Life with Dolly

I'm sitting here watching my cat on the windowseat, curled up in a ball sleeping. Dolly is the oldest pet I have ever had. We had a dog growing up, but he only lived to be 10. Dolly is going to be 12, and she is starting to show her age. She got sick in the summer, and I nursed her back to health. She is still recovering from that, and is still bony. She looks and acts completely fine, and is her ornery self :). We got Dolly as a kitten. My friend Nikki's barn cat had just had kittens, and she wondered if we wanted one. I wasn't really interested, but we wanted to come and see them. I saw Dolly when she was only a few days old, with her eyes still closed. We ended up taking her home when she was 9 weeks old. We named her Dolly because she would let me sit in a rocking chair and hold her like a baby and rock her. She was really healing for me, during a time when I was losing babies. When Evie was born, we started finding out how tolerant Dolly was. Evie would crawl up to her and squeal really loud....then grab her fur or tail with her little fists and pull. Dolly would yowl, but not bite, as we tried to unlock Evie's little fingers from Dolly's fur. When we got SiSi, Dolly glared at me for weeks, like, "How could you!" I'm not sure she still has forgiven me for that :).

This summer we experienced something with Dolly that will forever be in our family storybook. In fact, it is still brought up every week by either Evie or Jeff, in some way. I will say that if any of you have weak stomach's, you may not want to read the rest of this! lol! I still can't talk about it without hysterically laughing because it was so awful. Awhile back, a certain blogger friend told me I should blog about it, so I am. So if you get grossed out to the max, you can blame her...I won't name names (Liliana). lol :). So here goes! I spent 3 weeks living in the town Jeff had been working in. We thought we were moving there, and had moved a whole lot of our stuff there, along with our pets. When we found out that the company was closing soon, we decided Evie and I would move back home while Jeff continued with the job until it ended. We had the car loaded down to the max with all the stuff we were bringing back home. I don't know how we packed as much stuff in that Explorer as we did. It was amazing. We had the dog and 2 cats in the Explorer too. We put Daisy in a pet taxi and Dolly just sat on my lap during the trip. I didn't have a litter box set up in the car for them (no room!), so I tried to made sure I saw if they went before we left. We had traveled with them before and never had any accidents. I figured it was only a 2 hour drive. I mean, what could happen in 2 hours?? We were about 45 minutes from home when Dolly started acting funny. She was all over my lap, meowing and acting weird. I thought maybe she was scared. Why I thought that, I will never know. She has traveled with us countless times, and never been scared! So because she seemed so "scared" I decided to hold her like a baby. Oh yeah, real smart move on my part. Please note the sarcasm there. I look down and I see something on her tail. Then I yell to Jeff, "Oh no Jeff, she is pooping!" I had nowhere to put her because I had stuff between my feet in front of me, and there wasn't a single place open. We had just been to McDonalds, so I grabbed a napkin and tried to stop it. What happened next will forever be etched in my mind. We hear this popping sound, and like a cannon, Dolly shot liquid poo out out all over me, the window, and the door. It was everywhere. I just sat there in utter disbelief and said "Oh my word" about 500 times. Jeff pulled over into somebody's yard (it was out in the country, but on a busy road). He rolled the window down because of the smell, not thinking what would happen to the stuff all over the window! It smeared the poo all the way down the window as it went down. I threw Dolly outside into the yard, where she proceeded to throw up all over the grass. I sat there trying to figure out what in the world I was going to do, and then I started laughing hysterically. I have no idea why, but the whole thing was beyond disgusting, but so funny at the same time! I had no idea how to start with trying to clean things up. We only had some napkins and some hand sanitizer, and a little water. I did the best job I could. Then we had to cram Dolly, who was definitely not smelling like a rose at this point, in the pet taxi with Daisy. We rode with the windows down, and that 45 minutes home was the longest, stinkiest trip I have ever been on! We came into town, and had to wait 10 minutes for a train. I think we burned some nose hairs because of the smell in those 10 minutes. So really, the trip ended up being about an hour. I came home and washed my hands and legs about 50 times, gave the cats a bath, and hosed the car down with disinfectant. It was an experience I will never forget, that is for sure! It is a good thing I have a strong stomach. So are you all totally grossed out now :)?