Ticks and Lyme disease

Note tick under Angie's right eye

On the local news recently, an anchor person claimed about 80% of deer ticks now carry the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.  Deer ticks are the tiny ticks that are often difficult to notice.  Sometimes, their bites hurt.  Other times a person doesn't even know he's been bitten.

Experts say you should wear long clothes and spray yourself with a Deet repellant.  I don't know how well the repellant actually works.  Unfortunately, ticks can be found just about anywhere on my property.  I don't spray myself every time I go outdoors. 

I do know that after you have been outdoors, it is important to check your clothes and yourself for ticks.  It is probably best to take a tape roller to your clothes.  I have even used the rollers on my hands and arms and actually captured ticks this way.  I suppose this could be unpleasant if you have hairy arms.  But don't count on the washer and dryer to kill ticks.  I've heard tales of ticks surviving a laundering.  I wouldn't be a bit surprised.  These creepy little bugs are pretty indestructible and hard to kill.  

If you find a strange little black speck on yourself, it could very well be a tick.  The longer the tick stays attached to you, the greater the chance the tick has of passing the Lyme bacteria into your blood.  That is why it is important to remove the whole tick as soon as possible.  Don't fool around by applying Vaseline and waiting for it to drop off.  This supposedly takes hours.  I don't know if Vaseline  really works because when the tick is done drinking your blood, it will drop off anyway.  This is too long to wait.  

Lyme disease can manifest in many ways.  If you were bitten by a tick that carried Lyme disease you could get a bull's eye rash.  But instead, you might get a weird painful rash that keeps getting bigger.  Or you might not get a rash at all.  You could also get flu like symptoms or just feel under the weather.  Or no symptoms.  Many people have it and never even know.

Lyme disease is diagnosed by a simple blood test.  Unfortunately, even in an area where Lyme disease is common, doctors often don't think of administering the test.  I know this from personal experience.  I got a painful rash that eventually covered an area  bigger than the size of my hand.  It was Doctor #5 that finally thought of Lyme disease and and gave me a blood test. 

A couple years later, although my husband didn't get a rash, he wasn't feeling well.  This time, we asked for the blood test.  It came back positive and he was treated.

There is much unknown about Lyme disease and even among doctors, the theories are conflicting.  They do know that once you have had Lyme disease, the antibodies will always show up in your blood tests.  Because of this, I'm not sure how they can tell if you contract it again.  Nobody knows if having it once will protect you from a repeat experience.  Some doctors don't even believe in Lyme disease.  These doctors shouldn't be practicing medicine.  Some doctors think the twenty something days of antibiotics will cure it for good.  Others doctors claim it should be considered a chronic disease because it can flare up again.  I suspect it's chronic because my rash has since flared up a couple of times.

To sum things up, if you have the misfortune to have a tick attach itself to you, remove it as soon as possible.  Don't freak out and throw the tick or let it go.  Instead, drop the little bugger in alcohol or smash it.  Keep in mind, it isn't easy to smash a tick.  So if a bug is difficult to crush, most likely, it is a tick.  This is gross, but once the tick is bloated from drinking blood, it is easy to crush.  And finally, when in doubt, don't be afraid to ask for a blood test.

 

Tis the season for removing ticks

Ticks are every where.  They will find you when you're doing yard work, taking a walk or just sitting out doors.  Pets that go outdoors are also good a way to come in contact with ticks.  If your pet has picked up one of these evil hitchhikers, all the pet has to do is brush up against you to transfer the dangerous and creepy passenger.

Dog ticks are usually big enough to be seen.  Deer ticks can be as small as a pencil dot and are easy to miss.  Bites from either kind can be painful.  Removing the miserable things from your flesh once they've attached themselves is extremely painful.  Either kind of tick can transmit diseases.  The tiny deer tick is notorious for transmitting Lyme disease. 

To remove a tick once it has attached its self to you, grasp it up against your skin and yank it straight out.  I have actually done this with my long fingernails.  There is also a device called a tick key.  This device works well on bigger ticks but doesn't really work on the tiny ticks.  For small ticks, using tweezers is probably the best method. 

It is very important to remove the whole tick.  Once the tick is removed, make sure the head is still attached to the body.  Unfortunately, sometimes the tick's head will remain lodged in your skin.  It should be removed as soon as possible, by a doctor if necessary.

Some people coat the attached tick with Vaseline and wait for it to drop off.  This can take hours.  I wouldn't advise this.  The longer the tick stays attached to you, the greater your chances of contracting a tick borne disease.  There is also more of an ick factor with this method.  Personally, I couldn't stand the idea of knowing the thing is still attached.

I don't think there is a safe way to keep your pets from bringing you ticks.  That well known stuff that's applied to the nape of the pet's neck theoretically will kill the tick after it bites the pet.  But that stuff will not keep ticks from getting in your pet's fur and then on to you.  It is best to inspect your pet when he or she comes in and carefully remove any visible ticks.  I put the ticks on tape and wrap them in it so they don't get loose again and get me.  I hate it when that happens.

Baby deer ticks like to attach themselves on cats where the fur is thin, especially around the eye and ear areas.     

I have learned the hard way that it is nearly impossible to spot ticks on black or dark clothes.  Save the black clothes for winter.  It is also nearly impossible to spot ticks on black cats or cats with black markings.  Sometimes, if you get really lucky, in bright sun the tick will show up as reddish against black fur.

Happy hunting!      

    

Shedding time

Ah, spring.  Outdoors, the air is scented with lilacs.  Indoors, everything, including me, is covered with cat hair.  It's that wonderful time of year, shedding time.

Golddiggers Animal Hospital classifies most of my felines as domestic short hairs.  They've even stooped so low as to accuse Salem of being a domestic short hair with...."tabby markings".   Salem is very offended by this cruel labeling.

Maybe these cats have "short hair", but when this hair is covering the carpet and stuck to my clothes, it really doesn't look so short.  After I pick a cat up, the fur left on my clothes makes my garments resemble a gorilla suit.

The cats get a daily brushing.  Lately, when the brushing is done, I'm standing in a "haystack" of hair. 

The only cat of mine that actually likes to be brushed is Angie.  If she hasn't been brushed by a certain time each morning, she'll start nagging.  The problem is she's always switching the time on me.  Sometimes I'll be in the middle of cleaning litter boxes when Angie decides she needs to be brushed.  And when Angie decides she needs to be brushed, she yowls until I stop what I'm doing and brush her. 

But Angie isn't the worst shedder.  The queen of shedding just happens to be a domestic short hair with "tabby markings".  Once I finally catch her, she will let me brush her.  And lately, while brushing Salem, the fur has really been flying.

Brushing the rest of these felines is like wrestling a pack of gators.  And even though I brush them after they've had breakfast, Tommy, the king of shedding, still tries to eat the brush.  That guy has an incredible appetite.    

 

Fetch this, Fido!

If some nitwit threw a stick and wanted you to fetch it, would you?  Hopefully, not.  Although maybe the  the stick should be retrieved and used to beat some sense into the stick tossing nitwit. 

If somebody commanded you to sit and then when you did, he handed you a dog cookie, would you wag your tail?  Or would you tear the jerk's arm off?  Keep in mind that tail waggers would probably also hold still for bows, bandanas and doggie diapers.

Claims that obedience is a sign of intelligence are extremely misleading.  Sure, Crazy Dog Men do use traits like train-ability and obedience as tests.  But what these tests are really designed for is to ensure the dog isn't smarter than its owner.  This innate canine intelligence is probably why so many good dogs wind up in shelters.  No stupid human wants to be outsmarted by a brainy animal.  It makes the human look so bad.

Did you ever notice how many dogs and their humans resemble each other?  Like attracts like.  It's obvious a drooling, slobbering, jowly human would be seriously out-classed by a sleek brainy German Shepherd.  And no explanation is needed as to why a person would be drawn to one of those obnoxious little yappy dogs complete with mange.

Mind you, I'm not judging Crazy Dog Men for sticking to their own kind.  It gives one an instant excuse: 
 "That smell?  Oh, that's just Rover.  He always gets a little gassy when I drink beer."
"Why is my chin and the front of my shirt wet ?  'Cause Fido always drools at company picnics.  Must be the heat or something.  Hey, Fido, pull my finger!"

It isn't really ethical to put a dog in a shelter just because his IQ is higher than yours.  Still, these Crazy Dog Men might be on to something.  I am owned by a cat that is much smarter than me.  And possibly life might have been easier if I had been the brainy one.  But there are no fetch-sit dumbness tests for cats.  With cats, you just have to take your chances and hope that if the cat is the brainy one, he or she will be a kind owner.      

Tapping in to one's inner feline

Accessing one's inner feline.  It's more complicated than gnawing on the occasional dead mouse.  Cats are wise creatures.  Humans are just big.  Because we're so big and destructive, we don't have to develop wisdom.  So most of us don't.  But we can learn from our feline companions.  They're more than happy to smarten us up. 

To access one's inner feline, one has to develop it.  It may seem like male humans have the advantage because most of them easily tap into their inner tomcat.  They'll chase anything and spray anywhere.  But that's just the superficial stuff.  We're not talking about biology here.  Even amoebas have a grasp of that stuff. 

Cats are in the moment creatures, masters of being present.  They won't spend sleepless nights worrying about what they should do tomorrow and whether their fur and nails will look just right for whatever.  They sleep peacefully and just deal with whatever comes along whenever it does.

Cats are innocent and open.  They trust their instincts and senses.  No scientist or pundit will jam their frequencies by telling them what they perceive is wrong.  Cats know what they know and don't second guess it.

Crazy Dog Men complain that cats are independent and hard to train.  Well, of course they are!  Cats are too smart to do whatever stupid thing some moron tells them to do.

"Hey, you threw that stick, Buddy.  Now go fetch it yourself."

Right about now, humanity could use some good, old fashioned, feline common sense.          

Mischief Inc.

Contrary to popular opinion, cats are extremely dependable.  If there is mischief to be gotten into, you can count on them to find it.  This feline dependability makes for some fine photo ops.

Don't want your cats to get into something?  Don't bother putting it up in a high place.  They'll find it.  Put any foreign object out in plain sight.  They'll still find it.  Putting the object of interest behind closed doors isn't always a solution, either.  If a door isn't properly latched, they'll find it.  Salem has a knack for opening improperly latched doors and a weakness for clean towels.  It didn't take her long to teach the whole family to firmly close that flaky linen closet door.

 Cats love an occasional bouquet of flowers.  First they innocently sniff the flowers.  Turn your back and they start casually plucking them out of the vase and dragging them around.  But the thing they enjoy the most about flowers is spilling the water. 

Contrary to the old tales that claim cats don't like water, cats find water quite entertaining.  I've seen Ginger go right into a little pond to catch frogs.  There's nothing as fine as seeing a fat little cat coming towards you with a pair of frog legs dangling from her mouth.  It's possible that the frogs don't enjoy this sport but I've never heard any complaints.  This could be because the frogs don't usually live to complain about it.

Some cats also love to play in snow.  I have a few that go wild over it.  After a snow storm, Leo will nag me until I bring some snow into the house.  Then I have to toss little snowballs around the kitchen floor so the cats can chase and tackle them.  They love this game and will play until the snowballs are puddles on the floor.  Then the cats rest up for their next escapade while I mop up the puddles.

My cats don't like strangers or visitors.  They especially seem to dislike my mother-in-law.  I can totally relate to this.  As soon as the cats hear footsteps on the front stairs or a doorbell, they stampede and dive for cover.  The "Hoff" seems to be the exception.  When they found him on "their" sofa, they attacked and swarmed all over him.  But when they started to chew him, I had to take their new playmate away.

Cats also like to sew.  Whenever I use the sewing machine, I get more help than I need.  Some will directly confront the machine.  One tries to steal the spool of thread.  But Frodo sneaks up on it by crawling across the top of a tall bookcase.  From there, she will attempt to leap down upon the evil machine.  Since I'm in her line of fire, I usually intercept her before she springs.  Occasionally, a family member will hear me cussing and suggest I close the door.  Right.  I wasn't born yesterday and I'm not falling for that trick.  If I close that door, they will just find something else to get into.  I figure it's better to know what they're up to than to get surprised by it later.   

 

Degrees of feral

There's feral and then there's FERAL.  When I was growing up, some neighbors thought my family was a touch feral. 

There were some neighbors down the street my family thought were feral. 

To this day, I'm almost certain a couple of my siblings are feral.  One of them I wouldn't trust with my wallet.  The other I wouldn't trust with my life, sad but true.  It all boils down to trust.

"Feral" cats don't always need, like or trust people.  Many of them probably have damn good reasons for their caution around humans. 

Friendships between humans and other animals can be as complicated as friendships between humans.  Some wild cats easily learn to like humans.  To others, it comes more slowly.  Their trust has to be earned.  And I've met a few cats that just don't like humans and never will.

Even among the cats living indoors with me, there are varying degrees of feral.  A friendly feral had a litter of kittens on my porch.  After she disappeared, her children eventually became most of my house cats.  I have handled them since birth and they sometimes think I am their mother.  They trust me and I trust them, even Salem.  I can handle them, groom them, sort of medicate some of them and even put them in evil carriers to take them to the vet.  But even after several years iindoors, they're still feral enough to be reserved and wary of the other humans living in the house.  It sometimes occurs to me that this is a little odd.  And when company comes, most of those cats go into hiding.  They don't like strangers.

Tommy is a whole other story.  We have some mutual trust issues.  Although we've been buddies for a long time and he's moved indoors, his latest injury seems to have changed his personality.  He is wary of being handled and I am wary when handling him.  I pick battles with him carefully.  He will climb up on a chair and cuddle, but when he does, honestly, it makes me a little nervous.  If I want him to do something he doesn't want to do, he's like wrestling a gator.  Although he finally seems to be mellowing somewhat, he will still approach other family members and act friendly.  Then he'll suddenly swing or snap.    

Outdoors, the felines come in varying degrees of feral.  For one to be handled, she'd have to be trapped.  Another is borderline friendly.  She'll occasionally allow a pat.  There's one that is affectionate when she's hungry, but get too fresh by wrestling her into a carrier and you'll have a few scratches to show for your efforts.  And then there's Ginger.  She's more gentle and trusting than indoor Tommy.  Without fear of injury, I can pick her up and carry around.  I do this because she's extremely pesky and tends to get under foot.  When necessary, I can grab her and shove her into a carrier for a vet visit. She's a joy to handle.  So why isn't she indoors?  Probably because she drives me insane.  There's actually such a thing as too friendly.  Humans.  Go figure.