When good pets go bad

Hi Cindy,

As promised the other day, here are a few photos of the indignities we put our cats through. Fortunately they didn't live up to the title of the post although I'm sure they would have obliged if they were a little bigger.

We found this lion hat the other day while shopping at Target. It was just too cute not to subject the resident felines to. As you can see Teddy was pretty p.o.'d about it. He says he's too old to be treated this way.

Margi was also pretty peeved about the situation.

Abigail wouldn't even hold still long enough to get the hat near her. She is definitely wilder than the other two and is fully armed to lash out. Ted and Margi are defenseless on the front side. After the hat came off the cats had to express their displeasure by tossing it around and then laying on it. DH also had to put it on me (didn't fit, go figure) but that picture is hidden forever.

My friend from work, LD, has an iguana that she's had for about 13 years. She got while Que she was in college and he was a small thing. She even moved him here when she got transferred out to AZ while working in consulting. One of the bedrooms in her house is dedicated to Que and was even designed to be easy to clean. After 13 years he's grown to over 3 feet in length. She used to take him along when she did field work (he'd stay in the motel bathroom) but now she does GIS modelling so she doesn't have to travel any more for work.

Early Saturday morning she was cleaning his room before her new boyfriend came over and she decided to give Que a bath too. While she was bathing him in the bath tub he fouled the water and she released the drain to clean it out. She put a towel over his head and while she was reaching to turn the shower on he lunged and clamped on to her left hand. This is the first serious bite she's ever had from him. She promptly put him back in his room and tried to clean up her hand. She ended up calling 911 and going to the emergency room to have it taken care of. She had to assure the paramedics that he was secured before they would even enter her house.

Que got two of her fingers; on the center one he went through all the layers of skin and even chipped the bone. On her thumb it just broke the skin. LD is glad that he got the thumb too, otherwise she's afraid he would have bitten off the finger totally. The ER wouldn't stitch her fingers up until she's done with the massive vial of antibiotics they gave her. I guess they want to be able to observe animal bites to make sure that they don't become infected. She got a referral to a hand surgeon. When I saw her this morning she had a splint on the middle finger and her whole left hand wrapped in bandage. It's a good thing that a lot of the work she does is using the mouse and minimal typing. The picture is not Que but he is about that size and color. DH asked if she's ready to get rid of him since he hurt her so badly. I doubt that she will since she's had him for so long unless she can find a herpetological group that will take him.

This is a good lesson, never startle a lizard that's big enough to get it's mouth around one of your fingers, you may loose it.

Take Care, A

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