Ya, this post is not about felines in the heat of day- as in temperature.
It's about female cats and their body changes.
My 6 month old cat, Laoky, helped me eat my dead chicken the other day and then started acting weird. I thought maybe that was a curse, to have your pets eat your pets, kind of like a branch off of canibalism or something. She wasn't eating anything for days, she just slept all the time and when she actually was up and about, she would roll around and make loud noises. One night she left and didn't come back, I thought she went off to go die, like I always hear about animals doing.
But she came back an so I thought she had worms. I self diagnosed her. I thought for sure it was worms. I biked 7km to the farm school and they were out of medicine. I went to the vet 3km away, and he wasn't there. I sent out texts messages in all directions to fellow volunteers and friends to send me some deworming pills before she died. I was kind of in a panic. So, when every option failed, when nothing went right, I went left, I bought her human deworming pills. Any animal fanatics- continue reading before you accuse me of animal abuse.
I bought one pill for her and to be completely honest, one pill for me, because you just never know over here in Africa. I broke it in half (and only gave her half because it's for grown up humans, not 6 month old kittens) and smashed it up and dipped pieces of beef in the smashed pill. She wasn't eating anything I cooked her so I got carry-out (ha) and she of course gobbled it up.
Then I thought, what the hell, I should have Googled that first. At least I should have Googled her symptoms! But now having been here for nearly 20 months, Googling shit isn't the first thing I think to do when I don't know something.
So, I'm sitting there, worried about my cat that I self diagnosed and attempted to treat and dark thoughts came into my mind that maybe she was just acting weird and I actually am killing her by trying to cure her!
My neighbor said she was just tired. My friend said she must have eaten too much chicken. And so, I bought Internet on my phone and Googled her symptoms.
Damn. My kitten is becoming a cat. My cat's in heat. Her new affection towards me, her loud moans, her loss of appetite, her licking herself (you know where) and her going out late at night and not coming home til morning were large, bold, might of well have been colored red arrows that all pointed to her being "in heat". Not worms. Not possessed or cursed.
What do I take away from this lesson?
Oh, there are many things.
Don't ever become a vet.
Never get a female cat.
Never get a cat.
Never self diagnose/treat a cat (with human medicine).
Don't over react when a cat is acting weird (they're mainly always weird anyway).
Don't text all your friends about your dying cat.
And always use Google when you don't know something.
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