Babies! Cuteness! Heaps of Puppy Dogs!

My family had our own dialect. Most things we said referred back to some moment, probably forgotten, in family history, and made no sense to outsiders. Our phrase for a cuteness overload warning was "Babies! Cuteness! Heaps of puppy dogs!" It does make a little sense if you don't remember the moment, which is fortunate, because I no longer remember the moment. I remember that it was my brother's phrase and he said it in a particular way we found funny. 

Anyway, today's Furball Friday post begins with a whimsical animal interview...

Serena: I think I'm pregnant again. (She "said" this on Saturday by pointedly licking her underside, calling attention to a slight bulge. I think the bulge has grown visibly each day since.)

PK: Oh no. Not with all the poison that ratbag's been spraying.

Serena: I think about that every time I think about going out on a date, because I always come back with so many kittens and lose so many of them. But I keep thinking that, as it's a human doing it, you and the other decent humans will find a way to sort him out. 

PK, aside to the reader: (I don't know that that's the way Serena thinks, but I think it would be silly to rule it out...she does not think like a normal cat. She most definitely does understand a difference between sex, which Sommersburr can still do, and kittens, which he can't. At least, Serena and Sommersburr are both best-case carriers of the horrible Manx gene, so if they had mutual kittens some of those kittens would show the effects of that gene, and none of Serena's kittens ever has. So she knows that in order to have kittens she has to find another tomcat, or tomcats. There are at least two, one of whose kittens she prefers to the other's. I think Serena and other cats in her family reason and plan, to some extent. The dens Serena constructs probably show trial-and-error learning more than abstract planning, but definitely show intelligent design.)

PK: Heaven speed the day. I keep wishing that you could postpone having kittens until we do. 

Serena: If cats are meant to have kittens, we just do!

PK: Well, it's not as if there weren't plenty of women who start baby humans as unthinkingly as cats do kittens and dogs do puppies. But even though humans say "adoption is an option" when they think how horrid it must be for a woman to abandon or abort a baby, that option does not work out for every homeless baby human. 

Serena: Do humans adopt other humans' babies, then?

PK: Not often. We don't like to mention that money is involved, but it is. People like adoptive parents and children to be color-matched. Most people who want to adopt are White. Most homeless babies are not White. Most people who want to adopt want a newborn baby. Most homeless children are not newborn babies. All we seem to do with our complicated brains is think of ways to make it harder for humans to adopt than it is for cats and dogs.

Serena: Well, it is a thing we have to think over. It's not so important with older kittens, who don't have to depend totally on milk for all of their nourishment, but the quality of milk changes to fit our babies' needs. The first day's supply is right for newborn kittens, not so good for week-old ones, and so on. A healthy kitten can survive for several days without food, and can survive on the wrong kind of cat's milk, but it's not ideal. They may not get the right nutrients or the right antibodies from an adoptive mother's milk.

PK: Nevertheless it seems as if some cats always want to try to adopt an orphaned kitten, after thinking it over for a day or two, and some never do!

Serena: Well, obviously, hormones are involved. I have always found motherhood a great pleasure but for a malnourished cat, or a lazy sickly one, it might be less so. Sometimes a cat will abandon kittens because they have enteritis and shouldn't have food. While cleaning the kittens she'll notice that they cry and pull away from having their back ends cleaned, and they smell foul. She'll watch and hope they recover, and resume feeding and cleaning them if she can. She knows they can't keep taking milk in until they resume digesting and passing some out. Another cat might be willing to adopt those kittens, but she can tell that they shouldn't have food, so to humans it might look as if she were rejecting them.

PK: You've rejected some viable kittens, and very pretty ones too, I thought. You've rejected some of your own right after giving birth to them.

Serena: Well, yes, I suppose I am partial to the ones who are the size kittens ought to be. 

PK: I don't know why you always seem to have at least one oversized, precocious kitten and usually reject it. I thought they might have some sort of disease, but Biro, Pastel, and Crayola survived when your other kittens didn't, last year. Do you just not like the look of your oversized kittens?

Serena: I don't know. I don't like big ones crowding little ones out of things and hogging more than their share of milk. I'm a large cat now, but I was a small kitten! I'd rather have one of my friends' little kittens than another friend's big kittens. I did rear Burly, and that didn't go well. I reared Biro, Pastel, and Crayola...they're nice kittens in their way, I suppose, but can't you see how different they are from Felix, Stache, Silver, and Swimmer?

PK: I think you treated them a bit differently. Not so particular about their being indoors at night, and that sort of thing. You didn't want to get attached to them. You especially wanted them not to get attached to me.

Serena: Well, humans who want to adopt them can adopt them, and not break their hearts. Pastel was an oversized kitten and may be an oversized cat in another year. Crayola was an oversized kitten but is growing up to be a small cat.

PK: Not wormy or sickly, but just small, compared to you and Pastel and even Silver. She actually seems to like to snuggle...

Serena: Soppy!

PK: Pastel has more of a distant, detached manner. The most interesting thing about them is hard for me to determine, because you have such a strong purrsonality, and so have Silver and Sommersburr, that no matter what they're really like, those two would have to seem like just "your babies." They are smart and social enough to mind you, anyway. Are they particularly smart or social on their own?

Serena: Who knows how they'll turn out. They are their father's daughters.

PK: Anyway, despite your cat news, this is a Petfinder dog week for the web site.

Serena: Oh, you and your Lap Pooper! I'm gone!

PK: It's time for the annual nag. Actually it's past time for the annual nag.

A nag is an old, tired horse. I asked Morguefile for a picture of one. This is what they had. So let's picture the horse nickering and whinnying, as on the old "Mr. Ed" TV show: "If you don't want kittens or puppies, you must neueueueuter and spaaaaaayyyy! Todaaaaayyyy!" 

We now turn to Petfinder for New York's, Washington's, and Atlanta's most photogenic evidence of human neglect. People who didn't want puppies, but they didn't pay the vet to do anything about it. They just woke up one day with a lot more dogs than they wanted to keep. So they plopped the poor little pups, and sometimes their mothers, into shelters. I can understand their not having room for another half-dozen dogs, but in that case letting the unwanted puppies be born seems mean.

Serena: Thoughtless, anyway.

PK: I thought you'd gone.

Serena: Not far. I never have gone very far from you, human. I may prefer rough play to snuggling but I'm loyal.

PK: I have always appreciated that about you, Serena. It's the quality people love about Manx cats and I'm very glad to see it in a healthy cat with a complete tail. Now, the puppies...

Zipcode 10101: Taz from Alabama, By Way of New York City

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/taz-al-62574731/ny/new-york/rescue-dogs-rock-nyc-ny1274/ . You might want to check out the pages for his siblings Trix, Talia, Tillie, Tulip, Titan, Teagan, and Tetris. It seems a big Labrador Retriever and a little Chihuahua somehow managed to mate, and they produced these eight puppies, all different sizes. Taz was picked here because he shows more of his Chihuahua DNA, weighing only two pounds, while his brother Titan weighs seven pounds and the other pups are in between. This would be a cute dog family to watch grow up, if a person had a place to keep eight dogs. Anyway the mother just ducked under someone's porch and gave birth to eight puppies, and some heartless person dumped them in a shelter where they were likely to be killed, and a visitor from New York wanted to foster them up there. 

Zipcode 20202: Virginia from D.C.  

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/pup-virginia-61471789/dc/washington/k-9-lifesavers-dc19/, A Labrador Retriever and hound mix, she's just four months old, already weighs 25 pounds, and is still growing. It's possible that she may be in the custody of control freaks. If you want this pup you will pay for an extensive course of veterinary care and the web page sounds as if they may try to hold out for an adoptive family who can be sold on an equally extensive course of education. Retrievers are very clever about doing what they naturally like to do--chase and fetch things, dive and swim, shake off the mucky water through which they swim all over you while giving you great big dog hugs and kisses, eat things they shouldn't, get into places they shouldn't. Trying to teach them other skills, like ignoring a big sewage-filtration pond and walking politely at your heel, is harder. Labs are stereotypically like Barkley in The Book of Barkley, while golden retrievers are stereotypically like Marley in Marley and Me. They are not Lassie, or Rin-Tin-Tin, or Big Red, nor were they meant to be. Anyway, with that face and breed mix, Virginia can hardly help growing up to be a lovable pet.

Zipcode 30303: Reese from Dunwoody 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/reese-59429811/ga/dunwoody/rescue-me-ga-inc-ga535/ . Somebody was trying to breed "Labradoodles," but Reese's known ancestors include other breeds, so from the commercial breeder's point of view she's just a mistake. Close to six months old, she weighs only about 25 pounds. If her hair's allowed to grow long it will be on the curly side. She reportedly does very well with other dogs, but may have more difficulty fitting in with humans because she's not perfectly housebroken yet.