8 posts tagged “pets”

The Guv has returned from his annual golf vacation, rested and (finally) victorious, cradling the trophy for the year.  He has many funny stories to tell, and tonight, I will enjoy hearing them.  That's right, I will enjoy -- a word that hasn't been seen in my last few blog posts! 

There is peace in our kingdom, for daddy is home at long last.  Dash, who was beginning to take on a rather sickly appearance, decided to EAT!  in celebration of his father's triumphant return.  He munched on some of his favorite Starbucks vanilla scones, Burger King french toast sticks, cheese pizza, katsu chicken, rice... he ATE!  And, needless to say, he was pretty much instantly a different child -- an enjoyable, happy, fun little boy with whom I wanted to spend time.  We kicked rocks all the way around the cul-de-sac.  We posed dead worms.  We counted three deer, one bunny, one squirrel, one robin, one very angry bluejay and too many dandelions.  We laid on the grass and looked up at the cloudless blue sky.  This is how every day with him should be.  Instead, this is one of very few days we've had like this over the past school year.  I will remember this day next time he's refusing to eat, because I need to believe that he eventually will eat.  I also need to figure out how to convince him that eating makes him happier -- because think about it: if YOU didn't eat for four days straight, wouldn't you be miserable (and make everyone around you miserable) too?  Thank God that soon, after his ear tubes are placed and especially when we hit the Green Mountains for the summer, he will be pleasant like this more days than not.  I'll play with dead worms all he wants to if he never cries at me in anguish all day again.  Too bad he's too young to make that (gross) trade.

So tonight, the Guv put Dash to bed, I read Petunia a very scary section of the fourth Harry Potter book (the Guv should expect a middle-of-the-night visitor over that one), and I held some guinea pigs, who have been sorely neglected as I've struggled to keep my head above water over the last few days.   It's a nice way to end one of the roughest patches of my parenting career.  And end it, we have.  Guv, get the Goldschlager!  Time to celebrate.

This is getting ridiculous.  Oreo has been a bit lethargic, felt a bit swollen in the anterior to me, has a patch of fur missing under his chin, and is sporting a scab on the side of his little left front paw, so I called the local vet.  We decided to take both Cinnamon and Oreo in for a check-up since, to our knowledge, they'd never been examined by a vet.  Petunia was very excited that we scored an appointment on a day she has off from school.  So, off we went.

Upon thorough examination, the vet declared the sore on Oreo's foot to be a healing wound, but, because of discoloration on the skin around his wound, she felt that he might have a little bacteria in there, too.  He wasn't running a fever (and, might I add, now I know how to take a guinea pig's temperature... just imagine...).  But, since he's not himself, he's on antibiotics for a week.  I can use a "pet pill plunger" to feed him the pill or can dissolve it in a syringe and give it to him that way.  He sucked it down, perhaps because it was beef-flavored.  Until today, Oreo was a vegetarian.

In any event, we learned a lot about our furry companions today.  It costs $35 per pet for an annual check-up, which includes trimming their nails, which I will have to do every month or so.  I learned how to clean their ears (a weekly task) as well.  Oreo's missing fur is probably due to rubbing on his wood house; it was good to hear that Cinnamon hadn't taken a chunk out of him.  Much to Petunia's giggling surprise, Oreo (the baby of the two) weighs more than Cinnamon and has bigger "equipment" -- which means that Oreo will be bigger than his big brother.   So, what I thought was swelling in his nether-regions was just, ahem, nuts.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, my very favorite holiday.  Yes, I know about Christmas and Easter and that, as a Christian, those are probably supposed to be higher on my holiday scale.  But Christmas and Easter involve a lot of work for me, especially now that I'm a mom, whereas Valentine's Day is a day on which I can just celebrate the people I love.  And there's nothing more that I love -- except maybe smashing overheads in tennis -- than celebrating the people I love.  So here's my tribute to my brood:

To the Guv: I have loved you for 17 years, 9 months and 1 day, or thereabouts.  I am sure of very little in this life, especially right now, but the one thing that I have never and will never question is that I am with exactly the right person for me (and vice versa).  You are way too much fun, and I imagine you making me laugh just as much on a park bench when I'm 70 or even 90.  When it comes to you, that's what I appreciate the most: the smile you put on my face every single day.  I love you for that, and for much more.

To Petunia and Dash: Yes, I've lumped you two together, because you are two halves of a whole.  It is nice to know that I am finished having children, because you are a lot of work, but you've also made it easy by completing each other.  Where Petunia's sweetness ends, Dash's antics begin.  You make me tired, but, most days, you make me as tired from the stitches of laughter you induce as from the sheer work of raising you.  You both got that skill from your father: the skill of making me laugh when I'm trying to discipline you.  Oh well; you're good kids (well, Petunia anyway -- Dash, the jury's still out).  In any event, Petunia, you are growing so beautifully -- and too quickly, as we're only a couple of years away from sharing clothes, and that freaks me out.  But seriously, there's not a single thing that I'd change about you -- especially the way you put up with your brother.  I'm worried that you may have six kids because you have way too much patience.  As for Dash, you are nothing but all-boy-trouble, and I'm hoping that my strong heart will cast some sort of protective shield around you (like Violet in the Incredibles).  You'll need it, as you seem to have no fear.  I am trying to learn from that devil-may-care attitude, when it comes to snowboarding, moving away from New Jersey, and much else.  I'm not sure from whom you inherited this recklessness, but, if it works out, I'll take the credit.  I should get something after cleaning up all of your vomit blood messes.

As for the rest of my family and friends: You rock, non-stop.  I am lucky to have parents who still "go," siblings who still reach for the stars, an aunt brave enough to work in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and friends who put up with my antics.  Tomorrow, on Valentine's Day, I'll be celebrating all of you, and I am looking forward to another great year of love and friendship.  Cheers!

Introducing: The Brothers Pookerton, Cinnamon and Oreo:

Guinea pigs

This evening's pre-dinner conversation:

Petunia: Mama, why did Jesus eat guinea pig?

Mama: Huh?

Petunia: There's a picture in my guinea pig book of Jesus eating a guinea pig.

Mama: Oh!  I think that painting is from Peru, where guinea pig is actually food to people.

Petunia: I don't understand why people would ever eat guinea pig. 

Mama: Well, many people in India don't understand why other people eat cow meat.  In India, a cow is considered holy.

The Guv: Holey?  Like with holes in them?

Petunia: Dad, you need to go to church.

Amen.

After deciding to add a pair of guinea pigs to our family, we trolled a few pet stores for a couple of weeks.  In some ways, pet stores are happy places.  No longer do you pass row after row of pet in confined spaces.  Instead, dogs are brought in for adoption on Saturdays.  A few cats linger each day, but they're rotated from a local shelter; a crew of elderly ladies come in each day to care for and hold them.  But, if you're looking for guinea pigs, the situation is a bit different.  The recommended space for these small, furry critters is 7.5 square feet for one-two animals.  Instead, at each pet store I visited, three guinea pigs were kept in a tank the size of a fish aquarium -- as in, less than two square feet.  They didn't have room to move at all, and most of them looked a bit deranged.  Reading the websites, it seems as though madness does set in when these animals don't have the room they need nor properly vented cages.

At one of these stores, I found a particularly knowledgeable employee who is a veterinary technician.  She gave me great advice about raising guinea pigs.  At the end of our conversation, I shared with her my discomfort about buying guinea pigs from a pet store.  She didn't get defensive -- in fact, I felt she was relieved at my concern -- and suggested that I contact my local vet group to see if there are guinea pigs available for "rescue."  Now, I've heard of rescuing cats and dogs, but guinea pigs? 

Lo and behold, there's a huge guinea pig rescue mission right here in NJ.  It turns out that last year, more than a hundred (many of that hundred pregnant) guinea pigs were rescued from a barn in Pennsylvania that was raising them for food, something common in Peruvian culture but illegal in this country.  Many places raising animals for food keep their animals in humane conditions, but this case was as far away from that as possible.  It didn't take long for me to contact the shelter about taking in some of these critters. 

The adoption application was long -- kind of funny, since pet stores require no information -- but I dutifully filled it out and was approved to adopt.  Petunia and I scrolled through the long list of available pets last night, and she chose a pair of males aged about 5 and 9 months.  They are somewhere in a classroom right now, so they are used to kids.  This is not necessarily the pair I would have picked, as I was drawn to the cute little fuzzier babies.  However, I think it's pretty cool that Petunia was okay with adopting non-baby animals.  (Is this a comment on baby Dash?  I'll never know.)  We should have the piggies by the weekend, and after stocking up on the goods yesterday, we are ready.  Pictures of our new furry friends coming soon!

Today, our family visited our local farm supply store to order a very large cage for the pair of guinea pigs that we hope to adopt from an animal rescue mission next weekend.  Petunia started a little bit of sniveling while we were in the store, then, upon our exit, the tears started flowing.  She quietly sniffed, "I'm just so excited, Mama.  I've waited more than seven years to have my very own pet."  She is such a great kid that I won't even call her a Drama Queen for the theatrical tears.  We're all excited!  So send the "good pet karma" our way!  

Today has been a very strange day. 

For starters, I drove Petunia and Wally Cleaver to school with Dash tagging along, as au pair Maria is still under the weather and needed (at my behest) to sleep in.  After dropping off the big kids, Dash demanded to go to Wal-Mart.  Wal-Mart has never been a choice destination for me, but I go there a little more often since Target banned Salvation Army bell ringers three years ago.   Mostly, we visit the Wal-Mart store because it has a McDonald's, which is the only place that Dash eats regularly.  (In all seriousness, we are not evil parents trying to obesify our kid; we are under orders from a medical doctor to feed him McD's as much as he wants because he is so underweight and eats so little.)  So, when Dash wants Wally World, to Wally World we go.  And it's great that we did; he gnawed his way through two McGriddles and half a hash brown before we even hit the Matchbox car aisle so that he could pick a little reward for such good eating.

In any event, our Wal-Mart/McDonald's routine recently expanded to visiting the PetSmart next door.  The kids and I are fixated on getting a pet, and, since none of us are ready for a dog quite yet, we are visiting the store's guinea pigs regularly.  Today, I talked with a vet tech at length about guinea pigs, which are neither pigs nor from Guinea.  In any event, she plied me with pamphlets on these animals, which are well-suited for life with small children.  I'm still dragging my feet, but I think that even the Guv will go for a pair of these critters. 

The day continued with my mid-day tennis drill, after depositing Dash with a much-better and well-rested Maria.  At my drill, I was asked to join the USTA team for the club.  Since I was pretty much always the last picked in gym class, being asked to participate on this team means a lot to me.  But it's weird, it's weird -- athletic competition has never been my bag, but for this, I am ready.  Or I will be, come April, when the matches begin.

And then... I picked up Petunia from school to visit the Guv's far-away office with Girl Scout cookies in tow.  Her sales were outstanding, but we still have waaaay too many cookies left to sell.  Clearly, Mama had some sangria in her when placing the order.  So, we drowned our victory and our upcoming pavement-pounding-with-cookies in some Baja Fresh, which truly makes the world seem like a saner place -- an important thing after your seven year-old Girl Scout has spent the entire drive demanding to know why dictators kill people, why we are at war, why some people oppose the war, why 9-11 happened... hold on, need more sangria...

So here's my takeaway from this insane day: 1.) Guinea pigs rock.  2.) Dictators suck.  3.) Tennis rocks.  4.) Baja Fresh heals all ills, but the guac sure does come back on you.