Wednesday, November 23, 2011

holiday safety


Sarah just came back from a big conference, and I am very glad to see her! Of course, she only gets a little bit of time to recover before jumping into the fray of Thanksgiving gatherings with out of town guests. Christmas music is already playing, and Sarah's parents will put up their trees within the next week or so. Sarah's decorating preferences have changed over the years. Sad to say, part of the reason for that change is yours truly. I just can't keep my paws out of the decorations! No drama intended here. It got me in some serious trouble about a year ago, and I am lucky to be alive.



So let's talk about decorations...



Ironically, I didn't get in trouble during the holidays. Sarah never put up a real tree, so her tree never needed to be watered. PetsMart has an article about holiday safety on their web site; and they talk about the importance of not letting your pets drink Christmas tree water. Oh, I can tell you this would have been a big problem for me. I like water so much! If my own water is empty, I drink Sarah's water! If hers is empty, I drink it out of the kitchen sink! Oh boy, we would have had problems with Christmas tree water!



Anyway, we didn't have any holiday things up at the time... Sarah had sung at a memorial service for someone, and the people gave her a flower arrangement as a thank-you gift. She came home and put it on the table. Well, that weekend she learned why she could not grow African violets anymore. In other words, she learned who was responsible for killing them every time she started growing them. I had always been so sneaky, and I had managed to make her pin the blame on Inca! I thought I was so smart and stealthy! And it was so cool because Inca had been so good with violets for several years before I came home, and it made Sarah really mad that now Inca was destroying them.



Well, it didn't take long for the flower arrangement to suffer its fate. I did it while Sarah was out of the room; so again she didn't know who did it. At least, she didn't know until I started throwing up ... and kept on. By the time she figured out what had happened, it had been long enough that I had stopped throwing up and was sleeping in my chair. I drank a bit of water and wanted to be held a bit. The emergency vet said that she could bring me in if she wanted; but she decided to watch me since it had been longer than 12 hours. When I got past the third day and began to eat and play, things began to look up.



The problem in the flower arrangement was lilies. Sarah hasn't brought any more flowers in the house since then, and I've been mostly healthy. But I sure do love to be close to Sarah now.



So check out that article, and make sure you watch your pets. Oh, and if you are one of these silly people who likes to give your dogs presents, please don't give them Greenies. Sarah wants you to know that not every pet treat digests well.