Pet Paradise

[samls324]

Show off pics of your pets, tell stories, anything you want to share about those special animals in your life 🙂 Post as much and as often as you want!




Here are are my fluff babies DJ and Gunner (also called Lulu or Lou). They are mother and daughter. DJ is my baby and Gunner is a daddy's girl. They are approximately 9 years old and very spoiled!

This is DJ. She loves to be near me.

Miss Gunner Lou loves her catnip carrot

[samls324]

sorry I haven't been on much to reply to everyone's cute pics of their beloved furry family members. We are in the process of moving to Florida and life has been pretty hectic lately! 

[ZombieMetroAnt]

Florida?!  Nice - plenty of sunshine there for your furbabies @samls324 

[willa25]

So it looks like you guys liked Max immortalized forever in hard plastic/resin on the top of our wedding cake.. we liked it too! (thought I would follow up from my post from earlier)

Check it out.. they even recreated his MaineCoon huge "dustbuster" tail! 

Funny story, actually! At the end of the night (of our wedding) the caterer took our cake topper to wrap it up and THREW AWAY MAX! Yes, I'm saying it correctly, they threw him away!!! He was not originally attached to the base (long story) and he must have actually just gone for a walk! LOL! Anyways, I had to order another Max from the cake topper company for the keepsake but the real Max is alive and well sleeping by knees as I type this. 🙂

For those who are interested.. here is the link to the company who made the bobblehead. They are actually still in business which is pretty incredible in the wedding world. (http://www.bobblegr.am/) I think they may have been bought/combined with other bobblehead/cake topper companies b/c their name has changed but the cake toppers are the same. The name of the company is "BobbleGr.am"

This is what we got for Max:

I will say though (truthfully) one of the reasons why we chose this company was not only because they could recreate Max but also because they could create a multicultural cake topper. (I am caucasian/white and my husband is pacific islander.) I couldn't believe when I first started looking at cake toppers how limited the choices were! Maybe.. since it has been almost five years now this is not as much of a problem as it was for my husband and I (I hope) but it was at the time of our wedding.

@tsavorite @Anonymous @Tamara76

[ZombieMetroAnt]

[prettyinpa]

Yes!!  Having a black and white dog makes it twice as difficult, the black short hair shows on white things and the predominant white hair shows on all the rest of my wardrobe colors!  I thought it was bad with a long hair dog, but this short hair gets woven into everything.

[samls324]

I've given up on trying to get all the cat hair off lol

[EmmyLove]

@samls324i second this unless its a super important interview or something...like why bother, its just part of me now lol sometimes im even pulling it out of my mouth like wtf

[SootSoot]

@EmmyLoveLOL! That is me too... another cat hair in my mouth? Just another normal day...!

[willa25]

@ZombieMetroAnt.. Oh my gosh.. so true! Max has a winter coat and a summer coat. When that winter coat comes off in the spring you better watch out! The fur literally goes flying! Literally!!! (You can literally see it in the air. LOL 🙂 )

[CC3616]

So true!!!

[tsavorite]

@ZombieMetroAnt,   Yes!  This!  😉

[willa25]

I was going through old wedding photos and when I saw this I knew I immediately had to share this with the Pet Paradise thread.

The story goes at the time I was getting married, the trend was for people get to their own likeness as bobbleheads or caricatures for the top of their cake. Well I looked from company for the right one until I found a company that actually not only made you and your future spouse, but would also build a lifelike replica of your pet!!! How cool was this! 

So I literally sent in pics of my husband, myself, my wedding dress, and my beloved Max the Cat. And this is what they came up with:

(note the small cake.. it was a small wedding 🙂 ) Anyways, the cake topper is now a keepsake that we display as a beloved treasure. It not only commemorates our wedding, but it shows our lovely family!

[MariekeBT]

@willa25, If I get a cat or dog sometime before I'm married I have to do this! It's so cute! 

[niki172]

I was just coming to say "hey that bride cake topper kinda looks like you!" without reading the whole explanation. That's so cool I wish I'd had one of those for my wedding. I had fresh flowers on mine - boring!

[tsavorite]

@willa25, This is priceless!  🙂

[Anonymous]

That is so cute. We didn't have a wedding cake when my husband and I got married. But if we someday renew our vows or on a wedding anniversary day, then I would love to get a cake with our cats on it. Time to google wedding cakes with pets on them 😄

[Tamara76]

That is a beautiful cake topper and a sweet story!   💗🐱💗

[Insomniacmuffin]

For some reason whenever I think of this thread I always think "Whats going on in the Pet PARADE thread"

anyway, I have been struggling with my soul-kitty's health over the last 2 months, had some asthma, then some teeth issues. Found out Thursday that he has late stage intestinal cancer and not very long left together. 

Pretty devastated - he is my world. I alternate between being thankful for the years we've had together, the time we have left.. and bawling my face off. 

Who will give me kisses to wake me up to go to work? Who will make sure I'm not looking at anything too interesting on the computer by blocking the computer monitor? My heart hurts so bad.

Spoiler

This is Coal
my nugget..
my lump..
my rotten..
my baby..

 Edit: I bawled when I wrote this, which is why is it so vague and short.. but I'd love to share the story of how my Baby-Coal and I met..

Spoiler

About 8 years ago I was volunteering at a privately-run no-kill cat shelter. During that time, my Kitty-Baby Fuji passed away unexpectedly. I was oddly numb and withdrawn, thinking I'd never wanted to have another cat and experience that loss again. I stopped going to the shelter. We had another cat, who was my husband's best friend, and he became lonely, so my husband said 'let's get another cat, i'll pick him if you don't want to' and so we went to the shelter again.

There were several trailers on the property of kitty groups, and we went through a couple. I remained disinterested in the process and told hubby to choose. He kept dragging me through the trailers and having me look at every cat.

We got to the 2nd to last trailer and walked through the door, and all of sudden there was this screeching MEEEEEEEOOOOOWWWRRR and this black cat flung itself at me as I walked in the door, almost threw me off balance and grabbing me with his claws. Hubby tried to get him off but each time he got him off  the kitty just jumped up on to me and 'clawed in' to prevent being pried off. Purred like a motor. I was still pretty numb, Hubby said "let's take this one, since he wont come off" so we did. Since I was known there, we left with the kitty immediately.

On the way home we were driving and hubby says "let's name him Midnight, since his fur is black" and for some reason I said "no- his name is Coal"

When we got home he scrambled out of the cage and would not let me out of his sight - not even to use the bathroom! If I closed a door he HOWLED. The only place he was happy was in my arms with his face pressed into my neck. Couldn't give a F either way for hubby.

Coal and I were/are inseparable. We read books in bed together, watch youtube on the computer together. We play hide'n'seek together.. he loves it when I give him kisses on his cheeks and ears and will head-butt me for more.

I had to go across country for a week of training and missed Coal more than hubby. I've never gone on vacation or left overnight, except for that training, in 8 years because I don't want to be away from my baby-nugget.

I have been to the doctor twice to have cat hair removed from my ear canal because Coal wants to sleep on my ear/face.

When I come home he knows it's me when I'm two condo's away in the hallway and runs to the door crying. He talks to me all day and gives me all his kitty blink-kisses. When I'm watching tv he wants to be cradled like a baby and rocked, kneading his paws in the air while he falls asleep.

How did we figure out it was cancer?
I've driven my vet crazy over the years because I know every hair on my Coal's body. I know his moods like they are my own, and am very sensitive to when he's not feeling well. I've pushed my vet for testing that he wasn't sure on so many times because the 'signs' were unclear because I catch the change in him so early. Sadly, this time I was not early enough. Coal had been diagnosed with Asthma a year ago, and was taking meds daily for it, then he had mouth sores in his molars that were not responding to treatment and had to have his molars removed. This didn't help like hoped and mouth sores remained. Vet thought it was a food allergy, so Coal went on a raw diet to eliminate possible allergens. A few months go by - Then Coal stopped eating. Looking back, the respiratory issue, mouth sores, etc. are all inked back to the cancer.. but it wasn't until it progressed to the anorexia stage that we even thought to do an ultrasound and start suspecting cancer. The only good thing was that the medication for the asthma is actually the same as for the cancer, just that the dose was very low before (prednisone) so that may have bought me some extra time with him that I didn't know I was getting.

Love my baby.

[prettyinpa]

@Insomniacmuffin-  What a touching story. I'm so sorry that your beloved Coal has cancer, it must be so hard for you. Thanks for sharing.

[samls324]

so sorry to hear about Coal. 😞

[CC3616]

Love and hugs!! What a sweet story, thanks for sharing it with us ❤️