Friday Cats Blogging

TGIF

Friday. Finally. I'm so tired. Next week we have Tuesday off, and I should have asked for Monday off but I completely forgot, my fault, I could have had a long, long weekend but I forgot. Dumb. However. The day I am not getting off, both my immediate supervisors are off so the day does have that going for it.

I will be going on vacation at the end of the month, so I am getting time off this month as it is, but I need time off now. But I do have time off now, I have the weekend and I am going to see my parents for the first time since Tiny got sick and we'll see how he fairs this time. Hopefully, he will do better this trip and I won't bring back a sick cat again. I'm going to keep a very close eye on him this time.

But happy thoughts! Its my Moms birthday and that's a happy day and its the weekend of my parents Anniversary and my Dad has his grill ready to go and the weather is supposed to be good and we're going to have a good time. And Yay. So happy Thoughts!

Thursday

I'm pretty sure my friends family isn't going to do a funeral for her or least not a public one that her friends from work could go to.  It would be nice to have some closure, but you can't really demand that the family, who you don't know and have never met and have no idea how to contact, come across with a pricy funeral because you need closure.

I think she would like to know that her friends wanted to go see her off, but maybe she wasn't into funerals, it could have been her choice. It would have been nice to have a decent obit though. Because really, you know, at least a decent obit, is it too much to ask? I also want to know how her dogs are? She had two very elderly, sickly black labs that I made cookies for every Christmas  for years. She got them after her husband died so she wouldn't be alone in the house and those dogs were very important to her, and if they are still alive, they must be devastated by her loss.

Well, that's about it. I did get the dogs med, I think it was cheaper this time around, so yay. It was all about me calling the vet to get them to call the pharmacy to get the med ordered though. If I had left it up to the pharmacy to call the vet to get the med ordered it would have taken a week to get it. It would have been super awesome if the pharmacy could have called me to let me know the script was ready or, if when I called to check on the script if the computer had been up to date, because it told me it was not ready and I had a stroke. I then called back and talked to a person who told me it had been ready since Monday...

Now I'm going to empty the dishwasher and fill it and maybe run it! Whee!!!

#downwarddog #savedownwarddog #abcdownwarddog

They canceled my happy dog show! I;m so sad now. I knew something was up when I noticed they were showing two episodes this week, two hours later than normal. It was not a good sign.

I should have known. I mean, it was  quirky, probably too so. It was a hipster girl in a baby doll dress and window pane glasses cross stitching something rude on a tea towl level of quirky and the hipsters still weren't feeling it.

I mean, I understand. It was supposed to be about a girl and her dog and the girl was almost never with her dog and she did make really questionable choices  about her dog. She left the dog alone with a strange dog in a strangers house and just took off for a few hours and was like whatever, I was agast.  I would have never done that, it was asking for something really bad to happen to either one or both of the dogs or the house or the dogs and the house.

And then she left her adult male dog alone with a baby puppy and I was like why do you want harm to befall the puppy? There is a reason we don't leave adult male dogs alone with very, very young puppies and its not because they cuddle too much. They hurt puppies. they don't like puppies, they are much, much larger than a puppy and they could hurt a puppy too easily. Don't leave an adult dog alone with a very young, very small puppy unsupervised. As it was our hero shoved the puppy down  a flight of stairs.

Another issue that needed to be addressed : Is this show about her workplace and what she does for a living and how she feels about her job and her friends at work OR is it about her dog and her life with him OR is it about her dog and how he feels about her and his version of her life? There was entirely too much going on and it was confusing and muddy, what was the show supposed to be about? Pick a line and got with it.

It did not do a good job balancing these and it shouldn't have had to. My advice would have been to dump the work place and focus on her and the dog significantly more. I am much more invested in the dog than I am in her work mates or any plot involving marketing a women's clothing chain.

I am really hoping it gets picked up on a different network or on a streaming service somewhere because I will really miss the dog.

Tuesday

Today was a very big day for me.

I mowed my yard! I have mowed the yard , but I mowed it with my big lawn mower! LIke a grown up! I did more than politely  push the grass over! I actually hurt the grass uniformly! My front yard looks so nice now!

Its been so long! First the electric mower had some sort of switch problem that the electric mower people could not get fixed, then the electric  plug in in the front of my house stopped working months and months ago - that was  a huge problem! It doesn't matter how fixed your electric lawn mower finally is, if it can't get power, it can't mow. Now it can. Thank you Daddy!

It turns out it wasn't an electrical problem at all, it turns out it was just a massive fire issue problem, the inside of the receptacle was clogged with leaves and yard waste and yuck and it couldn't get the power from point A to point B. At any moment it could have gotten dry enough and all of that yuck could have ignited and I would have had an electrical fire.  It never happened because I finally stopped useing it, but its still scary to think about.


Oh, In honor of my parents Anniversary which is today. I was in line at the grocery a while ago, behind this  really cute older couple, and they were play arguing over how much money she had spent on the groceries. The checkout girl asked them how long they had been married, the wife smiled at her husband to give him the go ahead to answer and he said, "Three weeks, May 15".

To my parents, married much longer than three weeks, June 27, 1964.

Weekend

Sunday I went to a Moveon Cook Out.

It was more fun that it sounds. I and I was glad I went.I did have to drive out to BFE and that was a little bit of a challenge for me, but I did it. But, if I moved out to BFE, I would not live in a subdivision, you can live in a subdivision where its more convenient. If I'm going to to live in BFE, I'm going to live on a big lot in a farmhouse, maybe I'll have goats or free range chickens. I'm not going to live shoulder to shoulder with my neighbors.

Anyway.

There were about 12 people there, more than I thought, so that was nice. I was afraid it was going to be me and the woman who hosted it. A good mix of ages including an adult man with what appeared to be unmedicated ADHD.

When the rest of us were giving our Resistance CVs - how many of us went to Washington, who was at the Airport... he was wandering the yard,  he was in the shrubs, under the lady's porch, generally wandering around kind of zoned out like a little kid. He was we learned, a Bernie Bro. Shocking. His wife didn't seem to be paying any attention to him at all - she clearly was used to this behavior.

While he was giving us his CV, he said he thought the whole Trump Russia thing was a "waste of time". I decided he was a waste of time. Also he needs meds. Several different kinds for several different problems, also he could use a smack upside the head or three.

Everyone else was very nice and now I am on another email list.

I wanted to go to the cook out because it sounded like fun and I hadn't gone to one this summer and going to one where there will be no chance at all of having to hear 45 positive politics was a plus. However, a cook out that was all politics, was a little less then totally fun  too.  I did have a good time though, it was a lovely place, I had a great lunch and I met some new people.

Friday Cat Blogging

Friday

I didn't plan on going to Sam's every day this week but I went to Sam's every day this week.

Monday - Pre-planned trip to pick up prescriptions. I put in an order for an additional med. They call me frequently with suggestions of meds that they could refill, if I should want and I always want, even if I don't actually need them refilled, and then  I discover a med I need them to refill and this one seems to surprise them. Of course they don't have it and I have to come back. I also have lunch. I was supposed to pay my Sams bil today also but I forgot to bring it with me, its okay because I'll be back tomorrow to pick up the med. I was going to have lunch but the line was too long and there was nowhere to sit.

Tuesday -  I was not able to pick up the med because it was out of refills. I will have to wait until tomorrow. I also get a huge box of trash bags and I pay my Sams bill, this time I had lunch, pizza.

Wednesday- I refused to go into Sams, instead I go to Target and buy dog food. I buy gas $1.98 a gallon! at Sams. Sack lunch.

Thursday - I pick up my meds at Sams and think about their pizza, but the line is too long. I eat my sack lunch in my car instead.

Thursday I  discovered that I am not the only me on their client list, they have another Me, who is not Me. The other Me was born 3-10-1961 and they tried to give me not Me's script. I am now very curious about Not Me. Is Not Me using some form of my ID? Was the tech just harried and confused and mispronounced the Not Me's name? Or is something darker?  my ID did get stolen a few years ago. How do I go about asking the pharmacy if their client is an identity thief  and what we can do about that.

Fresh Scent

I just sat down to start this and I decided that what I really needed to do was to get up right now and wash the comforter and couch cover in the living room because they both smell like cat pee. Like badly. I am being haunted by a phantom :  Phantom Cat Pee.

When Tiny was ill, he wanted to pee a lot, sometimes he peed for real and sometimes he did a pee pantomime. It was impossible to tell  one from the other, and sometimes he just leaked pee. My entire house turned into a giant cat box.

Fortunately, Tiny is better but the giant cat box odor remains. I don't know how to get the cat box smell out of a dwelling. I can wash what I can but the odor is everywhere. I have a very good product for it but short of soaking every surface - which would be expensive, and  not good for my floors - the product gets rid of the smell but it also removes the finish right of a floor unless it's dealt with promptly - I don't know what to do.

Eu de old cat pee is very offensive and it is currently everywhere. You open the door and get slapped in the face with it. It is not welcoming. I've tried opening windows and letting the house air out but there seems to be a feral  male cat that lives outside and that son of bitch sprays!, so it came to my attention that all I was doing  was replacing one  old bad smell for a  new one. That was a great day.

I almost feel like repainting a wall just to replace one bad smell with a different non cat pee one, maybe the paint smell would neutralize the urine? I've tried to track down the odor but it seems to be everywhere at once, its not like when the dog pees somewhere and its just a matter of cleaning up the one  highly visible small mess and moving one, this mess is invisible and seems to be taunting me. I think I take care of it and then next day its back, stronger than ever. It can't last forever, is going to have o break down over time.

I'm going to have to get room fresheners and plug in things. My house is going to smell like a daycare or a nursing home, i.e,  the lovely odor of too strong floral scented disinfectant  - but at least its not going to smell like cat pee.

For an animal that allegedly could not pee, he peed all over my house.

Dealing With It.

And how was your day?  Did you know that you shouldn't really spend your day being pissed about how someone else is living their life? Well, I did. I had a low grade anxiety all day, made the day so much nicer.

 I can not and should not spend my day stewing over what you do in your life if what you do in your life is not going to change what I do on my life. Its stupid. I guess it had to be done though, I needed to process.

I can worry, worry is good, but I can't do it indefinitely. I can worry about terrorism too, I don't though. I was horrified when Cheeto got into office, I was very depressed, almost paralyzed by sadness for weeks - but I learned to live in this new wrong world, and I will learn to live in this new, new wrong world. I blame Cheeto for this, somehow I know this is his fault.

 Some people make their really, really bad, life altering choices when they are 15, some people make their really, really bad life altering bad choices when they are 48. Its about timing.  I will get used to it, I will be Happy and I will stop bitching. I will remember it is not my life, it is her life.

No Place for your Things.

When I was poking around the tiny houses, that are poky by definition, I had to wonder:  Where are you supposed to put your stuff? Where do you put your summer clothes in winter?" What about your winter coats over the summer?

None of the Tiny Houses or the larger trailer houses seemed to have anywhere to put dressers and there were no adequate closets. A Tiny House had a A closet. A small closet. It would be one thing to say that you would just have a shed or a rental space to store that kind of thing - but what if you wanted to take your Tiny House on the road,...

My guess would be that you buy your tiny wardrobe at  Goodwill or Salvo or whatever  they have where you are at the start of the season and then at the end of the season, you bag it up and donate it back at the back door and then go back around to the front door and  pick out your tiny wardrobe for this season.

You would have to decide how many sweaters each of you would be allowed, how many long sleeved shirts, everything would have to go with everything else. Essentially you would have to wear adult Garanimals, maybe you would share, so to stretch the wardrobe choices pretty much everything you would owned would be non-gender specific, nothing would really fit- however, it would work for your limited storage options.

And what about cooking? The kitchens in some were better than others. The larger Tiny House had a kitchen that had about the same cooking area that mine does- which is to say, not nearly enough but good enough once you get used to it. However, if you are used to a Gourmet Kitchen setup it would be impossible, the tiny-ist Tiny House kitchen was barely large enough to make toast in - and that was about what you could make in it. It came with a  small toaster oven and a hot plate and I bet you could fit in a very small hot pot. Bon appetit!   Thanksgiving Dinner is not going to be at your house!

And Christmas won't be either, kiss those decorations goodbye! Kiss the holidays goodbye, holidays are for people in real houses. You can visit Christmas but Santa isn't coming to see you, nowhere for him to go.  Forget Birthdays too, you have nowhere to put new stuff anyway.

And speaking of eating, there was no space for pots and pans and utensils and plates and glasses and cups and anything else you use in actual kitchen settings. No Tiny House came with anywhere to eat your food any way. My guess is that you eat it in you uncomfortable built in couch thing in the livingroom niche .

No room for Santa!? No room for you either! "living space", there is nowhere to stretch out, unless you go to bed, there is no where to put up your feet. You sit up straight because there is no space in which to put a sturdy table or ottoman or even a poof. The "couch" is actually a rock hard dwarf love seat/bench thing, good luck getting comfortable on that. You have no room for art on the walls or family pictures or collections of any sort. Its like living in a dorm room forever.

I haven't mentioned that in almost all of the Tiny Houses that you sleep in a loft with a seven inch head clearance. I hope you don't have issues with tight, enclosed spaces or enjoy sex. Because wow your options are limited.

You wear each others clothes and you share a plate and you live in a packing crate.  Lovely.

My assumption was that the Tiny House set eats out a lot. They all seem to be independently wealthy from weird not jobs that allow them to travel at will  - so as to spend as much time as possible not at home.

Tiny House Show

I hate watch a lot of Tiny House shows. Tiny House Hunters, hate it!, Tiny House Luxury, Hated it!, Tiny House Nation, Hate it!

I decided that after hating it on TV for all this time, the opportunity to hate it in real life was just too much to turn down. The Great American Tiny House Show came to Raleigh and I needed to go.

It turns out the GMTHS was tiny, there were only a handful of actual tiny houses on display and it seemed more about selling trailers and RVs then actually marketing Tiny houses, there were also venders there but they were not selling Tiny house-centric supplies either. The RVs and small trailer houses  they had were all much nicer than the Tiny houses.

This was one of the nice houses, you could almost spend time in this one. The kitchen and bathroom were larger then you would expect, but the bedroom loft was really far off the ground. there was very little living space. It seemed very tall and heavy.

This one got a big No from people who walked through it. It was the size of a shed and a single person would get on their own nerves in this place. It was "off-grid", a selling point for some, but this model was too small.. There was nothing with the actual square footage listed.

This is a trailer house. It was really nice. It featured a good sized bedroom and normal sized appliances and a real bathroom  and a loft, but the stairs to the loft were too steep. Otherwise, it was nice and very livable.

This one also has wheels, but I can't imagine trailing it anywhere. It was the most livable and homelike of all of them, excluding the RVs, which dominated the live-on-the-road category . This one was really nice and could sleep a family comfortably. It was the most clearly something you could live in. It was also ungodly tall and heavy and I could not imagine trailing it behind any consumer vehicle, you would have to pay someone to take this from point A to point B and then leave it there - which would be the idea with something of this size. There was another "tiny house" outside, but I didn't like it at all and didn't get its picture, it was just ugly and too tall to trail. I thought maybe it was on hydraulics or something. It was too narrow and just wasn't okay at all, no one was waiting in line for it at all, the above had a line the whole time I was there.

So now that I have actually been in a a couple of  Tiny Houses, I can now say froma more educated place : STOP BEING SUCH SNOBS GO BUY AN RV! They are all nicer, an RV is CHEAPER and its actually road worthy and  safer.

But if you never have a chance to go see Tiny Houses in real life, go and see Tiny Houses, its worth the trip.

Great American Tiny House Show

Friday Cats Blogging

TGIF

Just spent entirely too much time trying to be clever on Twitter for an audience I'm not entirely sure can even see my posts.

Its hard to be both funny and make sense in 140 characters and every time someone is both, please be impressed. Steve Martin is a genius. He wins Tonys and Grammys and Emmys and any other trophy he really sets his mind to and he's successfully funny in 140 characters.

Now, I have to take a shower because I had to rebag the remains of the lawn refuse that the lawn guy bagged up when he did my shrubbery, he only had three bags and they were black bags, he city will not take black bags no matter how clearly full of lawn waste they are. I had to take all the waste out manually ( yuck)  and put it in clear bags so the city will take them away. Now I am filthy and hot and sweaty.

My new definition of "princess" is City garbage  worker  on the clock who won't pick up black trash bag because it might have something yucky in it" - the reason they gave as to why we all need to now go out and buy new bags for our yard waste if we want the city to take it away. But its just fine for me  to dig through the black bags and to do it for free.

The yard guy was here, yesterday, early with his gear and his trailer and he could have picked up the offending bags from my yard, and taken them away, much like he could have taken away the refuse last week when he was here and did the work, which I believe he does when he does other peoples work, when I think of it, I don't see other neighbors with bags of crap in their yards, he takes that mess away.

 He did my neighbors work the day he did mine and they didn't have bags of leaves to deal with. Now I;m annoyed with him and I'm going to mow my own grossly over grown yard myself with my electric lawn mower - which I have avoided since it was broken for so long and fixing it never worked for very long. It also means plugging my freezer in elsewhere, but I'm up for the challenge. Screw you little lawn mower man, I don't pay you so I I can get dirty and sweaty and mess with bags of leaves, I pay you so you can get dirty and sweaty and mess with bags of leaves.

Piss me off and I will mess with my own leaves and you won't get paid at all.

Deep sigh

Woke up to a 27 story housing project in London burning. It was constructed of charcoal, stuffed with newspaper and coated with accelerant.. It did not have sprinklers, working fire alarms or more than a single passable means of escape in an emergency. It may still be burning, it was at 6pm EST.  At last count it was 12 dead - a genuine miracle if it stays there, there was 400-600 in the building. The Fire Departments got there very quickly and successfully evacuated many, many people but they are not magic and the fire was faster and the building was built to burn. Lord have mercy on their souls.

Sometimes those girls and women who died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory died in vain.


Later, a wackjob shot some Republicans and after than someone shot up a UPS office and then something after that too and then there was something at Travis Air Force Base .I am officially suffering from compassion fatigue. I no longer feel bad when adults get shot at work. We as a country don't care and I can't care anymore.

 I watched a mandatory video on Active Shooter preparedness at work.  The take away? Call for help, get out of the building if possible, if not, turn off the light, close the door, lock yourself in, barricade the door if possible, be quite, carry your cell with all the time.

#Downwarddog

Are you watching #Downwarddog? you should be! Its lovely. Its about a girl and her dog. And the dog talks.

But the dog doesn't talk to her or anyone else in their world or even to other dogs. He talks to us. He doesn't seem to understand his person, although he loves her dearly and she is his world. He also fears that they don't have enough in common.

For example, he loves garbage. Nan, his person, does not love garbage. Over the course of the episode we learn why Martin, our hero, loves garbage and why he also hates garbage and the part of himself that loves garbage.

He remembers his early puppyhood and his Mother and how hard it was for he to feed his puppy brother and sisters and how she had o turn to garbage to feed her litter: They were garbage dogs and that his secret shame. He feels that Nan must know this somehow he was a garbage dog and always dirty and yucky and this is why she hates garbage and probably him too. He is very sad.

He was also out and about and away from his house because Nans stoner ex-boyfriend left the gate  kopen and let him out. he claims he loves Martin, but not enough to keep and eye on him. he seems like a nice guy  and that he really cares about Martin, but when it comes down to it, not nice enough and he doesn't care that much. He's just lucky Martin knows his way home, didn't eat anything  he shouldn't have and didn't get hit by a car on his walkabout. He's kind of an ass really.

Nan, in a parallel story is in NYC for her job, they live, we learn this week in Pittsburgh, and has a freakout in the conference room bathroom and remembers the poverty of her childhood and how it made her always feel dirty and how clean all the people in the conference room clearly had always been - it isn't until her friend and co-worker comes in and gives her a sharp rebuke and tells her to get in the now, right now, that she puts on her big girl panties and makes her presentation and does very well, because she is who she is now and that woman is good at her job.

We learn that she and Martin have more in common than he thinks. At the end, she gives him a nice bath and they learn about themselves but nothing about each because they can't communicate. Which is kind of sad, because we learned this deep things about them as a pair and it goes nowhere. Sad.

Monday

I forgot to tell you a story.

On Friday I ate lunch at Burger King, I eat there once a week. I would rather eat at my favorite Chinese place but they insist on watching CNN - when did any place that  feature TV decide that we have to watch news? Why can't we watch reruns or game shows or animal shows. They have cable, the world is their oyster, they could have their TV on just about anything else and they insist on news. I don't want to watch news. I want to eat lunch in peace. I can't do that if the news is on. That place has two TVs for years they kept one tv tuned to FAUX and one to CNN, fairly recently they changed them to being both the CNN, so I guess that is a win but , geeze.

I did score there once though. I got them to mute the TVs until I finished my meal.

So Now I go every Friday to Burger King to eat lunch, so I can eat lunch in peace, where they 1) watch sports on their TV and 2) have outdoor seating.

This Friday I was happily seated outside, eating my favorite chicken sandwich and reading my David Sedaris book. A woman approached me and asked if she could sit with me. There was another empty table  behind us and two others at the building - but I was really reading my book and I said "sure", but I was thinking Why are you sitting here? With me? Go away, go someplace else. Please don't talk to me, pleasedon'ttalkto mepleasedon'ttalktomme.  Thankfully, she did not talk to me and I finished my meal and left. As I was leaving I noticed she was eating a jelly sandwich!  It wasn't even Burger King food. Why are you sitting with me at Burger King and you aren't even eating Burger King food?!

That takes nerve. No one ever sat with me at the Chinese place. They would make you leave if you tried to eat a foreign, DIY  sandwich. However, they don't have outdoor seating, you are not allowed to escape their imposed 24 hour news cycle.

So in order to not get stressed out by the news cycle, I pay more for less food that is less good for me. I could pay less for better food hat I like better, but I choose not to because they won't change the channels to something less stressful. I pay more to have a less stressful, if less healthy lunch. Its a thing.

One of my friends from college wife was on a car accident today that left her with  two broken wrists and multiple broken ribs among other injuries. They have two young sons. Think  a good thought for them

Weekend

I spent an entire weekend without going to the vet, instead I did laundry and watched TV and walked the dog and hung out with family and went out to dinner and cleaned out cat boxes, over and over and over. I've never cleaned out cat boxes as frequently in my life, or care so much about what I am taking out.

Tiny is producing, its just very small amounts. I am learning as I clean out cat boxes all day long, that even Ace doesn't produce much often. Ace produces more at a time but not more frequently. It makes me feel better. I would like to see bigger amounts from Tiny but the Doc has promised me that over time he will make more at a time. He has an appointment with his regular vet on Tuesday for a recheck and I hope he has positive things to tell me. I'm feeling better, I think he's feeling better but I am hoping that I can get a professional to  second that.

I think the cat peed somewhere and I can't find the spot..


I could have mowed the lawns but it was just too hot and I didn't feel like doing it. Then I idely thought about maybe I was going to mow the front yard after I got back from walking the dog, but then I  got back from walking the dog and I just didn't mow the yard. I took a shower instead and watched some TV. It seemed like a better use of time.

See, now I think I'm going to figure out what I'm going to wear to work tomorrow and then I might watch some more TV. Its hot,  it limits your options. I also spent the weekend being really happy this weekend was so different from last weekend, I hugged the kitty a lot, both the kitties a lot.

Friday Cats Blogging

Friday

I realized almost too late that  the  lawn mower guy was not going to come back to remove the clippings from the job he did on my shrubbery. I just assumed that if he produced the mess that he would remove the mess - well, for $60, No.  For $60, The bagging is the job of the home owner, so the reason there is no real entry,  is that I spent the best part of my evening bagging up shrubbery leavings.

Six big bags of shrubbery leavings, the big lawn bags. Six of them. I pulled out both of my clippers, the ones for clipping branches and leaves so that I could make it easier to get them in the bags. I have learned from earlier outings that it is better to work on them before you try to bag them because they tear up the bags otherwise.

Earlier, I had a panic attack about Tiny and his litter box and the contents there in? On the upside? There are contents! so that is a win, my issue is that they are very small contents and and some are very small and last night I saw him do the sad squat move and that is not okay.

So I called the hospital. I called and talked to a tech who did not make me happy. I asked about reupping his pain meds and she told me that we didn't want to give him a drug problem!
 He's a cat! I don't even know if animals can become addicted to pain killers in a week, especially if they are actually if they are in pain. I was left feeling unsoothed.

About an hour later, the hospital called me back and I talked to a doctor who reminded me that his little urethra was still really inflamed and sore and to cut it a little slack and that he would be going to the box frequently, but over the next week or so, he would be going less and less so and peeing more at a time and his pain would be decreasing soon. Also, I could ask my vet to give me more of the meds I have and if they couldn't, I could get more from the hospital . Kitty Addict my eye. I felt soothed.

Hair Cut

I came home and my shrubbery had a haircut. I knew it had been scheduled and I had a talk with the neighbor, and I gave some rough directions "make it look like someone lives there" and  "tidy".

I did not say prep them for  Boot Camp

Clearly my neighbor was more bothered by my over grown shrub issues than I had thought. Both of those shrubs are now less than half the shrubs that they once were. They will be much easier for me to manually keep trimmed though..

Welcome Home Tiny!!!

Back Home, in his favorite place.

 Shaved wrist, for his IV!

Big Sick Tiny II

My Day.

Got up, took care of business. Took dog to work, left dog in car - he protested this. I went to the office and waited until the Day care opened and called them to see if when I put my request in yesterday afternoon if it actually went in - It did not. Super.

Fortunately, they were able to come right over and pick Rocket up, got instantly lost on campus, which is very common when people first come here and so I stood around in the parking lot trying to flag him down.

He finally found us and fortunately, Rocket settled into being crated in the bus just fine! I was thrilled to learn that. So we will be taking advantage of that service again. It makes my life so much easier on mornings that I can't take him there myself, but I need him to be there. $10 for pick up service, can't beat it with a stick. I was afraid Rocket would freak out being put in a crate but he was very cool with it.

How is Tiny: I called this morning for an update and the report was that: Tiny is getting better, slowly, this morning he still had sludgy urine, so I spent the day freaking out and very clenchy. This is not a nice way to spend the greater part of your work day. They hadn't said he still had sludgy urine! They always talk about what great urine he was making, not about its consistency! They didn't say "Oh, yeah, he's making urine but it's been kind of like oatmeal", I think I needed to know that, so it was kind of a surprise and I felt like I had been punched in the gut.

 I knew they were going to re-run his kidney value tests in the afternoon, so I tried very hard to wait to call until late in the afternoon - because I call about every four hours to check in , so not calling for  an extended time was really, really hard - however by the time I did call - they had the results and they were great! In that they were completely normal! Before they were very close to dieing , so I was very happy. I was even more heartened to hear that his urine is much thinner and normal than it was this morning! Its still pink - I don't care about pink. I care about sludgy. And its not sludgy!

He's getting better slowly, they had to fit him with a different catheter that is better at being twisted because he's up and around and twisting his cath in a kind of unsafe way. So that is goodish   I wanted to hear that he was healing up and would be home, like as we speak. That was not in the cards, not what I wanted to hear, I wanted to hear that he was bouncing back like a beach ball and was blowing them away with his amazing healing and he could back home this afternoon! But isn't how it works. He will get better when he gets better.

Also, my glasses aren't ready and they were supposed to be ready last Friday. Also something that should not be hurried. With my luck they will be ready to pick up at the same time and they are about four blocks apart.  Grrr. Of course, Tiny ranks, I can get the glasses whenever.

Big Sick Tiny

How was your weekend? My weekend sucked.

Friday - Pet Hospital
Saturday - Pet Hospital
Sunday - Checked Tiny into Pet Hospital for procedure to treat his FLUTD, I should have had it done Friday, by Sunday morning he's kidneys were failing and his heart was following closely. He was very close to dieing .

I'm now in debt for the next year and a half. I had the procedure done at the hospital nearer to my house because I didn't like driving out to Cary and I have a relationship with the facility in Raleigh - even though none of those people worked there back then. I know the building, also, no long waiting times! Hated the long waits at Cary.

Anyway, he's doing better now. I call every few hours to check in. I had to take a shower earlier and it was lonely without Tiny there. I was working in the yard earlier and I kept looking up to the window and he wasn't there. Sigh. Last night he slept curled up  in my chest and it made me feel better, I wanted to make him feel better. Tonight he's in a crate hooked up to wires and tubes and a catheter and no one to snuggle with. I have Rocket and Ace. I know he's getting the best care, but he's all by himself and it makes me sad.

Friday

Why there is no entry for today: Tiny kitty was showing no improvement and I called his vet to say why is the antibiotic you gave him not working yet? And why did he growl  at the dog this morning?

The vet told meat me to take him to the emergency vet (!!!!) and not my old home away from home emergency vet either, the place where I have an existing "relationship" and they would cut me some slack.

No. They sent us to darkest Cary. Too far away if I had a pet in true peril. I know the difference and I would have had a meltdown and taken myself to the place on Vick.

Anyway. Four hours later and a rescue mission by Alphagal  later, his bladder was not distended or blocked, his blood work is normal and everything looks good. They did give him more and better pain meds - already clearly working.

I went and bought  the soupy -ist cat food I could find and shockingly, he liked it! I also just watched him drink water!:-)

Wednesday

Tiny kitty continues to recover. Last night he hid from me, which is Aces act, not his, so that was disturbing. He is still squating all over the place and not peeing and that is not making me happy - after he was effectively and expensively, roto-rootered , he should be peeing all over the house like a fire hose! I mean, Yay for not peeing all over my house, but I was hoping for more progress after he was roto-ed. I kind of thought he would stop popping squats around my house and looking so troubled. I've been giving him his pain meds, but now I wonder if they are working.

I am  however, finding little pee balls in the cat box and that is heartening, I can tell the difference between the large, healthy, hearty pees of Ace and the tight, angry, pees of Tiny and its more of an education than I wanted. But at least there are pees of Tiny.

Today I went back to the vet and got some urinary track health food for him and Ace to share. Ace loves it, Tiny looked at it and walked away. I'm hoping that there is a similar kind of food out on the open market or better yet, at the  pet food boutique I shop at because the vet food is expensive, even more so than the expensive cat food I already invest in. Hopefully, a food that Ace will have more of an interest in.

Today was weird at work. I knew something was wrong when I couldn't focus on taking messages off the over night message system, I had to listen to the messages over and over again to get phone numbers and names written down correctly, then my printer decided it didn't want to speak to my computer and that took forever to get fixed and then pretty much fixed it self after we turned my computer off and on a couple of times. Then after lunch, I came back to work and I walked face first into a migraine ( I think the inability to get the numbers in the morning had something to do with the brewing migraine) and that sucked and took  too long to go away ( but that you migraine rescue med for busting in and slapping the shit out it and beating it back for me, with minimum time face down on my desk.) - but I still got all my work done! And I  even got my correspondence distributed , which made me happy.