Yes, but you can take peace in the fact that it was the cat with the gash, and NOT the frazzled offspring!

Sorry to hear that campanula, although it is kind of bound to happen, either the cat figures that he can't do whatever he pleases, either well... he will become Darwin award winner (aka going to go extinct due to own stupidity).

Good news about hulthemias though. x)

Now off to kill my own old bats who took liking to howling in the night because heater is not hot enough... *sigh* Siamese cats should come with ear plugs. Not to mention that the blinking animals sleep whole day without a peesk, and then when we go to bed, the concerto starts...

Seriously, fishes are the best pet. x) Silent, relaxing to watch, and makes a great compost for roses once it floats belly up. x)

There's all that wonderful gin you guys brew, and you want to pop a valium?!? Come now . . .

Considering your recent visitation from a very riled-up tooth fairy, subsequent misplacement of your oral corrective device and now this feline fiasco, perhaps you'd best lie low for a while. Could be that the (former) planet Pluto is momentarily in malevolent aspect to your natal chart or something. There's got to be an explanation (rational or otherwise) for all this unpleasantness all at once, don't you think?

Keep us posted on the cat.

Since misery loves company, I'll weigh in with my own. Got home tired from work last night. Husband had just cleaned up cat's upchucking. Dog No. 1 (male) marked on carpet AND curtain. His urine is very yellow and stains do not come out, though god knows I tried. Later traipsed from kitchen to TV room and stepped into Dog no. 2's poop. She's getting older and somewhat incontinent. Second time in one week this has happened to me. Later on found dog no. 2 had also peed on carpet. Was out in garden this morning and was chased by a yellow jacket. Went out again later, same yellow jacket chased me again. Minutes later it sat on my arm and stung me for no reason. I'm becoming more and more allergic to wasp stings and you should see my arm. Oh, earlier cat upchucked twice outside and once inside. Got my roses from Heirloom today, including a box that was addressed to me with invoice and roses for Tracy in Stanford who will not be getting her roses as soon as she had hoped. My arm is throbbing and I'm going to lie down with aspirin, and really don't want to wake up any time soon.

Ingrid

Well, I am here to say that there is absolutely no validity to the notion that there is any correlation between the positive event of receiving roses and the negative events catalogued above. I received roses on Tuesday and no such bad events happened. So fear not and keep ordering roses!

Sherry

P.S. Hope all is well with all cat children and dog children and children children. "Nature's Miracle" works great on my dog's accidents. Benedryl gel and/or pills should help the sting. Everybody get some rest.

good grief - are we all masochists? Are we content with just one little goldfish....no, we have large, needy, expensive MULTIPLES. Suffice to say that when we are not tearing our hair out, up to our elbows in bodily fluids, we are basking in their furry love. Earlier this year, loads of us replied to a query about gardeners and pets: it seems that for most of us, plants and animals are all joined along the nurturing continuum (maybe not wasps).
Just phoned vets, cat bright and active but having anaesthetic while they mess with his head. Mmmm, sometimes wish this option was easily available to us too.

Tell me, I brought my Pukester and Peester (aka my beloved cat pets Mathilda and Xenia) all the way from Lithuania, we even had to opt for rather expensive boat trip through Germany as it was most luxurious shipping condition for those two...

Good news about the kitteh though, hope he recovers and learns something from it. :)

Ingrid, I am amazed that you still have carpet. :D Mine are gone, thanks to the same Pukester and Peester. Then again it is probably not that bad, since I have a mild allergy to dust particles. :)

no carpets here either. the main downside is the sound of elephantine feet stomping around the floorboards, day and night....and that's just the fur creatures. The humans wear boots and we have many stairs. I am possibly going to have to carpet stairs though as aged collie has taken to losing her (over eager) footing, racing to bark at door. The sound of desperate nails, scrambling for toeholds, followed by ominous thumping and high pitched barks is more than I can bear especially during the 6am milk delivery.

campanula,

carpets don't do much for those elephantine feet. We have one very small cat, and at times it sounds like a thunderstorm overhead when she's upstairs playing with her toys. I think she stomps her feet and makes noise for fun.

Always makes me think of the Sandburg poem--"The fog creeps in on little cat feet." Some pretty noisy fog!

>urine is very yellow and stains do not come out, though god knows I tried

Try dumping a whole lot of salt on the stain while it's still wet or as soon as you can (the sooner the better). Brush it in and around really well and let it sit a few minutes. Then get all that salt back up. Then pour not very diluted vinegar straight on the stain and let it sit there all wet for a little while. Blot that up, and blot, and blot... And then pour *very* hot water on the stain spot to wet the rug/dilute the vinegar out as you alternate pouring the hot water with walking on dry towels on the spot to alternately wet and dry the spot. Lots and lots of drying...

No, I'm not making a joke here. I must have done this cleaning job a zillion times, especially as our dog aged into dementia and almost a total loss of control. (Even with all that, though, I still miss her...)

The stain that's really a toughie is when the dog eats moldy leaves outside and then upchucks it on the rug. Those black stains are the things I never quite mastered. And I didn't always notice the black upchuck right away. (Don't ask _me_ why the dog ate that stuff! Dogs can be crrrrazy!) I've discovered Goop as a miracle worker for laundry stains since then, though, and that might have worked on the rug too, with enough effort at rubbing it in.

A plain old-fashioned wood floor might still be a pretty good idea with pets around. We still have some of that, and it still looks decent.

Best wishes,
Mary

Mary, many thanks for your tip, I'm going to print this out and try it the next time (please God, let it not be soon) that the dog has another "accident". It sounds like a bit of work but I don't care as long as I don't have to see those horrible yellow stains. The carpet is only four years old and was far from cheap. We recently had the carpet steam cleaned and treated with a stain preventer. Might as well have thrown the extra money that the stain preventer cost into the toilet. Half of our house is tiled with many area rugs. Invariably, they do their business on the rug, even though the tile is less than a foot away. Aarggh!

Sorry, I don't mean to go on and on about non-rose topics, so let me just add that of the roses we've received so far my darling husband has already planted most of them and two more will go in tonight. Two I can't plant yet since I have to take out the rose that's already there which I'm giving away to a friend. The two Iceberg roses that Tracy in Stanford was supposed to receive are also going to two eager friends. You see campanula, I'm mending my ways and spreading the wealth around. Nothing has ended up on my compost area for a long time. I wasn't able to endure the guilt any more.

Ingrid