Just FYI, Pops is dictating this for me, since, you know, I have no thumbs to work the mouse, and whenever I use the touchscreen, I want to rub my rear end on it to see what happens and it makes Humom mad.

Anyway, Humom and I got our Petbox in the mail the other day. One of the things in there was Pet Grass. She carefully unpackaged it, planted it, watered it, and set it in the window sill. About five days later, we had grass! Pet grass!

She took the planter out of the sill and let Molly and me have a go at it. I tried to get it to play with me, but it would not move. I began to suspect we had a defective pot of pet grass.

Can it chase the red dot? No.

Can it clean its own fanny? Not even close.

Can it try to cover up the half-eaten plate of food? Nope.

Can it walk on Humom's head when she's trying to nap? Not a chance.

So... what kind of a pet is Pet Grass? No good kind of pet I can think of. At least Pet Rocks had googly eyes. Pet cats are awesome. Pet dogs smell bad, but are tolerable. Pet grass... I think I'll just have it as a snack.

Dispatches from Pops: GoDaddy Misses Again

If you have not already seen it, GoDaddy has recently pre-released its commercial for the Super Bowl, and there has been quite a flap around it. Animal rights groups are crying fowl over the ad, which depicts a puppy falling out of the open bed of a pickup, and through a series of struggles finally makes its way home. The owner is thrilled to see the puppy return to its home, but the "joke" comes in when they explain it is not because they were heartsick over the loss of the dog, but because they had just sold the brave but ultimately doomed pooch on a GoDaddy-created website. They then unceremoniously place the puppy in a box, and load the box into a delivery van.

I can see why people are upset. I am sure the idea is to riff on the decades of heartstring-pulling commercials from Budweiser and others. Using animals to make drinking their brew or consuming their product seem like the granola thing to do is a tried and true way to get your commercial talked about and shared on social media. Undoubtedly, an ad exec for GoDaddy came up with the idea, and pitched the theory that the twist of selling and shipping the dog within moments of its return would really be a gut-busting, Facebook-sharing, water cooler-talking way to create buzz.

One of the theories of humor surrounds creating the biggest laugh by pushing the very limit of social acceptability. This idea was fabulously examined in the movie The Aristocrats. And GoDaddy has made pushing the limits of acceptability a regular business practice - remember the first Super Bowl ads for GoDaddy were so overtly sexual that many thought they should not have been aired in the first place.

What GoDaddy forgot is that we have seen far too much press around the abuse, maltreatment, and neglect of animals. Cruelty to animals has become a common thing on the evening news or online news sites, and there are few rational and well-adjusted people who are not impacted by the stories.

Having worked with the Central Oklahoma Humane Society for so many years, I have become a true believer in adopting rather than buying an animal. But selling a dog online might not by itself be enough to turn my stomach.

Letting dogs ride unprotected in the back of a pickup is ignorant and dangerous, but living in Oklahoma we see a lot of farm dogs in the back of a truck.

But the idea of an animal being no more than a profit center, and only being excited because the people in the commercial were about to lose income, showed the sale was more valuable to them than the life of the animal itself. And to put the puppy IN A BOX? That is not just unfunny, it is a portrayal of truly terrible people. And if truly terrible people use GoDaddy, then I most certainly do not want to.

I asked Sauerkraut about it, thinking she would have some valuable input about animal rights. Her response to watching the commercial: "Look pops! A box! I love boxes!"

*sigh*

UPDATE: GoDaddy pulled the ad. Hooray! ...but I still will not use GoDaddy for their lack of understanding and common sense.

Dispatches from Pops: One Year Ago Today

I can hardly believe that it has been one year, but exactly 365 days ago, Sauerkraut became a permanent part of our family.

When she first came to us in January 2014, she was a runty, grouchy looking little thing. I thought, well, we have the little cousin of Grumpy Cat for a while. She was instantly a fan of sitting, climbing, and sleeping on my shoulder. Me, not having been raised with cats, was somewhat dismayed. A cat on my shoulder was not something I initially took to. But with Sauerkraut, it did not take long for her to firmly, permanently make her own room in my heart.

We quickly learned she had some challenges. She would not react like a normal cat. When you stood right behind her and clapped your hands, not even an ear would twitch, and she gave no indication she heard you. She would not react to loud noises, or any noises at all really. We thought there was a possibility she was deaf. We have since learned she is not deaf, but only reacts when she is good and ready to. Sometimes she does not do what a cat should do to protect herself from danger, which sometimes alarms us!

After her spay surgery and our adoption of her, we later found out she has a heart murmur. It is not a bad one, but is detectable with just a stethoscope.

After watching her behavior, Humom has realized Sauerkraut likely also has Feline Hyperesthesia, also known as "Twitchy Cat Syndrome". Sometimes the fur along her back will ripple, and she will suddenly start scratching herself incessantly. She has recently scratched her chin so obsessively that she has worn the fur away in spots. The disorder will also display itself in sudden, unprovoked running or jerking, or twitching and thumping of her tail, as if she was startled. Hyperesthesia is an abnormal sensitivity of the skin, and is most commonly caused by neurological disorder.

Interestingly, one of the best treatments for Twitchy Cat Syndrome is... wearing clothes. Which we trained her to do from a very early age. Since she was to the vet so often when she was a kitten, Humom trained her to be in a harness and walk on a leash. Sometimes she only wants to sit and eat the grass in the front yard, but she is comfortable with the harness. A corollary to that has been to dress her up in kitten clothes, and we got in the habit of putting little dresses or bow ties on her. She took to it immediately, and usually is much more eager for us to put it on than take it off from her. When she hears the bag of clothes coming out, she runs right to us from wherever she is in the house.

There have been some detractors to our dressing Sauerkraut in clothes, that "cats do not like that" or "it is not normal" but it has been the best treatment for her disorder you could imagine.

In any case, I look back on the past year with awe and amazement, that such a little disorderly, drool-in-her-sleep, grouchy-looking creature could occupy such a large parcel of real estate in my heart.

I am truly blessed to be her Pops.