So, my little old kitten has heart disease (well, he is 19) and is currently on 3 different types of pills, 4 times a day in various configuration.
Ideally, pilling a cat looks like this:
In reality, if your cat is anything like mine, it is quite annoying for the cat and the person who has to do the pilling.
Now, after some practice, my cat is taking his pills in very good grace (and being very co-operative with it!), however, in retrospect, I wish I had trained him when he was still healthy, because the very last thing a sick animal needs is extra stress when his favorite human has to inflict medication.
So, if you own a cat, now is the time to obtain some placebo pills and a small syringe so you can squirt some water into their mouth easily; and train pilling until the cat is comfortable with it (around 4-5 days). Once you both have practice, do a maintenance pilling session once in a while.
You may have to start out with the cat burrito method she is showing, and don't be afraid of cat bite, if you copy what she is doing it's impossible for the cat to bite you in this position, as long as you stay firm (but gentle) and do not let the cat wiggle out.
The trick is to disguise it as a chest rubbing cuddle session involving lots of praise and a treat at the end (but not exclusively, some pills must be given on an empty stomach). This will help you avoid the following scenario, which for a cat with a heart problem is definitely not something to get into:
I managed to get the first cut written, and I got use the logmessage scribe. Took 5 minutes to write the log message, woo! Profit! :-))
Of course I found a couple of minor bugs in the logmessage scribe, mostly because I had to use GNU diff instead of git diff, but, I could not be happier.
Translation: if you're happy and you know it just say 'meow'!
Sometimes, a good thing can be too good, and so it is with GDB's pretty printing of strings.
I spent quite some time trying to figure out why GDB showed me "\"AA" and not (as expected) "AA" or, even just "\"AA"\".
To cut a long story short, svn_cstring_split() doesn't do strings with spaces inside strings many favours, and so, "AA BB CC" ends up as 3 elements, '"AA', 'BB' and 'CC"' respectively, which then ends up as "\"AA", "BB" and "CC"\" in the GDB display.
I didn't think that GDB would pretty print anything let alone decorate strings with escaping slashes... and so wondered for quite a while where the extra "\ went! :-D
I should have employed this kitty to help me here:
My cat of act has committed an act of cat and shredded neighbor's toddler. (Not terribly so, but it's never good!)
He did something like that before I adopted him, which is why he was exiled, and having his tail broken 9 year ago by a toddler apparently was still fresh in his memory and he suffered intense nightmares for a week afterwards.
My neighbor has been supplied with a decent supersoaker so he can easily dispel my cat's territorial ambitions, and because ASBO kitteh is now grounded during the day, I also bought a food maze to keep him entertained.
At least this was the theory and I was convinced this is a great idea after watching this video:
It's not popular. He worked it for a bit and then decided that he'll go on a nil-by-paw diet instead. It's not that he can't see the crunchies, it's that he refuses to see them -- he wants his bowl back AND his cat door open, and has formed a union of one, picketing the kitchen, lobbying for that extra portion of wet food he feels entitled to in lieu of the unreachable crunchies.
I on the other hand have realised that the food maze saves food because the crunchies are not sitting in his drool in a bowl. And whilst he is on cat strike, he at least is not serenading the cat door in protest because his feline right of free movement has been curtailed.
Also, he is a grumpy old man, and really does not like change, at all.
So, what to do? Treats. He may not work for food (as that is surely beneath his catly dignity) and no-one would be so unkindly honest to call him thick... but treats... that's another matter. Raw beef or ham is kitteh crack that causes instant IQ enhancement! Stage 1: remove the ring on top, put a box for the cat to sit on, add crunchies to top layer. Place cat in position, tease with catnip treat, place it on mound of cat food. Leave your perplexed sphynx to meditate over the puzzle, tease with catnip bicci every ten minutes or until you hear feeding action. Carry on a few days until this is his new bowl where he feeds and he understands that it contains food inside and that it falls through holes.
Stage 2: Now that he has understood that his food lives in this annoying plastic tower, remove all the inner layers. Add crunchies to bottom layer then tease all the way from the fridge to the maze with a delicious strip of ham until he is ready to riproarslaymassacre that morsel... and drop it in small pieces (taking your time) onto the crunchies on the bottom level. Tease cat with a strip of ham through the paw holes, let him munch his winnings and repeat, then walk off, leaving his prize on the crunchies in the maze. Steinitz took 2 weeks for this stage, and I started to suspect him of training me to feed him goodies... heh. But no, I think he was just forgetting he could reach them. Once he starts eating them up, you can go on to ...
Stage 3: Replace middle layer. Add crunchies and drop a few through the holes(the sound of success!) and some thinly slivered raw steak in small pieces. Tease with a long strip of meat as in step 2. If your cat has the goldfish nature, this can take quite a few sessions. He just didn't make the connection that the crunchies land on the bottom layer before dropping through clean and got quite frustrated when he pawed at a goodie that didn't turn up immediately in the bowl.
Stage 4: Replace the top layer and the and top ring. Fill feeder.
Your cat is now fully programmed to operate the food maze!
Update: He now has started to use his paw to scoop his wet food in the same way that he fishes for crunchies. Dare I teach him how to use knife and fork? Maybe better to just stick to a spoon! :-D
