Near Cat-astrophe. And Dog-astrophe.

This has been a week of excitement with our little pets. And I do mean little.
It started a week ago when Mike, Rebecca, and I took Polly, our 1-year-old miniature dachshund/jack russell for a walk. We were just a block from home when out of nowhere this bigger dog that looked chowish came running silently towards us...or should I say towards Polly. Made a beeline for her. It's that time-of-year for her, if you know what I mean, so Mike was scrambling trying to pick her up real fast and couldn't get her up in time so he started hauling her up by the leash and kicking the bad dog as the bad dog chomped onto her leg and Rebecca burst into tears. It finally went away, and Polly was fine, but Rebecca was so traumatized she was still talking about it at bedtime. I'm just glad it didn't happen when Jessica and I were walking her a few days earlier!
Then a few days later I sent the girls outside to play at our 10:00 break time, and one of them told me that Princess, our 5-month-old fluffy white kitten, was stuck in a tree. I blew them off, saying, "Oh, cats do that. She'll figure it out." But Jessica said, "No, Mom, she's really stuck." I went to look, and that poor kitty was hanging upside-down by her back leg which was tangled in some twine about 13 feet up in the air! Yowling for dear life. I grabbed Mike's ladder, climbed it and the tree as high as I dared, and I could reach her but not free her. So I ran over to our neighbor who has an extension ladder, but her wasn't home. So I called Mike, but as I was talking to him, Jessica hollered, "Mom! I got her!" She climbed higher than I'd felt good about climbing, with scissors in her hand, and freed the cat. My hero. Princess wouldn't put weight on that leg, but was purring, so we decided to just keep an eye on her. Until she went NUTS. After about 5 minutes she started yowling and thrashing around, and when I picked her up she started biting and scratching me--so I threw her in a carrier and took her to the vet.
Now I'm not entirely hard-hearted, but as a general rule, we don't believe in spending a bunch of money on animals. (i.e. we're not going to let them do knee-replacement surgery or anything like that). I tried to let the receptionist know that without upsetting Mikayla and Rebecca, who went with me, and then we had to wait about 30 minutes to see the vet. I was pretty shook up, between seeing her in pain and getting bit and imagining telling my 3 princesses why we had to put their Princess to sleep. But being Magnolia, we saw people we knew in the waiting room, plus met a really nice cowboy with his working shepherd who assured us cats really do have 9 lives. And sure enough, she's fine! Nothing broken, just a bad sprain. Gave her a cortisone shot, said to keep her away from our jealous older cat (which means we had to keep her inside. I don't care for indoor pets. But she is awfully fluffy.) and sent us on our way! She looked pretty pathetic for the first few days, but is doing great now.

The princesses

See what our pets put up with?