Pet Care

While I stood on the doorstep and fumbled with my house keys, I jumped when I saw the pair of bright blue eyes staring at me from the bushes in our flowerbed. I knelt down and found that attached to those eyes was a brown and white striped cat quietly curled up in the shade.

At Ranger’s yearly wellness appointment, his veterinarian warned Sophie to watch out for any vaccine reactions. The vet explained these possible reactions can vary— some dogs experience soreness, redness, or swelling at the injection site, and others might experience lethargy, loss of appetite, or mild fever the next day. She compared it to how some

My grandparents’ dog Foxy came in contact with all sorts of strange Louisiana country bugs during her daily exploration of their enormous backyard. These strange bugs often included ticks: parasites which can live in any wooded area. When Foxy ran through the tall grass, a waiting tick could attach to her skin and feed on

About a day after we picked Magic up from boarding, he began to sound more and more like a goose than a dog. He seemed like he felt like his normal self aside from the coughing and runny nose, but something was clearly not normal because he honked and hacked all night long. We had

Daisy isn’t much bigger than the bunnies who eat dinner in the backyard every night, but her size doesn’t stop her from trying to chase them. One evening when Dad opened the back door to let her outside, she flew across the yard toward the tiny fuzzy athlete who could’ve heard her coming from a

My cat Midnight has always kept her shiny black coat carefully groomed, without a single hair out of place. If someone strokes her fur in the wrong direction, she immediately sets to work making each hair look perfect again. But as she has climbed into her double-digits of age, she has an increasingly difficult time

On the 4th of July, my dog Magic spent all his energy trying to bark louder than the explosive booming and banging his sensitive hearing was forced to endure all night. Every year, he worked himself up into such a frenzy about what he surely believed to be the end of the world that he

Dad filtered through the tall stack of mail sitting on the counter and passed me a postcard with Daisy’s name on it. “Looks like we need to schedule Daisy for a wellness visit” he observed aloud. “She’s due for her rabies vaccine”. We had recently heard an unsettling story about an aggressive dog biting our

The smellier the treat, the faster Magic came running. His favorites were shaped like miniature t-bone steaks and stunk up the whole kitchen. Every time he heard the bag crinkle, he suddenly appeared before me out of thin air, sitting on his hind legs like a bunny and staring me down with perseverance in his

After much yowling and hissing with nothing to show for it but a soggy pill and two angry yellow eyes glaring at me from under the bed, I felt both frustrated and guilty for becoming such a kitty bully. I was so scarred by this fiasco that I would have invented any way possible to

My dog Magic loved carpet. With carpet, the possibilities were endless: it provided a convenient way to scratch an itch, a doormat to wipe his feet on after running through a mud puddle, his own giant napkin after dinner time, and the ideal terrain for scooting. Despite our attempts to train Magic and separate him

Seventeen years of sharing my life with my cat Midnight has perfectly synced our schedules. Every day we wake up, eat, watch TV, and go to sleep together. If I hit “snooze” too many times, she perches at the foot of my bed and yowls until I wake up. When it’s time for her thyroid

On a cold autumn evening in 1999, my cat Midnight was born homeless under somebody’s front porch. As black-cat superstition foretells, the odds were stacked against her from day one—Midnight was also born the tiniest in her family. Fortunately for Midnight, her early struggles gave her a spicy attitude and a scrappy will to survive.

Carey and Tana the malamute strolled along the shore and listened to the crashing waves. Tana relaxed as the cool breeze blew through his thick grey fur… But then he spotted a future friend prancing toward him. Before thinking twice, Tana sprinted toward his new playmate kicking clouds of sand behind him, completely unaware of

“Coronavirus?” I took the thick red folder out of my Aunt Susan’s outstretched arm, her brand new kitten Paige on my heels, chasing the long string of yarn that Susan had tied to my belt loop. Susan had adopted Paige only the day before and the animal shelter had sent home a plethora of information

On the first hot day of the year, Daisy can always be found lounging on the backyard bench. She is so reluctant to leave the toasty cushions that somebody usually has to go out there and make her come inside before she gets overheated. When she finally does come in, she is always so itchy

Foxy spent her life visiting the horses next door, racing the neighbor’s dogs through the brush, and harassing squirrels who lived in the towering pine trees behind my grandparents’ house. After jumping through leaf piles my cousins and I worked so hard to rake, she would plop down to take a long nap in the

The butter had vanished. But it couldn’t have gone too far, Becca had only left the kitchen for a second. She searched among the assortment of ingredients she had set on the counter in preparation for baking cookies. As she checked under the table, she heard a smacking sound coming from the living room… Hera

Magic trotted along the sidewalk as far ahead of me as his leash would allow. He paused, sniffed the grass, and turned around in a little circle. I pulled the plastic clean-up bag out of my pocket in response to this ritual. Once I approached him, his obvious diarrhea told me something was very wrong

The morning forecast had predicted a high of 103 degrees and I could almost see the steam coming off the parking lot from my lunch table by the window. The sun reflected off my Jeep’s windshield which was probably already reaching an oven-like temperature. I thought about my middle school classmate’s science project when he

When the time for Midnight’s annual wellness visit rolls around, she treats the entire day like a living nightmare. Once I take the cat crate out of the closet, she immediately darts under the bed and hisses her declaration of war. After I fish her out and attempt to lower her into the crate, she

Finn, a fourteen-year-old cat with chronic renal disease, began subcutaneous fluid treatment to help his body deal with toxins that his kidneys were no longer able to process normally. Subcutaneous, also called subQ for short, means just beneath the skin. SubQ fluid is received through a needle connected to a fluid line (a long, flexible

I stared at the YouTube video on my phone of a cute pig eating a cookie, attempting to distract myself from the heavy dread I felt. I tuned out the irritated meows coming from Midnight’s carrier and tried to believe her blood work results were going to be fine. Even after two years of surprisingly

Midnight is only five years younger than I am, so her veterinarian had already warned me about the prevalence of chronic renal disease among senior cats. But while Midnight’s diagnosis was not shocking, that didn’t make the news any easier to hear. Because she had not yet shown any of the symptoms I was watching

As my cousin Karen filled out the stack of adoption forms, her new kitten Rose fussed and pushed the sides of the cardboard take-home box so hard Karen feared she would escape. Karen remembered the shelter volunteer’s straightforward warning: “This one’s a terror”. But when they first met, Rose’s baby meow and big adorable eyes

My best friend Liz and her Shepherd mix Luna have been a package deal since the day Liz found her at a local rescue. Where Liz goes, Luna enthusiastically follows. But nobody ever minds, because watching Luna hop from person to person and squeeze all one-hundred pounds of herself onto someone’s crushed lap makes every

Our newly adopted stray Mella was obviously not a member of the feral cat colony which occupied our neighborhood. The feral cats would do anything to avoid humans as much as possible, even if that meant using storm drains as a travel system and only venturing out for food late at night. But Mella purposefully

Focus on the textbook I reminded myself for the hundredth time. But before I was able to delve back into my study guide, I heard it again: cling cling cling cling cling— the jingling sound Magic’s collar made while he desperately scratched an intense itch. Once he repeated this very loud and exhausting routine, I

Lilies were once one of my favorite flowers, but I have now banned them from my house after learning they place my cat Midnight’s health at risk. Midnight and I are very lucky that she never nibbled the cut lilies I used to keep on the coffee table, because even a small snack could have

My dog Magic’s nails dug into my leg as he hopped up and down to get a better look at the smiling Golden Retriever hanging her head out the car window in the left lane. “Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop!” I chanted while I desperately clutched the wheel with two fingers and nudged him toward the

It only took Magic a couple days after his adoption to prove that he got along great with humans. He was gentle with children who wanted to pet him, automatically trusted anyone with a house key, and loved to swing in the hammock with my friends. Trying to predict how he would behave around my

At 1:00 in the morning, the movie I had been watching was suddenly interrupted by a very loud baby crying outside my window. Upon hurriedly opening my front door, I realized the sound was not not made by a baby, but by the emaciated, desperate, stray cat springing out of the bushes and screaming for

As Mom and I looked inside each kennel at our local animal shelter, the decision before us became increasingly difficult— every dog needed love just as much as the last one. In the small dog area, we spotted a little scruffy mutt. His hair was so long and matted he looked like a black and

As my dog Magic aged, he became less like the carefree spirit we had adopted and instead grew quite irritable. In his younger years he was cheerful rather than crotchety, but as his fur began to gray and his fuse shortened, he seemed more like an old man character one would see in a movie

Around my house, the exclamation “Magic stinks!” was not uncommon. Every dog has an unpleasant habit or two, but Magic’s most beloved hobbies were really gross. In his eyes, the cat’s litter box was an all you can eat buffet, a rotten dead squirrel was a rare treasure, and a smelly running shoe was the