Memories in an Urn

We got a call to pick up Baobao’s ashes today. We’d paid for and expected an urn. But what they didn’t tell us was that they’d also included a little surprise — an impression of Baobao’s paws preserved in clay! They also did a nice job with the urn with Baobao’s name nicely “decorated” on the urn.

Bao Bao ashes

Bao Bao paw prints

When we arrived at the vet to pick up the urn, Bryan thought we were there to take Baobao home. So when we told him Baobao was in a tiny little box, he got confused and paused for a second. He still has a tough time understanding where’d Baobao gone.

Considerate Vets

I don’t know if all vets or pet clinics do this, but a couple of days ago we got a handwritten card in the mail from our pet emergency clinic about the loss of Baobao. We thought that was very nice of them to send such a card.

And then yesterday, we got another handwritten card in the mail from our regular pet clinic, also to mourn the death of our cat — signed by the head of the clinic himself (whom also happened to by Baobao’s vet). Grace was curious how they’d know. So she called the emergency clinic to find out. It turns out that they contacted our regular vet about the death (from the record in which I’d previously stated whom our regular vet was) so that our regular vet wouldn’t keep sending us reminders for shots and stuff. Now I think that’s very considerate of them to do that.

Another thing that Grace found out about the doctors at the emergency clinic is, they only work at the emergency clinic, not some part-timer who may have a regular job somewhere else (which Alicia was thinking may be the case). This makes me respect them that much more because of their fair prices, no down-the-throat commercial sales pitches and merchandises, and true love for the care of animals.

Nice people make me happy.

Baobao in Comfort

Baobao in Comfort

It took me twenty minutes to decide on an image for this post. But then, it was a lot to take in and a lot of emotions to process. At the end, I decided that projecting Baobao at her favorite place during the last day of her life was the most appropriate and captures a more accurate portrait of her characters.

On January 16, 2008 at around 10PM, Baobao took her last laboring breathe and her heart stopped beating. The life of a cat with strong characters came to an end. The burden of this tough call was ours to make as guardians of our pet. For those who knew, Baobao suddenly exhibited symptoms of acute asthma attacks late last year, and her conditions just kept getting worse after a couple of weeks of seemingly healthy recovery.

In the days leading to her euthanasia, her asthma inhaler dosages increased dramatically from 1-3 puffs a day to 13 puffs, and then finally during her last day, 30+ puffs. Modern medicine was finally overcome by the illness.

Bryan didn’t quite understand what happened. And I scrambled to Google for ways to explain the whole idea of “death” of our pet to our two-and-a-half-year-old. It was especially heartbreaking when he routinely said his good nights last night to Baobao as he prepared for bed time albeit to a photograph of Baobao.

I am glad Wawa also came along with us to the hospital as I think she understood what was going on. She got all freaked out and kept meowing as Baobao collapsed beside her in the pet carrier and struggled to breathe on our way to the hospital. She hasn’t looked for Baobao yet since we got back. So she must knows.

The house feels unusually empty even with two adults, a toddler and a cat. It’s hard to comprehend just the mere presence of life can fill a room, and the void of it can make even the most crowded space empty. But it does.

I once read a quote that goes something like this: “We don’t just live. We survive.” After living through the grief of losing a family pet, the quote rings ever more faithful to its core as we try to cope with the loss. And so march on we must with our own lives after saying a heartbreaking goodbye to our friend. March on, we must.

A Whole New Cat

After Baobao’s near death experience, it seems like she’s gained a new perspective on life. It’s like we’ve got back a whole new cat since the incident.

A few observations we’ve made:

1. She’s a much gentler and kinder cat now; she’s actually okay with random strokes by me, Grace and even Bryan! She even let Jason and Alicia pet her!
2. She now appreciates every inch of the apartment; she now sleeps at places she’s never slept at before!! This is a big thing for her.
3. She’s a little more talkative now; she now talks to Grace quite a bit more than before.
4. She’s not a bitchy and mean when handled. We’ve successfully fed her medications via a syringe and even administered inhaler puffs through a home-made mask (modified 1/2 gallon milk bottle) with much success (much fewer hisses and less intense struggles).

I wonder if this means some other animals can also appreciate life more after encountering near-death experiences…

Strange Behavioral Note

Ever since Baobao came back from the vet’s, Wawa has been acting strangely:

1. Refusal to approach Baobao and even gets hostile (hissing) towards Baobao;
2. Refusal to eat her favorite treats if they have been touched by Baobao;
3. Stays in our room with us during the night even though her favorite sleeping area is by the window in the living room;

Baobao, on the other hand, is enjoying the time of her life.

Grace thinks it’s the smell of the clinic mixed with the scent of other animals; I have no freaking idea what’s going on… but that assessment seems probable…

Cats…

Respecting Death

Confronting death isn’t something one does often nor is it something one would choose to come to grips with if given alternatives. We almost had to make that decision on behalf of one of our cats today — and it was painful.

Wawa (the friendlier, skinnier cat of the two) uncharacteristically came to the bedroom and meowed so loud that it woke me up this morning. She’s never done that unless something was wrong especially when Grace had already been up in the kitchen all morning! Soon I learned that Baobao was having another asthma attack and had to be rushed to the vet for emergency care…

After a series of events, the ER vet finally delivered the bad news — there’s a chance our cat may not make it… and I needed to give her permission to euthanize Baobao if her condition drastically plummets beyond humanly tolerable level even without my presence. Also, given Baobao’s feisty personality, it may be in everybody’s best interest to euthanize her so that she wouldn’t have to suffer through another asthma attack should she refuse to take any prescription drugs.

That’s when it hit me that all of a sudden, I’ve been entrusted with a monumentally important decision to make on behalf of another living, breathing mammal… After talking to Jason and Alicia, we thought we should probably give Baobao a fighting chance for survival — after all, she’s tried so hard to stay conscious and alive having been labored to breath all day. So we brought her home with some prescription drugs to see how much we can squeeze from the marvels of modern medicine and her own will to live.

One side note, on the vet’s billing statement, apparently the oxygen (something we take for granted) was the most expensive item in the entire treatment process. I found it ironic that often something that is free and abundantly available sometimes will cost the most if the alternative is unacceptable. On the flip side, it’s also good to know that things that are free and abundantly available are also priceless — the air, love, life, happiness, health… etc. Some of them are irreplaceable while others cost handsomely (monetary and emotional wise) to gain just a little… I wonder if people becoming more and more materialistic has something to do with this — trying to replace something that’s, in essence, irreplaceable with material belongings that ultimately nobody really gives a rat’s ass about during the final moments of one’s life.

But that’s an entry in itself and maybe for another day…

One Unfortunate Event Is An Opportunity for Another

Yes. Weird title. But let me explain.

One of our cats suffers from asthma attacks once in a while. And when it happens, her shortness of breath can seem frightening especially when the wheezing gets loud. Now, for those who know this cat, she’s pretty much impossible to man-handle in any way. So getting her the asthma inhaler has been a challenge. So in my infinite (lack of) wisdom, I’ve decided to construct a box w/ a tiny opening to puff the inhaler in for the duration of the dose… if I can somehow get her inside the box. But even that doesn’t usually work all that well though it improves her condition.

So last night was one of those times when her asthma was so bad that she just gave up running and reluctantly let me administer the inhaler on her even without the box. So I puffed and puffed. But because she was so out of breath for so long that she decided to lay there and just rest! This was a rare calm mood for this cat. Immediately I took a pair of scissors and started trimming her matted fur — and as the Harlows can attest, it’s a big fat mess on her back that has eventually become a big flat door mat — and it was tough, as in a well-knitted mat. It’s become that way because she’s never allowed anyone to brush her.

After almost two hours of going through some hissing and reposition negotiations, I finally managed to get rid of 95% of that big mess of fur on her back (at the sacrifice of sleep @ 4am when I should be coding for Neely’s project). The good news was, she was so tired and out of breath that 90% of the time she just let me cut through the mess with the scissors even though that meant having to endure some pain in some tough areas. Maybe she was really tired; or maybe she knew I was doing a favor… For whatever reason, she let me do it. And I am glad to announce that she’s now 95% mat free!

So you see, had she not had asthma attacks and as stubborn as she has been, she would never be as tired and been without a care for almost two hours. And if not for that, I’d never be able to trim her matted fur so relatively easily. I feel bad that it takes a bad asthma attack to clear out an old problem of hers. But at the end it all worked out — she got her inhaler doses; I got to trim her hair. And both cats got treats for being cool.

Sick Kitty

This past weekend was pretty eventful… One of the things that took place was Baobao, one of our cats, and her increasing difficulty in breathing. Grace started noticing it last week. But it was barely noticeable. And the symptoms took place rather irregularly and resembled coughing for hairballs. So we didn’t think much of it. Then came Sunday when she was breathing rapidly at twice the rate of our other cat. So we decided to take her to one of the emergency pet care vets around town.

Of the two possible causes for her rapid breathing, it turned out that the cat has, get this, asthma. I sure hope she’s not allergic to her own dander! (That’d be tragic if that were the case)

So I got some prescription pills and paid the hefty ER bill and was happy everything was much better (and cheaper; but not that cheap) than I thought. They tried to keep her in an expensive H2O chamber for 7 hours for observation (almost $200 just to breathe that pure oxygen; yummy). But Grace was like… “Um, thanks. But no, thanks.”

All in all, I still highly recommend the staff and Doctor David Novotny of Emergency Animal Clinic of San Jose. They are very friendly, communicative and very understanding. For example, when the staff at the front desk saw how Baobao was breathing, she immediately took her to the back of the clinic for treatment even before I filled out and signed any form!

The admission fee was slightly higher than another emergency clinic that we researched. But in comparison, the other clinic got plenty of bad reps for its staff’s indifference to the pets and their rude behaviors towards the owners. Also, I didn’t think the fees were too outrageous given what I’ve read online with some of the other ER vets.

It’s all good.

Neighbor

An old lady moved in next door after the previous neighbor moved out three months ago. She’s into rescuing cats and all that good stuff. She’s managed to catch two cats and got them “fixed” since she moved here. We wish we’d known that Palo Alto Animal Services can do a relatively cheap “catch and release” program without putting the animals down. After our last experience with the San Jose animal shelter, we decided not to do the animals any favors… But what Palo Alto is doing seems like a pretty good idea…

So anyway… back to the neighbor… She has decided to move out of the neighborhood despite having only lived in her new apartment for only about a month. She thought the neighborhood is not up to her standards because we have a few Hispanic neighbors who like to play their music a little loud. Within days of moving in, she’d already verbally exchanged “kind words” with them about their music (which never really bothered us). This reminds me of an NPR (more like “This American Life” ) episode with Mr. Rogers. The segment had a scenario exactly like this — dealing with loud neighbors. When people know each other, what someone else does doesn’t really bother one another quite as much. But when nobody knows each other, friction seems to get picked up a lot more quickly.

I guess we’ll be welcoming a new neighbor soon.

Cute Overload!

Slashdot was making fun of Cute Overload on April Fools which basically just made Cute Overload exploded with traffic (a.k.a. The Slashdot Effect). I am glad Slashdot covered the site though. There are tons of cute pictures of animals for you animal lovers… Even if you don’t like animals, I am sure your kids/spouse will appreciate the fun.

via [Slashdot]

Evolution of Cats

Carl Zimmer writes yet another greart article about the evolution of cats (in relation to other felines). Carl Zimmer is actually really good scientific writer.

An excerpt…

The scientists were able to reconstruct the evolutionary tree of cats with a great deal of statistical confidence. Their results are published in this week’s Science (link here). I’ve put the illustrations from the paper at the bottom for those who like to revel in the gorey details. What’s particularly neat about the paper is that it offers a hypothesis for how cats spread around the world. The researchers came up with this hypothesis by looking at where cats are today, and then mapping their locations onto the evolutionary tree.

The common ancestor of all living cats, according to their results, lived in Asia about ten million years ago. This cat’s descendants split into two branches. One led to lions, jaguars, tigers, leapards, snow leopards, and cloud leopards. The other branch gave rise to all other cats. These early cats remained in Asia until 8.5 million years ago, when new lineages moved into the New World and Africa. The New World immigrants gave rise to bobcats, couggars, lynxes, ocelots, bobcats, and other species found in the Western Hemisphere today. The African migrants were the ancestors of today’s servals and other small cat species.

But cats have a way of wandering. The ancestors of domestic cats moved back from North America back into Asia around 6.5 million years ago. Lynxes moved back as well about 2 million years ago, spreading west until they reached Spain. The ancestors of today’s mountain lions in the New World also produced another lineage that moved back into Asia and eventually wound up in Africa, where it became today’s cheetahs. Other big cats moved into Africa at around the same time–the cousins of tigers and snow leopards in Asia moved through the Sinai peninsula and evolved into African lions. But close cousins of the lions moved into the New World, evolving into jaguars.

Alicia to the Rescue

Monday was an eventful day. After trying for a week to get Baobao on pills and flea drops, Grace decided it was time to send her to the pros at the vet clinic. Little did we know, even they couldn’t handle Baobao’s aggressive attitude towards strangers. Not long after Grace dropped her off, she got a call from the vet’s office to pick her up… By then, I was already on my way to Valleyjo for my consulting gig.

Grace had to call Alicia to get a rid to the vet’s office to pick up Baobao because the loaner car from Michelle couldn’t fit Bryan’s car seat. And thankfully, Alicia was able to rush to San Jose all the way from Menlo Park to fetch Baobao. After hours of hissing and restlessness in her cage, Baobao meowed with a relief when she heard Grace calling her name.

Unfortunately, Baobao never learned her lesson; she’s still difficult to handle when it comes to feeding her pills. So this time we got a different brand of flea drop (Advantage, which supposedly works far better than Hartz, the first brand we tried) and continued our quest to be rid of the fleas.