Monday, February 23, 2009

terribly early in the morning

A Very Bad, No Good, Terrible Weekend

When you hope that your cat only herniated a disk, and are wrong, it makes for a crappy weekend.  We’re not sure what happened - did Bunny fall?  Did she have a seizure?  Did she have a stroke?  Does she have a concussion? (cross your fingers for “concussion”, as it’s the best of the bunch, at least for the future)  All we know is that she hurt her hip, and we don’t know if she fell and hurt her hip and hit her head, or had a stroke and then fell and hurt her hip, or really anything except her hip hurt, which is why we took her to the vet in the first place.  She was going to spend the night getting treated for a herniated disk (oh, everyone has to be like Mom - first Cricket, then Bunny), and they had to keep an eye on her because steroids are contraindicated for her heart condition.  When the vet called later that evening, she told us that Bunny was blind.  Well, Bunny wasn’t blind before Friday evening, so something is affecting her vision, but we don’t know what.  Her eyes react to light, so her eyes are seeing, but her brain isn’t.  Ugh.

The good news, if there’s anything good in this scenario is that Bunny is able to get around the house not too badly.  We don’t know if it’s because she has a little bit of vision (peripheral?) or if it’s because cats leave their scent on everything by rubbing up against things/people constantly.  You know how sometimes it’s kind of annoying?  Try to think of it as less annoying now, because we’re thinking that’s how Bunny is getting around.  She’s marked the whole house with her scent glands (it sounds kind of gross, but we can’t smell them…as far as I know, and if I can’t smell something, it generally doesn’t have a smell) and it’s basically mapped the house for her.  She’s still able to jump over the baby gates, go up & down the stairs, walk around the computer stand in the bedroom that we occasionally kick because the metal legs stick out into the path at the end of the bed.  Several times, I was sure I’d broken a toe kicking that damned thing.  It doesn’t even hold a computer, it has a Pachinko machine on it - a groovy one from a Pachinko parlor in Japan.  But anyway, we kick the legs of the stand, and Bunny doesn’t.  I put her on the bed, and just like she always did, she ran off by running over the blankets, jumped onto the headboard (which is an oddly shaped tree limb), and then down onto the ramp that sits at the end of the bed.  From the ramp, she jumped to the floor.  She navigated all of that without a misstep.  It’s pretty amazing to watch.

The bad stuff - she jumped onto the kitchen counter and knocked a glass bottle of vitamins onto the floor, shattering it.  Lesson learned, no more breakables on the counters.  You’d think that she just wouldn’t jump onto things that are that high up, but Bunny has always been our most fearless daredevil.  She’s the only cat that has jumped on top of the kitchen cabinets, walked the length of them, and then jumped onto the top of the fridge.  While we’re grateful that the other cats stay off the cabinets, we would’ve preferred that the family daredevil not be the one who lost her sight.  We have cats who do nothing but nap all day, when they’re not eating.  They wouldn’t have even noticed if they lost their sight.  Bunny has also been very very vocal since coming home.  We’re not sure if she’s talking to us to make sure we’re still in the room with her, chatting because she’s confused about the sight loss, or doing what I’d be doing…complaining loudly about going blind overnight.

While having Bunny lose her sight at the grand old age of 2 (next month) sucks, what sucks more is that there’s a chance that the reason she lost her sight is related to her heart condition (Restrictive Cardiomyopathy) - if she had a stroke because of a blood clot, chances are good that there would be more clots in her future.  Bunny is an adorable cat and we don’t want to lose her.  She had a follow-up ECG a few weeks ago (she was diagnosed with her heart condition a little over a year ago), and nothing had changed, so we figured that we were in the clear, that her condition hadn’t worsened at all, so we had a lot of years left with her.  Don’t tell the other cats, because I love them too, but Bunny is my favorite.  I sleep with Bing, and Bunny refuses to sleep with me or even let me hold her for too long, but there’s just a special something about her.  The cat that likes to play with your answering machine by walking on it and playing messages is going to either be annoying or adorable.  Bunny is adorable.  She’s been so healthy since she was diagnosed with her heart condition (she was in heart failure when we took her in - we thought she had a cold), and she’s more active than any other cat, which is good for a cat that you want to stay healthy and in good shape.  Anyway, we’d really really really like it if her blindness is caused by a concussion and that she’ll slowly get her sight back, and be fine, as long as she doesn’t fall on her head again.  However, apparently concussions are rare in cats.  But, not impossible.  We know all of the post-concussion symptoms from watching and reading about hockey, and if she had one, we would just make her quit her NHL career now, before she had any more concussions.  Then, she could live a long & healthy life.  The vets don’t think it was a concussion, but they don’t know what it is either, so I’m happy to think it’s a concussion and hope that by next week, she’ll be back to normal.  Oh, and the herniated disk that we thought she had…is fine right now.  She doesn’t seem to be in any pain and she’s stopped limping.

We’re exhausted.  We barely got any sleep on Friday night due to worrying about Bunny, and waiting for the vet’s office to open on Saturday morning.  We took her in as soon as we could in the morning.  We had locked her in the bathroom with Missy Mae, our bathroom cat (seriously, that’s where she’s happy - she sleeps behind the toilet and mothers tiny foster babies when we have them), because we knew that Missy Mae is our least active cat, so there wouldn’t be any danger to Bunny in the bathroom.  It was just her, Missy Mae, three or four cat beds, a bowl of toys, a bowl of water, and a litter box.  When we got up, the bathroom was the most amazing litter/water mess we had EVER seen.  The floor was just covered in gross clumps of wet litter, the water dish was full of litter, Bunny was covered in dried litter (it was like she had a coating of cement on her paws, legs, and tail) and we were really really confused.  However, after we found out that she was blind, we figured out what happened.  The pain meds wore off (we practically have a pet pharmacy here) and then she woke up confused and started to wander around frantically, spilling litter and water, over and over again.  She’s just now finally gotten most of it off of her.  Her tail still has a few litter spots on it, but she either cleaned herself up at the vet’s office on Saturday night or someone cleaned her up.  Whoops, tangent.  I just wanted to say…we’re tired and now we’re going to bed.  Cross your fingers that Bunny doesn’t find any more breakables.

Bunny in December

Bunny at 9 weeks

Tiny Bunny & Carlo (her tongue is sticking out, which is why she looks a bit odd - if you click on the picture, you can see the larger version with more detail)

Saturday, January 24, 2009

the wee hours

Female elephants rescuing a baby elephant from drowning

An amazing video that will have you on the edge of your seat, even though I promise you that it has a happy ending.  It’s just awful that people have been separately these elephant families for circuses when you can see how much family means to them.  They’re definitely better parents than a whole lot of people I’ve seen.

Friday, January 16, 2009

the wee hours

Help Best Friends Get Donations & Help Neko Case’s Music Get Listeners (win/win)

While Leigh-Ann and I are recovering from the exhausting 48 hours of cats & their vaccines (plus I had to go to the DMV on Monday to register the car), enjoy some music and a nice story from Best Friends.  Really, we’re so exhausted and sore that it’s going to take days for us to recover.  I stayed up all night last night partially because TJ had a bad reaction to the vaccines and I wanted to keep an eye on him, and partially because as a caffeine wuss, I had too much caffeine.  He obviously felt awful - he was running a temperature, felt nauseous (wouldn’t eat anything until late tonight), and was in lots of pain from one of the shots in particular, possibly the rabies vaccine.  He could barely walk, couldn’t jump over the baby gates (which he normally clears with lots of space), and had trouble getting in/out of the litterbox.  We use those extra high Rubbermaid containers because Jackson has bad aim, and usually everyone gets in & out of them without a problem.  TJ was such a sad boy last night, so I lifted him in and out of the box, opened the baby gate for him to get in/out of the bedroom, and lifted him onto the bed so he could rest in the physical/emotional comfort of Leigh-Ann’s armpit.  We know that whenever TJ is cozying up in bed with us, he’s sick.  It’s both sweet and sad at the same time.  Anyway, he’s feeling quite a bit better tonight.  We gave him some kibble snacks and we were greatly relieved to see him eat.  He only weighs a little less than 8lbs, so he can’t afford to miss too many meals.

Every time a blog reposts “People Got A Lotta Nerve” by Neko Case, she and her record label will donate five dollars to the Best Friends Animal Society.  You can watch the PSA below that she recorded while she was volunteering at Best Friends for several days, and you can listen to her song that’s below it.  The promotion will run from January 13 to February 3, 2009. Five dollars will be donated for every blog post and one dollar for every user of iLike that adds the song to his/her profile. (a maximum of $4,000 will be donated - and as an SEO, it’s certainly money well-spent in a whole host of ways)  Here’s the story of Neko Case’s visit to Best Friends, which is just about every pet lover’s dream weekend.

Click here to download “People Got a Lotta Nerve” and if you’d like pre-order the cd from Amazon.com (it’s released on March 3rd), click here:

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

evening

Interview with a Vet

As longtime clients of our vet’s office, we got to help “interview” a new vet at the office by bringing in our cat brood and having them vaccinated in a two day ordeal.  Because we were there to judge the vet, our cats were vaccinated for free, which saved us close to a thousand bucks.  We took the older cats in yesterday (and Kevin, the stray) and the youngsters in today.  Well, except for Bing, who refused to allow herself to be caught.  She hid under the bed, except for when she was bloodying Leigh-Ann.  Dobby (the former feral, yet mostly still feral cat), who barely lets us pet her, and then only on the back and only when she’s upstairs, also stayed home.  Everyone did well and there was little fallout from the vaccines from yesterday, except that Derek was extra sleepy last night and today.

The good news from today was that Kevin (the stray) is neutered and his feline leukemia tests came back negative.  So, if anyone would like to adopt a very very sweet (and healthy) young cat, who also happens to be very good looking, Kevin is ready for a new home.  He doesn’t want to be out on the streets.  He would like to stay inside someone’s house and watch tv with them.  He didn’t specifically say that he wanted to watch tv, but he does like to cozy up.

More good news from today - the vet couldn’t hear that Bunny had any sort of heart problem, much less that she had Feline Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.  She’s been doing really well since she was diagnosed a little over a year ago (when she was in heart failure) and except for requiring her heart meds (cheap, thankfully), she’s been fine.  She’s very active, loves to play, and is great about taking her meds.  I don’t know if she could outgrow HCM, but I know they can outgrow heart murmurs, so if she’s fine now, that would be great.  She’s scheduled for an ECG in a couple of weeks, so we’ll know for sure what’s up soon.

The bad news is that Scampi has some weird gum disease that is common in Siamese cats.  He’s going to have to learn to put up with us brushing his teeth, so he doesn’t end having to have them all pulled.  There seems to be quite the run on gunky teeth in our gang - I guess street cats don’t have the best genes.  Otherwise, they all seem happy & healthy…although none of them were thrilled with going to the vet, not even Tie, who loves strangers.  Once we got there, they all handled it really well.  Bunny & Carlo tried to hide their heads in the corner of the couch (we were in the big room that has a leather couch), so they could pretend they weren’t really there.  Plus, they were shedding like it was going out of style.  Fear makes them shed, and it looked like they shed pounds’ worth of fear.  My shirt turned into a carpet.

As for the new vet - we really liked her.  She was friendly, knowledgeable (she diagnosed Scampi with something we’d never heard of), and good with the pets.  We would have no problem seeing her as a regular vet…and we’re kind of picky.

Here’s Kevin - take him home with you.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

terribly early in the morning

Pet pictures & car stuff (good & bad) & Las Vegas snow

But, stay tuned for more episodes of the Days of Our Poverty Lives, where we lose our “with still new car smell, 2005 Equinox, w/ 12000 miles on it”, but buy a rode hard/put away wet, 2001 Aztek with 94,500 miles on it.  We’ve always missed our Aztek and it was a big mistake not getting it fixed when we originally had it, but we didn’t have the money to put out all at once and made a longer-lasting bad decision.  Oops.  The Aztek comes as-is (we pick it up on Wednesday) and it has some cosmetic issues and a driver’s side window issue (no drive-thrus, unless I put Leigh-Ann in the back seat to order…or use an ATM, or pay for parking somewhere) that we hope is fixable, but if it’s not, they’ll make sure the window stays up, instead of down, like during the test drive when it was 35 degrees outside.  The heater works nicely though, but the poor salesman in the back seat couldn’t have been too comfortable.  Anyway, the expensive car payments will be gone and car insurance will be cut in half.  Keep your fingers crossed that the car gets us to the grocery store, the doctor, and to visit family, which is about all we need it for, hence the 12000 miles on an almost 4 year old car.  We’re easy on a car, so it’ll be like the Aztek is getting a vacation by moving in with us.  We will, however, get our big ol’ cup holders back (the Equinox has wimpy little cup holders, not up to holding large drinks from Sonic) that we’ve missed for years.  We’ll get even more storage space, and we won’t have to worry about getting that first ding.  I think dozens of people/things have taken care of it for us.  Also, instead of another boring white car, we’ll have a red car.  We can be official ambassadors of the Las Vegas Wranglers.  Maybe they’ll want to put a wrap on the car, thereby covering the damage of the dings AND advertising the local hockey team.  Win, win, no?  Also, as lovely as the Equinox is/was, the Aztek seats are a lot more comfortable.  And the Aztek has a kick-ass stereo with like 10 speakers, so if we were teenage boys, instead old fogies, we could blow out your eardrums at stoplights.  Because we’re nice (and old), we’ll just listen so’se we can hear it, not you.  We would, however, like to figure out a way to get that kick-ass (older) stereo to play our MP3s.  We got a couple of cheap dealies from Woot that were supposed to work on an unused radio station frequency here, but alas, either all of our frequencies are used or it just doesn’t work well here.

Hmmm, I wasn’t going to write all of that, but it burst forth.  But, I’ll mitigate the sadness with new pictures of some of the pets.

This is Bunny, with her awesome checkerboard coloring, which goes right down to her gums.  It’s amazing.  I love her coloring, plus she’s an adorable & spunky cat.

Here’s Blackjack, looking curious.  For the moment, she’s not yelling at the dogs/cats or barking or saying, “No smoking!”  Usually our parrots get short shrift when it comes to blog publicity.

Eli romping in the snow.  It snowed allllllllll day here yesterday, although not a lot of it stuck in our area of town.  I’m sure there are zillions of new pictures from the Lakes/Summerlin area of town on Flickr w/ snowmen and such.  We mostly ended up with icky puddles in the back yard.  It hasn’t rained much here in the past year or so, so the ground is hard (harder than normal) and isn’t very absorbent.

Our snowy yard, which could use a little palm tree trimming.  Any volunteers?