Andy is busy with his morning bath. Wow! It’s like an earthquake in here! But a kitty’s gotta do what a kitty’s gotta do! There may be casualties.
“What!? What!? What!?” Andy hears his brother Dougy mewing in short, quiet, little mews! Something’s up!
“What’s up, Dougy?!” Dougy’s focused on the ceiling.
“Nothing!”
“It better not be that beetle we’ve had our paws ready for the past few days,” Andy says.
Andy is incredulous as only a kitty brother can be! No honor among some kitties, you know. Dougy’s hiding something. Maybe…. Anyway, he’s awfully quiet. Awfully. Yeppers! Quiet. And suspicious looking!
I didn’t realize that kittens could be that harmed by a grasshopper. Scary!
Yes, that parasite infected the grasshopper and it somehow got into the enclosure where the little family was being held in quarantine at the veterinarian’s clinic to, ironically, assure they were healthy for sale once they were old enough to leave their mother. Of course, once they became infected, they weren’t be put up for sale. Fortunately for me, they then became “free” kittens, with lots of veterinarian bills!
Oh! What a story! With an happy end
For the full account of how I got the kitty boys, go to this link: http://phainopepla95.com/2011/12/05/call-me-crazy/
I will!
I have read it now and it’s a wonderful story!
Thanks! They have been with me almost seven years now – it;ll be seven years in September – and I continue to learn new things about cats from them.
Gets it, Dougy! Gets that buggy! I don’t think Mom will let me at em’ anymore, ’cause she thinks it was a miller or a bug I ate in the house that gave me wormies.
That happened when Andy and Dougy were wee kittens (before I got them), only it was a grasshopper. Fourteen hundred dollars worth of veterinarian bills, lots of diarrhea, and lots of kitty baths later, they were OK again. That’s how my time with Andy and Dougy began. I hadn’t thought about them getting parasites from other critters. I’ll have to revise my plan to let them hunt critters that make it into the house!
That’s a lot of fur to keep clean but looks like they do a good job.
In two weeks, they get a haircut. I can’t wait! They are a matted mess despite my efforts to control them.
doodz…..did de bug final lee meet itz dee mize 🙂 ♥♥
I suspect it did. I haven’t seen it since yesterday morning. did cats do it in, or did it die of old age? We’ll never know!
Holding your faithful readers in suspence, Doug?
I think it is dead one way or other. I haven’t seen it since yesterday!
I find a lot of cricket legs, wings & antennas in the back room but never hear any chirping❗️ I think someone is eating them 🐱
Nice roll-top desk, if not for the papers in there I bet it would be a good ‘lair’ for the boys 😉
Thanks! It was made by my mother’s great uncle, a Scottish cabinet maker. I bet someone is eating those crickets for you…!
My kitty boys love to hunt crickets. They are big enough to be worth eating, and they are active in ways that excite and interest them!
entomology cricket distributors are expensive I think we will stick ‘Friskies’
Ha! Ha! That they are! Plus, their crickets are hoity toity pedigree crickets, not the mongrel field crickets that occasionally get inside then dispatched in this home. Free range crickets taste better, Andy and Dougy tell me
– (“Meow!”) – than those fancy chirpers anyway.
I bet every beetle become beetle-juice when the kitty boys are around ;O)
You know it! They are ruthless hunters, a state that sometimes is shocking to me since I think of them as harmless, mild-mannered cuties. Ha!