Buddy in the Basket

I was reluctantly doing laundry yesterday, the second load of which is still in the dryer this morning, and I had left the laundry baskets kind of stacked together on the kitchen floor by the dryer. Doing laundry because otherwise I would not have a clean bra to wear today, not to mention a clean pair of pants. Buddy, who hasn't paid that much attention to laundry baskets lately, but does occasionally like to tip them over and watch them roll around on their sides, was fascinated by the wicker basket that was on the top of the basket stack. He tipped the plastic basket over but the wicker basket was still kind of stuck in there, so I freed it and put it upright on the floor.

Where he proceeded to take a nap in it.

And speaking of cats, we took Pepper to the vet yesterday and spent lots of money. She has always hated having her back around her tail area touched and has had issues with being too fat to clean her bottom so I have to do it for her, but for the past month or so she wouldn't even let your hand get anywhere near her back by her tail and was extra cranky when I would wash her bottom. Aren't you glad you don't have to wash your cat's bottom for her? Worse than having to wipe a toddler, let me tell you.

Anyway, she also has a bad habit of not covering up her poop in the litter box but just leaving it right on top and I noticed something in her poop that shouldn't be there, and it was worms. Ugh. So, I treated her for round worm, which is what I thought it was. Wrong.

She has tapeworm. And the reason her back end is so tender is that she is eaten up by fleas. Which in turn give her tapeworm. We had treated all the cats with flea meds about a month ago, but we didn't buy the really good flea meds since they are so incredibly expensive, but in the long run it would have been cheaper to just buy the good stuff since the cheap stuff OBVIOUSLY DOESN'T WORK.

So, she got a shot for the worms and will go back in two weeks for a second shot, and we got Revolution flea meds for all the cats, which apparently is supposed to be even better than Advantage and whatever the other flea med stuff is, and we flea dipped all the cats last night. Either that or the vet's office gets a kickback for selling it. We also got some tapeworm pills for Mimi because she also had what I thought was roundworm, but it looked just like Pepper's worms, so it's not roundworm. Ack.

We checked all the other cats to see if they had all the flea dust on them like Pepper did, but they all seemed flea free, so maybe the fleas just like Pepper's blood the best. Neither one of us has ever been bitten or noticed fleas on us, either.

Keith is going to spray the yard this weekend for fleas and other bugs, too, because where else do the fleas come from but outside?

Anyway, expensive lesson learned, and we will keep up with flea control this year so nobody gets any more tapeworms or sore itchy back ends.