EDUCATIONAL INCUBATION & HATCHING CHAT THREAD, w/ Sally Sunshine Shipped Eggs

[BantyChooks]

Now, those spiders!! I'd be laid up with a heart attack before I was a week in Texas.

 

[Pensmaster]

Eh, they're not all that bad. You get used to them.

See it's the same with the spiders only they can't fly well some of them can't fly. I'd actually keep a tarantula inside the house if I had one.

 

[Pensmaster]

Now, those spiders!! I'd be laid up with a heart attack before I was a week in Texas.

You just step around them. Like the rattlesnakes

 

[BantyChooks]

See it's the same with the spiders only they can't fly well some of them can't fly. I'd actually keep a tarantula inside the house if I had one.

SOME of them can't fly?! I hope you're joking.

Gotta say, the blackflies get bad here but nowhere near the pic... Mebbe it's coz I've never been fool enough to canoe in spring.

 

[BantyChooks]

You just step around them. Like the rattlesnakes

Do they bite much? The tarantulas, I mean. I know plenny well to steer clear of rattlesnakes.

 

[Hawk12]

...

@Sally Sunshine
 @BantyChooks
 @DwayneNLiz
 @MotorcycleChick



TLDR : Cat had cancer, didn't come home from the vet....

Long, dramatic version below.


I know pets may not always be up there for everyone as a best friend, and not all animals are made equal.

When my horse died a couple weeks ago, it was "sad" but I didn't even cry. I liked her, but I didn't "loveeeee" her like some animals make you feel.
Today, after a week of debating, I scheduled a vet appointment for my cat, that i've had almost the entire time I've been married.

my "cancer" warning bells were going off. His only symptom was losing weight. I'd noticed it a couple weeks ago, but after verifying he was getting his share of the cat food, I decided I needed to take him in just to see if my spider sense was right, or wrong.

We had a very eventful day. He decided to commit cat suicide, he busted out of a dog crate, that was tied down in the back of my car, and jumped out of my truck at 80 miles an hour and faceplanted on the cement. After a near- panic attack, and stopping to get him and putting him in the cab with me, I raced him to the vet, and brought him inside. Only to find out, his suicide attempt not only FAILED, but he barely was injured. A bloody nose, a couple scrapes and bruises, and a black eye. Maybe a mild concussion.

All things consider, he got freaking lucky beyond belief, for trying to kill himself by jumping out of the back of the truck. He's been in cars/trucks/crates before, and has NEVER attempted to get out of one prior to this.

We get there, and a bunch of running around by the vet, on all these expensive tests, and how it could be all these things, and me telling them "disprove he has cancer, I want proof its not cancer." After running all his labs, and then coming back normal, and them finding enlarged lymph nodes, both by his thyroid, AND his belly, I told them, verify that it's not cancer.

More run around, and me telling them I have no intention of taking him home unless they can prove what I think is cancer ISNT cancer... they finally cave and aspirate the lymph nodes. (think 600+ dollars later of testing, 300+ which could have been saved, had they just aspirated the lymph nodes like I wanted to begin with....) 

He has large cell cancer. Given his little suicide attempt, and he went from 15lbs to 9lbs in a month, and talking with kids, husband, etc, we decided to say our goodbyes. Buying him weeks, or a couple more months with prednisone, didn't seem the best way to go for him.... 

So I said goodbye today, to the one cat who only liked me. That I loved, that I knew when I put him in that truck today, I was saying goodbye too. I don't know how to explain how I know "cancer" when I sense it, but I've yet to be wrong when I called "cancer" in an animal... Which is why I told the vet she was upsetting me by not ruling it out as the #1 thing before wasting my time with thyroid tests and other labs. (hundreds of dollars, actually.)

Kids didn't want to see him suffer, or decline and lose more weight, and we didn't know if he had any issues from the fall that would cause him to seizure at home a day or two later, and I couldn't just walk into a room and find him dead. I loved him too much to deal with the trauma it would have put on me, to do that. At least this way, I know he didn't suffer. I know they made sure he didn't feel any pain, and he was able to live a good life with no horrible last 2-3 months of extending his suffering just to not say goodbye to him.
The logical part of me goes "all that money they wasted, could have saved another cat, who was young and needed a home." 

The other part of me goes, you needed an answer and you did the right thing to confirm what you already knew so you could come to terms with saying goodbye.

and then, had he NOT decided to attempt caticide, I might have brought him home and forced him to suffer for days, weeks, or months because he "was healthy enough" to give it a shot... but his little faceplant on the cement took that choice away from me logically.  I couldn't justify it, because I didn't think he'd be strong enough to deal with everything else on top of that.


I just.... he was a good cat, and 10 isn't old enough  
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so sorry!

 

[Pensmaster]

SOME of them can't fly?! I hope you're joking.

Gotta say, the blackflies get bad here but nowhere near the pic... Mebbe it's coz I've never been fool enough to canoe in spring.

We have a spider here that makes like a parachute out of a web and glides wherever the wind takes them setting up a new place to live where they land. Others glide rather precisely, google do spiders fly if you dare. National Geographic has quite the study on gliding spiders.

 

[dan26552]

I block trolls. :/ I have LOTS of bats in my yard. They eat lots of bugs. I don't have a little house for them to anything - they have their own... somewhere... out there... So, how is it again that you justify how much more wonderful your bug ridden frozen wasteland is than Texas?!? Yep - that's what happens to me as well. As soon as I'm all done, THEN they go broody... Hey, I found this on one of my hikes: I wish I could do that. It's illegal to buy/sell duckweed in Texas, so I can't find a source. I guess it's reasonable, but still... Oh no... Wow. (Maybe someone has some duck weed I can harvest on the down low...)

 

[Pensmaster]

Do they bite much? The tarantulas, I mean. I know plenny well to steer clear of rattlesnakes.

Never had one bite me but the closet I got was 10 feet when I was a kid. I did try to guide one across the street once so it wouldn't get ran over. He didn't think too much of me trying to help.

 

[BantyChooks]

We have a spider here that makes like a parachute out of a web and glides wherever the wind takes them setting up a new place to live where they land. Others glide rather precisely, google do spiders fly if you dare. National Geographic has quite the study on gliding spiders.

You all are crazy. I wouldn't Google it if you paid me!!