Benedict XVI's Cats (And Papal Pets in general)

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That’s a sweet story. Re the thyroid issues, they have a radioactive iodine thyroid treatment for the catties now, which I just got successfully for one of my older girls, but it makes their doo doo into hazmat for a couple weeks, which is a hassle. I also adopted a large male cat last year who had been ditched by his previous owners and was visiting me and all the neighbors for food, because there were urban coyotes in the area who had just eaten a dachshund and I decided Thomas (who actually first arrived on my back porch hollering for food late on Christmas night as I was rushing to Midnight Mass) was too nice to be coyote dinner.
 
Canon 331: “By virtue of his office he possesses supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church, which he is always able to exercise freely.”

Canon 331 (a) (Inferred): Except for cats.
 
Well I have a fresh coyote story. This evening while eating dinner my wife and I heard what we thought was one of the neighbour’s dogs (one of which is the border collie I have a secret relationship with) howling in distress. But then it got REALLY loud and weird so I went out to investigate as did my neighbour. On the property adjoining ours (an uninhabited wood), less than 30 ft away was a very large coyote pacing back and forth, howling its lungs out. Our presence did not seem to alarm it, so I suspected it was either rabid or injured or something, so I called the game wardens, but then he sauntered off into the woods so we called off the warden.

Needless to say, Ruby will be kept safely inside for a while…
 
But you have to read footnote 351B very carefully in light of the Holy Father’s letter to the bishops of Argentina.
The Holy Father’s pastoral accompaniment for those who suffer from bi-pet identity is very controversial.
 
I would speak to your spiritual director. No one here is qualified to address your unusual pet tendencies.
 
OraLabora said:
I have a secret life and really have bi-pet identity…
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Bi-pet is okay but tri-pet is better. I once met a couple who had a pet boa constrictor, said to be the only snake species that can recognize different people and form attachments with them, as other pets do. The downside is feeding it: this one’s menu was a live guinea pig once a week. So when you’re ready to branch out …
 
OraLabora said:
It was a very cold night in March when we got home (about -20C), the kitten was shivering, and was looking at us with those longing “please help me” eyes.
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Yeah, those.Shortly after we had to have one put to sleep (he was going to get bronchitis abut monthly until it wore him out, so he spent most days suffering), a large half-siamese kitten appeared in our back yard (after trying the neighbor unsuccessfully).

I ordered the kids not to feed it, but it didn’t go away.

Then one day, it was clearly suffering (wobbly) from starvation, and it followed me back and forth–as I was mowing the lawn with a gas mower!

So I broke down. (this is the one that fetches–actually fetches bottle caps, as opposed to bringing things back to where he was playing. When he finds one, he’ll drop it at our feet and wait expectantly, then bound after it . . .)
OraLabora said:
She’s an indoor cat except that we let her out in daylight tied to a very long leash
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The one leaning on my arm (and was just sitting on my shoulder in my recliner!) likes going out until too hot or cold, but no leash needed. She’s gonet to the front yard once or twice, but mostly hangs out by my tomatoes. The evil one won’t go out of site of the door, and the one we put down wouldn’t leave the patio, and would dash back in if someone moved to open the door.

The Siamese, however . . . he found us while wandering, presumably after being abandoned somewhere in the neighborhood. And we’re pretty sure he’d hop on the fence, if only out of curiosity (he has an extra dose). He outgrew the harness the girls bought, but siamese are known for, among other things, tolerating leashes . .

hawk
 
For some reason, I never felt particular affection for Pope Benedict in the same way I did toward his immediate predecessor and successor. But now that I discover he is a cat lover (and a music lover to boot), that has all changed. Any cat lover is automatically a friend of mine. (I believe Hitler was a dog lover. I do also love dogs but that doesn’t count.)
 
on_the_hill said:
This troubles me. Aren’t cats associated with Wicca and the supernatural? As I recall, the TV show “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” featured a talking cat! How can we resolve the potential danger of normalizing cat ownership with their connection to dark magic?
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Salem was a warlock who, when he kept trying to take over the world, was turned into a cat.
 
meltzerboy2 said:
For some reason, I never felt particular affection for Pope Benedict in the same way I did toward his immediate predecessor and successor. But now that I discover he is a cat lover (and a music lover to boot), that has all changed. Any cat lover is automatically a friend of mine.
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Yeah, I didn’t really like Pope Benedict while he was Pope. He seemed preoccupied with picky details and he just didn’t seem as friendly or interesting as Pope JPII. Plus, JPII was a tough act to follow, and had been Pope for such a very long time. And this was during the time when I was mostly away from the Church.

But in recent years I have felt more friendly to Pope Benedict. I felt rather bad for him when I was visiting the Vatican a couple years ago and found that there weren’t many souvenirs with his picture and they were mostly stuck on the bargain rack, while Pope JPII (who had been canonized a year or two prior) was featured right up next to Pope Francis on the fancy souvenir rosaries and such. I have also gained more appreciation of Pope Benedict helping people to have TLM. And now that I know he loved cats, well that just means I have to pray for him extra, because a friend of cats should be a friend of mine. It’s a little hard for me to understand his theological statements on pets if he’s truly an animal lover, but I can put that in the hands of God.

I was just wondering while coming out of church if Pope Benedict is sad or lonely ever now that he doesn’t get to be Pope and is off out of the public eye and probably dealing with some illness that we don’t know about. (I also pray for his predecessor Pope Benedict who was Pope during the Fatima visions and whom St. Jacinta had a vision of, crying in his office while a mob rioted outside.)
 
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When my daughter was 3 or 4 years old she had a bad dream about a talking cat outside her bedroom window. It was either demonic 😁 or maybe she got spooked by seeing Salem. Regardless, my wife and I stopped watching the show after that.
 
I think my dog-to-cat conversion is complete. It occurred to me on a long bike ride with my wife today, that cats never chase bikes! Since we’re both avid cyclists… we’ve come to the conclusion that they are the ultimate low-maintence pet. Except for litter boxes. But they don’t bother bikes either.
 
I’m trying different litters now. The Arm and Hammer stuff does a good job of deodorizing. Removing the clumps is also a pain though. But you can’t train your cat not to eat or drink. 🙂
 
If you have more than one cat, that clumping litter is the devil, and ridiculously expensive. After two days the litter will be so clumped up with pee clumps that it will be unusable and unsalvageable, so you have to change it out, and buy more litter. I’m convinced it’s an insidious trick for the litter company to make money.

A litterbox of the Wal-Mart cheapo “Special Kitty” lasts twice as long, It can go 5 days with 8 cats using it. All you need to do is pick out the poo logs daily and flush them down the toilet (I just grab them out with a piece of toilet paper), then shake the box to get a clean layer on top.

When I can’t get “Special Kitty”, I use Companion non-clumping or Tidy Cat non-clumping.
 
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Believe it or not, I have discovered fine pine shavings are an excellent cat litter. Cheap, goes a long way, odor suppressing, and it doesn’t leave dust everywhere.
 
ProVobis said:
zing. Removing the clumps is also a pain though.
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You can, however train many cats to not only use a toilet, but to flush.

I haven’t bothered with our siamese (who actually buries what the other cats don’t), as I don’t think either of the other ones would (one too cranky, the other just too dumb . . )

There are actually training kits to order. Roughly, you start with the litter box on the toilet seat, and make a couple of staged changes or some such. A toy is hung from the handles, I think.

We simply accept that the box needs to be strained daily and changed entirely every few days.

hawk
 
That sounds like my father, who at one point had my mom believing that he didn’t like cats.

Way back when I was in first grade, I was walking home from school when I saw someone drive by, slow down and throw a cat out of the car window and drive away. That cat “followed me home” (by which I mean I carried the cat while walking backward). I got home, and left the cat outside, and told my mom that a cat had followed me home and asked if we could keep it. Mom said that we’d have to wait until my dad got home and see what he said.

Now this was in November after Thanksgiving (I had promised said cat turkey leftovers). My dad came home from work about an hour after I got home from school. The cat stayed at the foot of the driveway meowing piteously for that hour. My dad got home, picked up the cat and tucked her in under his winter coat (it was a wool blend dress coat) and brought her into the house.

He’s never been able to fool anyone about his feelings about cats since, even if he does claim to be more of a dog person.
 
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