time is precious...

mr puddins has a growing problem. no, it's not that he's just fat, lazy, and in love with sunbeams either..
mr puddins is living on borrowed time. every time i come back from my office after a long day, i give the fat
bastard a lil' scritch on the head and thank anyone upstairs that he's still with us.

almost 5 years ago, we weren't sure if mr puddins would grace those sunny spots on the carpet anymore after being
diagnosed with a heart murmer. our vet at the time was out on vacation, so we used the stand in jackass who damned
near killed mr puddins by prescribing a medecine that caused him to get sick and withdrawal into himself. embarrassingly enough, we never even realized that he was reacting poorly to the meds until it was too late. the wonder drug was designed to open his airways and allow him to breathe more freely. (therefore relaxing the heart muscles) in lieu of any cartwheels or overly energtic kitty-isms around the house, mr puddins hid from us, and managed to shed prolly 10 lbs of his already 20+ lb weight.

normally this would envoke a big 'huzzah,' but mr puddins was not well. ironically, this was also during the time we first got chewie, my lil' tuxedo kitten who at first was caramel colored with a light brown "bib.' (hence the wookie reference to chewbacca... i mean, who wouldn't wanna own their own miniature wookie, eh?) well, chewie grew up to be a regular black and white tuxedo kitty... WTF? where's my receipt! giggle.... but i digress. chewie, in need of a friend and parent figure, was also shunned by mr puddins, so now chewie is a tail sucking lil' freak of nature who's in love with my black labrador, maddie. it's really quite complicated, but chewie will turn down a warm lap to go butt-heads with maddie and curl up against her. maddie just looks at my wife and i like, "dude, this is soooo not right."

mr puddin's issues were fixed by taking him off the medication and voila, the fat bastard/thunderbutt/blobulous-maximous has returned.

why the hell am i telling you all about my f**ked up pets and their issues? because a friend of mine lost her kitten today of only 1 year. more important, (and i don't give a sh*t was any of you say, animal brothers feel loss too.) romulous lost his brother, remus yesterday. now, my coworker here is a mess because she didn't even know remus was sick. only diagnosis was an enlarged heart that just gave out. same goddamned thing mr puddins has. i've lost pets in my time, but for the record, mr puddins is one of the coolest attention whores on the planet. he lives to be picked up, schnoogled, and dear gawd watch out if you wear glasses! he'll 'mark' them with his lil' chin/big-ass front tooth gesture and knock 'em off your head.

this morning i awoke to find mr puddins, flat on his 23+lb back, legs splayed, one arm touching me, one arm touching my wife.... and he was purring contently. okay... he was snoring a really gross raspy-sound like he often does, but who cares. i'm glad he's around, in our lives, and catching those sunspots on the rug whenever his fat face isn't plunked down in his food bowl.

go hug your pets people. ya never know when you won't be able to again.