At least this one I had answers to.
Caroline’s female cat, Fig, is about eight months old. This morning Caroline came down to my office and said, “I’m worried about Fig.” I said, “Why?” She said, “Fig is making weird yowling sounds and lying on the floor with her front down and her butt in the air. Why is her butt in the air?”
One fifteen minute introduction to the concept of “in heat” later…
PAD
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Is fig the daughter of that gray-wit-black-stripes cat that was lying with Caroline on the couch in a picture you once posted, Peter?
Fig is the wee kitten they found in a tree in the pouring rain.
Spay spay spay!
Yes, we’re going to have her spayed. Caroline was crestfallen, bordering on tears, when I initially told her that we were going to bring Fig to the doctor and that he would make sure she never had kittens. She was VERY enamored of the idea of kittens. But then I laid out the realities of the situation, particularly emphasising an assortment of serious health risks that could either shorten Fig’s life or even end it very prematurely. In the end I told her that one of the realities of life is that sometimes you don’t get to choose between a good choice and a bad choice; sometimes all you have are options, none of which you like, and you have to go for the one that’s the least lousy. At which point she understood and perkily told her best friend during a play date, “We’re going to have Fig fixed because she’s in heat!”
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PAD
Reminds me of the Far Side panel where one dog sticks his head out the rear window of a car and tells another dog that he’s going to the vet’s “to get tutored.”
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Rick
HOMina homina homina … I’m not sure that’s a conversation I’m quite ready to have yet. Of course, all our cats are already spayed or “tutored” (cf. Larson, Gary), so I’m safe so far.
My first wife and i preferred to say that we were taking the cat to be “broken” – the cat’s working perfectly well before the visit to the vet…
My younger brother used to say we were having the cat’s “uticles” removed. I think he was about 20 at the time.
It’s not as difficult as you think. I just had to present her enough information to understand the situation because she takes what I say as a given. For instance, if I say to her, “When girl cats put their butts in the air and mew that way, that’s how they’re saying that they want to have kittens.” I don’t have to go into detail about the sexual positions of felines.
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PAD
Hmm. Good point; I don’t know that I’d have the presence of mind to come up with that off the cuff in the “heat of the moment” (sorry), but now I can keep it in the back of my mind. Thanks.
Reminds me of when Mama Cats aka Stretch – before she was fixed – would roll around in front of me and rub up and purr. Man that song from Country Bear “Two Different Worlds” really would have been appropriate then.
As a tangent to this topic, I never understood the phrase “the birds and the bees” when it comes to explaining sex to children. (And yes, I did look up the phrase’s origins on Wikipedia.) I suppose laying an egg is somewhat analogous to human birth, but it doesn’t explain how the egg was created. And what kid really equates bees with sexuality? It just seems like a very odd pairing.
And what kid really equates bees with sexuality?
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Ones who grew up watching Quark?
“Now we wait for the bee.”
“…undt I vill teach him about de birds undt de veasels!” – Oggie the jagermonster (i think – might have been Dimian)
To paraphrase Dave Lister, “What’s in it for the cat?” 🙂
It’s a retcon that the smaller size of my second cat — she’s just a little ol’ bitty pissant kitty cat — is how she got the name Miss Mona.
The truth is I didn’t get her “fixed” (hate the term) for several months, 2/3 of which she spent behaving like Fig. And thus her name changed from Star to Mona.
But here’s a dandy question to ponder: Do pro-lifers spay and neuter their pets?
http://soundskinky2.blogspot.com/2011/02/does-your-religion-and-politics-extend.html
Probably depends on how far they go with their pro-life views. If they’re against *any* form of controception I can see that playing a role. But if they’re okay with preventative measures like condoms and birth control pills, as opposed to actual abortion, I imagine their pro-life views factor into things about as much as if they prefer chocolate ice cream vs vanilla ice cream.