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| Pork chop remains thrown onto our garden |
What kind of being, because it sure isn't human, throws a pork chop bone - a little underdone, if you ask me - fresh from today's lunch, into someone else's garden? Bearing in mind that I live in the middle of nowhere and that nobody is going to drive half a mile to throw away a bone, then it has to have come from one of our group of only three houses here. One neighbour, who only comes on alternate weekends - including this - barbecues, just yards from where this was found.
My dog found this as we were going out to go for a walk: Ms Supersniffer went straight into the overgrown weeds where it had been thrown and had got it in a trice. Fortunately, a very sharp "Drop it!" command ensured that she did.
Besides being pork, which dogs shouldn't have and, apart from the fact that it's dirty and gross and would also have attracted all the other wild dogs, cats, rats and goodness knows what to our house if it hadn't been found, one has to be cautious of other non-kosher ingredients, because there are always accounts of people putting down poisoned meat to kill other people's animals here.
There honestly doesn't have to be a reason.
And the other neighbour (both neighbours are brothers) had been out spraying chemicals this morning. It would be just far too coincidental. Whilst I am not saying it was and I'm not about to have it analysed, I'm just saying it would not be unheard of, so I'm not about to take chances. It's also just bloody lucky that the cats have not been out for quite some time and are unlikely to do so, so they couldn't have found it first, when I wasn't around to act in time.
Why have the poor cats all been imprisoned again? Apart from bad weather and a list of other reasons, after losing Khan to kidney failure in November, his brother, Balu started pissing blood last weekend. Sister, Kitty just didn't seem her normal self, then Betty started throwing up. So, last Monday, I took the whole family to the vet, plus Mico and the dog. At this point I was fraught and not just from the constant "choral singing" on the long journey either.
One must not have favorites when one has a "numerous family", but the fact is that I found Balu, abandoned, when he was only 4 1/2 inches long, brought him up on the bottle and, unlike his siblings, constantly carried him around inside my clothing when he was "the baby who would not be put down."
Brilliant vet mind you. Balu lay in my arms without being held down, while she shoved a catheter up his you-know-what to make sure there was no blockage and to "extract the urine", so to speak. He only flinched slightly, once.
Kitty walked out of the carrier, allowed herself to be prodded and poked, without complaint and, walked back in again.
Mico was also entirely unperturbed by the experience.
Holly is a damn traitor. She kissed the vet! Otherwise, she was a total menace, because she barked and lunged at all the other doggies in the surgery. Partly because she has no clue what a dog is and partly, because, obviously, she was protecting her "children", the cats.
And Betty did her usual two circuits of the surgery like a whirling dervish, before hiding in a cubby hole in the desk, from where I had to extract her - hissing, spitting and scratching - from between the computer cables.
Oh well, at least she didn't climb a wall this time.
Then the nice lady vet, called Ana, hugged and talked to her. Actually, I think she may have hypnotized her, because Betty was the model of good behavior after that. By the end of the day though, I was wishing I could hop on the vet's table too, probably to be put out of my misery.
The upshot is that Balu had a very nasty urinary infection, but the results of the analysis did not indicate any other, more serious, problems. Phew!
Betty had wind (gas). However, during the rattling off of the long shopping list of animals, their histories and various symptoms, the vet did query if there was any possibility that they might have been coming into contact with poisons.
Funny she should ask ...
The council is also undertaking a large "desratización" (de-ratting) campaign here at the moment. They'd been round door-to-door and held meetings about it just before Christmas, but said that they were putting the rat poison into boxes and tubes to avoid risks to domestic animals. Locals, of course, never bother to tell me when they spray with weed killers and such. That is how I came to spend one Christmas Day in that same veterinary hospital with Betty, seven years ago and the next three days and nights nursing a cold cat that didn't move, jabbing her with Vitamin K. And if all that fails, they just throw mystery meat!
