omg so jealous

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She is absolutely adorable and must have had a home at one time, right ? Also, once these heartworms are dead and flushed, is she cured for good or can they come back ?

How do you think Tom is going to get along with this energetic ball of fur ?

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I don't think she ever had a home - only two pups means that was probably her first litter, which would put her somewhere between 1 and 2 years old. Also, she didn't know how to sit already, even though she's eager and smart.

My guess is she either got dumped in the woods as a "teenage" pup, or she's a generation removed from being dumped. Feral dog populations are very viable in wooded environments around rural towns; I have yet to see a decent size patch of woods without a bunch of wild dogs in it.

I think Tom will be okay; he's come out of his shell ENORMOUSLY in the past couple of months - I actually caught him cuddling up to his catnip mousey the other morning, and he's pretty clearly bored when I'm at work (he's ALWAYS waiting within a few feet of the front door when I get home - and that's the only time he ever hangs out in the hallway). I already know Molly gets along well with cats, and the first month or so I need to keep her confined to the living room means I have time to wipe her down with a towel every day and put the towel under Tom's food dish. So by the time she's got run of the house, Tom will have had a month to associate her smell with getting fed. Should be fine. I think he'll probably wind up appreciating the companionship.

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For a dog that's been homeless or perhaps feral for a good long time, she looks incredibly friendly and enthusiastic to be around humans. Adopting adult animals guarantees knowledge of their disposition which is completely up in the air when you choose a puppy or kitten instead.

If and when I decide to take on another cat, it'll be a full grown stray that I get to know and size up, and I could kick myself for not having kept Peter Gibbons. Hard.

This Molly-smelling-towel under Tom's food dish routine is an incredibly smrt idea. You are a genius and completely meant to have pets. :D

You MUST show us some more pictures next week.

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I can't really take credit for the towel idea - it was in a booklet that came with "Dr. Elspey's Cat-Attract Litter, guaranteed to cure all behavioral litter box problems in any cat in 20 days or your money back!" - which I bought with the sure knowledge that it was utter snake oil but with at the end of my rope when I was having litter box troubles with Tom (long LONG story, he hasn't had a healthy history with litterboxes) but it turned out that Dr. Elspey wasn't bullshitting me after all - it IMMEDIATELY cured Tom.

Anyway I read the little booklet because, well, hey, little booklet, why not. And the towel trick was in there as a way to introduce a new adult cat into a household - confine the new cat to one room, and wipe the scent glands at the chin of each cat with a hand towel each day and put them under each others' food bowl. Sounded like a great idea to me, so I figured why not give it a shot with Moll and Tom?

The living room's interior door is a French door, too, so they'll get plenty of chances to see each other in the meantime also. And Tom shouldn't resent getting shut out of the living room since he almost never goes in there anyway - I am not kidding about how much he hates TV. If I go in there to read a book on the couch he'll eventually wander in and curl up with me, but he waits AT LEAST an hour to make sure I'm not going to turn on the hated bright-loud-stuff-box first, whereas if I hang out in the office or the reading room he's in there with me in 5 minutes or less.

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Dr. Elspey's Cat-Attract Litter - Non Snake Oil Formula, could have saved a couch and a fair bit of carpet in this house.

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I missed the heartworm question earlier - see my reply to wanton_bliss below about how the whole heartworm thing works. They can't actually reproduce in the host, so you just have to keep them from getting reinfected from more mosquito bites and you're good to go.

Note: cats don't make good hosts for heartworms and "productive" heartworm infections are almost unheard of in felines - HOWEVER felines do get infestations in places they aren't supposed to, such as the brain or the kidneys, which can cause paralysis or fatal injury on first infection. The rate is somewhere around 10-15% the rate of infection on dogs in the same area typically. So if there are heartworms in your area, you will want to make sure your cats are on heartworm preventatives too.

I'm going to have to get Tom started on them, since he's going to probably end up indoor/outdoor after Moll gets run of the house - I plan on giving her a doggie door so she can come and go to the backyard as she pleases, and since Tom lived his first couple years as an almost exclusively outdoor cat I'm pretty sure he'll wind up out there a lot too.

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What a cutie-patootie!

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Wow, my mom always made heartworms sound like a guaranteed death sentence.

But then, she's that way about forgetting to pay your bills on time.

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Adult heartworms infest the heart, never leaving it. They grow about six inches in size but very thin (like angel hair spaghetti), and produce "microfilariae", microscopic offspring that live dormant in the bloodstream. IMPORTANT: microfilariae CANNOT grow further in the host. Next, a mosquito comes along and bites the dog, sucking up some microfilariae with the blood. Inside the mosquito, the microfilariae then develop into larval forms which CAN grow into adult heartworms. The next time the mosquito bites a victim, the larval heartworms enter the bloodstream of that victim and travel through the circulatory system to the heart, where they lodge and grow into adult heartworms.

A few heartworms don't present any clinical symptoms to speak of, but the longer a dog is left without preventive medication in an environment where heartworms are present, the more the dog will accumulate as he or she is bitten again and again by infected mosquitos.

In a dog who already has heartworms, the treatment for removal goes like this: sedate dog, inject arsenic compound into the muscles of the dog's lower back, wait a day, sedate dog and inject arsenic compound into the muscles of the lower back again. The arsenic does a slow kill on the heartworms (a fast kill could cause them to go berserk in there and do serious damage as they die), but the corpses are still in the heart. Over the next five weeks or so, bits and pieces of dead heartworm dissolve and are encysted and naturally get flushed out of the heart - during that period, the dog has to be kept quiet, because vigorous physical activity greatly increases the risk that enough little heartworm bits get flushed at once to plug a brachial artery.

Once the first month or so is up, they can have some exercise again, but you're still supposed to try to keep it light, as they do still have some damage healing from the whole episode. But now it's more of a "don't strain healing tissue too much" thing than a "don't give them a thromboid embolism from dead chunks of worm plugging their arteries" thing.

... oh, and after four months you get them checked again for the presence of microfilariae in the bloodstream, which would indicate that you likely missed some of the worms with the first treatment, in which case they have to do it again.

Depending on the size of the dog and who your vet is, the treatment costs between $500 and $1000. So um. Don't ever EVER forget the heartworm prevention meds on your puppy...

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Mmm...

LUNCH TIME!

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Yeeeeeah, I'm trying very hard not to get queasy over here. Ug, those things are AWFUL! I just gave our dog her heartworm pill this morning - she loves those things. I don't have to wrap it in cheese or anything, she thinks the pill itself is a treat, which makes it nice for us.

I'm so excited that you're so excited, and I think Molly is going to be really happy there with you!

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Yeah, they're fucking horrible. I never really knew anything about heartworms until I decided to adopt Molly. The expense is BRUTAL, too, which is sad because it means so many shelter dogs are probably never going to get treated. =(

I was trying the other day to think of some way you could tackle eradicating heartworms - I mean, they very literally serve no purpose at all in the food chain, nothing can get at them! - but they've found a pretty ironclad niche. Short of either completely eradicating mosquitoes - an ecological mistake (mosquitoes DO serve a significant purpose in the food chain) even if you could somehow manage it - or regularly medicating or eradicating all dogs, INCLUDING feral dogs, which is obviously impossible, I don't see how it could be done.

The typical way to try to get rid of insect, arachnid, or nematode pests is to interfere with their reproductive cycle chemically, but these damn things just don't spend any time outside a host, which makes that problematic in the extreme. Grrrr.

I'm just thankful human immune systems make short work of the damn things. (Ever been bitten by a mosquito? I can just about guarantee you've had heartworm larvae in your bloodstream then... but lucky for you, your immune system is WAY better than a dog or cat's at killing them.)

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On a happier note, btw, I just got home from picking up a crate, bed, toys, food, bowls, and a collar and leash for Molly. =)

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ps: I emailed Sharon tonight to say if she was willing to let Molly out of observation a few days early, I was totally willing to drive to Manning tomorrow (Sunday) to get her. OMG CAN'T STAND IT WANT MY LIL' DOGGIE. =)

I'm hoping she gets up pretty early and emails me back. Srsly I'm dyin' here.

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Ack! I can't imagine having to wait to get a new pet, and that's awesome that you're ready to come there early if you can. You are exactly the kind of person Molly needs, and if you can get her early, then you have the day to bond with her before you have to go to work. I hope Sharon says it's okay. Dog snuggles in your immediate future!

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Turns out Sharon was bringing her grandkid to see a movie on the other side of Columbia today anyway - I don't even have to go to Manning! I'm meeting her near the theater an hour from now to pick Molly up. =)

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Awwww, yay!!!! Congrats on your puppyface!!!!

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Good for you. Fully grown animals are hard enough to place, much less ones with diagnosed health issues.

On a nifty little aside, Mom named her dog - a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel - Molly as well.

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