Archive for the 'Kitties' Category

What we have here is failure to communicate

Published at September 13, 2009 in Kitties and Life with pets. 13 Comments

We have A Situation with Miss Zuzu here.

Oh, sure, *she* can sleep

Since I moved into this apartment, over a year ago, I have not had one uninterrupted night’s sleep. And why? Because Our Girl here agitates to be fed at the first hint of light, no matter how late she gets her evening feeding.

This agitation takes the form of nipping, running over my head, meowing loudly, knocking things over, tearing up any paper left around (which is quite, quite loud when you’re trying to sleep), jumping on my nightstand and rattling the lamp, getting the dog antsy and generally being a pain in the ass.

I tried to ignore it at first. I’m sure the guy who lives downstairs didn’t appreciate it when she would knock the remote off the dresser and onto the hardwood floor just above his loft.

At 5:30 in the morning. Continue reading ‘What we have here is failure to communicate’

Busy

Published at July 20, 2009 in Gardening, Library stuff, Kitties, work work work and Life with pets. 9 Comments

Life interrupts.  Pardon the lack of posting, but I’ve been working full-time and taking two compressed summer classes, which is like taking four regular classes.  And I’m taking four in the fall, too, trying to graduate early because who the hell knows if I’ll have a job past August.

The pets are more or less fine, though Sugarplum, on top of everything else she’s had to go through this year, has had a mammary tumor removed.  The edges are clean, but the tumor is highly malignant, which means that if it shows up in her lungs, that’s pretty much all she wrote.

The tomato plants, so promising in early June, have suffered terribly from June’s wet, cold weather.  I don’t think they’re showing signs of blight, but they’re mildewed and the leaves are falling off.  I’ve gotten a few large-cherry-sized tomatoes from them, but nothing to write home about.  It’s going to be a lousy year for tomatoes in the Northeast.

Since I’ve made the decision to graduate in December instead of June of 2010, I’ve begun poking around looking for jobs in law librarianship.  While I can’t really begin looking in earnest until October because I won’t be available until January, the market looks pretty decent in that there are, actually, jobs available if one is willing to relocate.  I’ve also got 11+ years of legal research experience, so I’ll definitely have an advantage over anyone who’s coming right out of law school/library school who doesn’t have that.

Another thing I’m finding out is that either jobs are scarce in New York, or people hang on to their jobs forever so there are never any openings, and if there are any openings, they’re not advertised.  But I’m very willing to relocate, at least within reason (like, I don’t want to get stuck somewhere with miserably hot weather, lots of fundamentalists, and no city life as compensation).  I’ve also been told this is a terrible year to be looking because nobody who was ready to retire can afford to now that their 401(k)s have crashed, so they’re staying put, which means nobody else can move up, which means the entry-level jobs don’t open up.

Hope springs eternal, though, and I’m headed to the AALL annual meeting next weekend in the hopes of at least networking if not actually snagging a few interviews.  Got my suit, got my reasonably-priced hotel not far from the convention site, working on getting business cards, and my shoes are in the mail.

Making another boat payment for the vets

Published at May 27, 2009 in Kitties and Life with pets. 7 Comments

So Miss Sugarplum is having Health Issues again. This time, it’s some kind of abdominal mass that barely shows up in an X-ray but is pushing her intestines and stomach out of the way (and is thus responsible for the vomiting and diarrhea she’s had lately; literally, she puked 15 or more times today and I suspect she’s been barfing when I’m not around, though I don’t want to ask what happens to the stuff that doesn’t just dry onto the floor). Tomorrow, she goes in for an ultrasound to see what’s what. With luck, it’s a cyst that can be drained. Without luck, it’s a tumor. Either way, it’s $500.

UPDATE:  Well, the mass appears to be neither a cyst nor a tumor but a lipoma, since when it was aspirated, fat came out.  So it’s still there, and she’s on a special diet now, both to get her to lose weight so the lipoma shrinks and because the damn thing is pressing up against her bowels and pancreas, and the vet wants to treat this as an irritable bowel/tetchy pancreas issue as well as a lipoma.   I just bought a case of food, too, but luckily the nice folks at the local pet food store will let me exchange any unopened cans, and I’ll just stock up on Junebug’s food instead.

Oh, and did I mention the mammary tumor?  When she stabilizes, she’ll need to have a mastectomy.   Perhaps the vet can get a skidoo.

Do you MIND?

Published at January 24, 2009 in Kitties. 1 Comment

Leave us.

Look who’s eating

Published at December 14, 2008 in Kitties. 0 Comments

And with a pretty good appetite, too:

nom nom nom

She’s pretty well back to normal, other than the shaved bits: She’s eating, having figured out canned food can actually be swallowed; she’s playing; she’s vexing the dog; she’s getting onto the bed and the couch. The one thing she’s having trouble with is jumping up onto the cat-feeding table, but then, she has had abdominal surgery.

Speaking of which, her incision is healing very nicely. It’s not even red anymore, and all the scabs have come off. There’s still a bit of bruising, but really not bad for a month out of surgery. I’ve even backed off the antacids, experimentally; the other day, there was a commotion out in the hall (someone moving) which sent her under the bed at the time when I had to give her the meds, so I couldn’t get her before I went to work, but since she continues to eat, I’m going to leave off for a while just to avoid the whole pill-shoving business.

And one of these days, I’m going to get a picture of her little go-go boots.

Stabilizing

Published at November 28, 2008 in Kitties. 4 Comments

Sugarplum’s weight is beginning to go back up, and she’s eating kibble more eagerly now (though only the special blend of kibble that I have to make from one good bag and two crappy boxes).  She’d dipped down to 13.4 pounds for a while, but is now back up to 13.6.

I’ve also managed to shave the nasty food-crusted bits of hair from her chin, so at least she’s cleaner.  Tomorrow’s another vet visit, to get the sutures out.

More about Sugarplum

Published at November 24, 2008 in Kitties, Life with pets and Junebug. 7 Comments

Still not really eating. A few nibbles here and there, but so far I haven’t found a food that she really, really is interested in. So the force-feeding continues apace. Less, though, because I’m supposed to be backing off it to let her get hungry enough to eat something.

Of course, one of my problems is the fact that because I live in a studio now, there’s nowhere to feed her where Frick and Frack can’t get at the food.

Frick and Frack

And yes, they do get at the food.

Sugarplum’s still losing weight, because she’s not eating enough, but in other ways she seems to be improving. Her bowels are working again, she’s doing a lot more of the stuff she did before she got sick, such as greet me at the door and get into the bathtub to drink from the faucet. She’s also swatting the dog away when she has had enough of the chewing (and the fact that the dog is bugging her is, I feel, a good sign).

She’s just, you know, not eating. Not enough. And to tell you the truth, I’m getting a little tired of feeding her like this. She’s tired of it, too. But she hasn’t quite twigged to the concept that if she would just eat something, we could stop this routine.

Though we’ve gotten the whole force-feeding business down to a science, with the towel and the kneeling-while-pinning and the crankyass growling-while-smacking.

Look who’s back!

Published at November 16, 2008 in Kitties and Life with pets. 21 Comments

Back home

And cranky as ever.

I still have to do a little force-feeding if she’s not going to eat on her own, but she is eating the cat treats they sent home with me.  Slowly, but she’s eating them.

I don’t even want to think about how much money I just forked over to spring her from the vet.  Damn cat should be shitting gold bricks with all that money in her.

“Well, there’s haaam…”

Published at November 15, 2008 in Kitties and Life with pets. 6 Comments

Kat will get the reference in the title of this post; it’s a family joke.  One day our youngest brother Tom, then pre-pubescent, came home from school in a foul mood and screamed, “Where the hell is food?”  And Mom, in that exaggeratedly placating way she had* in the face of a tantrum from any of the six cranky little monsters she called her children, said, “Well, there’s haaaam, and turrrrkey?”

Sugarplum’s getting some turrrrkey today.  The vet called and said she was doing well, no puking for three days, no fever for two, and she’s beginning to show interest in eating on her own, but they weren’t sure what to feed her that she’d really be interested in.  So I suggested baby-food turkey, which is what I feed the beasties when they’ve got diarrhea or what have you.  And it’s one of the few things (along with tuna juice) that they all, finicky as the cats are, go for.  So much so that when one’s sick, they all eat that so there’s no stealing of the sick one’s food.

And once she starts eating on her own, they want to send her home.  I may have to rearrange some furniture so she can get on the bed post-surgically, but I’d like to have her back, even if I have to feed her baby food for a while.

______

* She also did this when she answered the phone.  It was kind of a marvel how she answered the phone the same exact way no matter what was going on when it rang: “Helllloo-oo.”  I mean, she could be screaming at us all one second, and then answering the phone with the same “Hellloo-oo” she used when she was feeling frisky.  Compartmentalization.

This cat, I tell you

Published at November 13, 2008 in Kitties and Life with pets. 11 Comments

A day of highs and lows with Sugarplum.

Got a voicemail from the vet, left 11:00 at night (I really need to check my phone more often) on Wednesday.  Called him today.  Sugarplum is not doing well, he says.  The fever and vomiting really concern him, she was taking a turn for the worse (he was the one who’d seen her on Sunday, and he was surprised how much she had deteriorated since then) and the scans were all clear.   The likely culprit is the pancreas, but since it doesn’t have enough mass to show up on the scans, the only way to check it is to open her up and go in and look at it and take some samples.

But if it’s pancreatic cancer, she’s fucked.

So I authorized him to open her up and to euthanize her if he found tumors.

Got a call when the surgery was done — not cancer!  But still not good news.

All the blood and fluid in her body were rushing to the core, leaving none in her extremities.  The veins were simply collapsing, and they had a hard time getting blood from her, and the blood had lost all its stickiness.  The pancreas looked inflamed, but they wouldn’t have results for a few days, and by then things would be resolved one way or the other, so the best thing to do is to treat it as pancreatitis.  He gave me four options:

  1. Do nothing;
  2. Start her on an expensive custom diet that could be ready tomorrow;
  3. Give her plasma to raise her blood protein so the blood would become sticky again and reduce the chance of fluid getting into her lungs;  or
  4. Euthanize her.

I went with Option #3.

As it turned out, Option #3 has made a tremendous improvement in her.  Despite the fact that she got a transfusion of plasma totalling about half the volume of what a cat of her size normally has, it barely budged her blood volume levels from a few days ago.  Apparently, her body, which has been starving (the theory is that because eating made her vomit, and because vomiting made her feel crappy, she stopped eating, which eventually led to the hepatic lipidosis and all our jolly fun) had simply consumed the protein in her blood to keep itself going, so the large amount of plasma was simply replacing what was there.

Also, because the plasma is from a cat who doesn’t have nasty pancreatic enzymes running loose, it will probably help her pancreas settle down.

Now, she’s not out of the woods yet.  If she doesn’t keep food down, she can’t replace the protein she’s lost, and she probably won’t make it.  But the vet is hopeful, so I’m hopeful, too.

Especially because I was absolutely convinced tonight when I went to see her that I’d be saying goodbye.