When free = $200

cowman said:
You got nothin on all the free horses my wife brought home
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I had said "there ain't no such thing as a free kitten"

But another one could be "There isn't much that is more expensive than a free horse".
 
I once had a conversation with an older gentleman who said "There are a few things you should absolutely do sometime in your life. Drive a convertible, own a horse, own an airplane. You know horses are EXPENSIVE?"

For him to say that after mentioning the airplane really caught me off guard.
 
cowman said:
You got nothin on all the free horses my wife brought home
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jsstevens said:
I once had a conversation with an older gentleman who said "There are a few things you should absolutely do sometime in your life. Drive a convertible, own a horse, own an airplane. You know horses are EXPENSIVE?"

For him to say that after mentioning the airplane really caught me off guard.
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Everyone I've talked to who is familiar with airplanes and horses has said that horses are expensive.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Everyone I've talked to who is familiar with airplanes and horses has said that horses are expensive.
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I guess I'll play it safe and stick with airplanes.
 
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JOhnH said:
But outdoor cats certainly do run up bigger and more frequent medical bills than indoor cats. On the other hand, they don't live very long for those same reasons.
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I think a lot of it depends on what the intent is. For us, we hire outdoor cats to keep the mice under control, and they do a great job. We had a bad mouse problem in our garage when we moved in, and that's been eliminated. Plus we love the cats and the kids have fun playing with them. We make sure that they have shelter, food, water, etc. It's surprising how little they even want to go in the garage for the winter.

We also don't expect for them to live as long as indoor cats, and they're very happy with their outdoor life, and we're very happy with them.
 
When I got Ados, he was a barn kitten. He was not socialized at all. To get him to come near me, I had to lie flat on the ground, and let him come to me and check me out. I slowly built trust, yada yada yada, now he's the greatest cat EVAAAAARRRRRRRRR!!!!!!

So I let him go outside during the day; he keeps the yard free from critters of all sorts. I try to get him to come in at night, usually I'm successful, sometimes I'm not. He ventures kinda far away, so if I can't find him, there's nothing I can do. There is a huge field and pasture across the street, I'm sure it is very rich hunting grounds.

From barn cat he came, so I feel like it's cruel to not let him explore outside. I know that one day/night, the coyotes, an owl, an eagle, or something else will get him. I will truly be very, very sad. I will miss him greatly. I have had cats that I was "meh" about; but there are special animals that come into your life, and what form they take, you can't be sure, but when they arrive you'll know.
 
JOhnH said:
I wouldn't say "just about all", but certainly a lot. And probably more with dogs than with cats (which I have the most experience with). Diabetes, cancer, heart disease are prevalent among older indoor cats. Christmas tree tinsel is another big one, along with Christmas (and other) lilies. Lilies are much more toxic to cats than Poinsettias.

But outdoor cats certainly do run up bigger and more frequent medical bills than indoor cats. On the other hand, they don't live very long for those same reasons.
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Both our older cats have thyroid issues. Vet says common cause of death in older cats. They burn everything up.
 
StevieTimes said:
When I got Ados, he was a barn kitten. He was not socialized at all. To get him to come near me, I had to lie flat on the ground, and let him come to me and check me out. I slowly built trust, yada yada yada, now he's the greatest cat EVAAAAARRRRRRRRR!!!!!!

So I let him go outside during the day; he keeps the yard free from critters of all sorts. I try to get him to come in at night, usually I'm successful, sometimes I'm not. He ventures kinda far away, so if I can't find him, there's nothing I can do. There is a huge field and pasture across the street, I'm sure it is very rich hunting grounds.

From barn cat he came, so I feel like it's cruel to not let him explore outside. I know that one day/night, the coyotes, an owl, an eagle, or something else will get him. I will truly be very, very sad. I will miss him greatly. I have had cats that I was "meh" about; but there are special animals that come into your life, and what form they take, you can't be sure, but when they arrive you'll know.
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That just brought a tear or two to my eye. But this is a pilots' site...lots and lots of machismo here...you might want to reconsider and delete that! :)

BTW, that's exactly how I feel about Buddy. He's one special dog.
 
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One of our cats was a black and white, pretty small for a cat, but well proportioned. Our vet always said, "If you looked up 'cat' in the dictionary, this would be the picture." But that cat was one heckuva hunter. It kept the rabbit population in our whole county in check. Unfortunately, it didn't eat the whole rabbit. It would bite them through the neck, and crunch through the skull (watching those little bunny ears get slurped down like spaghetti was funny, I gotta admit). Then it would stuff its face into the open neck and slurp out all the upper organs. When it was done, it would leave the lower tract behind, always on our front steps, and find a nice place to sleep for a day or two. The headless, hollowed out bunny was a pretty common sight. Whenever it would find a nest, it was like me at the Golden Corral. That cat finally had to be put down, it was pretty much deaf and blind and losing weight after a long run of about 18 years. It did have a bad habit of chewing and swallowing strings, though, so we always had to be on the lookout. When it was a kitten it was running around the house, trailing a few inches of string from its butt. I got to pull it out the rest of the way.

We got that cat from a buddy of mine. Every time he'd take his cat in to get spayed, the vet would say, "Too late". He had 3yo twins at the time. When we went over to his place, his girls had all the kittens stuck on themselves like they were Velcro, then they'd go down the slide. Kids and kittens and a cloud of dust, lather, rinse, repeat. The kittens could survive that, so they could survive pretty much anything.
 
I guess I'm just a heartless old farm boy but pets didn't get vets. Farm animals got vets. The pets had a better life than they would have otherwise because they had usually been set out by someone on the highway and we fed them. They usually didn't live long enough to have old age problems. The neighbors had too many hunting dogs. If that bothers anybody, live with it. That was life in the country 70 years ago.
 
I've compared costs between horses and aircraft, and it isn't too far off. They are expensive. One horse owner pointed out that I couldn't get a second airplane and have them make baby airplanes, to which I pointed out that my airplane wasn't going to get colitis and die.

When you look into a dog's eyes, you get oxytocin, just like looking at a cat. The difference is the dog also gets oxytocin, while the cat just gets the smug satisfaction that it has enslaved yet another human.

Best evidence suggests dogs were domesticated the same way as cats, hanging around early human settlements.
 
Graueradler said:
If that bothers anybody, live with it. That was life in the country 70 years ago.
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I can relate. Spay and neuter? That wasn't even in my parents' vocabulary back in the '60s and '70s. Another litter? Put them in a burlap sack and toss them in the Mississippi. That's what dad would do when none of us kids were around. And dad was one of the gentlest souls you'd ever meet. Times were different. It makes me cringe thinking about it now, but then was then, now is now.
 
timwinters said:
I can relate. Spay and neuter? That wasn't even in my parents' vocabulary back in the '60s and '70s. Another litter? Put them in a burlap sack and toss them in the Mississippi. That's what dad would do when none of us kids were around. And dad was one of the gentlest souls you'd ever meet. Times were different. It makes me cringe thinking about it now, but then was then, now is now.
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All of that still happens today. In some cases you have people who will bring the litters to the shelter, and in many cases the shelters will just put them down on the spot if you're in a high-kill area. It's not always a lethal injection, many states still use gas chambers or heart sticks (basically a cattle prod that they stab through the heart of the animal to kill it).

And that is why I do what I do on weekends with the MU-2, flying pets from high-kill areas to places where they find homes, and hope that one day I'll be out of business because there won't be a need anymore. But that's a long time away, even though things are getting better in many states. We've still got millions a year in this country that are put down due to overpopulation, and until people are consistently spaying and neutering their pets, this will continue. It's why there are areas that

We'll never spend enough money at our vet to contribute meaningfully to her next airplane, lake house, BMW, etc. like @JOhnH may have had from his outdoor cats/clients. But we do spend the money to make sure they're spayed and neutered, up to date on shots, etc. So, we take a balanced approach. We're not going to spend thousands of dollars (and put them through that kind of treatment) for a major infection or the like, but we also make sure that there will be no litters on our property and that they have what they need, and are fed and happy. They all seem to be.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
We'll never spend enough money at our vet to contribute meaningfully to her next airplane, lake house, BMW, etc. like @JOhnH may have had from his outdoor cats/clients. But we do spend the money to make sure they're spayed and neutered, up to date on shots, etc. So, we take a bal
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Without trying to sidetrack this thread, I would like to point out that we had a specialty/niche practice. We were there for people who did consider their cat a part of their family and sought out the very best medical care for them. But that did not mean we looked down on those who felt differently, or had different financial resources. We were expensive, but our costs were high. We encouraged annual exams for our clients, but that wasn't really the best use of our resources. That would be like a top A&P I/A concentrating their efforts on oil changes. We were there to save lives, and we did save the life of many cats that would have died otherwise.

That said, we donated many thousands of dollars annually to humane societies and spay/neuter clinics. We also opened our clinic two Sundays a year where we ran a free spay/neuter assembly line for anyone that claimed they could not afford to have this done. Those cats also got a free exam and free rabies shot. And we used all the same high quality supplies and medications our paying clients got. We also "laser tipped" the ears of each of these cats so if when they were released outside, anyone that found them would know they had already been spayed or neutered.

And while I understand that things have changed over the years (all my cats while I was growing up were outdoor cats that never saw a vet) I could never approve of throwing a bag of kittens or puppies in the river. Never. That was just as unconscionable then as it is now.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled discussion of cute kittens and cats.
 
Check this out, a huge step forward. Buddy hasn't been letting the new kitty get within 10 feet of him. Today, I walked into the living room, and this is what I saw.

IMG_20180804_141505718.jpg

BTW...the cat's named Maxwell. He's goofy, uncoordinated, clumsy and freakin' wired for sound!!!

Maxwell Smart!
 
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Cool pic Tim. When I was little, mom had a Wire Hair Fox Terrier. I managed to sneak a black kitten into the car one trip home from her parents house...she and dad found it out about 30 miles into the trip. That little black cat and the terrier became best friends. Blackie the cat would climb up on Jonas's back and entwine his claws into that fur, without poking the skin and Jonas would take off and they would go adventuring around the yard. Blackie disappeared a few years later and Jonas would try and get every black cat he saw to come play with him. Just about killed mom when Jonas got out one day and the sob at the end of the block drove into the ditch to intentionally run Jonas over. I think some of the bit more aggressive neighbors convinced him to move out a few weeks later.
 
My dad was a veterinarian. Taught small animal surgery, initially at UC Davis and then Washington State University. You know where my feelings about pets comes from. We had a couple cats that we got when we lived in San Jose who were (supposedly) outside cats when we lived there. You always knew which one brought home the "trophy". The big (18 pounds) cat left his on the front porch, the smaller one brought his into the house via our son's bedroom window. The big cat defined the word "lazy". He brought home a mouse one day, still caught in the trap from a neighbor's garage. We made them inside cats when we moved up to Olympia as our neighborhood has racoons, foxes and other critters not conducive to longevity in cats. The big one never met a lap he didn't like and at 18 pounds when he took a liking to your lap, you were anchored until he got up. The old guys were about 16 or so when kidney failure caught up with them. While they were still around our daughter got a cat who is partially Maine Coon. Looks like one, except he is small for a Maine Coon. After a few years we wound up with him. He is an inside cat. About as friendly and loveable as you can imagine. Anyone comes to our house was clearly there to see him. My wife sits down and he is in her lap immediately. He's now 17 and doing fine. A bit slower that when he was young, but otherwise doing well. Spoiled as can be, but good luck doing otherwise. I'll miss him terribly when the time comes.

Don't get me started with the dogs I've had in my life. With few exceptions, all Golden Retrievers. Loveable bird brains, the lot of them.

We've had horses, decades ago. I don't need that expense ever again.
 
Max likes to leap Floor-->countertop-->refrigerator-->upper cabinet top, so he can observe his subjects...
 

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StevieTimes said:
When I got Ados, he was a barn kitten. He was not socialized at all. To get him to come near me, I had to lie flat on the ground, and let him come to me and check me out. I slowly built trust, yada yada yada, now he's the greatest cat EVAAAAARRRRRRRRR!!!!!!

So I let him go outside during the day; he keeps the yard free from critters of all sorts. I try to get him to come in at night, usually I'm successful, sometimes I'm not. He ventures kinda far away, so if I can't find him, there's nothing I can do. There is a huge field and pasture across the street, I'm sure it is very rich hunting grounds.

From barn cat he came, so I feel like it's cruel to not let him explore outside. I know that one day/night, the coyotes, an owl, an eagle, or something else will get him. I will truly be very, very sad. I will miss him greatly. I have had cats that I was "meh" about; but there are special animals that come into your life, and what form they take, you can't be sure, but when they arrive you'll know.
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My cat was a barn kitten when I got him. A local rescue picked his litter up. He has no desire to go outside. I can leave the door open and he just stares at it, like he's thinking "I know what it's like out there and I prefer the gig I've got in here." He does have the highest prey drive of any pet I've had though. If he sees you tying your shoe laces he runs up and attacks your feet. He's also very skittish. He doesn't like when people come over and any sudden movement or noise sends him running. No idea what happened to him when he was a baby.
 
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