Dorothy Marley's Journal

Things I have learned in the last 24 (or so) hours:

( Or, as Archie Goodwin once said: There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up. )

First things first:

As I previously mentioned, my family was relatively unaffected by the flooding in Nashville. But I know someone who lost her home and possessions and every day I learn about new groups of people who are having difficulties getting back on their feet. As always, it seems that those who can least afford it have lost the most. elizah_jane has a very good post with resources and links for making donations (thanks to coreopsis for the link). There is also a follow-up post with more information. Tomorrow I plan to take my O-neg self down to the Red Cross. It's been so long since I've had the energy to even come close to qualify for donating, and now seems like an excellent time to go back.

In more benign news:

This morning, Boo asked what "If your cat likes Cat Chow they might like this" meant (it was written on our bag of cat food). Since we had been discussing proprietary formulas the day before (don't ask), this led to a talk about brand names, which led to patents, which led to trademarks, which led to copyright. That took up the first half hour of the forty-five minute drive to school, after which we switched to the Kuiper Belt.

The problem? I meant to review the words for her weekly spelling test today.

So, yeah, she'll be fine if the teacher asks her about trademark law, but won't be able to spell "butterfly" or whatever the hell it is I was actually supposed to help her with. Crap.

( In other news, the cats are well )

Greebo tried to assist in my word count yesterday. When I'm using the computer in bed he thinks it a prime opportunity for snuggle time. He may be right about this, but he also tends to want to snuggle right on top of where I'm using the mouse. This means that sometimes the mouse does things I hadn't necessarily planned, especially when I give up trying to move it around under seventeen pounds of cat and just leave it there. Yesterday, he managed to select all the text in my Nanowrimo file, and when I pasted it all in later my stats returned a miraculous 22K+ word count, almost exactly twice what the count should have been. One of us (and I have my suspicions) had duplicated the entire novel in the file.

Good kitty.

I had my final cast removed yesterday, and am sporting a highly fashionable black Velcro splint. All I have to do is refrain from breaking my pins until Monday.

( Surgery details )

In other cat news, I took Greebo in for his checkup on Tuesday. While I had Tom there, I realized that I might as well get Greebo his (overdue) shots and have him looked at. Greebo is nine years old, so I wasn't surprised that he needed his teeth cleaned. Apparently they have a nifty anesthetic that the cats can breathe that doesn't stay in their systems, so they can put older cats under for non-critical procedures like teeth cleaning. This was something we were never able to do with Sylvester. As seems to happen, he didn't need his teeth cleaned until he was too old to have his teeth cleaned. But Greebo is going to have his done in three weeks.

I also found out why, despite the fact that he was obviously huge, my other vet never mentioned Greebo's weight.

( Pictures of my big-boned cat )

Just to let you all know, Sylvester died early this morning.

He hadn't been showing any signs of his numerous illnesses getting worse, and he was still eating and drinking and prowling around as per usual. Albert reports that Sylvester jumped on his head and knocked some stuff off the nightstand in the wee hours--again, normal behavior--but around 7 or 8 this morning Albert found him lying outside the bedroom.

Although I had expected him to be around a bit longer than this, I think in the balance I'm glad that he didn't have to repeat the obvious misery he was in when his kidneys first started to fail. We'll sure miss him, though.

( And just because, the full view of my favorite Sylvester picture )

I took Sylvester to the vet today to get a read on how he's doing and what needs to be done. Although he's still doing better, eating and drinking and purring and sleeping and complaining, the kidney failure is still an issue, and isn't going to go away. The vet is putting him on a variety of medications to mimic various kidney functions, and to help him put on some weight. So, he'll be taking:

Tapazole, his thyroid medication

Potassium to replace the potassium lost because of the kidney failure

Pepcid AC to control the excess tummy acid caused by same

Epakitin (crushed shrimp and crab shells) mixed in his food to absorb phosphorus

Anti-nausea medication for a week or two, so he'll keep in all down and hopefully gain weight

Everything except the Pepcid has to be given twice a day. Apparently, the kidneys are a complex organ.

The bottom line, though, is that even if all the medications do what they're supposed to, the kidney failure is going to catch up with him, probably within the next few months. Again, not unexpected, and it's certainly a lot longer than I (or the vet) thought he was going to have when I took him in last week. He'll also, hopefully, have a relatively comfortable and happy life until that happens. Well, as happy as any cat can be when its owner is pushing five kinds of meds down its throat twice a day. So, as always, we'll wait and see what happens.

Yes, hello, it's me, popping up from my gopher hole again. I've had modem issues. I actually still have them, but finally realized that I couldn't afford a new one anytime in the near future (or distant past, either) and had best tackle the old one and make it work again. So, I whipped out the Scotch tape, the Q-tips, and the old jiggle-it-until-it-works-again technique, and finally the hellish shrieking noise was replaced by silence interspersed with the occasional dial tone. So long as I don't move, laugh, cough, or breathe too much, it only disconnects me about every 15 minutes. :)

In other news....

( We're all fine here, now, thank you.... How are you? )

( A witch, a rabbi, and a former Episcopalean walk into a synogague.... )

( The knitting tally )

( You've paid for it and insured it, but do you know what color it is? )

Well, those appear to be the highlights. I hope everyone has been well, and maybe now I can catch up on what you all have been doing. Skip=100000000 ought to do it. :)

And while I'm up at 2 am, I might as well continue to spam about my life.

( Me, My Cat, and I )

Er, hi.

Yep, it's been quite a while. I should really just resign myself to the fact that I am a sporadic surfer. Three months on, two months off, two months on, three months off....

The biggest reason I haven't updated is that for quite a while the only notable news I had was of the "argh!" or "this sucks" variety. And, well, that's just no fun to write about over and over. Plus, my modem became tempermental (somewhat fixed now that I've figured out exactly where to wedge the Q-Tip). Then I started knitting. And knitting. And knitting.

Eventually, of course, the growing horror of the un-downloaded e-mail became a phobia in and of itself, and it took several weeks to nerve myself to log on. I did it for a good cause, though, of which I will speak more about in a separate post. And it only turned out to be around 250 messages, which is a lesson in the fear being greater than the reality.

Now, to summarize the last few months, which, I will warn, we've been calling, "The Summer From Hell." I've split the cuts into sections, for ease of skipping the bits that might not be interesting to all.

( Boo: She's Plump, She's Agile, She's Stealthy )

( In other news, I didn't have emergency surgery )

( Cats Are Like People, Only More Expensive )

( But, you know, it wasn't all bad )

So, there you have it. My summer in a nutshell. Which is where it likely belongs.

Have encountered yet another situation not covered in baby literature: What to do when the cat falls in the tub while the baby is taking a bath.

For the last two or three days, my older cat, Sylvester, hasn't been acting himself. He's been listless and clingy, wanting to be near me even if it means being within range of The Boo Unit. He's also been allowing Boo to pet him (aka "yanking his fur"), but it's more because he doesn't seem motivated to move away than because of a sudden desire to get friendly with the baby after nine months. He's 13 and no longer a spring chicken, so I decided to take him to the vet.

Now, this simple decision is no longer the relatively easy undertaking it was before the arrival of No. 2 Cat Greebo and the baby. Gone are the days when I can just pop Sylvester in his cage, or not even bother with the cage and use his leash, and zip over to the vet's. Oh, no.

For one thing, the last time I took Sylvester to the vet without also taking Greebo, he freaked out, growled, hissed, spat, and took a swipe at the vet. They had to sedate him before they could examine him. So, it's two cats, two cages, etc. Plus baby.

Loading went fine. I put the kitties in their cages, took them downstairs to the car, then came back up, put Boo in her car seat, took her down, and we were loaded up and ready to go. Piece of cake. Okay, so the temperature's in the mid-90s, but hey, what's a little heat stroke.

At the vet's, I had it all planned. I parked the car, got Boo out of her car seat, put her in the backpack carrier, got a kitty cage in each hand, and voila.

Of course, the vet could find nothing physically wrong with Sylvester. But he's been Sylvester's vet for 13 years, ever since Sylvester was 8 months old, and while Greebo and Boo chased each other around and under the table, Greebo jumping up and down to check on his buddy and Boo trying her best to yank the tassels off the vet's shoes, the vet agreed with me that Sylvester's behavior wasn't normal. So I forked over $100 for blood tests, which luckily I had because I'd been saving money for a trip to my sister's. Don't know what I'm going to do about the trip now, but hey.

Back home, I did the loading in reverse. I took Boo up first, got her settled in her play area, then zoomed back down for the cats. But when I put Greebo down to the open the front door, the sophisticated mechanism of old wire and knitting needles holding the cage door closed gave way, and he squirmed for freedom.

I wasn't too worried at first. I just scooped him up and shoveled him quickly inside the building. But when I opened the door again to get Sylvester and the empty cage inside, Greebo made his break.

I set off after him, leaving Sylvester in the hall and my baby unattended upstairs, remembering frantically all the baby book admonitions about never leaving babies alone even in rooms that have been locked down like Fort Knox (leaving aside the question of how any of these women get their groceries upstairs, but never mind). Greebo had apparently forgotten all of the previous three years of comfort and pampering, because he ran away from me like I was Cruella DeVille looking for a new tabby coat. I finally cornered him under a van and persuaded him that I wasn't some bizarre space alien after his brain, and tucked him under my arm while I hauled Sylvester's cage upstairs. Then it was back down for Greebo's cage, a last trip up two flights in about 100 degrees of humidity, and I was free to collapse on the floor and wheeze.

I'm supposed to find out about Sylvester's blood tests today, and I can't say I'm not nervous. A lot of my friends' cats have died at 12 or 13, and Sylvester has definitely been slowing down the last couple of years.

And now I'm hearing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" over the baby monitor, which means Boo is awake and standing in her crib to push the button on her Sesame Street Edu-tainment Center. And, yes, now she's accompanying the music with "Ba ba ba" and raspberries. So, time to get up. :)