Stop peeing on my couch!

Cats have always been a part of my life. I adore their cuddles, their friendly meows and their soothing purrs. Nothing is better than coming home from a hard day and having my kitties walk figure eights through my legs and look at me with loving stares.

When things go bad with cats, however, it always seems like the end of the world, and you are left with the questions, why me? why my cat?

My cat had been peeing literally everywhere for (what seemed almost every day, but was more weekly) the past four months. I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I automatically started to panic and dollar signs danced in my head as I Bing'ed every potential cause of this highly annoying problem.

First thing first, we brought her in to the vet to run a series of tests - urinalysis, blood work, ultra sounds, you name it! We had to start with what would be the most obvious cause, kidney stones or bladder infection.

All the results came back negative. This was great news, but also left us with the unanswered question.. Why is she doing this?

I then began to be much more visual around the house and paying attention to her behaviour and where the pee was. I noticed that she would pee around any open area to the outdoors (windows, doors, and furniture around these areas).

I also realized that there had been a new cat in the neighborhood that decided that this area was his turf, and had been jumping over on to our balcony and terrorizing my ladies through the sliding glass door.

I automatically put two and two together. My little lady was being territorial and spraying, trying to tell this cat to F-off and that this was ours and only our territory. I know what you are thinking, a female cat that sprays? Yes. I know, I was surprised too. I had never before heard of a female cat spraying.

We literally tried everything to deter this horrible nuisance, from blocking off all the windows with cardboard, to buying anti-feline spray to deter her from her usual marking spots (one being peeing on our $2000 couch.. yeaaaa).

Absolutely nothing was successful.

I had a lot of "encouraging suggestions" that maybe I should get rid of my cat. No. That was in no way an option. When you take on the responsibility of owning a pet, you are also agreeing to all the headaches they come with, let that be large vet bills, ruined furniture, pooh, pee or vomit. EVERYTHING and ANYTHING. If you are not willing to deal with all the headaches that comes with owning a pet, then don't get one.It's as simple as that. Pets are for life.

After many sleepless nights and crying episodes from finding yet another pee spot on the couch, we have finally solved the problem. Perhaps it is just luck, but I like to think that I played a role in stopping this horrendous behaviour.

So, how did we do it? First thing, get rid of the problem ie. the "other" cat. I got so pissed off one day when he jumped over to our balcony, that I chased the damn thing away and down the alley way throwing rocks to scare him away for good (calm down animal activists, I wasn't throwing rocks AT him). Next, my little lady now sleeps in the bathroom at night with a little beddie, food, water and a litter box. And honestly? She loves it. Every single night, she runs to the bathroom, jumps in her beddie and starts kneading the feather blanket as if she is getting ready for bed. She loves her "room." Also, whenever I leave the house, I now put a blanket on the couch. So now when I come home, I come home to my kitty sleeping on the couch, opposed to peeing on it.

Hopefully no one else is suffering from this same problem. And if you are, hopefully my story has been able to aid you in solving your dilemma. I know it is hard, and sometimes the idea of kicking our pets to the curb seems like a good idea at them time, but there is always a solution. If a cat is capable of starting something, they are more than capable of stopping. Patience is a virtue people! Patience, patience, patience.

Until next time..

Shut the hell up

Sometimes people need to shut their faces and mind their own business.

I am so sick and tired of people telling me that dental school is "hard to get into." Do you honestly think that I don't already know this little tid bit of information?! Look, I know it's "hard to get into," and it really doesn't help my situation, or my confidence, to remind me of it.

I have pretty much narrowed people's ignorance down to the fact that they are just simply jealous. I am sorry that you are not happy in your own pathetic life, or job for that matter, that you have to bring me down. I cannot help the fact that you didn't go to school to better yourself, and if you did go to school, that you didn't choose the right field, or were too lazy to spend extra time in school to be in a better program.

Why all this frustration all of a sudden, you ask? Well let me tell you. Yesterday was "info night" at my college. I had just gotten out of my English class and decided to see what it was all about.. and to enter into their draw to win $500 towards tuition. I am drawn to anything teeth, so I am automatically drawn towards to the Dental Hygiene booth and Denturist booth. They ask me if I am planning on applying for their programs, and I say no and explain what I am actually going for, a dentist. The next thing that comes out of their mouths astonishes me: They tell me that I need to be in the 90 percential to even be considered into top instituions, and they inform me of the price (DO THEY HONESTLY THINK I DO NOT KNOW THIS CRAP!?!?). They then go on to tell me that their program is cheaper and it takes less time.. duh, because in the end I won't have a "Dr." infront of my name!
I just honestly could not believe their response to me. No "good luck, you'll do great," just a bunch of discouragement to get me to enter their program. These, ladies and gentlemen, are the people that build our futures. They are our educators, and they are discouraging us.

I've encountered this problem before with other people, people that aren't important. Usually people that I have worked with in the past (again, jealousy) and random customers that I have delt with in the past while working in the sales industry. But to have this response from an educator just baffles me. I wish I would have said something, but I am always so taken back from their responses that I just stand there starting at them, wondering if I really just heard what they truely said.

So, word of advice. Do NOT tell students, or anyone for that matter, that they cannot make it. You have no idea what that individual is capable of. Also, you have no idea whether or not that ignorant comment you just made was enough to destroy that persons dream because they were already having doubts. Simply keep your mouth shut of your oh-so lame ass comments, and instead give a welcoming smile and tell them that they can do anything they set their mind to.

Until next time..

Technology nightmares

For the past month or so, I had been having insane computer problems; the internet was slow, pages wouldn't scroll down, my firewall kept disabling, the list goes on. During the past week, it got beyond bad. I couldn't even go on Facebook (Gasp!) without having to refresh the browsing page because it was running so damn slow.

So, today, I decided to get down to business and figure out what in God's green earth was going on. I did everything. I started off by running a full scan. Two hours later, I had to clean out the disk drive and perform a disk defragmenter thing, you know, and all that jazz. After all that was finished, about an hour later, I had to update my computer. That nasty ass update took three hours (?!). So now I am thinking that I must have had some sort of luck in fixing my computer. No dice. My antivirus is now yielding a huge red "X" and saying that my computer is at risk. Whattttttttt.

Praise the Lord that I have a smart phone, and thus have access to the almighty internet, so I go researching as to what to do next. To my astonishment, I find out that my antivirus program is the down right culprit. Ohhh the irony. Apparently, in 2000, the owner of the once fabulous antivirus program, McAfee, had decided to sell his company and from there it went all down hill. People are having problems left, right and center with this damn program, and it even makes up its own viruses. Lovely.

So, on I go to uninstall this "antivirus" protection. All these warnings pop up that say, "WARNING! You are disabling necessary antivirus protection and exposing your computer to threats." Pffffft.. as long as I am done with your ass, I don't see this being an issue. I click the "proceed to uninstall" button and voila! my computer is working like it did when I opened it up from its packaging back on Christmas day.

Lesson of the day, do not, and I repeat not, buy or use McAfee antivirus protection. I have never had so many problems in my technological life. Don't be a cheap ass (like I was being) and just stick with what works. ie. Norton.

Until next time..