My husband and I have a cat named Skit who is about 10 years old.  He’s still very playful, always very affectionate, and pretty much as cute and loveable as they come.  I got Skit as a kitten with my daughters, and although the kids have moved out, Gord was good enough to take on our silly cat as part of our menagerie of animals.  To explain the ‘silly’ designation for Skit, well, he’s a good cat, really, he just has a few oddities, which most pets (and humans for that matter) tend to do.

One way Skit is silly is that he sometimes acts/believes himself to be a dog.  He loves Gord to distraction, and will always go to Gord when he calls.  Actually, our bird, Cameo learned to call Skit in Gord’s voice, so Skit also responds to her, thinking that Gord is calling him, and goes running to the living room looking for Gord.  It’s kind of sad to watch, as Cameo just waits for Skit to give up when Gord isn’t where his voice came from and wanders away, then Cameo will call him again.  She even chuckles about it, also sounding just like Gord laughing.  Gord decided that as Skit is such a good ‘dog’ who comes when he’s called, then he should also teach Skit some dog-style tricks.  Skit now sits on command, and begs for treats.  Lately, Gord’s been working on teaching him to ‘woof’ like a dog, and it’s amazing how much it sounds like a very quiet bark.  I’m actually sort of embarrassed for Skit, he’s letting down the whole cat population by forgetting to be the aloof cat and hating dogs and stuff.

Another aspect of his silliness is his invisible friend.  Now, the whole concept of an invisible friend is not unheard of.  For Skit, the issue comes down to the fact that he and his invisible friend often-times get into scraps, and Skit ends up getting beat up.  Yes, sadly, he loses against his invisible friend.  He bounces off walls, he falls off the bed, he runs into furniture, all in the process of play-fighting with a non-existent something (we’re not sure if his invisible friend is another cat, or just what exactly).

Unfortunately, at some point in the last week, Skit broke a tooth, one of his lower canines, and we think it was during one of these battles with his invisible friend.  We found a piece of the tooth (just the top ½ of it or thereabouts), and had a look in his mouth and found his gum around that broken tooth badly swollen and very sore looking.  We took him to the vet, they decided that yes, the rest of the tooth needed to be extracted, and he could also use a full dental cleaning.  Skit hates vets, nothing personal, it’s just never a good experience for him – 1^st visit was to get fixed, 2^nd visit saw him catheterized due to crystals in his urine, and 3^rd visit was to be de-clawed on the front, now yanking a tooth.  He was not a happy cat this morning, no soft food, put in that carrier contraption that ALWAYS means the mean ol’ vet, and then I abandoned him in that strange, nasty environment.

I had a very weird call from the vet about 3 hours after dropping Skit off.  She was explaining to me the findings of the x-ray for the surgery she was preparing to do on Skit, and started talking about how one of his testes was not hanging in exactly the correct location, but that it would just mean one extra incision to do the surgery, and shouldn’t be any further problem.  Given that she is supposed to be extracting a tooth, I have to admit that my eyes were pretty wide open by the time she stopped talking for me to respond.  I sort of stuttered at her before getting myself together and then laughingly asked her exactly what she was doing extracting a tooth from that end of the cat.  She was, as far as I could tell over the phone, hugely embarrassed, as she so rightly should be.  She then figured out she had grabbed the wrong file, was talking to the wrong owner about a different cat than Skit, and apologized all over herself.  Wow, no kidding.  Imagine how much Skit would hate me if he had a tooth pulled via his butt.

We’ll be taking Skit with us camping this weekend, to keep an eye on him, and keep him fed with his favoured soft food, which is all he’ll be able to eat for the next few days.  He’s always been an indoor-only cat, and gets in major shit if he so much as pushes at a door to outside in the hopes it might open (he escaped twice while we lived in Fort McMurray and it was very traumatic for all of us, him especially).  He’s never even worn a collar, but we bought him a harness and tried it on him last night and while he didn’t especially like it, he wasn’t all freaked out about it either.  Then we put the lead on him and took him outside, where he proceeded to do everything in his power to get himself back on the inside of that door!  He was having none of it, he seemed to figure he was in trouble cause he’s not supposed to be out there.  I guess we’ll have to spend a lot of cuddle time this weekend, but if we take his old, familiar blanket and leave him inside the trailer, he should be ok.  Thankfully, the trailer stays quite cool, even in the heat, and it’s not supposed to be overly hot this weekend anyhow.  I’m sure by the end of the weekend, Gord and I will be looking forward to getting home to a real shower and our own bed, but Skit’ll be more excited to get home to his familiar environment than we will.

Now see, a lot of people would read that statement, and think, yep, that’s Donna alright.  But actually, I’m not referring to myself, this is all about our fids.  This is just a little up-to-date life in the day of us, as bird owners.

Cameo

Well heck yeah, she has attitude.  Just ask Gord.  He still gets the occasional chomp, and despite daily attempts to ‘make friends’ with our CAG, he’s not allowed to pet her from behind or on the top of her head.  She’ll cuddle with me and let me pet her anywhere I like, but Gord is only easily able to touch her toes and beak, with the occasional quick scritch under the wings or down her breast-bone.  Cameo does everything in  her power to avoid having him touch her back, to the point of biting and/or flying away.  You got it, Gord’s not feeling the love with her most days.

On the other hand, Cameo will fall all over herself to give Gord a kiss or bonk him with her beak, including making the kissy noises, or saying BONK.  With me, I have to earn a kiss, and when she decides to give me one, it is usually accompanied by a farting noise.  Yeah, I feel the love, too.

Casey

I’m pretty sure attitude is his rain forest name.  Our big guy is still a clown, and still figures he’s the only thing in our house allowed to make big noise.  If we laugh loud, he’ll scream to be louder.  When we talk loud, he tells us to shut-up.  If any of the other birds are louder than him, he tells them to stop it.  If anything, including the TV is making noise (or more than he feels like making at a particular moment), he’s pretty likely to tell the world in general  to F**K OFF (yes, he still says that, thank you to his previous owners and the pet store in Fort McMurray!).

Then, there’s the whole affection thing.  As of late, Casey has decided that while I am still his mate, I have to pretty much beg for kisses.  He shakes his head no, he pulls back (psych!), he wanders away, he gives me the ol’ cheek busk, but the real kisses, I gotta try and try and try before he’ll give me one.  If Gord should come close while I’m trying to get a birdie kiss, Gord gets smooches like no tomorrow, to the point the bird will reach around me to kiss Gord, but I get nothing.  He still wants to hack crap up and feed me, but not give me any of the loving I want.

Sunshine

Ok, so Dude is still a sweetheart of a little guy, and his missus is still a supreme bitch.  I dunno how else to describe it.  I feed them pretty much every day (Gord does take the occasional turn), I give them water, I clean their cage, I give her paper to shred so she doesn’t feel the need to pluck feathers to nest with, I give her fresh fruits and veggies and sometimes even treats.  I’m a good person, really.  Just don’t ask Sunshine for her opinion, cause I’m pretty sure she’d dis me to no end.  Every time I get close to that cage, she tries to take me out.  I’ve gotten pretty good at avoiding the beak, but in the process I’ve worn both the water from the clean and dirty water dishes, as well as dumping the entire fresh food dish over myself and the floor.  And now she’s nesting again (2 eggs as of yesterday), so believe it or not, she’s actually worse.  If she’s out of the cage, she’s not so deadly, she’ll ride around on my shoulder or hanging somewhere on my shirt, but I’m still not allowed to touch her then, either.  Dude, I dunno man, you got a NASTY female in your life, you poor little guy.

Pearl and Al

Ok, so most of the time, I think both Pearl and Al want to be friendly and nice, but sometimes, they forget and crank at me.  Pearl will be going along letting me give him a head scritch, leaning into it and giving out these sweet little grunty-chirps, then suddenly BAM, he’s trying to chomp my fingers off and squawking at me like I’ve just pulled out all his tail-feathers.  I don’t think Gord is allowed to even scritch him, most of the time.  It’s like he has multiple personalities, and one of them is really mean.  Poor little Al, I’m pretty sure she wants to be friends, she comes over and even sometimes puts her head over for one of those scritches like she keeps seeing me give Pearl, but as soon as my hand starts toward her, she backs up and gives me the hissy-sneezy sort of movement/sound.  She’ll usually let Gord touch her, as long as no one else is close (humans that is), but she’s really nervous/skittish, even with him.

Interactions

Pearl and Al have a love-hate relationship going with Cameo, their next-door-birdie.  Of course, as far as we can tell, Cameo instigates the territorial fights – the little brat goes to the back corner of her cage closest to their cage, and sticks her toes through as close to their cage as she can get them.  Then the 2 of them come a-running and squawking in full alarm cause she’s invading them.  She’ll calmly pull back, hang upside down, and watch the cockatiels freak out.  Cameo waits until they calm down, and sort of ‘go away’ from that area of their cage, then she sticks her toes through again and starts up the entire ruckus all over again.

Dude and Sunshine like to have out-of-cage time, but they can only be out for a few minutes before they’re causing wars, too.  I swear they go and land on the other birds cages just to piss them off, and when the bird they’ve gone to irritate gets close to them on the cage, off they fly to go land either elsewhere on the same cage, or on someone elses’ cage to annoy them.  Like, they never land on the top of Cameo’s cage (it’s solid, so she wouldn’t see them up there), they always go for the side of hers, but with Casey, they land on top (his is open/wire on top) where we can’t reach them easily to get them off.

Holding any two different species of birds doesn’t work, either – jealousy reigns supreme.  And heaven forbid either Gord or I hold one bird, and then not give equal time to the others – we get the one-eyed baleful stare until we pony up at least a pet and attempt of a kiss, if not an all-out take the bird out of the cage and play.

Look!  It's back!  Yep, we resurrected the Pets Own Us website, and hope to get back to updating it, adding pics and videos and newsposts and all that other great stuff.  I sort of had to let the website slide for a while as other things (like work and life in general) got in the way, but Gord decided we should once again pay homage to our critters, so we brought back 'their' website, so here we go, and let's hope between us and the fids/cat/fish/iquana, we can find enough to keep it interesting.

Gord's been working on some video, maybe he'll post it sometime soon.  Of course, today when he pointed the camera at the birds, they all turned mum, but I'm sure they'll get used to it again soon :) .

Ok, so, I haven't added to this site in months, and I thought it was probably time to catch up.  We have had a few significant changes over the months.

First, Finnegan.  We found our little friend Finnegan a new home, and he moved off with Liza Nelson and her family to enjoy the love and attention of some good people.  I have to admit, it was love at first sight for both Finnegan and Liza, and although it took Liza some doing, she managed to rearrange her life to accommodate her new bestest buddy.  Finnegan took to the change with gusto, and we hope he and the Nelson household are all doing well.

Second, well, we moved from Fort McMurray to Calgary, Alberta.  It was quite a disruption of our lives, and no less of a disruption to the lives of all our pets.  It took us about 9 hours of driving time to get here with all our critters in our two trucks, but the birds, cats, and the iguana are all troopers and made the trip with little issue.  Actually, the iguana and the cats decided to cozy up together in the back of my truck, which was weird, especially the couple of hours where Enid was sleeping on top of Skit, and that silly cat just couldn't seem to care less!  Anyhow, we've been down here about two months now, and everyone has pretty much relaxed into the new house well, Enid is still hunting for the perfect heated/lit place to sleep (her stand is apparently NOT that place), but I'm sure she will settle down eventually.

Third, updates on Cameo's speech.  Yes, our little African Grey is still expanding her vocal abilities, and has recently taken to saying "Wow" a lot, and in the last two weeks, she has also learned to say "HEY, want some PIZZA?"  Yes, Gord and I taught her to say it, it's a huge improvement over the swearing she was doing.  We discovered the other day that she is getting to be quite a ham, we pointed our new video camera at her, and she talked to it for a solid two hours!  It's funny, she won't talk when Gord is in the room, but she talks to him like no tomorrow when he's just out of sight.  Oh, another new feature she's added to her repertoire, and this is something she does do with Gord, is to hit her beak against something (such as Gord's fingers), and then say "BONK".  Silly bird, but fun.

Fourth, we have ordered two new cages from CagesByDesign.com for Casey and Cameo, and look forward to receiving their new homes sometime in the next month or so.  Both cages (identical) will be 4' wide x 4' deep x 8' high, with built in food dishes, a couple of big perches, and will have wire sides and plexiglass front and back.  We will have them set up side by side, so that both birds have a friend, as Casey has been kind of lonely in the living room in the new house without the other birds (the others are all in the kitchen), and we just aren't always in his sight like we're apparently supposed to be.

Fifth, Calgary.  I've always liked Calgary to visit, and this was Gord's home for a long time, and so we have no qualms about living here, especially as we get to visit places like the Calgary Zoo as often as we want (we bought annual passes).  As in the past, I find I still really like the hippos, and the giraffes, to me, all animals are amazing, but really, who would have thought up a critter that is a grazer with a mouth as big as a hippopotomus?  Or an animal with such long legs and neck as the giraffe, but it still can't eat food on the ground easily?  Just amazes me.  Anyhow, the Calgary Zoo trips have been a blast for both Gord and I, it's all changed since either of us last got to visit, so we've had a great time exploring and getting to know it again, and with the passes, we can take all the time we want!  As for the rest of Calgary, we've had a really good time getting to know the city again, and have had a lot of fun here.  We've driven around and visited a few of Gord's old haunts (including Peters, a great hamburger place), and did the tourist thing at the Stampede, and even did a float down the Bow River one hot sunny Sunday.  Yup, we are having fun in our new home, and look forward to lots more!

Final (for now), we purchased a new Sony video camera, and have started taking footage of our animal friends.  Look for new video clips in the Gallery in the next months, we'll probably have LOTS to put up!

Yes, once again, our prolific little Peach-faced Lovebirds are in the nesting stage, and we expect to have a clutch start to hatch here within the next few days.

Dude and Sunshine are such good parents, pretty much all we have to do is provide lots of food and fresh water daily, a clean cage for them, and they do all the rest.  They've clutched several times in the years we've owned them, and the last clutch had 4 lutino (yellow like Sunshine) and one green (like Dude).  They are such beautiful little birds!

We expect that when the current clutch of babies are somewhere between 4 and 8 weeks old, they will be ready to find new homes.  Anyone interested in getting a cute little companion, please get in touch with us, and we'll arrange a baby-viewing!