Pets

[wurwolf]

Yeah, if there was ever a bar trivia contest about Todd.

[Mrs. Dick Courier]

My sweet Mr. Kitty loved doughnuts and bread.

And Mika loves veggies, especially cooked carrots and broccoli

By the way, love the pic of Todd

[mattwnelson]

Yeah, my cat, Tiger, loved (and I mean LOVED) french fries, saltines, and (weirdly discovered late in her life) red and green bell peppers. On the other hand, my cat Jiji does not like anything but his cat-kibble and the occasional canned cat food. He has a much less broad palate than did Tiger. Pets are weird sometimes.

[Space version 2.0]

Our cats have fleas again. I've been considering using diatomaceous earth, as was suggested in this thread, but it sounds a bit dangerous to use. Lucas mentioned that it shouldn't be breathed in, but with three cats I can see one of them sniffing another and accidentally breathing it in. Am I worrying about nothing or is this a serious concern?

[LucasM]

Our cats have fleas again. I've been considering using diatomaceous earth, as was suggested in this thread, but it sounds a bit dangerous to use. Lucas mentioned that it shouldn't be breathed in, but with three cats I can see one of them sniffing another and accidentally breathing it in. Am I worrying about nothing or is this a serious concern?

Dunno how serious it is; I think the warning is mostly for when it's in the air in a big poof of powder, but you probably shouldn't be snorting lines of it either.

   Yeah, snorting lines of it would be bad.

Im's right: just don't cake it on so thick that it is able to poof into the air.  Basically try to get JUST enough on the skin where normal skin oils and moisture hold it in place.  It doesn't take much at all to work: a patch of an inch or two square which is just a layer of one-powder-grain thick diatomaceous earth is plenty.  After all, to the fleas, that little bit is like crawling across a field of nothing but barbed wire.  [It also kills all eggs and larvae it comes in contact with, which I believe isn't the case with some chemical killers which have to be re-applied as any already-laid eggs hatch.]

And to keep things safest, just like with toxic chemical flea killers, the back of the neck, between/above the shoulder blades, seems best for this, as it is one of the 'least accessible' areas in cleaning, and isn't as often accessed by other cats as other areas might be.

Hope that helps.

[Coragale]

We got fleas because of outdoor pets when I was living with my parents. Borax works wonders, and so does lavender oil. If you put a few drops in the corners of each room, and then on the pets, it generally deals with things.

I have a picture of Ein on my lap that I'm trying to upload, but my phone doesn't want to cooperate with me.

He's been a bit upset that I've been using the recliner HE usually sits in while I'm on my computer. He does his best to disrupt whatever I'm doing by jumping into my lap at the most inopportune times.

Spoiler'd for size.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[MerryWanna]

Dunno how serious it is; I think the warning is mostly for when it's in the air in a big poof of powder, but you probably shouldn't be snorting lines of it either.

   Yeah, snorting lines of it would be bad.

And rather pointless.

[MerryWanna]

Yeah, my cat, Tiger, loved (and I mean LOVED) french fries, saltines, and (weirdly discovered late in her life) red and green bell peppers. On the other hand, my cat Jiji does not like anything but his cat-kibble and the occasional canned cat food. He has a much less broad palate than did Tiger. Pets are weird sometimes.

Urrow has a bread trip I've never seen in a cat before.  I bring home a bread loaf and she's jumping up my knees with her forepaws as if it were Fancy Feast.  Some time when there's a third party in the room I want a picture taken of the way I will sometimes share a piece of bread with her, eating one corner with her going to town on the other side of it...then I just drop it and let her have the rest.

[mattwnelson]

Yeah, I couldn't give Tiger bread (aside from saltines). She'd get it stuck to the roof of her mouth.

[Mrs. Dick Courier]

I'm thinking of getting a rodent.  I love them.  I got my first hamster at five, and kept them until I was 17.  I don't know why I never got another one.

But I'm not sure what to get.  My local Petsmart has cages of rats and gerbils for adoption pretty cheap.  I hear rats are good pets in same sex pairs.  They have several of the white ones with red eyes.  I held one of them and it climbed my shirt and sat on my shoulder, it was so sweet.

Has anyone ever owned a rat?

Also thinking of a Guinea Pig.  Not sure what to get yet.

[k1]

I've had a bunch of guinea pigs. They're nice.

[Coragale]

I've actually wanted an iguana for a long time, and if any of these job prospects work out, I'll probably look into it further. We used to have two when I was a kid, and my uncle had two that ended up about 3 feet long, I think, when all was said and done. I actually have 3 stuffed iguanas. Probably my favorite lizard.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Just a quick warning about rats, even people without any allergies can develop them if they are around rats a lot.  Rats seem to have that problem that more than other rodents.

Oh, and iguanas are cool, but you need the space as they get big.  And cleaning up their poop is disgusting (like cleaning up broken eggs).  Surprisingly they can be trained, sort of, a student donated one to work and I took care of it, managed to get it to poop when I took it out of it's cage and put it on top of a small aquarium tank.  So as long as I did that every day it hardly ever pooped in it's cage.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

We had an awesome little white mouse named Gandalf when I was little. One word of warning though, you have to give them plenty of room (and places to hide) or they kind of turn into dicks. When Gandalf had lots of space he was sweet and if you took him out he'd crawl on you and play with you.  When my brother got a smaller cage for him he turned into a dick and would bite.  Maybe unrelated, but that's what we figured it was.

Did the mouse still have hiding places in the smaller cage?  Good hiding places where you couldn't see him?  I would guess it was the lack of places for him to hide that turned him nasty.   They used to use corncob bedding at work and the mice would always be nasty, when they switched to the shredded cardboard bedding that they can burrow into and hide they stopped being like that. 

[Mrs. Dick Courier]

Oh, a mouse would be cute too...

There's also a chameleon there I like, but it's over $30.  And I really want to adopt.  I can't see buying a pet for over $10 when you can adopt one for $2 (the price of each rat)