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[ASCIt]

All this furry talk may just make me convert back...

My mom had a hamster when she was a kid, and one time they went on vacation so they had to leave him with their neighbor. The guy had like, seven gerbils, so he put it in the cage with them. Next morning he went to check on them, and all of the gerbils were missing their heads...

[Sutremaine]

I wouldn't mind having some pet rats, but they don't live very long and they seem to be quite prone to tumours according to the SA forums.

[reteip9]

All this furry talk may just make me convert back...

My mom had a hamster when she was a kid, and one time they went on vacation so they had to leave him with their neighbor. The guy had like, seven gerbils, so he put it in the cage with them. Next morning he went to check on them, and all of the gerbils were missing their heads...

Now that is a dorfy hamster!

[Oliolli]

We have rats. They live inside our walls and roof. No matter how many get caught by our mousetraps, they always come back.

[C0NNULL]

We have rats. They live inside our walls and roof. No matter how many get caught by our mousetraps, they always come back.

Cats.

I knew a few that'd fit the bill. A friend's cat lived to be a 22 year old mouser - Frank lived in the woods, kinda, and they were very quiet woods. Had a GF with a Siamese/Himalayan, Blue, that'd kill it if it was dumb enough to come close. (Birds, reptiles, mice, rats, squirrels, so on.) My ex wife's cat, Timmy, would do - after her dad rubber-banded the cat's balls, (old school castration,) the cat placed them on dad's pillow and in general killed lots of small critters. (Anger issues. But I loved the dropping his balls off bit, myself. I had not yet met the cat, (or the ex,) so I didn't get to see it.)

Yes, cats solve this problem - you just need a mouser. Even in DF they hunt vermin. 

(Hungry ferrets would do, also. And they can get into places. But that requires well-trained ferrets or luck. I mean, if there's food aplenty up in them walls and a ferret will poop wherever is closest, (really,) miasma might ensue. Still, what's a bit of stink when you know it's all the carcasses of the invaders making it?)

Continue.

[King DZA]

after her dad rubber-banded the cat's balls

That's...That's fucked up.

[Wannazzaki]

My cats bring live mice in and occasionally get bored before they have killed them. Yay bringing mice in. Fucking back assward cats.

[Dave1004]

after her dad rubber-banded the cat's balls

That's...That's fucked up.

Not really. You either did it that way, or cut them out. With the rubber band the balls lose circulation, and just eventually fall off. A lot nicer than a potential death from blood loss.

[Eric Blank]

Poor kitty.
We have 3 living, hunting cats in our household right now. An elderly female that is essentially incapable of hunting anymore due to horrible asthma. (I blame Iowa.) Her granddaughter is also a very good hunter, though she prefers birds, which is funny because she's so damn fat. We also adopted a little black male from a friend's house, whose older brother was mental and would torture cats. Had to get him fixed, but went to the vet... He's not that great for hunting as far as I know, but he's better than the newest kitten we've adopted who never learned how and just chases butterflies. We also have the elderly females' older brother, who is retarded due to a head injury and lacks most normal cat behavior and any coordination whatsoever. He's rather entertaining though when he's chasing something, because he can't really keep up with it, and then just bats at it ineffectively if he thinks he's close enough.

The hamster? She was a cunning little thing to never get eaten, for sure, but the lack of bladder/rectum control is not a bonus.

[King DZA]

after her dad rubber-banded the cat's balls

That's...That's fucked up.

Not really. You either did it that way, or cut them out. With the rubber band the balls lose circulation, and just eventually fall off. A lot nicer than a potential death from blood loss.

I don't know, both methods seem a good bit unpleasant. Having your nuts literally drop off of your body would be quite a disturbing surprise, yet having them sliced out all of a sudden isn't too favorable either.

Choosing between two evils, I suppose.

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Go watch Dirty Jobs, S04E03.  Mike Rowe has to castrate lambs.  The "official, humane" method is the rubber band on balls method.  The actually humane method is to cut it open and suck it out with your mouth.  (WTF, no joke.)

The difference is that with the rubber band the balls slowly shrivel and die for a few days and the lamb just kind of plods around totally out of it.  Cutting it out, however, is only a few minutes of trauma before the little lambs are bouncing around again.

Mike Rowe talks about it during his TED talk, actually.

[Lord Dullard]

after her dad rubber-banded the cat's balls

That's...That's fucked up.

Not really. You either did it that way, or cut them out. With the rubber band the balls lose circulation, and just eventually fall off. A lot nicer than a potential death from blood loss.

Yeah. Rubber-banding is animal cruelty; it's completely unsanitary and carries a very high risk of infection, aside from just being painful and generally uncomfortable for the animal.

And in this day and age, when getting a feline neutered is ridiculously cheap and often free (depending on where you live, but if you're anywhere NEAR a metro area, it's likely you could get it done for free at several times during the year), there's really no excuse. It's just lazy and negligent.

(My girlfriend is a vet student, so... I am subjected to this kind of information a lot.)

[C0NNULL]

As hinted at, I had not yet met the man who was to be my father-in-law until '92. I think Timmy lost his bits in '88. I would have been fourteen and, short of the TARDIS I have on back-order, "this day and age" just has to stay right when it is. (Coincidentally, I had an English teacher that year that thought "this day and age" was a solid writing tool, so it does kind of tie this whole ball temporally together.)
 
I was not discussing the rubber-banding of balls, anyway. I was speaking of those balls on the pillow afterward - and I can't very well go talking about someone leaving his nuts on another someone's pillow without mentioning how those nuts came to be separated from his cat-ness in the first place, now can I? No, clearly I can not. I am disappointed in this thread for ignoring the dwarf-like justice carried out by my old friend Timmy.

And I can't be sure that I'd rather get a pair of fun-pliers right now, or a bit of numb for a fortnight. (I studied pre-vet at Utah State U for about three semesters, because Mom thought I'd make a good vet. *shrug* Nothing about those pliers resembled fun. Excruciating Fun, perhaps, but not the fun you or I would generally like to have. "Hey there boy - here's an apple *crunchx2* see? All's well, yer just a little bit lighter. Good it."

As a side note, the mountains west of Cedar City, Utah, are not near anything called metro. He ran solar power before it was cool, and had a car in Japan in ~'76 that ran on soy oil. (Before it was cool translates to not quite feasible. I swear his house was out of power 40% of the time, and an LED clock would drive him nuts if left on. (Yet he had no mechanical clocks.))


[Okay, really I was talking about mousers - I added an anecdote about a cat I knew that, ^, and here we are. This is Bay12. Enjoy. Clearly I do.]

[ASCIt]

After the events of this page, I have come to realize just how vulnerable I am...to trauma. Mental or otherwise. I shall now go sit in a corner, protecting my precious from nasty Hobbitses.

[JJtoocool]

I once had three mice. One of them was pregnant, and gave birth. Two of the four baby mice were killed and eaten by the other grown ones the following morning.

ALL. RODENTS. ARE. BLOODTHIRSTY. KILLERS.

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