However, two days ago, on Tuesday, one of the neighbourhood's many stray cats stupidly jumped into my yard, when both Kiya and Louie are pottering about. Huh!?! It's one thing to use the yard when my dogs are kept in the kitchen, or at night when the dogs are kept indoors, but when you see two large dogs in my garden and you're this tiny cat, you DO NOT come jumping into the yard, you stupid cat! So when I got home, I let the dogs run freely in the house and yard of course, and after several minutes in the kitchen gutting and chopping up some meat for the dogs' dinner, I heard snarls, whines, growls and groans - I ran out and saw, to my horror, both Kiya and Louie biting something furry by the front gate. I yelled at them both, thunderously, and that gave the cat enough time to jump up and over the fence to safety.
I was furious, of course, at both the dogs and the cat. I was very worried that the cat was one of the neighbour's, but I recognised the cat to be a stray (I later found the cat, all OK and napping, round the corner outside my house). Louie looked fine, and Kiya suffered an obvious cut on her muzzle, which I promptly put antiseptic cream on, but not before washing both Kiya's and Louie's heads, faces and necks, as they both reek of cat's piss - I don't blame the cat for pissing in fright. I thought nothing more of this incident, though I was (am) very annoyed with cats in general. Cats are stupid.
However, on Wednesday, I noticed something dangling below Louie's chin - like a fluid-filled sac, or very swollen lymph nodes. He was also more listless than usual, though he ate his dinner and was otherwise OK. Oh, and he whined the house down when S or I tried to remove his martingale collar - it seemed to hurt his left ear and neck area (but no, I could not find any wounds). This morning, though, I could tell he was definitely in some sort of pain or else feeling very poorly, so I asked Cousin S to take us to the vet before heading to the beach.
Here is Kiya, healthy and very happy to be in a car, period.
Louie, meek, listless and obedient.
So there. As I suspected, Louie suffered a bacterial infection from the cat's scratches or bites (but no obvious puncture wound, unlike Kiya's, which bled and helped flush the wound of bacteria) and he was given antibiotics. In a very twisted way, it made handling Louie much easier - he is usually so full of energy at the beach that he'd jump and skip-hop into the water, but today, he merely plodded into the water and barely swam.
Kiya could not wait to get into the water and dragged all of us into the sea.
Again, Kiya was fascinated with anything or anybody floating in the water.
When Person DS swam freely in the sea, Kiya immediately took off -
Kiya was very speedy in the water! Still, she must have been quite scary-looking, given how intent she was when she swam after somebody in the water.
Do you see Louie's 'lump' under his chin?
It makes him look even more strange - like a camel-goat-dog or something, ha ha!
Kiya didn't even care about her brother. She was in her element.
And she whined a lot when she saw other people in the sea. She wanted to join them desperately, but I know most people would misunderstand a "Rottie" swimming intently after them in the open sea. Like a black furry shark.
I had to take this picture cos it almost seemed like as if we were somewhere on a beach in the Middle East, ha ha.
Time to go home.. and Kiya's still very happy! Why? Because she gets another car ride!
I hope that even if Lou could not enjoy the beach fully, he did have something to distract him from his fever!
