Syzdekistan

All my current pets have scales. They are easy to take care of and they don’t mind if leave town for the weekend. However, sometimes I miss having a cat.

Then again, maybe not.

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Today I had to put my cat to sleep.
We picked up Missy as a stray on a wet winter day in Denver in 2001. She was a friendly black and white cat with a few missing teeth and sharp claws. She immediately dominated and terrified our other three cats but was friendly and nice [...]

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Today, I received word that Mojave Max, the desert spokestortoise for the Clark County Desert Conservation Plan died. I had the pleasure of feeding and taking care of this tortoise at the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center in the early 1990s. He was a very friendly tortoise with a great personality and he lived in the [...]

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I have been keeping snakes and other reptiles for over 15 years. Hot Wife is very understanding and allows me to have an entire room for my collection of critters. However, once in a while I’ll leave a cage lid loose and something will get out. These mistakes aren’t very serious (and, coupled with the [...]

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It’s funny because it’s true:

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Yesterday, Spencer died at the vet’s office. I could go into detail about his changing condition over the last few days (hey, I’m a scientist and took accurate notes and even produced a spreadsheet) but this isn’t the time.
His right front leg was amputated last Wednesday due to a chondrosarcoma tumor on his scapula. We [...]

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On Wednesday, Spencer had surgery on the chondrosarcoma tumor in his scapula. Hot Wife took him to the vet first thing in the morning and he went into surgery in the early afternoon. When the vet called Hot Wife the news wasn’t great. The tumor had damaged too much of the scapula (over 80%) so [...]

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I talked to the vet yesterday and he said Spencer’s laboratory tests taken on Friday all came back very good. So he has no known underlying condition that would make him unsuitable for surgery. His weight loss is probably due to cachexia of cancer, which is the effects of the tumor on his metabolism. Our [...]

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We got the test results from the veterinarian and Spencer has feline chrondosarcoma, a type of bone cancer. Bone cancer is very rare in cats (4.9 per 100,000) and this cancer is even rarer than the more common malignant osteosarcoma. One article states: “Chondrosarcoma is rare in cats, representing only four of 103 (3.9%) [...]

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Friday was a pretty bad day. There were some good things about it. It was my birthday so that was a good thing. I turned 36. Not so good but not bad. I had the day off from work which was really good. My employer gives us one floating holiday during the month of your [...]

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