Our little patient

I can't believe how well-behaved she is during her subcutaneous fluid treatments, which involve being stuck with a large needle between her shoulder blades and having a baseball-sized pocket of cold fluid pumped into her body over the course of 5-10 minutes.  She hasn't once hidden and tried to avoid the trip to the vet, or attempted to get away during treatment, or done anything other than try to snuggle continuously with me for the rest of the day after the treatment is done.  She squawks a bit when the fluid starts to flow, then just sits there and takes it without any restraint or coercion.  She really is a best-case scenario for the temperament of a cat I'm going to have to treat at home from now on.

Wish me luck with doing this on my own tomorrow morning!  

A list

Fun and exciting things I was supposed to be doing tomorrow instead of taking my cat Bella to the vet to start treating her chronic renal failure:

1. Calling contractors to get bids to waterproof my basement
2. Installing another dozen bags of topsoil to improve the drainage away from our foundation
3. Fighting with the postal service web site to print postage for some eBay sales
4. Sweeping up cat litter and mopping up cat pee in our basement
5. Scheduling a carpet cleaning for the whole house (which we've needed since, um, 2008)

Oh, fuck the list.  My favorite cat is sick.  I feel bad because I put off taking her to the vet so long that he described her as "a few days away from 'emaciated,'" (and even I admit that four and a half pounds is a bit of a scary weight for a whole cat) and I'm scared that the treatment for her condition either won't work or will be such a pain to keep up that we'll prove our selfishness and get rid of her because she's become massively inconvenient.  

Let's just look at pics of how awesome she is, and try not to think about how much subcutaneous hydration and phosphorus binders and special diets are going to cost. 

Look!  It's the World's Most Patient Cat!

She lets loud strangers stack things on her!

She wears baby headbands with dignity!

She can sleep anywhere!

But she prefers to do so on my chest if I'm anywhere near horizontal for more than 1.3 seconds!

Get better, Bella-chan.  We love you, and we don't want you to be such a Teeny Zucchini anymore.

They are losing their freaking minds

The cats are, that is.

The birds have finally found the feeder that I put in the yard back in November (way to be observant, guys!), and they're hitting it hard.  I put it in the front yard this year, partly to give the birds some cover in the bushes nearby, and partly because this way I can watch them while sitting on the couch blogging (ahem).

I also put the feeder there because it's right near the window where the cats normally hang out anyway - I figured it would be like Kitty TV.  When the first birds appeared, I called Zach over to the arm of the couch and pointed out the window.  Zach normally isn't Mr. Observant, either, and I don't know if I've ever actually gotten him to look at something I was pointing to ... until today.  Dude started barking his head off (yes, cats can bark) at the birds, and I thought he was going to launch himself through the window (which would have been problematic, since it's got a Christmas tree in front of it).  The initial flood of birds - maybe half a dozen female cardinals and a couple of house sparrows or house finches, plus a black-capped chickadee - went down eventually, and Zach regained his sanity.

Just now Bella finally noticed the birds, and SHE started barking at them, and she never barks at anything.  She pretty much ignores the squirrels and chipmunks (which Zach happily stalks and yells at through the sliding door) and hardly ever meows unless there's something wrong (like her food bowl being less than half full).  But she stood on the arm of the chair and yelled at those birds for a couple of minutes straight.  She's quieted down now and trying to pretend that she's resting, but I'm not fooled.  She's trying to figure out how to open the window so she can go get those suckers.

Good luck growing some opposable thumbs and bulking up enough to turn the crank on the windows, babe!

Now that I know the birds will actually come in this close to the house, I'll have to see if I can manage to get another kind of feeder out there.  Just having hulled sunflower seeds won't do it for long, not if we want to have more than two or three kinds of birds around.  I'm thinking of getting a feeder for nyjer seed to see if I can get a few more finches.  And maybe if I'm feeling really kind I'll get one of those suet/peanut butter feeders for the squirrels in the back.  At any rate, it looks like the Ohio Birds guide is out to stay, at least until we can recognize all of the usual suspects at the feeder.

Also, my cat sleeps funny sometimes

Yes, she regularly attempts to sleep with her forehead buried in the arm of the couch.
(Please to be excusing the crappy webcam photo, btw)

I, on the other hand, prefer to sleep like this:

What?  Can I help it if they missed me?  They'd just be scratching at the bedroom door if I tried to keep them out, anyway ...

Blackmail

Dude, if you're going to invade my space every time I sit down to work on my laptop ...

... I'm totally going to post stupid pictures of you on the internet.

Now, go get me a vacuum to get all your fur off my keyboard.  And stop snoring.

Seriously, how do you keep a straight face?

Dinner is in the oven, Liza's artwork is drying on the easel downstairs, and the whole family is sitting on the floor playing Uno.  The cat wanders over and plunks down on my lap, where I notice that all is not right.

"How did Zach get paint on his head?  Did we leave anything out where he could rub against it?"
(quiet sobs start)
I pause for a second in disbelief, then ask, "Liza, did you paint the cat?"
(wailing begins)
"I didn't mean to!  He was just right there!  Arghlfarblepthththt!"
(Jason and I can't look at each other, or we're totally going to bust out laughing, because she is soooo repentant)
"You painted the cat.  You actually painted the cat?  Why would you do that?  You know that's wrong, don't you?"
"I don't know!  But he was there!  Arghflarghpththth!"
(Seriously, we can't even look in each other's direction, or we're going to lose our "stern parent" front)
"Well, that was wrong.  We can't paint the cat - do you understand why?  What's going to happen when he cleans himself?"
"He's going to puke all over the floor again."
(sniffles and much moping)
"That's right.  You did something wrong, and we're going to have to punish you for that, but I'm glad you told us the truth about it.  You have to draw six extra cards and skip a turn in the game.  And I'd better not see the cat with a purple forehead ever again, do you understand?"
"Yes, mama.  Oh, look!  I got a blue one!"

Not exactly the trials of Job, but annoying all the same

Last week of July: My father doesn't feel so well for a few days and finally goes to the doctor, only to discover that he has pneumonia (again). Doctor puts him on a double shot of antibiotics, and he seems to be recovering well.

Friday, July 31: While searching for change to pay the toll on our way to the family reunion, I discover that my American Express card is not in its slot in my wallet. Frantic searching of my wallet and purse do not turn up the card, but I'm reasonably sure I just left it in the pocket of my pants when I got gas on Thursday.

Saturday, Aug. 1: My father passes out while taking a shower, gashing open his forehead and wrenching his shoulder. He's only marginally coherent when my mother finds him bleeding on the floor in the bathroom*, so he gets an ambulance ride to the hospital, where he gets eight stitches and gets held over for a couple of nights to try to figure out why he passed out. My mother doesn't call me with the news, since they don't know how severe the problem is, and it's not like I'm going to be able to do anything from Indiana, anyway.

Sunday, Aug. 2: I get to sit next to my grandmother at the family reunion. She does not say one coherent sentence the entire time she's there, but she does look pleased as punch to get a shiny package to unwrap for being the oldest attendee. When we get home from Indiana, I get my mother's message about my father being in the hospital. And my American Express card is not in my pants pocket. But nobody has charged anything on it since I bought gas last week, so I doubt it's been stolen.

Monday, Aug. 3: I go to the doctor to renew my prescriptions; he tells me I need to lose weight and that I shouldn't tell anyone how good my blood pressure is because I'd be a bad influence on them. And the nurse who draws my blood for routine testing strikes oil on the first try, yet still manages to leave a bruise the size of a 50-cent piece. My father is discharged from the hospital, and I talk to him while I hold the puke bucket for my daughter for the sixth or seventh time in less than two hours. And did I mention the puke in my bra? And my hair? And my hallway carpeting, all across the bathroom floor, and all over the bathtub?

Tuesday, Aug. 4: We stay home all day so Liza can recover her strength. Liza discovers that dry erase markers write really well on the family room carpeting. Liza's older friends from the neighborhood come over to do crafts with us, and I hear the saddest thing I've ever heard in my whole life: "You mean, it's okay for me to make stuff with the clay? My mother doesn't let me do crafts at home. She says it's too messy. ... Can I bring these back in a few days so I can paint them? I'm not allowed to paint at home." The girl is 10 years old. Meanwhile, Tuesday evening someone steals my iPod** out of my (unlocked) car. We got it for free, and I've been thinking of upgrading it anyway, but still ... I hate it when people violate my space. And they didn't even steal the $12 pack of batteries that were sitting right next to it, so they're obviously not very smart (or have never used those batteries before).

Wednesday, Aug. 5: I stay up late to finish the bodice of a dress I've been knitting for weeks for Liza, but when I get it off the needles and hold it up, it looks suspiciously wide. I try it on, and the chest area is too large for my waist, and the waist area of the dress is only slightly too tight for my hips. Whoops.

Thursday, Aug. 6: I wake up at 4:30, puking my guts out, only there's nothing in my stomach, so I get to dry heave about 400 bajillion times over the course of the day. Liza and I watch television continuously from 7am to 2:30pm; I'm so sick I don't even object to watching three hours of Barney videos back-to-back. I'm so sick, I don't blog. Or knit. Or sleep. I do, however, get lots of practice moaning and clutching my stomach. I'm so achy at bedtime that I have to take Tylenol just to get to sleep.

Friday, Aug. 7: Liza wakes me up at 2am and wants to cuddle. I'm too tired to go to her room, and Jason is sleeping downstairs to avoid The Plague, so I let her sleep with me. Liza wakes me up at 4am, having just peed all over herself (and my bed) for the first time in months. I send her back to her bed, pull back the covers over the wet spot, and go back to sleep. During the day, I recover enough to eat some soup and applesauce, and to clean up the squalor in my house. Liza is in rare form, refusing to do anything I ask and trying to find new and unusual ways to get in trouble. At one point she decided that the best way to get a piece of pink fuzz off of the cat was to cut off the cat's fur with a pair of scissors. And the cat let her. And she did it where I had already vacuumed. And the only reason the pink fuzz was there in the first place was because she had taken the scissors to her feather boa.

Saturday, Aug. 8: I'm feeling queasy again and it's raining, which means no visit to the Corn Festival for me today. Jason has taken Liza to the science center, and I'm trying to finish up some Lazy Mama business while not heaving on the poor lady's mermaid tail.

Yes, I know none of it is tragic. Jason has coworkers whose kids have been in surgery for various things this week, and other people have a lot more immediate and serious health issues than a stomach bug.

But still, daaaaaamn. This week has sucked donkey balls. And I can't even wallow in brownie-flavored self-pity, thanks to the queasiness (and my doctor ... asshole).

*So, did you get those stains out of the grout yet, Mom?

** It's a Shuffle, which uses a completely different docking/charging setup than any other MP3 player I've seen, so unless the thief already has one, he's going to have to buy one if he wants to change the songs on his "free" iPod. I hope he really enjoys the They Might Be Giants kids' tunes and Pinky Dinky Doo audiobooks. Rat bastard.

Excisions R Us

Tomorrow morning we will all trundle out of bed early to go find out whether that crusty lump on Zach's lip is, indeed, the return of The Cancer.  If it is, well, he's already past the median survival time for cats who have even one bout with mast cell tumors, so I guess we should count ourselves as lucky.  But the recurrence of The Cancer would be a Bad Sign.  Not to mention what surgery and/or radiation therapy will do to his modeling career ...  So let's all just hope it's an abscess or something, right?

Right.

ETA:  Doctor says it's not The Cancer, it's The Figment of Your Imagination.  Couldn't find a thing wrong with him.  Oh, well, at least now Zach has had a good experience at the vet, as opposed to most of his "knock him out before he gnaws your face off" visits in the recent past.

4/365 - the photographic edition

1. Eating lunch with this dude five feet away (through our patio door) the whole time.

2. Seriously, how cute are the rolls of fat? And the fact that he was willing to turn his back on two people and two cats watching him from a couple feet away?

3. Going "grocery shopping" with a list she's written herself (as I tell her which letter to write next). On today's list: tomato, butter, waffle.

4. The silence that descends on the house when she's presented with glitter glue and a tub of sequins. Thank you, craft gods.

5. Have I mentioned the winter sun? We're all loving it.

Here's a heaping load of indignity for you, guys!

Liza tends to shed clothes during the day, leaving a trail of discarded socks and other items behind her throughout the day. And half of the time she refuses to wear the items again, preferring to get a new pair of socks or a different skirt out of her room instead of just putting on what's sitting right in front of her. One memorable day I cleaned up six pairs of socks ... from just the living room.

At any rate, when Liza showed up in my office without her Christmas-y headband, I wasn't too worried ... I figured I'd just trip on it later or have to pull it out of the vacuum in a few days. But then I went downstairs and found what she had done with it ...

That right there is the photo of a cat weathering a huge indignity with as much pride as she can muster with a huge red bow around her neck. How Liza managed to get Bella to hold still long enough to get this on, I have no idea. What that cat puts up with ... poor thing.

While I was taking photos of Bella, Zach was laughing his head off - did you know cats can smirk, too? - so it was only fair that he be next in line.

I think he looks pretty dapper, but Zach didn't agree.

"Oh, this is so embarrassing."

"Embarrassing? You haven't even seen the beginning of 'embarrassing,' boy."

"You aren't going to post this on the computer, are you? Because the squirrel already laughs at me enough as it is ..."

Dumb and Dumber

What happens when you spread birdseed on the ice on the deck to keep the contractors from slipping?

Yesterday

Today

The interloper

"Neener neener!"

There's something evil in me that really wants to wipe the smirk off that squirrel's face by pulling the door open, but Zach's clawless and clueless, so he'd either get lost or beaten up by the dumb thing.

Work Day 10/Calendar Day 12 - Pass me a paintbrush, Paul

Final coat on the drywall repairs, beginning to add doors and drawers to the lower cabinets. Freaking out cats.

Most of the cabinets are draped because this weekend Jason and I will be priming and painting the 10 square feet of kitchen that won't be covered in tile or cabinets, and we'll painting the ceiling of the kitchen, living room, and dining room. This will be the first time we've ever painted a ceiling, and we're both prepared to hate Hate HATE the job. On the positive side, we got the color-change ceiling paint, so watching it dry should be fun.

On the contractors' to-do list for next week: Install hardwood in kitchen-living room-dining room, install slate in entryway, measure and template the Corian counters, etc.

Reality bites

Your cat has cancer - have a happy Thanksgiving!

*****

Well, they were a little nicer and more informative than that, but that's the gist of it. The lump on Zach's head was a mast cell tumor. Apparently we hit the jackpot - a type of tumor that is rare but (sort of) treatable in cats. We always knew you were special, buddy.

The treatment for this sort of tumor is surgical removal, and the biopsy results show that they "think" the edges of the biopsy are clear, meaning it's likely that the surgeon got all of it on the first go-round. But the standard for removal on these tumors is to cut out an area about 1cm larger than where they think the tumor is, just to make sure there aren't any mutant cells left behind to regrow and/or metastasize (oh, how I hate typing words like "tumor," "metastasize," and "biopsy" in relation to a member of our family, even if he is a cat that regularly pukes in places where I subsequently step first thing in the morning). And the biopsy doesn't have 1 cm of clean edge around the tumor, so the surgeon says to be safe he'd like to cut another chunk out of my cat's forehead.

But there's a good chance he DID already remove the whole tumor, so it's hard to say whether he really needs a second surgery or not. He seems to have responded to the first one well, with no lingering after-effects that we know of. But a larger incision - almost an inch across - means more stitches, more drugs, more chance of infection, and an even bigger facelift for our aging kitty. Not that he couldn't use the wrinkle removal, but we're going to have to start dying his beard if we want the maximum anti-aging effect.

From the stuff I can find online, it looks like even if we do remove this tumor entirely, it's likely to come back someplace else, and survival rates range from 2 months to 18 months. So maybe we'll wait a while to buy any new carpet.

Looks like Jason and I will have plenty to talk about on the way back to Ohio this weekend.

Lame, lame, lame

1. Jason's grandmother's husband's health is worsening, with an episode last week that involved things like fainting in a restaurant, not having a pulse, being resuscitated, staying in the hospital for three days, hallucinating, losing control of some functions, etc. He's not a blood relation, but he's a really nice guy - the kind who is always the first to give little kids high-fives at Thanksgiving - and it's awful to hear he's hurting. We're thinking of you, Bill.
2. The kitchen renovation estimate we received on Monday was only a couple thousand more than our target, and it was just barely within the realm of reasonable justification ("yes, we could get it down to the target, but then we'd have to live with no tiled backsplash and no Corian ... and I think the kitchen is going to look kinda cheap without those."). As we're about to sign the contract, Jason notices that the estimate doesn't include the cost of the cabinets, which we'll be purchasing ourselves through Ikea. Add the roughly $3500 for the cabinets, and we're getting into "seriously over-budget" territory. I got to spend my free time last night totalling up all of our liquid assets to see how much money we actually have to throw at this thing, and totalling our income and expenses for each of the last four months to see how quickly we're burning through our savings right now. Good news - breaking even (ish) each month, and even with the higher pricetag, we'll still have a reasonable amoung leftover for emergency funds. Now we just have to decide whether we really want to dump this much money into the house, given that we've already got one of the higher-priced houses in the neighborhood. Keep your fingers crossed that we don't need a new furnace, roof, and car all in the next year :\ Oh, and they can't start work until January. Gah!
3. Zach and I both had medical appointments today, and both of us had to fast for them. So not only was I ravenous, I got to clean up about 10 spots of Bella's "oh-my-god-there's-no-food-what-are-we-going-to-do" stress-provoked cat puke out of the carpet. And the kid had two accidents. I spent a good portion of today up to my armpits in paper towels soaked in other animals' bodily fluids. Yay.
4. The napalm-conquering recurring crotch rot? Now thought to be contact dermatitis. Throwing out dryer sheets, changing toilet paper, changing soap, applying hydrocortisone, taking antihistamine. Fun. And they never did do the "you might have diabetes" test, so I starved all morning long for nothing. I'm all, wait, don't I need to pee in a cup, and they're all, not unless you really want a souvenir.
5. Zach needed to go to the vet to get his shots and to get a peanut-sized lump on his noggin checked out. It's been there for about two weeks, and given the placement and the occasional crustiness of it, I assumed he had gotten hooked by Bella and just had a mild infection or something. Vet thought the same thing based on phone conversation, and he asked me to bring him in fasted so they could possibly sedate him and drain the thing. Only when I brought him in, they started using words like "biopsy" and "possible melanoma" and "$500." I brought him home tonight so he could be in comfortable surroundings, but he has to fast again overnight (eat fast, buddy, I'm storing the food away as soon as I hit "publish") and go in first thing tomorrow to remove the lump. I think it's funny that the vet sits down with you with an estimate of what it's going to cost to do the procedure to discuss whether you want to do it ... you never see that in a regular doctor's office. "So, Mr. Brown, your son may have skin cancer. It's going to cost $500 to remove it and find out - should we go ahead with that or just let him die a slow painful death of unknown causes? Hmmm?" Zach can be an annoying little puker whose bad habits way outweigh his good traits, but I got all choked up thinking about him possibly having cancer. He may be annoying, but we've got a long, annoying history together, and I'm not in a hurry to end that (or have to explain it to the kid).
6. I posted the most hilarious description for my ugliest item in my etsy store yesterday. Over the course of less than 24 hours and with only minor plugging by me, it got 450 views, eight "favorites" and three pages of comments in the forums about how funny the description was, how cheap the price was, and how it was going to sell so fast. Sucker's still sitting there gathering dust in my shop. Come on, doesn't anyone want to be seriously unattractive buy really warm?
7. Jason ordered three things for me from various etsy shops for my birthday. Thanks to the wonders of business trips where Jason can't access etsy from his company computer, postal holidays, and the vagueries of shipping, I've received one of them. And my birthday was last Thursday. On the positive side of things, it's a really nice present, which will look really nice in my hideously over-improved kitchen. People who feel sorry for me can feel free to buy me any other items from this store that include that turquoise color in them somewhere ... it may not make me feel better, but at least I'll be well accessorized while miserable.
8. Oh, and apparently today is "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" day, at least on the Toddler calendar. We do not have nearly enough chocolate in the house for me to deal with this.

All it took was a two-week absence

Remember when I had to bribe Zach with kitty treats to get him to come into the same room as Liza? And she wanted nothing more than to gnaw off his ears?

Apparently, all it took to get them to befriend one another was two weeks apart. Liza spent the last week at my mother's house, trying desperately to get their cats to acknowledge her presence (they didn't). And Zach is so needy that he would accept attention from giant soul-sucking leeches, if only they had fingers to scratch his head.

And so this week the two of them are locked in some sort of co-dependent relationship, and I keep stumbling upon scenes like this ...

Liza, chillin' with her homey watching the (Sesame) Street. Yo, word to ya mutha!

Final shots

Kiddo has discovered the wonders of being on the small screen ... but she forgets that she needs to pose first, THEN run around and look at the screen on the back of the camera. So I keep getting all these photos of her attacking the camera, trying to see herself in the viewfinder.

So I have to catch her unawares.

And the cat, well, her I just have to lure with offers of petting and high-calorie treats. Works every time!

Cute video I found on Youtube

I think Jason's sister's cat Casey needs one of these. When Susan weighed her recently, Casey was 19 pounds. My daughter weighs 24 pounds. 'Nuff said.

Signs ...

... That the soup, delicious as it was, probably could have used a little more stock:


... That two years is probably too long to wait to change the water filter in our refridgerator (this is what came out of the old filter when I changed it today):


... That Zach, ancient as he is (Happy belated 9th birthday, buddy!) is still as limber as a kitten:


... That Sybil will never read my blog again:


... That Liza has a future in Argentinian tango dancing, as soon as they replace the roses with cat toys: