Our Cat is Moulting

This is our cat, Jo Jo. If you ask our kids, they'll tell you we named her after Jo Jo from Jo Jo's Circus on the Disney Channel.

If you ask Peanut Head, he'll tell you her name is really Jumping Josephine, but we shortened it to Jo Jo.

Either way, she's the best cat we've ever had.

She has the perfect temperament for inconsiderate kids, and she is friendly to everyone.

Even Sammie. She tries to cuddle with Sammie, but it just makes Sammie nervous. Sammie learned early on that cats are unpredictable and moody.

Is that redundant? Unpredictable and moody. Hmmmmm.

Jo Jo likes to sleep in her cat bed, as in the picture above. Since Jo Jo is always in her cat bed, Annika likes to carry her around in it and put her to sleep in strange places.

Like here. The picture above was taken of Jo Jo inside this Princess tent, in her bed, and thrilled about it. Jo Jo actually crawled into the tent on her own, because she knew her bed was in there.

She lets Annika do whatever she wants to her, and she just takes it and thinks she's the luckiest cat in the world. You could say she's an attention starved cat.

Here the girls are making a Poinsettia plate head for Jo Jo, so she could be festive right along with us.

Here Jo Jo is wearing that Poinsettia, but as you can see, not thrilled about it.

We didn't do it just to torture Jo Jo though. She had boo boos on her head from what we thought was a cat fight.

We should have known better though. Jo Jo's a lover, not a fighter.

Alas, Jo Jo didn't keep the festive Poinsettia plate on her head, so we had to graduate her to a higher security level.

The ultra humiliating, yippy dog cone head.

Immediately after we put this on Jo Jo, she was pissed off. And remember, this is a hard cat to irritate.

She wore this cone for more than a week, very unhappily, before we realized she wasn't getting any better.

In fact, she was starting to moult.

Her skin flaked off her head first, accompanied by the fur that was attached to it, and we started calling her Baldilocks.

Then it started flaking off her back and we thought she had dandruff.

Then she got boo boos all around her neck where the cone was rubbing, and we knew it was something more than the remnants of a cat fight.

That was before Christmas, and we were lucky to get a vet appointment on Christmas Eve.

Our Kitty Bits has an auto immune skin disorder of some hard to pronounce, and impossible-to-Google-when-you-can't-even-spell-it, mysterious name.

Oh geez, why do we always get the high maintenance pets?

The good news is that it's treatable and it's not going to break the bank. The vet gave her a steroid shot that'll fix her right up. She'll have to have more shots as the condition flares up again, anywhere from six months to two years from now.

The shot relieved the itching right away, but we were told to keep the cone on her for a couple more days so she wouldn't try to scalp herself again.

Once the cone came off, Jo Jo immediately started bathing herself.

Annika was carrying Jo Jo around the house and Jo Jo was melting out of her arms, unconcerned, and focused on her bathing.

Jo Jo could care less if she was perched on the edge of a cliff, she was going to have a long overdue bath, dang it.

It was so funny to watch.

"My life is in your hands Stinkerbell, I'm havin' a bath."

"What? Haven't you ever seen a cat take a bath before? Give me some privacy for crying out loud. I don't want my picture on your blog. You do not have my permission to post these on your blog."

Ah ahem.

Eeeeeeew. After the first bath, Jo Jo started itching her neck, and fur and skin went flying.

That's when I got out the vacuum cleaner and started following her around the house. I would have vacuumed her, but I think I would have gotten the short end of that stick.

It gives me the willies just looking at these pictures. I'm feeling itchy.

I think I want to dust too.

Nah. False alarm.

Before too long we're going to have one of those hairless cats, I can see it now.

For now we're just calling Girlfriend here Baldilocks.