The first time you see your pet in the middle of a seizure, it’s like time has stopped. You feel helpless, not knowing how long it will last or what will happen next. Seizures happen when electrical activity in the brain becomes disorganized, slipping free of the coordinated circuits that usually keep things running smoothly. […]
It starts innocently enough with some faint clicking as your dog trots across the kitchen tile. It can wait, you figure. She hates having her nails trimmed and another week won’t hurt. Until she climbs into your lap and eight dull knives dig deep into your thigh. Reluctantly, you admit to yourself that this is […]
Sharing my home with both a dog and a cat, I’d be hard-pressed to say which one I prefer to keep as company. They bring such different kinds of joy, and feel like two halves of a lovely whole. But my cat does have one clear advantage that no dog can match. She can purr. […]
I hate diagnosing diabetes. It’s a frustrating disease, made worse by the fear that washes across people’s faces when they hear the news. I see them hoping I won’t say anything about insulin injections, then watch them deflate when I finally do. Diabetes is a hormonal disorder that comes in a few varieties, but always results […]
I’m sure we’d all agree that animal ears are absolutely adorable. Unlike our inert curls of skin that only seem weirder the more you think about them, cats and dogs have delightfully expressive ears. They perk up when we talk to them and flop all over the place, and are generally just fuzzy and fun […]
Can’t anything be easy? There are a million toys on the shelf at the pet store, and you feel like you’ve been warned about every single one of them. This one has a squeaker, which you heard is a choking hazard. Your cousin’s dog got an intestinal blockage from rawhide, so that’s out. Pretty much […]
You’ll know when it’s time. She’ll tell you. It will be sad, but you’ll know it’s the right thing to do. Except it’s not happening that way at all. None of this makes any sense, and every decision seems wrong. She walks so slowly and can hardly be bothered to eat. It must be time, […]
I suppose there’s no good time for a cat to pee in your bed, but two in the morning is particularly objectionable. Wrested from sleep by the noxious mess saturating my sock, I resigned myself to a bleary-eyed bout of laundry and mattress cleaning. This wasn’t the first time, and I needed a better solution than […]
There’s something magical about eyes. Sleek and precise, they seem built of different stuff than the rest of our physical selves—something more deeply connected to the root of who we are. This may be true in more than the poetic sense. Embryologically, the eyes sprout directly from the same clump of cells that go on […]
From toilet cleaner to paint thinner, most homes are stocked with at least a few poisons that need to be kept safely away from pets and children. And while it’s certainly worth minding where you store the Windex—ammonia is nasty—I’ve never seen a pet consume any. So rather than panic about every single bottle with […]