Everyday 'Cat Blogging' -- Southern Ohio Porch Cats & Max

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not being a shit about it. Well, not a total shit, anyway -- often, they're badly formatted, overly complex, don't have many pictures, don't have good pictures, and generally aren't pleasant to look at. The most annoying thing about personal sites with pet pages? Embedded MIDI files of songs like 'Alleycat.' Like I didn't get enough of that damn thing when I was taking piano lessons.

Of course, there are decent sites for companies that serve the animal-owning community. Like Royal Canin, who currently are feeding our cats. Doodle was starting to hork the Iams, and Tink was starting to have hairballs again, so I figured quality control at Iams had fallen off since Procter and Gamble bought them out. Yeah, I know -- I was shocked, too; who could imagine a multinational conglomerate would do quality control less effectively than a small local company? (/sarcasm)

Of course, behemoth Tink grew up on Purina chow -- kitten and cat -- before we found Doodle and started feeding her Iams, so I guess I shouldn't blame all of it on multinational conglomerate quality control. A good bit of it is, of course, a matter of the great lottery of genetics.

Tink's are, quite clearly, impressive. Whereas Gord's:

Not so much. Legs too short, head too big, gingivitis, he's absolutely driven to scrounge food, up to and including climbing up on the stove to lick a greasy frying pan. When he was allowed to free-feed, he made it up to almost eighteen pounds. So did Tink, but she never looked like she was fat like he did.

Doodle is, for that matter, a little on the tubby side these days ... but frankly, we don't figure on her loser genetics maintaining her very long, she's already lost quite a few of her teeth, and one of the vets at the clinic where we take the menagerie said she saw no harm in letting Doodle eat whatever she wanted and be a little on the tubby side, since she has phases where her appetite isn't what it could be. As long as she's eating decent food, being a little poochy won't hurt her any more than her genetics and whatever tough life she lived before we found her did, so we let her have what she wants.

Squeek gets whatever she wants, too, and she really looks quite normal. Not that appearances can't be deceiving -- but she's only got worms in her brain, the kind you can't see, not in her DNA. She's a 3/4 scale Tink, from all indications.

Here's a shot of the girls all sitting still on the back of the sofa in the front room. Rare -- Squeek sitting still, and not bugging the crap out of anybody else:

Speaking of web sites useful to pet owners, Doctors Foster and Smith is one of the better online/catalog retailers. If there's something you can't find, they often have it -- I mean like pet fountains, shampoo, that kind of stuff. They respond fast, and their prices are reasonable.

Another useful site sponsored by Foster and Smith is a searchable encyclopedia of information about animals, called Pet Education. Loads of useful info, I've found it very helpful, especially when I'm sitting at the computer at two in the morning, wondering about something. Not that it's really all that unusual an occurrence, but when it's an animal problem (because Pet Education can't help me stop worrying about the death of our culture, how poorly most people spell, or whether or not the current thieves are going to steal that pittance I've thus far paid into the Social Security fund), it's right there.