Monday Mario

I meant to use Mario's birthday mint gift as sort of a perpetual treat dispenser.  Give it some love and it would grow and I could give him a leaf or two every now and then.  I set it up on his old wooden box which has taken up residence by the window ever since I converted him to the lower height pen.  It was a nice spot for it to get some sun.  I let Mario out one night, went into the bedroom for a second, came back out and saw this:

The moment where I could have saved the plant, or grabbed the camera to document and you can see what I decided.  It looked like it could still be salvaged after the above attack, but a few nights later I again forgot to put it out of his reach and he decimated it down to one inch stems and it did not rebound.  Live and learn.

To update on Mario's tooth situation, I found a vet who is willing to file his teeth without him under general anesthesia.  She said she can't do as good of a job so he may need it more frequently, but for me this is a good trade-off for putting him under.  He has had his first treatment and came home and was immediately eating and acting himself so I don't think it was too traumatizing for him.  He does make interesting crunching noises with his teeth so I do think there is something going on and he's going back in for a check-up in another month.  I think she suspects there is some connection between his chronic (now bilateral) weepy eyes and his teeth but I didn't have a chance to question her fully about this (she mentioned his having old looking teeth and something about probable root disease).  She is not very aggressive with treatments and I think she feels she wouldn't pursue anything at this point.

I like this new vet because unlike my other vet she would be willing to do head x-rays without anesthesia and seems to just take a much more relaxed approach.  Vet #1 thought he needed to have his ears treated for debris and Vet #2 felt they weren't that bad and said you don't want to mess with the ears if you can avoid it.  At his age, I like a much more relaxed approach to his health, especially when he doesn't seem bothered.