Sneaky (cat!)

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Last night, we had steaks for dinner, and Sneaky ate a lot of it. There was some left over, though. A few minutes ago, I let him inside after he'd been out catting around for a couple hours. He wanted food, and I gave him a can of cat food, which he ate most of.

Then, he jumps down and walks to the fridge and stares at it. I said "What do you want, Sneaky?" and he let out a bitchy-sounding meow. "Do you want STEAK?" I asked. Another loud, BITCHY meow. I gave him some steak.
 
CMur12 said:
Sneaky appears to be taking his job seriously!

I hope Mack is soon feeling better.

- Murray
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Mack is not well. He has had diarrhea for a while and the doctors can't figure out why; tests for infections have come back negative. He went to a gastroenterologist last week and she scheduled a bunch of blood tests and wants to do colonoscopy and upper GI endoscopy. She also discovered that he has a heart murmur and wants him to see a cardiologist.
 
Pál_K said:
My wish is that Mack gets the best medical help possible and recovers soon.
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He'll likely end up at the Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis. Medical care here is BAD. Really bad. If they find what's wrong here and it requires surgery or any sort of advanced treatment, I'm taking him to Indianapolis. If they can't figure out what's wrong, he's also going to IU.

When Mack was 5 weeks old, he began to instantly vomit as soon as he drank a bottle of baby formula. His doctor didn't know what was causing it and had him admitted to a local hospital. The doctors there kept him for a week while he slowly starved, claiming that they were running all kinds of tests and couldn't figure it out. My aunt, a nurse, told me to demand that they transfer him to the Indiana University Riley Children's Hospital at the IU Medical Center. They put him in an ambulance and drove him down there late at night.

The next morning an elderly medical school professor comes in, accompanied by a few of his students. He looks at the paperwork the hospital in Ft. Wayne sent and says: "Well, your baby is vomiting as soon as he eats. I think I know what the problem is. Let me take a look at him." The doctor then starts feeling Mack's belly with his fingertips and declares that he has found the problem! He tells us that the place where the intestines attach to the stomach is blocked, keeping the food from getting through and being absorbed by the body. He can fix it with surgery. Before the surgery, he said he wanted to do an x-ray to confirm what he felt with his fingers. So a few minutes later a nurse comes and takes him to radiology for the x-ray; and an hour or so later, the old doctor comes back with his students, with the x-ray film in his hands. The x-ray clearly shows the blockage, and he shows it to us.

That's it, the doctor at IU knew what the problem was just from reading the symptoms on the paperwork, confirms it by feeling the baby's belly, and just to be sure confirms it again with a simple, ordinary, inexpensive x-ray. Total time, about an hour. The hospital in Fort Wayne kept him for a week and ran a long list of EXPENSIVE tests; insurance ended up being billed about $50,000 for nothing.

I asked the doctor how the hospital up here could keep him for a week and not figure it out. He told me point blank: "They had no idea what to do, and they should have sent your son down here the first day he was there. They kept him as long as they could without killing him so they could bill your insurance a ton of money and pad their profits. If you hadn't asked for him to be sent here, they'd have either sent him here themselves within a couple days...or they'd have kept him to try to milk your insurance more and would have killed him."

Stupidity, dishonesty, and greed: that's medical care in Fort Wayne. There are five hospitals here. Three are owned by a for-profit corporation. The other two belong to a supposedly non-profit hospital group, but they charge the second highest prices in the entire USA according to the New York Times, and they paid millions to buy the naming rights to the minor-league baseball stadium in downtown Fort Wayne. Non-profit hospitals don't do shit like that. The for-profit hospitals here are run by greedy bastards, but at least they pay taxes. The supposedly non-profit ones evade paying taxes by being non-profit yet they act like a for profit corporation.
 
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Polaroid snapshot of Sneaky doing some very early morning bird watching in the back yard. This was at daybreak, just as the sun was beginning to rise.

Yesterday, after a two month hiatus, Sneaky killed again. I found a sparrow with a broken neck on my doorstep. Sneaky scratched at the door to let me know he wanted inside and immediately demanded food. Murder is for fun, not food!
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:


I got this chair to sit on at my computer desk, but have never been able to use it. The thick coating of cat fur shows who owns it now!
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I can empathize, Chris.

My cat Joey thinks the recliner in the living room is his. We've gone round and round about it and the "rules" have changed over time, but we have it worked out pretty well now who gets it when. :cool:

- Murray
 
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Last night, I fell asleep while sitting on the sofa. Sneaky got up on me and head-butted me a couple times, then cuddled up on my chest. My son got out his phone and snapped some photos of me sleeping with the kitty on me.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
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Very nice photo - Sneaky loves his humans.

But Sneaky is not killing birds or other critters for fun. Every six months cats have to appear before the Cat Skills Assessment Board to prove their skillz are current and stay certified; this is preparation for that.

Some people would call this behavior “instinct”. Instinct fascinates me. How is it that spiders know how to make a web? If I were transformed into a spider, I’d have to do a web search (heh) to learn how to make a web.
 
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Sneaky is always so comfortable when he sleeps; he's usually stretched out on his back on the sofa! He spent most of Saturday sleeping there. Being a feline overlord is such exhausting work!
 
Well, he appears to be asleep... Our kitty can look equally dead to the world, but the moment a can opener punctures a can at the other end of the house, she's instantly there at my side and wide awake. It's become a huge source of amusement in our household!
I think that Sneaky is only pretending to be asleep while he's actually guarding your camera bag.
 
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