For example, when Joy was three months old, she got into the bathroom trash. I found her on her dog bed with a string hanging out of her mouth. Being a new puppy mom, I, of course, panicked. I wrestled her to the ground while she howled and screamed and pulled the string out of her mouth. She had swallowed a used tampon, and the only thing that saved her was the fact that the string still hung out of her mouth.
Luckily I was able to pull it out.
We were both traumatized. She thought I was torturing her and I was holding her down, pulling a string, and screaming, "No, I won't let you die!"
The next potential death sentence was handed out around seven or eight months when I had just adopted Spencer. I'm still not sure how this whole thing went down, but once again I found Joy on her dog bed, chomping on something. I pried her mouth open (while she screamed and yelped and struggled) to find a thumbtack under her tongue.
A thumbtack!
The only thumbtack in my entire house was the one I used to hang a very small cross stitch picture on the wall above my craft desk. My craft desk is downstairs in my living room, blocked off by a gate. The dogs are not able to get downstairs because I don't want them down there without me. Things like precious stuffed animals, heirlooms, and thumbtacks exist downstairs.
And the TV. Believe me, you break my expensive Smart TV there will be tears.
I found the cross stitch on the floor in the kitchen, and I deduced that the only culprit could be Spencer. Somehow he had dragged the cross stitch, thumbtack and all, upstairs, played briefly with the thumbtack, and then passed it off to Joy so she could kill herself.
This is the first time the kitten has tried to kill Joy.
The second time involved a stuffed Wampa.
You read that right.
I have this adorable stuffed Wampa I bought at Barnes and Noble a few years ago. He was sitting on my table, far back enough where Joy couldn't get to him. One night I heard Spencer batting something around, and I just assumed he'd found some trinket to play with. He has a toy box full of toys, but he'd rather pay with a piece of lint, or, for some odd reason, my foil wrapped chocolates. I took the trinket from him and was momentarily confused. It looked like a round black button with teethmarks. I went upstairs and found Joy on her bed with the mutilated Wampa by her side, missing a nose.
I cried, "My Wampa!"
Joy stared at me with big, innocent puppy eyes, unaware that the piece of plastic she'd been chewing on before Spencer commandeered it for his own toy could have choked her, or caused her to need surgery.
I snatched away the Wampa, and examined him for damage.
Other than the nose and being covered in drool, he really wasn't too worse for wear. One trip through the washing machine and a trip to my friend, the seamstress soon put him to rights.
He now sits on my desk in my office, well out of harm's way.
Again I deduced Spencer as the culprit. He must have pushed the Wampa off the table, Joy got a hold of it, chewed off the nose, and the rest was putting me through trauma as I once again felt like a dog mom failure having not dog proofed the house well enough.
Plastic does seem to be Joy's preference, and if she can make it a particularly dangerous bit of plastic, so much the better. This next time I was sure I had everything that could kill her safely tucked away. I have that gate blocking the downstairs, and I put up a baby gate in the bedroom to keep her out when I can't watch her.
Well, that sure doesn't stop Spencer. Another day I again found him playing with a tiny piece of plastic that I couldn't recognize at first. It turned out to be half a plastic shoe off of a beautiful doll I keep in my bedroom. The gate was up, so Joy couldn't get into the bedroom, so where was the other half of the shoe?
It was in pieces on, you guessed it, Joy's bed. Chewed up, a drooly mess. I took a deep breath counted to ten, and swatted Spencer with the stern reprimand of, "Stop trying to kill the dog!" Here's how this must have happened. Spencer jumped over the gate to get into the bedroom, found the shoe (he had to go digging under the doll for it, mind you) and carried it back over the gate where he left it for Joy to chew up. Then he played with the rest. I put the other shoe in my bedside drawer, but left the doll where she was. Five minutes later I caught Spencer on the dresser, digging under her dress.
I yelled. He fled.
How Joy has not killed herself with sharp plastic objects yet, I do not know. But Spencer sure seems to get a kick out of purposely bringing her plastic pieces to chew up and play Russian Roulette with her life.
The last incident where Joy almost lost her life, was my own fault. I can't blame the cat this time. I had bought several dahlias and calibrachoa flowers to get a kickstart on the season. I was only going to plant one planter that I can take inside at night so the flowers won't freeze. I couldn't resist. Those dahlias were so pretty, I just had to have them. My best friend and I spent a Friday afternoon planting the flowers, and then I placed the planter on the deck next to my geraniums. Geraniums, I might add, that have sat there for a few weeks now, completely unmolested by the puppy.
You know what's coming.
My friend and I went out for couple of hours. We came home to feed the dogs.
My back deck looked like a war zone. Pink and green strewn everywhere. Piles of potting soil tracked across the deck and down the stairs. The calibrachoa was chewed up and lay in clumps around the yard, but the dahlias were nowhere to be found. I assume they made a fine snack for Joy.
At that point, there was nothing left to do but sit on the steps and cry. Which I did. My friend stood next to me, patting my shoulder, hugging me while I sobbed at the loss of my flowers. I think it had more to do with flowers, of course. I can always get more. Joy has just been such a disaster lately, really all I can do sometimes is look at her and weep. I was at the end of my rope. And I threatened soon Joy would be at the end of a rope as well.
I'm kidding of course.
I sincerely hope dahlias are not poisonous to puppies.
A quick search of the Internet shows that they can cause mild gastrointestinal stress in dogs. Well, that explains the piles of green bedecked poop Joy has been leaving me these last few days. She has been eating grass like a fiend. I guess she did have an upset tummy, though I sure couldn't tell the way she hoovers her meals, her treats, her own poop, and of course plastic pieces.
I'm really not a bad pet owner. I really do try to puppy proof as well as I can and I never thought she would dig through the flower pot as she has never done this before. I also never thought the kitten would constantly find items to bring to the puppy that she could potentially choke on. I keep potentially harmful things away from the puppy. I can't believe I have a kitten who actually brings them to her since she can't get to them herself. My other two cats don't do this. And Tess is old so I haven't had to worry about any of this with her for years.
My friend joked that we should get Joy a tag that reads "Ruiner of nice things" on one side, and "The Meg" on the other.
I hope Joy outgrows this phase of constantly looking for new ways to accidentally kill herself soon. I don't think the rest of us can take the trauma or the guilt.
This seemed an appropriate badge to get for Joy. I haven't yet inscribed "The Meg" on it.
