Killer Kittens and Monster Squirrels

I read an article today about how cats in the United States kill billions of critters a year. Billions. Per year. In the US alone. For reference, this is a billion: 1000000000. Multiply that by 20ish, and you're looking at how many mice, squirrels, birds, bats, and other small fluffy or feathery lives are extinguished per year, in America, in the jaws of vicious kitty cats.

Some thoughts:

1) Holy crap, we have a lot of critters out there if cats are murdering billions a year and the population of birds and squirrels still seems to be thriving (as far as I can tell, anyway).

2) I guess the loss of that many birds and small mammals is probably bad for the environmental balance, and the whole catch-neuter-release idea for stray cats isn't necessarily the best plan, although the alternative breaks my heart.

3) I wonder how much higher that number would be if my Horton was an outside cat.

4) Maybe that explains the giant monster squirrels in Mom's backyard. Evolutionary pressure.

No, really! Think about it! Obviously, the cats are preferentially picking off the smaller and weaker creatures, leaving the giant-critter-genes disproportionately represented in the population! This explains why the crows in my yard are getting so fat they waddle and the squirrels are big and strong enough to haul beefsteak tomatoes off my garden vine and eat them on the deck.

I'm in Montreal this week, and Mom likes to have her morning coffee and cigarette on the back porch even in the cold of a Canadian winter (our blood is thick up here, folks). On my second day here, I heard her yelp and race back in, slamming the door behind her. "He's back, 'stie! Jennifer! Come see this sucker!" She pointed out the window towards the biggest squirrel I had ever seen.

"He hates me," Mom told me, still wrapped in her fur coat and wanting her smoke. "He's an aggressive son of a bitch! He's the one who ate through my garbage cans and dug up my flowerpots! I put mothballs like my friend told me, but he just dug them out and threw them on the neighbor's balcony! When I'm inside at the table, he comes to the windowsill, looks me in the eye, and poops there on purpose right in front of me, the little shit!"

Good daughter that I am, I put on my purple down coat with the fluff-lined hood and stood on the balcony with my mother, brandishing a plastic shovel to defend her from giant attack squirrels. This guy came towards us once or twice, but the whoosh of the shovel scared him back to the neighbor's hanging flowerpot. I got a picture of him:

And this was one of the smaller guys.

While I was out there, I had a good look around. We were surrounded. There were dozens of squirrels hanging out in the trees behind Mom's place in Montreal, and every single one was bigger than the ones I usually deal with back in Maryland. The Canadian squirrels look exactly the same in terms of color and features, so I'm sure they're the same species, but they must weigh at least 3 pounds each.

Weight-loss-inspiration photo these guys surely have
taped to the bathroom mirrors in their nests.

I'm not kidding. Thick branches dip dangerously under their weight. The downstairs neighbor is contributing to their weight problem by throwing crackers and stale bread out for them on a regular basis. If you're quiet, you can hear them crunching from the balcony. It's surreal, hearing dozens of crackers being crunched by hundreds of tiny teeth.  I tried hard to get a picture of the really fat one, but he stayed too far away. He doesn't fit through the holes in the chain-link fence, poor little guy, so he had to climb the fence to get at his carbs.



A photo of Fatty from 2008. He's still using it in his SquirrelMatch.com profile.

I'll be back out there tomorrow for more balcony defense. Wish me luck. They may bring reinforcements. Does anyone have an outside cat I can borrow?

Animal, Defender of the Home, Killer of Mice

"Hey, um, can I ask you a question?"

When that's the first thing I hear when I get home, I know something interesting has happened.

"Do we have a really, really realistic mouse toy?"

Eep!

Apparently, despite the fangs the vet had to remove from his mouth, our Animal is a mouser. It looks like eleven years of training and hundreds of determined butt-wiggle-and-pounce attacks on the purple catnip mouse finally paid off. At some point last night, Animal found and killed a real made-of-meat-and-fur mouse, and delighted in batting it around the computer room to show off in front of Dave.

And of course, Dave saved it to show me.

For those of you wondering how long you can store a dead mouse in a Gladware container before it smells absolutely rank... most definitely under twelve hours. Probably much, much closer to no hours at all. Just... yeah, don't keep dead mice. Or if you do, and your spouse really wants to see it because they're weird like that, I cannot stress enough the importance of not opening the container you have stored it in.

I have no idea where this mouse came from. We found a few in the garage when we first moved in, and the problem seemed to disappear when we cleaned up their nest area and laid down some traps. There's no evidence of more mice anywhere in the house, so this guy likely ran in unnoticed while we were coming in from the garage. Just one mouse, not a big deal.

No big deal, because I'm not afraid of mice, and it's clear we don't have an infestation, but with the recent study linking toxoplasmosis to suicide and self-harm in women, I'm a little uncomfortable about it. You see, the Toxoplasma gondii parasite is carried in mice (and birds), but requires a trip through a cat's digestive tract in order to reproduce. It manages to do this by messing with a mouse's neurotransmitters and making it attracted to the scent of cats*. Mice walk up to their new feline BFFs, and suddenly find themselves dead and eaten. People can become infected when they come into contact with cat feces, which is why everyone knows pregnant women aren't supposed to scoop the litter box - Toxoplasma is particularly dangerous to a developing fetus and can seriously mess with brain development. And since recent studies seem to link Toxoplasma infection with schizophrenia, depression, and self-harm, the non-gravid among us get to be paranoid too, hooray!

But, as all these news articles are happy to report, if you have exclusively indoor cats, they're not out eating Toxoplasma-infested rodents, so your home's litter box is not a danger zone. That meant my home was free of Toxo-related worries... until the mouse incident. Is it possible that the mouse walked right up to Animal and offered himself up as a sacrifice to the Toxoplasma parasites running his foggy little brain? I hope not, because I don't want to think of Animal, or us, getting sick. I need to stop watching medical dramas and those "OMG Scary Diagnosis" shows on Discovery Health.

I'll just keep washing my hands really well after dealing with the litter and try not to have nightmares about parasites in my brain. And I'll buy some special treats for Animal, Defender of the Home, Killer of Mice.

*It needs to get into a cat, so it controls mouse brains to get it there. Science is awesome. Also scary.

Cat tooth

This is a cat tooth.

Normally, one would find it inside a cat's mouth.

Obviously, this means the beasts have graduated from the level of "cat fight" to "hockey fight". I'll have to buy them little jerseys they can pull over each other's head. I hunted them each down in turn to play the "show me your mouth" game so I could figure out who's won a vet visit. Mojo was first, and he's easy - after months of pills and medicines and vet visits, he surrenders after only the most perfunctory of struggles and lets me check his mouth. He was fine, so Horton was next. Also a simple task, since he very much enjoys baring his teeth to bite my face off. I pissed him off, let him pounce, and quickly counted fangs before he made contact.

So, that leaves this furry Animal.

He hasn't been acting differently at all, so I'm incredibly surprised to find him shedding teeth. How long has he been in pain? How bad are the other teeth? It doesn't look like it broke off in a fight, because the edges are too jagged. I suspect that he inherited the same bad-teeth genes as his older half-brother, and will need some kitty dental surgery. 

I'm feeling so guilty about not bringing them to the vet more often, but they're healthy and happy and there was really no need, or so we thought. They're getting older, and we only recently realized that - Mojo is 12 and Animal is 11, which means they're considered "seniors" in the cat world. Like older people, I guess the health problems start to stack up as kitties age. We'll be doing regular visits to the vet now, for all of them, so we can hope to catch problems earlier and not have to resort to anything drastic.

Mojo Update Part 3

The amitryptiline may have eventually helped Mojo to be less anxious and stop peeing outside of the litter box, but trying to get those pills into him was a very trying experience for everyone, especially him. No matter how quiet I was about it, if he heard the rattle of the pills, he would bolt and hide under furniture, and we'd have to drag him out, pin him in our arms, and wedge half a bitter pill into his mouth. And then, at least half the time, I'd chase the cat-spit-soaked pink pill across the floor for a second try. A counterproductive way to administer an anti-anxiety medication, wouldn't you say?

I called the vet back after a few weeks of this, hoping for another way. Someone at work mentioned using antianxiety meds in a topical gel for his cat - just rub it onto the ears instead of trying to make him swallow it - and I asked the vet whether we could try it. He told me the medication didn't come in a topical form, so if the pills weren't working well, there wasn't much else he could offer us. When I pressed again for an alternative treatment, he suggested that rehoming Mojo might help him calm down, and some of his clients decide they can't deal with the soiled carpet problem and have their pets put down for incontinence.

Needless to say, I was shocked. I understand that not everyone sees pets as members of the family, but to end a little furry life because of some spots on the carpet? And that a vet, of all people, would suggest it as a solution, instead of looking for more ways to help?

Mojo saw a new vet a week ago, and the first thing she asked, after hearing his symptoms and his age, was "didn't your other vet run a thyroid test?" Thyroid problems are common in older cats, and a lot of Mojo's symptoms could fit hyperthyroidism. And, no, the old vet didn't run that test. All he did was a metabolic panel, looking for kidney and liver problems, and diabetes. No blood count, no thyroid panel, and no urinalysis (that last part pissed me off, because if you're telling me my cat has a UTI, and the antibiotics don't help, maybe you should check to confirm the UTI).

She drew the lab work and finished her examination, discovering some bad abscesses in Mojo's mouth. She was surprised to hear he'd had his teeth cleaned in October, because his mouth looked so bad. It just broke my heart to see how bad his gums looked - he must have been in so much pain. I came home with a strong antibiotic (Flagyl), and instructions to bring him back in a couple of weeks for a checkup (and bring a urine sample). But she called two days later to tell me his thyroid levels are elevated - little Mojo has hyperthyroidism.

We're going to start with medication, to see if it will help. The peeing, the licking, and the increased appetite can all be signs of hyperthyroidism, so hopefully once we fix that, he'll be back to his old self. If we get the thyroid hormones under control and he's still having issues, the vet recommended a topical antianxiety medication, which, despite what the first vet said, very much exists.

I wish I'd ditched the old vet sooner. I feel like maybe we could have saved him a few months of discomfort.

Mojo Update part 2

Mojo handled his day-long trip to the vet like a champ. He was a little dizzy and stoned from the anesthesia they used to keep him still for the procedures, but he was back to eating and meowing and demanding a spot on my lap that night.

We got good news and bad news. The good news is, nothing is wrong with him. The bad news is, nothing is wrong with him. The Xrays didn't show any blockages, stones, tumors, or other issues with his urinary tract, so there's no good reason for him to be peeing everywhere. The paws don't seem to have any sort of rash or irritation on them, so there's no good reason for him to be licking them furless. There is absolutely no physical, medical reason for him to be acting like he is.

And I'm delighted, really, because it means that Mojo is fine and doesn't need surgery for bladder stones, and he's not blocked up and in pain from a tumor somewhere. I am very relieved to find out he's healthy.

The flip side of the news, though, is that he's peeing on things and licking his paws off for reasons nobody can understand. Did we upset him somehow? Why is he so anxious and intent on peeing on any shopping bag I leave on the floor for more than a minute? Why does he groom his paws until he's pulling his fluff off?

The vet recommended some medication to ease Mojo's anxiety, so we got a prescription (filled at the human drugstore) for amitryptiline, a tricyclic antidepressant that's used a lot as an antianxiety medication. It's not too expensive, which is a relief. We've only been giving it to him for three days so far, and I can't say that he's doing anything differently yet. He still licks his paws a lot, and we try to stop him when we notice it, but he's acting exactly the same. He hasn't peed on anything since his vet visit, as far as we know, but I've been a lot more careful about leaving pee-on-able things around. Maybe I'll give it a week and then give him a test - a canvas shopping bag on the floor in the foyer.

I'm keeping a close eye on him for side effects. Lethargy, changes in appetite, and loss of coordination are all reported problems in cats taking this medication. Can someone please tell me how to note "lethargy" in a cat who sleeps 20 hours a day?

Mojo Update

Something's still up with Mojo.

He's acting mostly normal, maybe just chatting a little more than average, but something's off. He's still peeing on things, although it's gotten better since I've started being really careful about leaving things on the floor or on chairs. He's gone back to licking his paws raw, just when the fur was starting to grow back. He also suddenly started liking canned cat food, but only the salmon variety so far. He pushed Horton away and gorged on it last week, surprising me - he never ever eats anything other than his cheap kibble, because he always sniffs new food and walks away without registering it as something he should eat. We've tried canned food before, and we tried switching everyone over to expensive cat kibble when Horton started having urinary issues, but Mojo refused to eat it. So the fact that he's suddenly open to new foods concerns me a little. Maybe the tooth decay makes it hard to eat the kibble? But I've also seen him eating his kibble this week, so maybe not.

We've got an appointment at the vet early next week, to bring him in for Xrays and a tooth cleaning. We'll have to leave him there all day, poor little guy, because they need to sedate him and then keep an eye on him while he recovers.

I wish cats could talk so I could ask him what's wrong and where it hurts, so we can help him feel better.

Mojo

Something is wrong with our dear Mojo.

A couple of months ago, he started peeing in places that were not his litterbox. There was a spot on the carpet, which we cleaned up, but then he started seeking out other things to pee on - plastic bags and canvas shopping bags being his two favorites. Maybe he's commenting on my sub-par housekeeping skills and peeing on things he wants me to put away?

The vet suspected a UTI and gave us a round of antibiotics and a cortisone shot - I'm still unclear on what the cortisone shot was for, but I wasn't at that vet visit so I only got the information secondhand. It helped a little, in that his pee stopped being dark and stinky, but he was still peeing on anything I left around too long. I have to be very careful with laundry, blankets, and shopping bags, and make sure they're stashed away quickly. Then we noticed that he was missing fur on his paws - I thought it was a toe tumor at first because this squishy pink blob was sticking out of his paw, but when I looked closer I saw it was just a naked toe. Naked cat toes look very out of place sticking out of a mound of white fluff. And there were also naked spots up his front legs like he'd been pulling all the fur out. His skin is so incredibly pink under that fluff!

Back to the vet, who gave us a second round of the same stuff. This time the cortisone shot was in case there was an allergy or skin irritation causing the hair loss. The fur is growing back but the pee issue isn't resolved. It's frustrating, because I feel like my house smells like a crazy cat lady house, even though we have only three cats and stay on top of the automatic litterbox so it's always very clean for them. He peed in the front closet and it seeped into the hardwood floor, and despite my attempts to clean it up using baking soda, oxyclean, vinegar, and Pine-Sol (all in different attempts), I feel like it attacks my nose as soon as I open the front door. Other people coming in have said they don't notice it, but I think they're just being nice.

It's possible that it's psychological - cats are prone to anxiety and the peeing and fur-eating might be a manifestation of stress - but in that case, I'm not sure what we'd do. Get him on anti-anxiety meds? Regular cat massages and spa days? We give him plenty of attention and love, and I can't figure out what we may have done to stress him out, because our normal life hasn't changed much recently. The vet said he'd explore a couple more physical possibilities first, like checking for bladder stones or tumors, and maybe some dental work because he noticed a decaying tooth, but it's possible Mojo is just stressed out. I hope it's not wrong that I'm hoping it's something physical (and minor!) that we can actually fix. I worry that the food we have him on isn't healthy enough for him and might be causing urinary issues, but he won't touch any other food at all. We've tried fancy expensive ones, canned ones, even tuna, and he doesn't seem to recognize it as edible.

His current run of antibiotics has a few more days to go, and if he's still having problems we'll have to bring him back in. Expect an update soon. If I forget, somebody post a comment asking me to get my act together and tell you more about Mojo, ok?

Tio

He was just a tiny beige blob of fluff, but he was feistier than his brother, who would cower in fear as he was repeatedly pounced on, and so I picked him. I first thought he was a she, because it's so hard to tell when they're so small and when you know so little about kittens, so I picked out Tia as a perfect name. A subsequent discovery of boy bits resulted in a seamless name change to Tio.

He didn't purr as a kitten. It's like nobody ever showed him how. But he was loving, sleeping on my bed when he felt like it, and head-bonking me as often as he could manage it. Mom was good enough to let me bring him home when I moved back in with her. She didn't want pets, didn't want to deal with the mess and the trouble, but I loved him and she loved me, so he stayed. Everyone ended up loving him, of course. Even those who would never admit to being "cat people". It was impossible not to. He grew from a spiky, twitchy kitten into a big lounging Garfield of a cat who had his own spot on the couch and would sit and glare at you if you dared to put your butt where his should be.

He had no sense of space whatsoever, and thought that he could fit into any box, bag, or bowl that he came across. He'd wedge a paw and half his fluffy butt into an egg carton and look as you as if to say "what? I fit just fine. Screw you." The dryer, Coke 12-pack boxes, stew pots, anything was a cat bed. He loved shoeboxes, especially the ones that were just too small for him, so he'd ooze over the top like a fluffy muffin. We took to leaving one on the kitchen table like a centerpiece, because he would howl and cry if his box was ever missing.


He watched hockey with us, curled up in his spot on the couch or on my brother's recliner. I think he was a goalie in a past life, because he loved swatting balled-up paper missiles out of the air when we tossed them at him. When I'd get ready for late class in the morning, I would turn on PBS for the kids' cartoons, just for easy background noise, and Tio came running every time he heard Clifford The Big Red Dog come on the TV. I swear he was watching it, too. Oh, and the restaurant scene in Men in Black, where the jeweler's cat meows - it freaked him out every time because he kept trying to figure out where the strange cat was hiding. No other cat noises from TV commercials ever got that reaction from him, but the Men In Black cat always did.

He loved tuna. We discovered his love for it when Mom was making a tuna sandwich and Tio tried to climb her for a taste of it. So, being a good cat-mommy, she bought him some tuna on sale at the grocery store, he refused it. Only the expensive albacore tuna packed in oil for our Tio; otherwise, he tried to bury it like it was poop in his litter box. He did that to everything he didn't like. If he sniffed my nails after I painted them, he would try to bury them, too. Whatever it was, he'd position himself over it and swipe one paw at the table or floor over and over, occasionally looking back to see if the offending item was buried under the imaginary litter yet.

We played hide and seek a lot, with pouncing. I'd hide around a corner and then just as he was coming to get me I'd pounce on him and he'd tear off down the hall and turn around a corner, to wait and do the same to me. He'd bring you his rattle mouse if he wanted you to throw it, but he'd only bring it part of the way back before dropping it for you, always just out of reach. The stinker. And he loved to transport socks around the house. Folded, balled-up socks - he would carry them like they were kittens, and move a pile of them from one place to another. He always helped us change the sheets on the bed, by getting in between the layers and batting at them viciously. But when it was time for sleeping, he would make his rounds and make sure everyone got a little Tio time before they fell asleep.



I believe he loved all of us equally, but he really became Mom's cat when I moved to the states. I wanted to take him with me so badly, but he was already a middle-aged cat who didn't like change, and the immigration mess was hard enough to figure uot without worrying about bringing an animal across the border. Besides, I knew how much he meant to my mom and my brother, and it didn't seem fair to hurt them and traumatize Tio, so I said goodbye and left the country. He always remembered me when I visited, though, sniffing me once to confirm my identity and then flopping over for the required belly rub. Seeing his connection with Mom every time I visited helped me feel better about leaving him. Those two shared a wavelength and it was special. He sat with her while she had her morning coffee, coming right up to her face for nuzzles and bonks and kisses. He splayed himself over anything she tried to read, begging for attention. We joked that he was asking "attention me!" and we did, always.

He would have been 12 years old this fall. He had a seizure last year, and recovered, but he was never the same. He had some digestive issues, and he was always sick and seemed to be in pain. They couldn't find anything wrong with him, and it wasn't fair to let him keep on fighting through misery so he could have those few moments of love in between. It was a hard and brave decision for Mom to make on her own, and I think she did the right thing. It's very hard on me that I didn't get to say goodbye, but life isn't always fair that way.

I'll miss you, Tio. I hope you get to be a goalie on one of heaven's cat hockey teams. I'm going to give Animal, Mojo, and Horton a can of tuna - the good stuff - in your honor.

Horton

I found a Horton in my pajamas this morning.


How he got into my pajamas, I'll never know.

Vicious Pals

Horton has befriended my Monty Python "Rabbit with Big Pointy Teeth" bunny slippers. I fear they are plotting against me. I always took comfort in the fact that Horton only has small pointy teeth to kill me with... but apparently he's recruiting.

Horton's Room

Horton, my dearest Murder Kitten, is trying to kill me. At first it was obvious aggression, flinging himself at me with fangs bared in hopes of clamping down on my windpipe and taking me down like a gazelle. But he's mellowed with age and he's much more affectionate than ever, even cuddling in my lap to watch TV, so the attacks are much fewer, and mostly only when provoked with poking. His main tactic now is sleep deprivation.

He has been eating special food since his urinary blockage and urethrostomy surgery two years ago, and so far it has kept him from having a recurrence of urinary crystals. Unfortunately, he started throwing up several times a week, and the vet thinks it may be an allergy to the food. We tried two other "urinary health" formulas, neither of which Horton would eat, so we opted to feed him canned food. instead, because it has less grain fillers, and more water, both of which are good for cats with urinary issues. The problem with the canned food is that he only eats a little at a time without throwing up, so we can only feed him about a quarter of a can per feeding. This means he needs to eat several times a day, and his majesty has decided that one of his feedings needs to be at 4am, because he can't get through the night without starving to death.

At first, I tried pulling the blankets over my head and ignoring his plaintive meows at the bedroom door, but he's a clever cat and stuffs his paws under the door, rattling it, which is a much harder sound to sleep through. I used felt pads on the door frame and the handle like this to try and muffle the rattle:


but it doesn't do enough - the sound still wakes me up and then keeps me awake. If I don't respond, he's happy to continue for half an hour or more, sometimes throwing himself at the door handle in an attempt to break in. We can never switch to the lever-style door handles - he would learn to open them within a week, despite the lack of opposable thumbs. If I cave and let him in, he stays for a while, then whines to get back out. If I go feed him, he'll eat, then come back to the door to harass me again. After two full weeks of insufficient and interrupted sleep, I was a wreck.

So now I put him in his room at night.


We set up the mudroom with a pet bed and a food station, and when he wakes me up at night I bring him and his canned food in there, dump him unceremoniously onto the floor, and lock him in. He keeps meowing, but this way I can't hear him from the bedroom. It breaks my heart because I love him and don't want to keep him cooped up alone all night, but I was losing my ability to function. I should put him there when we go to bed, but I'm still too much of a softie to handle that. I let him sleep with me till he wants out, then we go to his room and I say goodnight and walk away. I still get woken up every night, but I can fall asleep again quickly.

He's mad about the situation, though. And he's taking it out on the carpet in a big way.

Sigh. We were going to rip up that carpet eventually anyway.

Bizarro cats

I was minding my own business a few nights ago, washing some dishes in the kitchen, when I saw Mojo sitting outside on the patio, looking through the sliding glass door. I was startled and confused.


OMG how did he get out??
Wait, it's his reflection, stupid.
But he's not in front of the window, he's on the couch.

And then my brain melted.

Turns out we have a stray who likes to visit the backyard. After getting a better look at him, he most definitely isn't Mojo - he's scruffy and not in fantastic shape, making me think he's a definite stray, not a wandering pet. But his markings were sufficiently Mojo-like that I was completely terrified, for about 5 seconds, that Mojo had gotten outside somehow.

I have decided his name is Jomo, because he's bizarro Mojo. The man said it should be Ojom if we're doing it properly, but I poked him and said mine's better, so I win. I hope I get a chance to get a picture of him, so I can post it with a picture of Mojo for comparison.

Kittens and their adorable destructive powers

As I type this, I have a Horton smooshed up against my butt as he tries to subtly push me off my chair so he can sleep properly sprawled across it.

But when I first got up this morning, he was fast asleep in one of his other favorite spots, the fluffy bathmat in the Kermit bathroom. For those of you not in the know, our hall bathroom has a green tub and has been christened the Kermit bathroom, or sometimes the Frog Room. But I digress. Horton was sleeping thusly:

Which of course got my "awww" instinct activated, making me reach out to pet him. Just try and tell me you don't want to pet him. You'd be a liar. After a moment or two of contented purring and vicious biting (simultaneously, as usual), he rushed off to the hallway to suck on his teddy bear, leaving me to notice the art project he'd been working on overnight.



This is why I never bother to buy the expensive paper towels.

Things that Horton will eat

I love Horton, my little murder kitten, despite how he keeps trying to kill the other cats, squeaks at our bedroom door all night, and generally gets himself into a lot of trouble. He was a tiny runt of a thing when I adopted him at the shelter, and he's stayed very small, which I think has given him a feline Napoleon complex. He's got redeeming qualities, though - he's loving when he wants to be, and he is painfully cute when he's sucking on his teddy bear. He runs to that bear several times a day and kneads it and sucks on it and fluffs up huge while he's doing it. His tail gets puffy when he's happy - how odd is that?

His health problems have caused us a lot of grief, between his broken hip that left him with a limp, and his massive emergency surgery for urinary crystals, (shout out to the fabulous emergency vet on rte 40!) With his kidney problems, he's supposed to be eating special food, so we can avoid further medical interventions. Except that he's an unruly brat who wants to eat everything but what he's supposed to. For example:

• Banana bread (but hates bananas)
  
• Pumpkin bread (will also eat the batter)
• Milk from my cereal
• Water from the bathtub faucet
• Bugs (mostly chews and spits out because they're wiggly, but at least he disables them)
• Grapefruit (will attack me for it)
• My spaghetti sauce
• Garlic (toxic to cats, so I don't let him eat it, but he will fight to lick my hands if I've been chopping garlic)
• Petals that fell off the tulips Dave got for my birthday (those didn't stay down)
• Butter
• Raw chicken
• Cooked chicken
• Pepperoni
  
• Ice cream
• The other cats' indoor-formula food, no matter where we hide it
  
• My perfume (licked off my wrists)
• Tufts of fur/hair/fluff found on the carpet (I have to be careful when brushing him or he will try to eat all the fluff I take off him)

I'm not sure how his ancestors survived long enough to breed. But I'm glad they did.