapped; only when he was released 18 years later was it found out he had cerebral palsy and was mentally sharp as a tack--only physically was he handicapped. He talks about how he was beaten up and had his head shoved through a wall, and only was allowed to attend school for 5 years. Today, he's a successful business man with a heart of gold that helps prevent others from suffering that fate. Truly inspiring.
For anyone interested....even if you're mildly curious. Give it a watch. It's heart breaking, yet inspiring.

 

[1 bruce 1]

I cannot understand how anyone can live with an unneutered cat. I picked up a stray tom yesterday, and he's in my spare bathroom. He used the litterbox like a good boy. Now I'm in my bedroom on the other side the house, and all I can smell is tomcat urine. I might die . How anyone can put up with this odor for very long is beyond me.

I'm definitely picking up some Fresh Step non-clumping the next time I'm near a store. It's the only litter I've found that can dampen the tomcat odor even a little.

Boys smell, or so sayeth my girls... =P

My neutered-at-9-months hyperesthesia boy has urine that can clear a room depending on how he's doing. It's like a combination of old pee and a locker room. My intact boy dogs occasionally get, uh..."aroused" and give off this old pee/locker room scent as well.

 

[Willowy]

My male dog is still intact (I wanted to wait until he was 2, now he's 2 1/2 but I'm such a procrastinator. . .) and his pee is strong, but not like a tom! That tomcat odor makes me want to tear my nose off, lol. I also don't like female-cat-in-heat odor, but it's not nearly as strong.

 

[1 bruce 1]

My male dog is still intact (I wanted to wait until he was 2, now he's 2 1/2 but I'm such a procrastinator. . .) and his pee is strong, but not like a tom! That tomcat odor makes me want to tear my nose off, lol. I also don't like female-cat-in-heat odor, but it's not nearly as strong.

I leave my dogs intact for as long as possible (I don't think pediatric spaying/neutering is a good thing in most cases)! Even with the pee smell =D

We had a few tom cats show up here, then leave as they realized all our girls "weren't into them" (spayed) and the smell. Dear God the smell. They had a regular peeing match for a few days, it was terrible!!!!

 

[arouetta]

If you look at death certificates from early 1900s and earlier, people died young, and they died of preventable things. Plus there were a lot of "new" diseases that aren't new, they are simply known when until recently they were unknown. A lot of people died of bad food, and they are thinking now that all those people didn't die of food poisoning, they died of unknown or preventable diseases.

I'm going to draw a comparison that people are going to think is unfair or wrong of me to say, but oh well, you all know me here. You never used to hear of a grown man that did what he shouldn't with young children. Does that mean child molestation is something recently created? Freud wrote of female hysteria and women lusting after their fathers when he heard patient after patient saying what their fathers did to them as children and decided there was no way that many men were perverted. Was he right and the modern trend of molesters being close to home is something modern and never known in the past?

Also, gotta point out that life expectancy is about 20 years longer than it was 100 years ago.

 

[Alicia88]

I'm pretty ticked off at someone right now, but I'm not sure who. We went to Wal Mart and I picked Aedan uIp and he smelled. I sniffed the car seat and someone had peed in it! I'm livid. Of course, I have no clue which furball is responsible. I wonder if it's a jealousy thing.
On the bright side, since they're all fixed, the smell isn't as bad as it could be.

 

[arouetta]

Darn it. We all missed Pi day.

I just read an article that they've calculated pi to 22 trillion digits.
Even After 22 Trillion Digits, We’re Still No Closer To The End Of Pi

I'm thinking it would be appropriate to have a Caeser salad for dinner tonight.

 

[Willowy]

You never used to hear of a grown man that did what he shouldn't with young children. Does that mean child molestation is something recently created?

My mom claims that most of the friends she had when she was a kid were molested in some way by someone trusted (dad, brother, grandfather, uncle, teacher, etc.). I don't know if that's because it was especially common, because she knew all the right (wrong) people, or what. But it was a Thing We Don't Talk About.

 

[Margret]

Okay, I'm responding to several messages here, and I'm not even going to try to tag everyone or quote everything.

When my mother was a little girl, her uncle raped her. She told her parents, and her parents warned the rest of the family not to let the man have access to their daughters. But no one even considered reporting it to the police, because that would have resulted in making it public, which would have further victimized my mother. This would have been some time in the 1920s. More than 50 years after that, at a criminal trial for the repeated rapes of a 3-year-old girl by her brothers and father, in Colorado, the judge refused to convict the rapists. He had the little girl brought to him and placed her on his desk (bench?) and explained to everyone that "this is a very promiscuous child." At least by that time this generated enough outrage that the judge could be forced to retire (not, please note, fired for cause), but he was still allowed to put his name on the list of judges available to serve in emergencies. This was, I believe, some time between 1975 and 1980, but that's pretty much pre-internet, so although I remember it clearly (except for exact dates and names) I'm having trouble finding documentation of it now. However, victim shaming remains to this day, with victims of all ages, and it can be even worse when the victim is male.

My paternal Uncle Philip was a "blue baby"; the umbilical cord had been wrapped around his neck, cutting off oxygen to his brain long enough that he was born blue. The doctor declared him dead, but the midwife worked over him until she managed to resuscitate him (it must have been a good year financially for my grandfather to have paid to have both a midwife and a doctor attending the birth). The result was that Uncle Philip had severe cerebral palsy, the worst I've ever seen. He could get around only by wheelchair; he was unable to do things like pick up a glass or cup, or feed himself, and his words were extremely hard to understand. His form of C.P. resulted in nerve signals being sent to multiple muscles when he moved, causing (quite literal) palsy. One further result was that his muscles were quite strong, despite being seriously uncoordinated. And when people got frustrated and finished his sentences for him, or his sisters and mother fed him like a baby, he'd get angry and hit out. Somehow that managed to be coordinated. By the time my mother married into the family everyone was terrified of him, and he was miserable.

My mother (the physical therapist) insisted that Philip be bought plates that were divided into sections for different foods and had high edges against which a spoon or fork could be pushed, and then be left alone at meals to feed himself (though his food was to be cut up into bite sizes in advance). "Oh, how cruel!" the family said, but she insisted, and Uncle Philip gained some independence and became happier and less angry. She also had them buy straws for him made of glass (Pyrex, I think), that he couldn't accidentally bite through, so he could also get a drink from his glass at meals. She told me that when Philip was first diagnosed as an infant my Grandmother was told that he was mentally defective (he actually had normal intelligence, though it was difficult for him to learn things like reading because his eyes didn't work together properly) and that she should send him to a "home" that would "take care" of him, although he'd probably die young. My Grandmother refused; insisting that she wouldn't send him off to be with strangers when he had family. That decision probably saved his life, because those "homes" had no funding for extra food for children who used such enormous energy just trying to reach out to pick something up, so their residents did, indeed, tend to die young, of starvation.

Obviously, my grandmother did some things right, by instinct, and other things wrong, by ignorance, but how could she have been anything but ignorant given the state of medical knowledge on this subject at that time, and the total lack of support from the medical profession that she received? And how could she have known that things had changed until my mother showed up and told her?

I have to get to other things right now; I'll continue this later.

Margret

 

[Mother Dragon]

On my mind now is my asthma kitty. WHAT THE HECK is causing these flare ups? He had another hospitalization last night, 24 hours, and is home doing well but within 20 minutes of being home, he coughed. I'm going insane.
We dust like crazy. We have a HEPA filter, a humidifier, no carpeting. I wash blankets very often two times a week in a very gentle, hypoallergenic detergent. No one smokes indoors. No one uses wood fireplaces or anything. No oils, fragrances (no febreeze or candles or tealight burners) and we only (and I mean ONLY!) use a very dilute solution of white vinegar and water or murphy's in a dilution to 10:1. The only litter I've found that doesn't send him into a fit (or make him avoid the box, probably because the dust is more than he can bear) is pelleted. I don't mind the litter but I HATE the non clumping factor as I used clumps to see if anyone is passing small amounts vs. normal size clumps. Even so the boxes are uncovered. I'm so frustrated, I feel like I'm going insane.
I'm having his prednisolone compounded with flavorings as he's decided pred laced food is something to be avoided, good news is he's gained back the weight he lost and is holding steady at his normal weight. I HATE prednisolone but I hate the idea that my cat might suddenly be unable to breathe when I'm not around.
I had a horrible nightmare last night that I came home to find him panting and unable to breathe and couldn't locate his emergency meds and was watching as his tongue turned blue then black. I woke up freaked out. I know, it was just a dream but it woke me up so violently, I was happy knowing he was at the vets (24/7 staffed) and was in good hands, but I still didn't fall asleep for a good hour after =(
I'm just so defeated. I can't figure this out. A cure would be great but I am not looking for it, I just want to find his triggers and eliminate them so he can be happy.

Have you had him tested for food allergies? It's also possible that the scent of something you're cooking or have cooked could set him off. Vapors from drapes or furnishings? Grass or tree pollen you bring in on your shoes or clothing? Allergies are boogerbears to find. I hope you do find the problem.

I'm so sorry you had such a vivid, terrible nightmare. Those linger after you wake up. Try to replace it with some happy memories of this cat. It might make you feel a bit better.

 

[arouetta]

I came very close to catnapping a cat tonight. She's a pretty thing, technically a calico but rather than patches it looked like the gray and orange hairs are completely intermingled. She was all lovey lovey to the woman feeding her. But she's a feral. On top of all the up front costs of making sure she's not going to bring something to the boys, she'd likely have gone spastic if I actually walked up and grabbed her. And my husband is standing firm that there will be no new cats in the house until Montressor dies.

I think I will check with the local shelters though. The woman is concerned that if she's classified as feral then they may not try to rehabilitate and home her. That might be true with the county shelter, since governmental funding can be stingy. There's a Humane Society shelter, but as of a few months ago they were not accepting cats. If they are though, they may have foster volunteers that could work with her.

But the fact that I'm still ready to grab random cats shows to me that there's still a huge unhealed hole in my heart from Shadow. If it was healed, I wouldn't be wanting to just grab any cat I see and bring them home.

 

[Margret]

She's a pretty thing, technically a calico but rather than patches it looked like the gray and orange hairs are completely intermingled.

More like a tortoiseshell? A dilute tortie? Is that a thing?

Margret

 

[Alicia88]

Spent the evening doing laundry. After folding 3 load of baby clothes, my back is hurting so bad, I may cry. I've had problems with it ever since I broke it and bending over to grab clothes repeatedly apparently was more than I can handle. The worst part is knowing that it's only going to get worse with age. I'm not even 30 and my back hurts all the time - the level of pain just fluctuates. What's it gonna be like when I'm 60? And it's not like I was really doing anything that difficult. Folding laundry is hardly strenuous.

 

[arouetta]

The part that hurt your back, was it grabbing an item out of the basket in order to fold it? What about elevating the basket so you don't have to bend over for every piece? If the basket is deep, I'd recommend getting a shallow one as soon as you can manage, until then dump the basket on whatever surface you are using to hold the clothes once you've gotten far enough down that even elevation can't prevent you from having to bend over to reach the clothes at the bottom.

 

[Alicia88]

I assume. That and hunching over while folding. I guess I'll have to pay more attention to my posture

 

[arouetta]

Throwing out some ideas. Maybe use your kitchen table as the surface that holds the folded laundry until you are done since it will be high? Practice other styles of folding that keep the clothes and your arms chest level? If a low surface must be used, then sit down in a kneeling position that keeps your back straight while folding?

 

[arouetta]

Okay, so this was on my FB feed. Caption is "So what are your future plans?"

 

[Willowy]

Well she's got me beat! I think I counted 60 in that pic.

I saw someone on another forum insult another person by calling them a "sad middle-aged butch with too many cats". And I was like, sad?!? Why is that sad? I'm livin' the dream, baby! LOL

Seriously, when I was maybe 8 or 9 I read a book about a kid who befriended the neighborhood "crazy cat lady". And even then I knew that's what I wanted. I'm not sure if that was the character I was supposed to identify with. . .

 

[arouetta]

I can think of one sad thing about being a crazy cat lady - cleaning all the litter boxes.