Stitch & Rowan

Stitch and Rowan have a special bond. Firstly, Stitch is the most dog-like cat I’ve ever known. He greets you at the door like the dogs, he begs with the dogs, and he plays with the dogs. Stitch and Rowan, however, share a propensity for trouble-making that greatly surpasses that of the average pet. Stitch is the reason I have child-locked all my cabinets. One morning I found Stitch and Rowan in the kitchen. Stitch was eating gluten free pasta and Rowan was eating uncooked rice. Rowan crapped rice craps for two days. What happened last month was, well, I can’t even think of an adjective to describe it. Loki woke up one unsuspecting Monday morning and was limping. Not only that, he cried when he got out of bed which really tugged at my heartstrings. We played ball a lot the day before and after feeling all of his joints I decided to give him a dog-specific NSAID. They are chewable tablets. After I gave Loki his dose I put the bottle back in the Tupperware container that holds all of my pet medications of a certain kind and walked from the kitchen to the bathroom. Stitch was pissed. The moment I put one foot in the bathroom I heard a loud crash and briskly walked back into the kitchen. Stitch had knocked off the Tupperware from the kitchen counter (I’m suspecting out of jealousy that Loki got a special treat offered to no one else) and all of the medications had fallen out. Not thinking too much of this and cursing at Stitch under my breath, I put all of the meds back into the box and this time, stuffed the box where it belongs in a hall storage area. It wasn’t until, on one of my innumerable wtf are you doing Rowan morning checks, I saw him licking the inside of the now empty medicine bottle and realized what happened about 20 min. earlier. Rowan had eaten 32 times a dose appropriate for his size.

Lets just stop for a moment and consider what this means. Like I already alluded to earlier, Stitch Murphy definitely wanted what Loki was given that morning or at least wanted to check it out. This also means that within about a five second period Rowan was able to steal the bottle without me seeing him near the incident at all. Similarly, Rowan was able to identify the bottle from which Loki’s supposed “treat” came from amongst many other bottles on the floor. Even more impressive, Rowan was able to seemingly distinguish the bottle from which Loki’s supposed “treat” came from, from a bottle that was visually identical to it. Yes, I had another unopened bottle that was identical to the one I used earlier but I suppose it wouldn’t smell as appealing as the other one. Dogs do have amazing sniffers. My angel of a Labrador can distinguish his particular tennis ball amongst many others. Hmmmmm, I wish this story was about him. It would end with “…and I ribbon danced while he sloshed around gayly in the waves crashing on the soft, sandy beach until the sunlight was no more.”

Anyways, after IV fluids, charcoal, liver supplements, and 5 blood tests in one month the good news is that Rowan’s liver has made a full recovery! What a happy thing.