What a set of teeth Rolo is showing off

Rolo yawning

Last time Rolo yawned when I had the camera handy, I managed to cut off one of his ears (in the picture 🙂 ) when he tipped his head back during the yawning process, but in this picture, I managed to capture the yawn as near to perfectly as I think I will ever manage!

I think this picture is the cat equivalent of the horse laugh pictures you sometimes see! 😆

Monty is a neat little cat

Monty is a very neat little cat. He tends to hold his appendages in neatly rather than sprawling.

Monty sitting down neatly

He looked quite satisfied with himself in that first picture. In the second one, his tail isn’t neatly curled around himself, but is describing an arc behind him. He’s also got a bit of green-eye, which is the cat equivalent of the human red-eye. I must get out my super duper new flashgun instead of relying on the pop-up flash on my camera!

Monty sitting down neatly, but with his tail arced out behind him

Rolo and Monty are becoming long pussycats

Rolo and Monty continue to grow. When they stretch out, they are now a considerable length. Rolo tends to be an expansive cat, and can cover a lot of duvet when he puts his mind to it!

Rolo stretched out for a sleep

He did put his head up to take an interest in my photographic activities.

Rolo still stretched out for a sleep but with his head up

Monty also watched sleepily.

Monty stretched out for a sleep

He never seems to occupy quite as much space as Rolo, but he’s happily stretched out here.

Monty tries out a shopping bag

Monty emerging from a shopping bag

Monty likes to know exactly what is going on in our house and likes to inspect everything personally. He is frequently evicted from the dishwasher and the washing machine; and cartons and bags are just grist to his mill.

This is a sturdy plastic “bag for life” from one of the supermarkets. Monty climbed right inside, and when he emerged, the handle looked like a hat over his head!

What is that white stuff?

Sitting on the windowsill and the sink looking out at the snow

When Rolo and Monty joined our household, I wanted to keep them off the kitchen work surfaces, but I’ve made an exception for the sink, as it gives access to the windowsill, and I feel bad enough about denying them the outdoors (for their own good as we have busy roads nearby) without denying them even the opportunity to look at the outdoors!

I’m afraid that the contents of the sink indicate that the dishwasher should have been run – but we can’t all be perfect housekeepers… 😕

When we had snow in the middle of December, Rolo and Monty definitely wanted to take a look. They’re used to the outside being green, not white!

Playing with the light cord

Both the cats love playing with the bathroom light pull cord. Monty has been able to do it since he was quite small, but it took Rolo a little longer as he didn’t get the idea of hanging on to the tie-back with one front paw and using the other front paw to bat the pull cord around.

However, now he’s bigger and better balanced, he has no trouble with the game, and can be seen here getting ready to launch himself at the dangling pull cord.

Rolo eyeing the pull cord for the bathroom light switch

The next picture shows the game in full swing! 🙂

Rolo playing with the pull cord for the bathroom light switch

Considering how often Monty has played with this pull cord, it’s surprising that I don’t also have pictures of him doing this. I will have to lie in wait for him!

An important milestone for our pussycat boys

Monty and Rolo playing with a loose piece of pull cord

The last day of 2009 was a significant last for our pussycat boys, as it was the day when they went to the vet to be neutered and microchipped.

Their operations were originally scheduled for 7th January, 2010, but over Christmas, their playfighting started to get a bit serious, and it seemed wise to take action before they found out how to mark their territory as well as indulging in stalking one another and trying to assert their dominance.

So last Thursday, they got put into separate cat carriers (a first for them, as they were small enough to fit in one carrier last time they needed to go in one) and they went to see Laura the vet. She performed their pre-op checks at our local clinic, and said that she could still hear Monty’s hear murmur, but only very faintly. She also looked in Monty’s mouth and confirmed that he no longer had any retained deciduous teeth, which made things simpler. The one surprise was when they went on the scales: Rolo was 3.2kg and Monty was 3.3kg! This is the first time Monty has ever been bigger than Rolo! He doesn’t look bigger, partly due to his dark colour, and partly because he is a neat cat rather than a sprawling cat like Rolo, but I’ve noticed when I pick him up that he’s solid.

Rolo miaowed piteously about being confined to the cat carrier, but when Laura wanted him out for his pre-op checks, he didn’t want to come out. Monty, who is very inquisitive, came straight out of his carrier!

They were transported over to the ParkVets Footscray Animal Hospital so that Laura could use the facilities over there for their operations. She phoned us up once their operations were complete and they were waking up and told us that all had gone well.

They were transported back to our local clinic and we went around to pick them up at 5:15pm – where we found them wearing perspex collars! They had both decided to lick their operation sites, and so they had to be collared. Monty, in particular, had gone a bit mad, and was looking a little inflamed, but Laura said that she was happy with him and he could go home.

We took the collars off to feed them, and Monty flatly refused to wear his again! 😯 He purred while I put it on, but as soon as I let him go, he did a Houdini act on it. The first time, I thought I couldn’t have tied it tight enough, so the second time I tied it as tight as I dared. He still managed to get the perspex part over his ears and was then in danger of choking himself. I didn’t try a third round with him. Rolo accepted his collar back on and lay down and went to sleep.

However, they woke up later and got into a playfight and I think Rolo may have scratched Monty – or maybe Monty’s inflamed nether regions were already sore. Anyway, I noticed that he was bleeding – not badly but just leaving blood where he sat down. I was a bit concerned, so phoned the vet and spoke to the evening duty vet, who turned out to have been present during their operations. She said not to worry, and just to keep an eye on him.

In the morning, Monty was much better, and neither of them seemed to want to lick themselves obsessively in the wrong place, so the collars did not last the recommended 48 hours. Monty, of course, had refused to stay in his, and I’d actually taken Rolo’s off before we went to bed, as he was running into things with it on and I thought he was more likely to get trapped by the collar than lick too much. As they were fine in the morning, I think I made the right decision.

Each cat has a patch of shaved fur on his right leg where a catheter was inserted during their operations. The catheter sites looked somewhat angry when we got them home, but now they just look like bare patches of skin. It will take about 6 weeks for their fur to grow back.

They were a bit subdued the day after their operations. They had a game of “scamper scamper”, but tired themselves out and went to sleep on our bed. They did the same thing again today, but seem almost back to normal now.

The picture was taken today and showed them playing with an old length of pull-cord. They have carted it all over the house. I thought it was in the kitchen, but it turned up on our bed.

Oh no… Retained deciduous teeth

Monty yawning and showing one of his retained deciduous teeth - an upper canine

The other day, I noticed a mark on Rolo’s fur and wondered if he’d hurt himself, but could find no trace of a wound, so I decided to look at Monty, to see if Monty had anything wrong with his mouth and could have left blood on Rolo. I didn’t find any sore spots inside Monty’s mouth, but what I did find was that his canine teeth were doubled up.

His new adult teeth had come through without his baby teeth falling out! As such teeth are jammed together, this can lead to the adult teeth growing in the wrong direction; and the overcrowding can result in food getting stuck between the teeth, so it is not a good thing.

Monty, along with Rolo, had a 7th January appointment for neutering, and I wondered about delaying it to see if nature would take its course, but in the end, the neutering appointment had to be brought forwards, rather than delayed.

Fortunately, Monty got rid of the excess teeth within a few days of my noticing them, so the vet didn’t have to do anything in his mouth while Monty was under anaesthetic. That was a relief, as I didn’t want to put Monty through an unnecessary dental procedure, but nor did I want to leave the problem untreated and potentially have to subject Monty to a second anaesthetic.

Rolo didn’t, to my knowledge, have any problem at all with his adult teeth. He yawned expansively and showed me his dental arrangements very comprehensively!

Rolo yawning

I wanted to get a picture of Monty’s mouth from that angle, but he just wouldn’t face me to yawn! Rolo has done it a couple of times when I’ve had a camera ready, though.