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.

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.

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 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…

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…

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 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.

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.

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.

via [Slashdot]

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.

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.

Alicia and Jason brought over their flea comb today.

Wawa was always going to be the easy cat to comb. It’s always been Baobao we haven’t been able to do anything about because of her infamous quick temper. From what I heard, Jason even thought he could hold Baobao with his hiking gloves while putting her over his shoulder. It was a good thing he didn’t try — he would’ve been ripped to shreds, like a piece of paper running through a shredding machine…. zheeeeeeeeeeeee…

Grace has been following Baobao around the house since A&J left. The idea was to tire her out until she falls into deep sleep. That usually gives us about 30 seconds to do whatever we want to do with her before she realizes someone’s messing with her fur and smacks us silly. Too bad there aren’t any safe seductives we can try on her… even for just 10 minutes…

So I guess this means Baobao’s just going to have to take more of those drops at the end of the month (maybe we’ll get another brand)… This cat is a jerk! Damn it….

Knowing that there are fleas in the house, Grace wasted no time and hopped into action. She started a major house cleaning — in the middle of the night! She went to Safeway and got some flea control drops and collars. The cleaning went on till 4AM after she washed every piece of fabric, vacuumed every square inch of the house and wiped every surface in the house. I could only helplessly march on with my project and thesis deadlines. Deadlines suck.

We are happy to report that there are now signs of dead fleas. That said, we are not sure how we are going to give the cats baths to get rid of the medication on the back of their head. They have never had a bath!

Fleas suck. Now we gotta restrict Baobao from going outside.

While at dinner at Jason and Alicia’s, Alicia casually mentioned that a recent research concluded that having pets at home actually HELPS infant and young children build up their immune system to resist allergies when they grow older.

CBC News

The 10-year study showed children who were exposed to the furry pets during their first year of life were half as likely to develop common allergies by about age six than those living in petless homes.

CBS News

The bottom line is that maybe part of the reason we have so many children with allergies and asthma is we live too clean a life. When kids play with cats or dogs and the animals lick them, the transfer of bacteria may be changing the way the child’s immune system responds in a way that helps protect against allergies. Parents should not be concerned about having pets in the home with a new baby but the findings do not go far enough in allergy prevention to warrant the purchase of pets.

The fact is, the society today is super freaked out about being sterile and germ-free. Every cleaning agent you can buy in America sports a guarantee of “killing 99.99% of germs and bacteria” on contact. The same hysteria is driving people to use obscene amount of antibiotics to the extent that someday there will be a new species of superbugs that will be resistant to all antibiotics and kill off a significant portion of the human race. I bet those hardcore, conservative right wing Christians will somehow tie that into the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus Christ the Savior, the only son of God, the one and the only salvation to eternal afterlife. So let’s not piss off God by using too much antibiotics and leave them germs and bacteria alone once in a while.

People, let’s relax. It’s perfectly natural and OK for kids to be dirty from time to time. It’s good for them.

As for my mom, I found similar report in Chinese and am planning on sending it to her, with key points highlighted, along with the latest video clips and printed pictures of Bryan.

We talked a lot about the troubles Chee-hoi and Widodo went through with “cat problems” around their houses. They complained that neighborhood cats refuse to stay away from their yards with occasional acts of retaliation, especially with Chee-hoi’s back yard. Then Widodo proudlly shared his money-saving tricks on his pool (one of the only TWO in the entire neighborhood, according to Google Earth). I never knew pools can take so much to maintain! Kind of takes the romance of owning a pool knowing all that insider knowledge.

On Saturday, Yi-sheng, an old friend from high school called to see what we were doing. So we decided to get out of the house and show him this Thai noodle place in San Francisco we love so much. We just love Thai food!

Sunday afternoon, we went over to visit Jason and Alicia, good friends I met from college, over at Menlo Park. Jason made us some really nice home-made Japanese dishes. The visit also gave me a new insight to Jason and Alicia’s past through a series of albums (including a scrap book that Jason’s mom made of his baby years). According to Jason’s mom, he liked Kung-fu when he was four years old. Maybe it’s a good thing he didn’t really follow through with it. At over 6-ft tall, he could easily be a killing machine.

We also saw Jason and Alicia’s two cats (finally). It was amazing to see how their cats are so totally fine with having leash put on them when going out for a walk. It was also funny to see how cats just can’t tolerate baby cries (ours eventually got used to it after a couple of months). But Bryan did OK today. We went through three diapers and a bottle of formula during the visit. Jason blogged about our visit soon after we left. He has a couple of tight shots of Bryan. It was very nice to just talk to friends without other distractions in the way.

It was nice to be out of the house to get some fresh air.

When Bryan is hungry, sometimes he doesn’t have the patience to wait for his formula. So he’d cry at the top of his lungs until Grace gets back with a bottle of formula. But Grace can’t really get the formula ready with Bryan in one arm. So she has no choice but to put him on the bed and let him cry while she’s preparing his formula.

One day Bryan was crying for his formula as usual, but Grace noticed that this time, Wawa jumped on to the bed to examine why the baby was crying, then she calmly walked to the kitchen, looked at Grace, meowed at Grace a few times and then went back and sat by the bedroom door, waiting for Grace to come back with Bryan’s formula.

Looks like the cats are starting to warm up to the baby.

We feel incredibly guilty for having turned him in, thinking he’d receive a good life in a nice home. Apparently he’d been just a little too aggressive for adoption, and it’s the San Jose Animal Shelter’s policy to “rid of” those that aren’t fit for living because of budget problems. I wish they’d do a spay/neuter and release instead though… I don’t believe a government agency of any type should have a say in what/who lives and dies.

I have a hunch this must be what he was feeling…

Image via [Gizmodo]

Surprised I was able to catch her in the pet carrier, Grace immediately readied her self for a short trip to the humane society. The kitten begged for her release in the backseat as we took a short drive to humane society’s closest office. We believe in our heart that she’d eventually be adopted by a loving family.

When we arrived at the humane society, the strangest thing happened — the kitten was rejected because of where we found her. Apparently there’s been some politicking going on. The city of San Jose decided to setup its own animal shelter, and in doing so, it severed its contract with the Humane Society Silicon Valley, a non-profit organization that serves the Santa Clara County. Even though we live only less than two miles down the block from the Humane Society, the politics of the situation got in the way of doing what’s good for the society. I couldn’t help but think how this is such a microcosm of our society today.

We turned around and drove 10 miles to San Jose Animal Care Center. As we filled out paperwork for dropping the poor thing off, the social worker was trying to get the kitten out of our pet carrier and into their own cage. For the first time, the kitten hissed and fought with a vengence. I guess I would have too if I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

So we have accomplished our goal. Now the kitten is in the hands of professionals. But we felt naked, almost an indescribable emptiness inside, feeling we had betrayed the little thing by handing her fate over to a stranger at an unfamiliar place, and we did so without her permission. Already, we have started to miss her, mourning the loss of a tiny orange tabby in our yard, greeting us everytime we went out or came home. Though we consciously knew we weren’t going to adopt her, our acquaintance for the past three weeks made us feel as if she’s been part of our life surrealistically longer.

Grace wants to go back and check on her in a couple of days just to make sure that she’s adapting to the new environment well. After the kitten’s initial exhibit of anger, the social worker commented that she’d have to see if the kitten passes her temperament test in a few days to make sure that she’s fit for adoption. We hope she passes. Other wise, we’d just subjected her to a dose of leathal injection. And THAT is going to sit well with our conscience for the rest of ourlives.

But the little rascal knew what was up. She didn’t fall for the trap in the both times that we tried. After the attempts, both us and the kitten were too stressed. So both sides gave up. We ended up just sitting there watching each other doing nothing.

And yesterday when we saw her again, she appeared a little weaker than the last time we saw her. At one point, I was able to get pretty close to grab her. The kitten’s reflexes handed her the advange of speed, and she quickly dashed away.

I wonder if that ruined her trust for me. Maybe the next time it’d be much harder to get her into the pet carrier.