Betz's Pets Page

If the sun is out, he's probably either eating, sleeping, pooping, licking himself, or harassing his adopted sisters as they attempt to innocently eat, sleep, poop, or lick themselves.

If it's dark outside, he is either hunting, or driving us insane, begging to go in and out every 2 minutes so he can satiate his ravenous appetite for rodent flesh. Whatever it is, I guarantee he's up to no good.

It would appear that I am an enabler. This morning, a chipmunk scurried across the deck, just inches in front of Ratso's face as he lay on the carpet, looking out through the glass as he is wont to do when the morning sun pours in. He was on his feet (actually, a foot in the air) in an instant, making some of the most intriguing "kill" noises. I was nearby, and my reaction was not to distract him and turn his attention to a more wholesome activity such as licking himself inappropriately, but to open the sliding glass door and taunt, "Get 'em, boy!" Derek half-heartedly disapproved, "You're cruel, giving that chipmunk a death sentence like that."

I left for work shortly thereafter, so I don't know if Ratso's death quest was successful. But I do know that he and Simonie routinely perch themselves at the foot of Kathy's gigantic hydrangea for up to 30 minutes, standing completely motionless as they lie in wait.....suggesting that beneath the robust foliage is a bustling chipmunk metropolis, populated with chipmunk lawyers, baristas, tax accountants, schoolmarms, and sanitation workers. One has to wonder though: why don't they just go under the hydrangea chipmunk city themselves?

Remember my 4/20/06 (yeah, neither do I), when I suggested the silly notion of a Ratso cam? Well, someone actually has one! Yes, a little camera, attached to the collar of his cat. http://www.mr-lee-catcam.de/index.htm. It's very entertaining, actually, and now I really want one....although if I knew what Ratso was up to every minute of every day, I'm sure he'd be in serious trouble.

No recent carnage to report. Aside from tearing up the furniture, hollering to go in and out every 3 minutes from sundown to sunup, and frequently bitch-slapping his sisters, he's been a relatively good boy. We don't even have any tapeworm to report this year! Either he's not eating rodents anymore, or he has figured out which ones have tapeworm, and he leaves them alone. Yeah, right. Morel likely he's developed an immunity to them.

Nothing new to report for recent weeks. No new carnage. Ratso did have a toad backed into a corner, but I was in the garden and saw his evil intent, so I rescued the hapless toad and sent Ratso packin'.

We had a lovely photo shoot in the garden today. The idea was to take pictures of FLOWERS, but Ratso decided that he wanted to be in the pictures too. I love this one. He looks like a giant!

We call Ratso "Bubba." I have also referred to him as "The Devil." I think the perfect name for him is "Beelzebubba." :-)

Derek said:
At night, Ratso only comes in for three minutes every hour to check the food bowl. Not because he's hungry, but because he wants to make sure that neither of the other cats is eating. That's all he cares about--depriving the other cats of basic needs or anything they might enjoy. One of these nights, he's going to come running inside, and I'm going to be sitting there, eating out of the food bowl. Then let's see what he does.

Death of Bunny #2. Ratso snuck past me again. This time he tossed the poor thing into the air a few times, clearly trying to bring it back to life because he wanted to play some more. We played a little tug of war over the damn thing.

I just added the "What is Ratso doing at this moment?" intro above his picture at the top of the page, and for a fleeting moment I thought it would be fun to have a "Ratso cam" live webcast of where he is and what he's doing all day. But first of all, that would require at least 8 webcams throughout the house, and second of all, if I did that, I would drift into very dangerous "loser beyond belief" territory. And ultimately, it would be pretty boring, with occasional moments of excitement. The litter box cam would be sort of cool. That would be feline fetish porn, wouldn't it? Ewww.

4/14/06

Betsy writes:

If there was ever any question about whether I am a cat person, I guess this seals the deal. My cat has his very own blog.

4/13/06

Betsy writes:

I am sorry to announce, ladies and gentlemen, that there will be no Easter this year. Ratso has, in fact, slain the Easter Bunny.

He scurried in the door at 11:55 tonight as we were closing up the house for the night. I started squealing when I saw that something was in his mouth, unable to speak because of the strawberry Twizzler dangling from my lips like a cigarette. I thought: mouse, chipmunk, maybe an unlucky bird (whatever it is, get it OUT of my kitchen). But no, it was indeed a baby bunny. Ratso hissed and whined and growled as we cornered him and took it away, clinging to the misguided hope that we might be able to save the poor little bugger. But it was too late. Time of death: 11:56, just four strokes before Good Friday.

Ratso keeps returning to the last spot where it lay, sniffing and patting the carpet with his paw as if his new meal had simply turned invisible. "Where did it go? It was just here a minute ago" he wonders, as he looks up into our eyes and begs to go back outside to the nest where the other baby bunnies are. The water pistol, which we use for his "training," has been working overtime tonight to keep him away from the door.

I suspect that in the light of day, as we are leaving for work, we will find a small basket in the yard with miniature eggs strewn about. And so ends the joyous anticipation of boiled eggs and sweet treats for all the little Christian boys and girls this Sunday morning. (And when I told you all that Ratso was the Devil, several questioned me because "he seems like such a nice cat!").

I guess this means he has made a full recovery from his April Fool's Day injuries and is now back up to his fighting weight. Although he still has bald spots all over his body, is wounds are mostly healed, and his nipple even appears to be growing back. (Who knew they could regenerate themselves, just like lizards' tails?)

The blog you are reading now is the result of Ratso's April 2006 experiences, as well as his innate ability to constantly keep us on our toes. I wrote to friends; several said it was funny and should be published, and I decided to start a blog.

Lucas found a rabbit nest the winter before last and killed all but 3 of the babies. Pat brought them inside and one of them actually survived to be released back into the wild as a young adult. We haven't seen it lately but saw it as recently as last fall. The rabbit, who occasionally ran freely around the house, has diplomatic immunity from Lucas. He won't chase it.

Actually, I think Amber got one of his cousins a few years back. Couldn't save it either, broken neck. But Bones did his best, running around the backyard in only his skivvies with a broom, in the daylight, to get Cuzzin Wasky Wabbit from her mouth. All he could do was get the wabbit and toss it into the woods. I think that would be "compost."

My Dad would be so proud of Ratso - when any of our childhood cats would come home with some poor creature clamped in its jaws and we would recoil in horror - Dad would always say - "Hey, it's just its nature"! Of course as he was all bursting with pride over the mighty hunter(ess), we made him clean up the mess and dispose of the remains of the unfortunate victims.

For anyone who gives a Ratso's ass (haha), our little black man got a serious ass-whooping on April Fools Eve. He suffered this attack at the paws of a stray cat that has been leading an organized crime syndicate in our neighborhood recently. The stray, we suspect, is unaltered (his cojones are still intact, so he has testosterone aplenty). Derek saw him a couple of nights ago, when he had Ratso backed into a corner, his furry butt splayed against the glass door on our patio in a submissive position. The stray is even bigger and meaner than Ratso, which is unbelievable to me, because Ratso is very big and very, very mean. As I pulled into the garage after work, Ratso was dripping blood all over the floor, and it appeared to be coming from his jugular. We got the bleeding to stop pretty quickly, but he was acting weird all evening. He moved very little.

At around 1AM, seeing no improvement in his demeanor, we called the emergency clinic to see if they thought we should go in, or try to wait it out until we could see our normal vet the next morning. They listened to my description of his symptoms and said that since the bleeding had stopped, it would probably be ok to just monitor him. We got up every 90 minutes through the night to see if he was still conscious. He hardly moved from his spot for 6 hours.

We finally took him in at 11AM, and the doctor had to shave him in a bunch of spots to get dried blood away and look at his wounds. Here are a couple pictures of his bald neck. I was unable to photograph his belly with its 12+ bald spots, because he would have shredded my hand and the camera in it.

He did have a puncture wound in his jugular vein--three in fact. But she wasn't too worried because the bleeding had stopped and scabs were already forming. But then she started inspecting him, and there were lacerations all over his body; literally every 2 inches, a gash. He even lost one nipple (fortunately, he has 5 more with no real purpose). He was swollen and bruised all over his front/neck and belly, and two of his claws were torn out. In short, the boy was f***ed up.

I can't believe how well-behaved he was at the vet. He was like a docile little rag doll, and the techs and Vet kept saying, "What a sweet cat!" If only they knew that at home he is Satan on Paws!

For the next two days, he hardly moved. The girls (Snooker and Simonis, his adopted sisters) could sense that he was weakened. He slowly got up to eat on the second evening, and Snooker bitch-slapped him just for good measure. Normally, if she ever attempted such an insulting attack, he would grab her in a full-nelson and sink his teeth into her neck until she went limp.

For a week he was on antibiotics to prevent infection. Derek and I had the joy of corralling him twice a day and poking a pill down his throat. Two large adults were required for this process, and we shrieked aloud on more than one occasion while doing so. Derek was the holder, and I was the poker. The injuries I sustained during these sessions were comparable to the injuries Ratso sustained in the fight. Except, thank goodness, Derek and I both still have our nipples intact.

Dr. Kaufield recommended a new training system by the company that makes invisible fences, which dog owners have used outdoors for a long time. He'd have to wear a little collar with a receiver on it, and if he went somewhere we didn't want him to go (for example, on the couch or bed), he'd get a little jolt of electricity to teach him to stay down. I told her I don't mind if he goes on the furniture, but I'd like to get the collar for my own entertainment purposes.

Ratso has a habit of going in and out dozens of times a night, each time crying out as if his life depends on our opening the door for him. His stalking/hunting instincts are uncannily strong. We've taken to using a water pistol to teach him to stay away from the door and let us have a moment's rest, but this works marginally at best. He's simply too smart. Usually, he just goes to a different door that is not within squirt range, and begins squawking uncontrollably there. I wonder whether using the electric collar for this purpose would be considered inhumane.

The vet also gave us the phone number for a place that neuters stray male cats for free. If we can capture this little feline Tony Soprano in a live trap, they will take him, neuter him, and release him, thanks to donations from some people who apparently shit money. (The Vet said they do it for free because "we have too much money right now.") But we'll probably pay to have him tested for Feline AIDS and Leukemia, and if he's positive for either, ask them to euthanize him. Those are the two worst cat diseases, and there is no vaccination or cure for feline AIDS. Not to mention that if he is a stray, that's no life for a cat to have.

This brings our vet bills for that 4-day span up to $130, as we had to get his semi-annual bottle of tapeworm medicine just three days earlier. Gross. (That's almost what we pay for vaccinations for a whole year for all three. Pets are never free). Tapeworms, by the way, are another joy-filled benefit of owning a cat like Ratso: not only does he drive you crazy wanting to go outside, he captures and consumes live rodents on a regular basis, so he gets a tapeworm a couple times a year. I won't go into detail about how we know when he has one, but let's just say that the worms have to escape the host body, and to do so they find the nearest orifice and squirm their way out. Fortunately, they die soon after leaving, but it's utterly revolting.

Hopefully Ratso has learned a lesson and will chill out a little bit in the aggression department. I seriously doubt it, but a Mom can always hope. Anyway, he's alive, and for 24 hours or so on April Fool's Day, we weren't so sure.

Katie (who knew Ratso when he was a tiny kitten but has since moved away) writes:

Poor little guy. He (Ratso) will always be my little guy, ALWAYS. And he will never grow up in my head. He is a little like Peter Pan in that sense. Also, in case you were wondering, no one on the Internet sells cat "Get Well" baskets that I wanted to send to Ratso. Seriously, we should have a website for stuff like that. People would eat that crap up!

Sorry to hear about your friend Ratso's problems. "Satan on Paws?" I always thought he was such a gentle soul. So what would that make Snooker? Satan's asshole uncle?