Cheetah vs. Greyhound

I figure we will start off with the gruesome part of this post. Most of my true readers know me well enough that this will be just as humorous as the gender anecdote, but any of you who are new might be a little taken aback by it... Brace yourselves for another twisted imagining from the epic duo that is my husband and myself.

 

The discussion started as normally as any of our discussions. We were finishing dinner and chatting about our respective days. Collin made mention of the fire that was all the news aired that morning, and about how one of his dear coworkers had made mention of it like no one else had heard the story. Collin had jokingly said something in response to his coworker about a baby rhino being born at the zoo within the last five minutes and that was more current news. Me, being me, asked in all seriousness if there was a baby rhino born and he dashed my hopes by informing me it was just him being a smart ass.

 

I then responded that it's okay, I'd be more excited if it had been a baby big cat. He said like a cheetah, and I said I'd prefer a lion or tiger more so. Cheetahs are adorable fluff balls but they grow into the skeletor of the big cats. This then brought to light the fact that they are essentially the feline equivalent of a greyhound. This realization/observation brings us to the dark part of the humor. (And I have no doubt it could be googled for an answer but this is more fun so roll with it. And your reward for indulging my disturbing imagination is the factual answer at the end.)

 

In a land speed contest who would win? Cheetah or greyhound? We both assumed cheetah, but what if you were to race the two? And what if you gave them additional incentive... Like, starve the cheetah? Our reasoning for this is that the cheetah would be unimpressed with the lack of meat on the greyhound otherwise. And if we needed to we could put gravy on the greyhound. The greyhound's incentive is obvious: to no be eaten. We would also give the greyhound a bit of a head start and hope it is smart enough to start running. Collin decided that the best atmosphere for this trial would be a gladiator style coliseum. At this point we were both laughing so hard we almost fell out of our chairs. This is 100% normal dinner conversation for us.

 

Now for the factual answer: According to Live Science, a Wild cheetah would win hands down clocking at about 60MPH top speed. But now for a twist: the greyhound's top speed is about 43MPH whereas the captive cheetah's speed topped out at 38MPH. They believe the slower speed is due to the zoo raised cheetahs (having been bred in captivity for several generations) never had the opportunity to truly run wild at full throttle. So it would ultimately come down to the cheetah used in the land speed trial: wild or captive bred? You just learned something! Bam!

 

Now for the lighter side of life. A funny anecdote about the similarities in discovering our babies' genders. I am referring to both Spaz (our furry monster child) and our unborn baby girl.

 

We'll start with the human baby. With all the pregnancy symptoms I have been NOT experiencing everyone (myself included) was certain she must be a boy. I had nothing more than mild nausea for "morning sickness." The baby was sitting "low" in my pelvis. I have been craving spicy, savory, and tart more than sweet. And on and on the symptoms all screamed boy. Even my gut instinct was that it was a boy. Well, lo and behold, at the anatomy scan our darling baby was showing the world she was most certainly a girl. Legs wide open like a little hussy... I swear. She had us all fooled. I shocked a fair number of people when I gave them the news that the baby was a girl.

 

Now for the fun parallel story of discovering Spaz's gender. Collin wants it on the record that this was not a fun experience for him. At All. She probably still hasn't forgiven us (well, namely Collin). Spaz was a scrawny runt ball of fluff when Collin got her for me. She was six weeks old and the smallest of her litter. As Spaz entered adolescence and started to fluff out more and fill out a little, she truly looked male. The markings in that vicinity looked like little kitty gonads; especially with the fluff factor. As she neared the six month mark she started to behave a little oddly, and we thought, "Great, HE is going to start spraying soon." We knew we needed to get Spaz fixed ASAP. As the odd behavior continued and grew, we realized that it was similar to a cat in heat... Finally, after checking forums and so forth on how to detect the gender we found the best and most reasonable method was to simply check for testes physically... We snagged Spaz and Collin proceeded to check (I don't feel the need for elaboration on the "how"). And by golly, there was nothing under the markings/fluff... We had one very agitated little girl kitteh at this point. During her first estrus she fell madly in love with my father in law... She followed him everywhere and insisted on presenting herself like a little hussy. It was beyond disturbing. 

So that's it. Both our babies we originally thought were boys and they were most certainly not! Luckily with medical science we didn't have to wait any longer to learn the tiny human's gender. 

Now for the weekend! Tomorrow we are going to the Street of Dreams where I hope to snap a TON of pictures of stuff I can't afford, and decorating ideas I can copy on the cheap! So excited!