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2007-04-03 - 12:37 p.m.
Dear Diary, Note to self: You cannot live anywhere ever again where there is not a proper (deep deep) freeze every year. Because you are unable to cope with year round temperatures that allow things to live. Like parasites, spiders and ticks. *** So yes, I am still on poop patrol, trying to get samples to the vet to find out just how many of my six cats have this parasite. So far two of three do. I have another sample down there right now and I am taking another one with me...so I will know the state of five of six kitty intestines. But one lone kitty is being awfully secretive about her pooping. This is going to be a problem. In the three years I have claimed her as mine I have only seen her use the litter box a couple times. So, it might be a while before we find the parasite in her poop, or not...but what I did find last night was. . . . . . . A HUGE, ENGORGED TICK. Now, I have never seen a tick before and I have certainly never seen an engorged tick before, so it was scary. I thought she had a sudden tumor growing from her skin at first and my heart started racing and tears were welling up in my eyes. But reason took over and I deduced, and then confirmed via Internet pictures, that it was a tick. I then removed the nasty thing with tweezers and threw him in a jar of rubbing alcohol. And then proceeded to feel extremely guilty about it all night. I don't kill things and I especially don't kill things in such a voilent manner. I mean, drowning in a vat of rubbing alcohol? That is fucking awful. But I was in panic mode. Pure panic mode. I was just doing exactly what some website told me to do and I did it all without thinking. I just wanted that thing off my little cat. Anyway. All this parasite/tick business makes me feel dirty. I know, rationally, that my cats are getting this stuff from over the wall. The first year we lived here someone went through and plowed everything under. Which was a good idea. But no one has done that since then and now the whole area over the wall is overgrown with nasty weeds, it's swarming with spiders and other creepy crawlies...the stray cats live down there and therefore, poop down there, and add to all the festering-ness that goes on over that wall...it is a year round 'anything can live here' climate. So these nasties just grow and grow and proliferate. Oh god, I miss winter. Anyway, I know the cats are getting all this crud from their ventures over the wall, but it doesn't stop me from feeling dirty or from feeling like I should be, and should have been, bleaching the hell out of everything on a daily basis. Since this parasite thing I have kept the cats inside and have been bleaching my eyes out (literally) every single day. It just amazes me, the amount of bacteria problems we have all had since we arrived here. And none of this stuff ever happened in Michigan. Ever. And by rights there were more opportunities for it to happen in Michigan. I had a small house and a full time job which left the house kinda (really) messy from time to time (almost always). And, I let stray cats sleep in my house all the time because I couldn't stand the thought of them outside in the cold. Here I clean all the fricking time and there have been no stray cats in this house and I try to keep them far, far away. My cats should be exponentially more healthy here than they were in Michigan. I have all this time to dote on them, I make them homemade food for christs sake, I brush them daily, give them vitamins, they eat the best food available and they get lots of exercise. They even drink bottled water. So it's the lack of winter and the fact that there are way more stray cats lurking about here, it's not me. It's not me. It's not me. Ugh. Anyway. I have a list the length of my arm...things I have to clean just to make sure everything is pristine as hell around here until I can get us back to a place where there is a proper freeze every year. Please? Please let us go somewhere where there is a proper freeze every year? |
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