There’s More Than One Way To Scan A Cat

That’s what my father said after I mentioned that I had microchips implanted in my cats. When I posted on Facebook that I’d had this done, the responses were: “Feline Borgs” and “Are they spies?” (My reply: “I can’t say”.)

I’ve written here before about my struggle about whether to allow my cats to be indoor/outdoor cats. Well, I’m still struggling. While Johnny wears his collar like a gentleman, Charlie refuses to wear his. He is the Houdini of feline borgs, and manages to extract all 16 pounds of himself from any kind of collar, every time. So I got the chip. But it migrated. Or at least that’s what I thought, a few days later, as I was petting him and noticed a bump on his haunch—it felt like a grain of rice, just under the skin. I looked up the details of the microchip, and that is exactly how it is described. The company I used claims to have developed a special non-migrating chip. I waited a few more days, and it was still there, so off to the vet we went. The vet tech (whom I adore big time) took Charlie in the back, then called me in shortly after.

“He’s fine,” he said. “See? He scans just fine.” And with that, he took a large scan gun and beamed it at Charlie’s shoulder scruff, and 14 digit code immediately popped up on the scan gun. I showed him where I felt the alleged migratory chip, and he felt it, paused, and told me that’s where they did the feline leukemia booster shot. Normally they do that shot in the shoulder, but since the cats were getting the microchip that day (injected subcutaneously), they got the booster in the haunch instead.

Mystery solved, cat scans just fine. Now explain this: since getting the microchip, Charlie’s been wearing his collar non-stop.

For more info on the Home Again microchip and to help lost pets in your area, check out: www.homeagain.com

When Living By the Seashore...

We have a friend* who just recently moved from the city to the small seaside town where we live. Having made a similar move, from New York city to this small town, I can relate. At first it’s too quiet. Too clean. Everyone is in shape, or at least seems to exercise regularly—and probably takes a daily multivitamin too. Families seem neatly shaped, stacked in place with perfect parents, offspring, and every possible possession, from stroller to Subaru, necessary to propell that family forward for the next twenty years till the children go to college. You feel funny, like you might suddenly and loudly curse in Starbucks for no reason, or that your library books (if you roll that way!) will be monitered, or that the music coming out of your apartment windows will reveal you to be what you really are: a city person misplaced in a small, beautiful, town.

But I give our friend props. Within a month, he’s worked on a friend’s sailboat getting it prepped to go in the water, he’s discovered and grilled a new kind of marinated meat from the local grocery store, and he bought his dog Lucy this collar. 

It took me living here about as long as I’d lived in Manhattan in order to loosen the grip on metropolis pace—and that’s with a few years in Brooklyn as a transition before moving here. I embraced the suburban supermarket instead of the deli at the corner, but it’s taken some time to get into the pace of “town”. Once here, the city still appeals. But there’s no need to wear it. Where we are is alright by me. 

*okay, you guessed it, the friend is "Food Guy", whose cuddly yet stylin' Boxer Lucy is staying with us this week.