telophase | (no subject)

(no subject)

The cat was acting oddly on the boxes she sits on over by the window, and I went over and saw that she'd found a slug somewhere. She was batting at it and was visibly disappointed that it wasn't doing anything more than twitching feebly. I guess it got in when I had the window open earlier and it rained a lot on the windosill before I realized the rain was getting inside and shut the window. I rescued the slug and threw it out the front door, but I fear it is no longer for this world and is now oozing around in gastropod heaven. And now I feel vaguely guilty for not rescuing it sooner. The cat, naturally, feels no guilt at all and is now wandering around and every so often licking her paws. I hope the slime isn't anything other than icky - I don't want to clean up more barf.

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I suspect that, at worst, the slime might make for...easier passage...for your cat.

Good. The less barfing, the better.

I'm ashamed to say that I'm probably the person who reads your LJ regularly who should know the answer to your implied question, yet doesn't. I teach anatomy and physiology, did all my graduate work (M.S. in geology and a Ph.D. in Biology) on gastropods, and own cats, but I have no clue if the slug mucus will make your pet vomit. Sorry.

However, I can tell you that any slug you are likely to find in Texas is going to be an introduced garden pest. I'd pour salt on it, not rescue it.

Hee. :D Well, she hasn't thrown up yet, so it's probably fine.

I have a hard time killing things myself (well, fire ants, wasps, and scorpions excepted), but I have zero problem with cats and dogs doing so. Go figure.

I'll file away the cat not vomiting for future reference. That's useful data.

I don't like wasps either. I'll kill any of them that get in the house. Arrogant things never believe anyone will ever try to swat them. Lucky for me I live in an environment where there are no fire ants or scorpions.

As for the cats and dogs, killing pests is one of their jobs. I had cats for mousers for years when I lived on the house on the lake.

* And the combination of geology/biology sounds like my dad, who was a BA physics and PhD in wildife ecology. XD At least I got to library science and digital image management through a reasonably intuitive path: anthropology => museum studies => library. :D

Well, the path I took was fairly straightforward, too. I started off as a paleontologist (which is part of geology, not biology) and then decided to work on the living animals instead of their fossils. Your dad's path looks a bit more erratic. Did he ever explain how that happened?

BTW, your dad sounds like someone I'd have gotten along with. I'm sorry he's no longer around.

:) He went into the Air Force after undergrad, then read Konrad Lorenz' King Solomon's Ring, a classic book about animal behavior and psychology, and became fascinated with it, so when he got out of the AF, he went into wildlife science.

Thanks. :) I mostly remember the annoying things about him, like all parent-child relationships have, because he died right after I graduated college, so I never had a chance to develop a somewhat more adult relationship with him, like I have with my mother. Ah well, life does that sometimes.

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