please solve my problems.

A couple of smaller problems, anyway.

I’ve got two glasses stuck together. One is a small, square glass. It’s trapped inside a larger mug. I found them in the cabinet this way, and they are very much in love and don’t want to be separated.

I tried running them under hot water, submerging them in cold water, gently rapping it against a hard object, and wiggling them back and forth. I also froze them, shook them, and talked gently to them. Last night Dan suggested I bury them in a Pet Cemetary, and I wondered if I was going to have to choose one of them to smash and one of them to keep. Or should they just stay together forever because it’s the only way I’ll keep from slicing one or both of my hands open?

Problem number two is a bigger problem.

Taylor hurt his leg late last year. He must have smacked one of us too harshly and pulled a ligament in his front right leg. That’s what the vet said, anyway. At the time, he suggested two options: putting Taylor in a cast for six weeks, which would probably make him angry, or putting Taylor on cage rest for six weeks, which would make him furious. Since Taylor spends 89% of his day sitting absolutely still, I asked if we could let it heal naturally. The doc said that sounded like a fine idea, as long as Taylor took it easy. He also said that it would probably never heal all the way, and that Taylor would probably always walk with a little bit of a limp.

Considering he’s a thirteen-year old, French-Canadian bruiser and ex-goalie, it seemed to fit his persona.

The leg was healing and he was getting around better, jumping up onto the bed and the chair with ease. It must have healed so much, in fact, that this week he celebrated by smacking the crap out of Cal, causing him to re-injure his leg.

Now he’s limping much worse than he was before, and today, for the first time, I heard him whimpering, holding his leg up, having just jumped down from the chair. Like a stubborn old man, he refuses to curb his jumping and smacking, and he keeps sitting there licking his leg (he’s worn a sore into it twice), looking all pouty. And, since he can’t run around like he usually does, he’s gotten ridiculously fat in the past two months. He sits like a bean bag.

I’ve scheduled an appointment with the vet for tomorrow morning, but the vet always acts like veterinary medicine is a giant guessing game, and basically asks me what I want to do with the injured or ill animal. I know it’s going to be the same thing again: cast or cage. I’m leaning towards nothing and pain meds, and there’s no way I’m ever putting Taylor in a cage (And you suck it, Ray Prewitt. I know how happy you’d be if Taylor actually became the official “Cat in a Cage.”) But is a cast something that a cat can handle? And I’m not making him wear one of those humiliating funnel heads.

Taylor is a grumpy, pissed-off, snitty cat who showers me with love and affection for about three minutes of every day. The rest of that time he’d like to eat or sleep and he’d really like for you to leave him alone. Is a cast going to drive him into a depression from which he’ll never recover? Keep in mind that this is a cat who’s got OCD to the point where wind makes him chew a sore in his leg.

… aw, man.

I’m a crazy lady.

I’m a crazy cat lady asking strangers to help her with her stuck dishes. And today I made cookies but there’s nobody here to eat them.

DO YOU KNOW WHICH BUS GETS ME TO THE EYE DOCTOR? You look like such a nice, young man. Have you seen my socks? I just put them down for a second and now… Hey! Was that Milton Bearle on that motorcycle? He didn’t have to be such an asshole.

My cat’s got a limp and I can’t get my glasses unstuck. Want a cookie?

Help.

Leave a Reply

Comments (

)

  1. Rita

    That COOKING OIL referenced in the previous entry? Try getting a little of that between the cup and the glass!

  2. alphaharpy

    Put ice in the inside glass while putting the outside glass in hot water. The ice makes the inner one shrink, the hot water makes the outer one expand. It sounds like with the things you tried, you were doing the same thing to both glasses, so they were contracting and expanding at the same time, and therefore remaining in their unholy embrace.

  3. Missy

    Go with the cast. My cat sliced her leg open on a piece of broken glass and the vet had to put a cast over the stiches. She would bite at it and try scratching it the first few days then it was almost like she forgot about it. I would definately recommend the cast.

  4. Patti

    I am clueless with the glasses, you already tried all my ideas.But my semi-retarded cat Craig once broke his leg jumping about three feet off a fence into soft grass (I don’t know). We had him casted and he did just fine. We got him a cheerful bright green cast (they let us pick colors, just like when you break your arm playing volleyball in junior high) and we signed it for him. He seemed cool with it. He walked around all pitter-pitter-pat-THUMP for a few weeks, and that was that.

  5. wen

    Have you tried liquid dish soap? Try squirting it down the sides of the glass if you can. It needs lubrication. Maybe beer?I’m wondering if a cast is a good thing for your OTHER cat… considering that Taylor (AKA Smacky McCrankyCat)loves to hit things. Maybe beer?

  6. Jen Z

    I might try to help with the glasses if you were to tell me where you got that incredibly cute black and pink combo that you’re wearing. Yum. I want it.Seriously, I have no idea what to do about the glasses. That’s happened to me before. I wonder if there’s some physics trick you can use. Put ice water into the inside glass, wait a little while, put the outer glass (with the inner glass inside it, obviously) into a pot of very hot water, and try to pull them apart at that magical moment when the outer glass is hot and the inner glass is still cold?? Worth trying, maybe.

  7. mary ann

    Do you have a dishwasher? Our dishwasher magically unsticks the glasses when they do that. You stick them in one their sides and then when it’s just finished, you grab (with a towel or something, don’t burn your hands) the glasses and pull them apart. I don’t know if the washing machine would have the same effect if a dishwasher is not available, but it seems to me that it would. Or you might end up with a washing machine full of glass shards. Hard to say.I think the cast would be fine. Well, I mean, it would be a miserable six weeks watching the cat find new ways to attempt to remove the cast, but once that’s over, I don’t think he’d be scarred for life.

  8. sbmaya

    Dear Pamie,First, my condolences (apologies? what IS the word here, please, you’re a writer) on being passed for the show. I was all excited for you.Second: I had a cat who broke, yes BROKE his back foot in the pull of a drawer once, walked around on it sans limp for a week before announcing, loudly, that he was Very hurt, need vet now. We had his poor little paw casted up to his leg and guess what? he climbed about 20 feet up into a tree with it on. The leg healed just fine and Gilligan had a happy life. I vote ‘cast’ – he’ll be grouchy, but it’ll be fixed.Third: Had exact same situation with my husbands’ favorite Echo & the Bunnymen mug and one of my favorite glasses. Did all of the above. Repeated the freezing bit, removed and ran them under hot water. Froze again. Waited a week. Ran under water. They popped apart. Sometimes persistence pays off. Good luck.PS Am a huge fan of this site and wish you much luck on future projects.

  9. Ellen

    You’ll definitely have to run the glasses through the dishwasher afterwards, but try some WD-40. Same theory as the dish soap (lubricate the surface to facilitate movement), but a little less likely to make it even stickier if it doesn’t work.And as miserable as the cat will be with the cast, he’ll be a lot more miserable if it becomes a permanent issue, which is more likely if you try to let it heal on its own.

  10. Catherine

    Cook’s Illustrated just did a quick tip on stuck glasses. Try putting ice in the inside one, and submerge the outside one in some warm tap water. The temperature difference should help loosen the seal.Unfortunately, Cook’s Illustrated did not do a quick tip on injured kitties. I’m very sorry.

  11. Betsy

    I second (third? fourth?) the cast. Our very timid cat Floyd developed an open wound on one of his hocks that keeps opening, getting infected, etc. We were very hesitant to put him in an e-collar and a full-leg bandage, because he just seemed so bummed out by it all. But we’ve been amazed at how quickly he adjusted to it all. He’s also gotten really tolerant of being handled so much by us and the vet, which used to totally freak him out. Sadly, I think the whole thing has been more traumatic for us than for him.

  12. Val

    Okay. I have a theory on vets. I think they are like mechanics… you can’t really believe anything they say because you wouldn’t know if they were lying or not anyway. I say the same thing about dentists. Last year my cat hurt his leg jumping after one of those feather-attached-to-elastic deals. There was a loud pop and he darted under a chair and refused to come out. When he did finally poke his head out he had a horribly pathetic limp and looked at me with that, “Mommy, why do you want to hurt me?” face. I took him to the vet and they x-rayed him and poked and prodded and announced he had a torn ACL. They recommended a $5000 surgery. As a college student at the time and generally bad pet parent I told them to suck it and took him home. I called my cousin, who is a vet far away and she said she had NEVER heard of a cat with a torn ACL (apparently it’s common in small dogs) her 15 years in the business and her boss who had 30+ years had only seen it once. With all that said, she told me that he didn’t need surgery because it would heal on it’s own if I just gave him some time, and, if he seemed incapable of not aggravating it, wrapping his paw in an Ace bandage. So, that’s exactly what I did. And saved myself $5k in vet bills. I vote for wrapping him yourself. If it doesn’t seem to help, THEN go to the cast.

  13. Jasmine

    Pour whatever cooking oil you have into the glasses, then put on an oven mitt (or wrap a towel around your hand) and pull.

  14. Scott

    Re: Stuck glassesI’ve recovered from two cases of conjoined glassware by (1) pouring enough lubricant into the outer container to completely cover the contact points, (2) wiggling them as much as possible to try and get the lubricating agent into the junction, (3) waiting overnight before repeating step 2. One took two cycles, the other three. The three cycle case employed peanut oil; Astroglide (hey, it was around and not too viscous) freed the other pair. I’d speculate that the agitation is more important than the particular lube used.Re: Feline problemsSorry, can’t help on this problem [either].Best wishes for the ailing cat; I hope Taylor makes a quick recovery.

  15. christina

    I rescued a stray who was hit by a car and her leg broke in two places. The vet wanted to operate, but for a cat that I wasn’t sure I could even keep, I couldn’t justify the two grand it was going to cost. We went with the cast and her leg healed perfectly in about two months. At one point the cast fell off, so my only advice would be to make sure you take him in exactly when they tell you the cast needs to be changed. Three years later, she’s happy and healthy and has absolutely no limp.

  16. Krista

    The cast is a no-brainer here. He’s really not going to be traumatized by it as much as you think. It will probably enable rather than hinder his smacking. He might even like the extra oomph it gives him.

  17. katie

    it sounds like maybe there’s a vacuum between the two glasses, if you can get something really thin but strong like a butter knife and use it to geeeently push between them and make a gap between the two cups (even if it’s just a tiny one) then air will go into the vacuum and they’ll separate. maybe. fingers crossed?

  18. Jeff Harrell

    I vote cast too. When I was a kid we had a family Siamese who broke or dislocated a back leg. (I can’t remember. I was only four or five at the time.) He was in a cast for a few weeks, and it bugged the crap out of him, but it came off and he was fine. Went on to live a long, happy life.

  19. Jessica

    I’ve had some experience with animals in casts (not domestic ones though). So I’m happy to read many people have successfully casted their kitties with good results.I just wanted to give my 2 cents that as funny as a feline Dr. House is in my head, long term (1 week+) pain meds will probably hurt his kidneys and cause more problems.

  20. Lyn Never

    When my cranky old girl was in a cast several years ago, she had one day of sitting around with her scrunchy face on and then she adapted, though that included whacking the other animals with the cast. The only trouble she had was laying down comfortably, so she used the cast to clear every table, dresser, and windowsill in the house so she could stretch out there and dangle her club off the side. I kind of think she missed it when it was gone, because it took so much longer to knock everything off the dresser the old fashioned way.This may not bode well for the healing properties of a cast if Taylor’s just going to use it as a weapon, but possibly it will slow him down enough that his targets can get away before he really gets going.

  21. Pam

    Don’t know about the glasses. Seems you’ve tried everything. Its happened to me before too and I just kept messing with them until I got them apart.About the cast. I had a cat (Polly) that broke her leg and had to have a cast. She did really well with it. No depression. Could be because every time she used the cat box she got poop on the cast!! But that’s nothing that a little tape and a plastic baggie won’t cure…right?Seriously iff he’s in pain and hurting, I’d go for the cast. He’ll be fine. Honest.

  22. Stephanie

    Another vote for dishsoap in the glass. And if it doesn’t work at first, and you don’t mind wasting a huge container of dishsoap, absolutely fill the outer mug with the soap. That way you knwo that the glass is lubricated anywhere it is possible to lubricate it.However, I have no cats.

  23. Kristina

    Pamie,Do the cast. We had a cat that came home with every kind of dead critter a cat can catch and was hit by a car. All he suffered was a broken leg, whuch was in a cast until he decided to pull it off himself by wedging it under a stairstep and yanking himself out. Yes, this was the day before he was scheduled to go to the vet to have it removed. He still hunted like crazy AND saved us some money on a vet bill.Best of luck,Kristina

  24. AB

    Is there a reason why you don’t just throw the glasses away?

  25. heather

    I had my now nearly 12 year old cat in a cast (front paw) when she was a kitten, and she did fine with it. She could walk on it and did, but she also sometimes hopped along on the three good paws. I never caught her trying to take the cast off; in fact, when it was removed, it still looked almost new. Go ahead with the cast; it shouldn’t be a problem at all.

  26. Cori

    Go with the cast. Seriously. Otherwise, it’ll never heal properly.And maybe, find a new vet. One that will give you real advice…

  27. Quesa

    I vote cast for kitty. He may even be proud of it, whereas if he is sentenced to a cage, he would think he’s being punished. Good luck.

  28. Courtney

    Dear Pamie,I’m sorry to hear about Taylor’s leg. I’m a veterinary technician, and I would say that a cast is the best way to go at this point. Most cats will fight it a bit at first, but they do get used it and adapt pretty quickly. It’s much harder on the owners, who have to stand back and watch them do so. Unfortunately, a lot of veterinary medicine can be a guessing game, given that most owners are reluctant to go to enormous expense for the tests necessary for confirmation, but I would start with the cast and go from there. Just my most humble of opinions – hope he’s feeling better soon!

  29. Bethiclaus

    I really think you should consider the cast. He’s licking sores into the leg already. The cast will protect it while it heals. If he’s mostly a blob anyway, it won’t likely make too much difference.

  30. Chito

    I say cast, fool. Even if the cat goes from three minutes a day to two of lovey love, that is much better than him having to walk around in pain all the time. Who knows? He might be nicer afterwards.Try WD-40 on the glasses. That stuff is the BOMB! My yellow key was sticking on my Guitar Hero controller and we WD-40’d it and it fixed it up hardcore. There’s also this stuff called PB Blaster that I’ve never tried, but it is advertised to get things unstuck EASY, yo.Quit blaming me for MySpace. And put me back as your number one friend, damnit.

  31. Secretly Stephie

    Set them in a bowl. Surround the outer glass with warm water. Then fill the inner glass with cold water. The inner glass will contract and the outer glass will expand, so it should be loose in a couple of minutes.And I’m not a cat owner, but I think any creature would prefer cast over cage. It will suck for him, but it’s better than long-term whimpering.

  32. Amanda

    I vote cast, too.Years ago, Princess had to get a (hot pink!) cast on her front paw for a couple of weeks, and she was fine.She’d even sit on the windowsill with her cast gracefully and demurely crossed over her other paw.And it was amusing for me, too, because she walked with this windmill-like gait – bup-bup-bup-thwap, bup-bup-bup-thwap.

  33. pamie

    I knew that was Chito before I ever saw his name.Jen Z– The top I’ve had for so long I can’t remember where I bought it. Wait. Now I do: Ross. And the sweater is by Lux. I got it on Amazon when Urban Outfitters didn’t carry it.SBMAYA– Thank you.AB — I truly appreciate how you know everything in life is disposable.Others have emailed with the Mr. Wizard’s World-like double-temperature submersion theory, so I will give it a try… after Taylor’s appointment in a couple of hours.You guys are making me feel better about the cast, which is what I’d been leaning toward the entire time. Thanks.

  34. Sandra

    Just a note about the glasses, it’s easier to separate them by turning, rather than pulling…

  35. clifftorres

    I would say the wd-40 if the dual temperature doesn’t work.

  36. j

    just be glad that your cat doesn’t have cancer on his leg. mine did (from her vaccines!) and we had to have it amputated… the funny thing is, now she acts almost like she never had a 4th. the only holdover is the way she sometimes “scratches” her head with that missing leg – you can see the hip joint working and her brain thinking she is getting scratched on that side.sad, but funny.good luck! just think of how happy he’ll be when he gets the cast off.

  37. Ally

    I say cast. for sure. My cat had a cast once, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. He was fine with it. It was my other cat who had the problem. Apparently the cast freaked my other cat out, and she would constantly hiss at the cast-cat (they are usually the best of friends).

  38. Bubbles

    Uhm… everyone else has weighed in on the cast and the cups… can I have a cookie? ;)But for the record I’m another vote for cast, and an undecided but a lot of the ideas mentioned sound good for the glasses. Oh and check out the cute or sad category on cuteoverload.com. It has quite a few pics of creatures in casts.

  39. MA

    Letting the leg heal naturally is a great idea, but it sounds like all the jumping could make it difficult for the leg to heal. Have you tried setting up ramps to the places Taylor likes to jump on? Maybe one to his favorite chair; one to the bed; one to the window? A friend of mine had a cat once who was older and had arthritis. So she set up ramps (made of slats of wood covered with towels; her husband actually used a staple gun to affix the towels to the wood).Otherwise, I’d probably go with an ace bandage and, if that fails, the cast.

  40. Jamie

    My cat went up into the inside of a car’s engine and of course got beat up all to shreds when we turned it on. She broke her leg in the process and we put a cast on her. She was only a few months old so she was extraordinarly active; we had to also leave her in a cage with the cast and she wasn’t happy, she tried to bite off the cast, and whenever she would get out she would go running through the house flapping the cast-laden leg behind her. But she got used to it and the leg healed.I would go with the cast just because if Taylor is less active already, he should be able to handle it after a little bit of complaint.

  41. Jenny

    I love you being crazy cat lady Pamie. It makes crazy cat lady me feel like I’m not alone. :)Go with the cast. If I’ve learned anything from the Vet guessing game it’s to take care of the problem, or it’ll keep coming back (even though the Vet always says you could do any of many options, none of which are the final solution that will surely solve it.)I agree that the cage is a BAD idea. But go with the cast. Who knows? Maybe he’ll use it to his advantage in Cal-fights. It’s like carrying a bat instead of fighting bare-knuckled.As for the stuck cups? Let them love. Drink out of it as it is. One day, when they grow tired of eachother, they’ll break up. Probalby when they’re full of wine and mid-sip.

  42. Julia_82

    Throw the cup/mug away. This happened to me about a month ago at work and nothing I did worked. Just chuck them out.

  43. braden

    Will you tell us what you decide to do with the cat? I vote for cast.