Remind me to pay more attention to my cat!

It's no secret that our cat is mildly neglected. I mean, she has food and water and all of the necessities, but when it comes to attention and affection, she comes up lacking. Once Evan was born, she really took a backseat. But, today we got a wake up call.

I came home from work, and my mom (a huge animal lover) showed me Ellie's collar that she removed, after realizing she had sore underneath. One look at the collar was enough to spell trouble, but then Ellie came in the room and I saw the wound. I would describe the collar and/or the wound, but I won't do that to you. Let's just say - "Gross!"

Luckily my mom is an expert on animal care and she told me what to do and even went to the store to get us what we needed. My mom is here one day out of the week and she noticed something wrong with my cat that I was completely oblivious to. I don't even want to think about how long it would have taken me to realize she was hurt, if Mom hadn't caught it. When I asked her how she found the wound, Mom said, "I was petting her!" Man, do I feel lousy.

We have no idea what happened to her. Our best guess is that her collar had started to get too tight and she'd been scratching at it. She has gained some weight lately...hmm...depression anyone?

To top it all off I cleaned out her litter box today and realized that I had really let that go too!

The moral of the story is that I need to be a lot nicer to my cat, never get a dog, and you know, pet her every now and then. I'm turning over the new leaf even as we speak by allowing her to sit dangerously close to me while her disgusting neck stares me in the face...wow, can you feel the love?