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      Monday, June 15, 2020


otherstuff
02:57 PM - 06/15/2020

The topic: May you live in interesting times.
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Yeah, no thanks. I'm just tired all of the time. Tired. I want to go to Barbeque Pit and have a chicken sandwich and fries. I want to give the bun to Brian so he can make two sandwiches out of his one (they put that much meat on them). I want to be able to leave the house (which I've done all of....let's see....vet visit for Mario's blood pressure, vet visit for Mario' followup blood pressure and Ike new kitty checkup and last Wednesday for Ike's neuter and then to pick him up...so five times, in the car) and not have to wear the face mask. It's so uncomfortable. At the vet's I had it on and around my neck so I could quickly pull it up. I wear it when we walk in the morning, but we never come within six feet of people, so I never need to cover my face. This morning, I had started sweating so I ended up using it as a headband (I had my hair down, it got hot). I don't like it. But I think I prefer being uncomfortable to being really sick or really dead.

I'm really pretty lucky, though, Brian does all of the grocery shopping. He's the one who picks up the cat meds. He's the one who gets us food that isn't prepared here (a lot less take out these past few months). The end of last week, I was feeling pretty crappy. Allergies finally hit, Benedryl taken to knock out the pressure in my right ear and the teeth grinding that went along with it. Unfortunately, it also knocked me out and I slept quite a bit. Finally started feeling human, get back from our walk Friday morning and I started feeling VERY crappy. I had a fever of 101.8° at one point. Chills. And I spent most of the day on the sofa, covered in a light blanket, sleeping. Poor Brian was concerned maybe I got sick from something he brought in, I didn't think it was anything horrible, most likely a twenty-four hour thing. But where did I get it? Mail? Brian? I'll never know for sure, but I'm feeling better.

And, I'll be honest here. I will wear the mask. I will stay home. Brian will take precautions. We will not be one of the statistics. We don't understand why everything was opened up so quickly. Well, yeah, we do, us Muricans are entitled to get what we want when we wanted, muh freedom, don't take away muh freedom. Except a lot of those "freedoms" depend on someone who maybe SHOULDN'T be out about, or at work because they have bills to pay and a family to feed. The food servers. The hairdressers. The manicurists. The bartenders. The grocery workers. Putting their health and lives on the line because some people just can't stand the idea of thinking of someone else for a change. Me, me, me, it's all about me. It really does tire me out, just thinking about all the selfish, entitled people who don't really give a crap about anyone else. I just don't get it.

Anyway....

So, Ike moves in on May 30th. He has his first vet visit on June 2. He had a physical and was tested for disease. He was fine, just an ear infection, which he's getting meds for. And the vet called in an prescription for Xanax, because there is a lot of fighting going on. Nooby, Spot and Pancho mostly. Nooby is the worst of the bunch.

Mario's blood pressure was tested and it was perfect. The new human medication is working for him (by the way, we just realized at some point in the past year or so, he also lost his hearing). Yay! He's definitely been a little more active.

When we got home, I made an appointment for Ike's neuter. It happened last Wednesday. They sent pain meds home with him, but when a cat is active and I'm reluctant to contain them, as I would be with Ike, I prefer to not give the pain meds (for something like a neuter) because hopefully the pain will help keep him from being active. He's doing fine now. This morning, he was actually in the house when Brian was dishing up their breakfast. That's a first. He didn't stick around long, but he was part of the gang for maybe five minutes.

Rachel isn't doing well. She was horribly dehydrated yesterday morning and I've been giving her fluids. She got 40cc yesterday morning, 60cc last night and another 60cc this morning. She takes them well. She's on Calcitriol for here kidneys, so, I know how this is eventually going to work out. Hopefully, the fluids will help perk her up and she'll be more comfortable for a while.

Remember when we got Ike and I mentioned the fence? Well, the past few weeks, we've had a visitor at night. A raccoon has been coming in and eating cat food in the garage. And washing paws in the water bowl. Every morning, the cat bowl has to be cleaned. Saturday night, I saw the critter in the backyard and I thought he couldn't get out and that's why he's been in the garage and also eating avocados, leaving skin and seed (and it also explains how avocado skins are ending up in the pool). So, I got all the cats in, blocked the doors so they couldn't get out, Brian opened both gates and it took about ten minutes for the raccoon to leave.

The odd thing was Brian said there must be two, because there was no way the critter made it through the gate and up onto the top of the fence in the time he turned around. He swore it hadn't gone out through the bottom. Whatever, as long as it was out of the yard and free to go home to the fam, I really didn't care.

The water bowl was clean Sunday morning.

Fast forward to this morning. Dirty water bowl. What the hell? Guess we'll just be feeding another mouth.

So, there are some trees that are growing at the side of the bank, they've been there for a while, but they really need to go. They're getting big enough that they'll be strong enough to be climbed. And we're looking at them this morning and Brian says "hey, look at this".  It's the wire fencing that we use for a barrier to keep the cats in. And right there, where the wire has been weakened over the years from the gates being open, is a big hole. The welds had gotten bad enough at that juncture, that they could just be pulled apart. Yeah, okay. Got it now.

That'll be fixed by the end of today, as well as the trees being cut down.

rachel    raccoon    mario    ike    catstuff   

      Saturday, June 20, 2020


catstuff
08:19 AM - 06/20/2020

The topic: The end of an era, a sad goodbye
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Rachel crashed this week. Her kidneys finally quit working.

I mentioned that I had been giving her fluids in my last entry, but she didn't stay hydrated. When she peed, she peed a lot. The fluids were going right through her.

The last thing she ate on her own were a couple of Temptations treats on Monday morning, and she only ate those because I stood there petting her. And she didn't finish what I'd given her. Brian thought maybe she had allergies, because her eyes and nose were watering and she was sneezing. I finger fed her some Fancy Feast, then watered down A/D in a syringe the next couple of days, hoping against hope she'd get her appetite back. She kept it down. The few stools she had this week were really small and very hard and dry. She was having a hard time walking and was in pain. Nothing she did gave me much hope. But she purred.

I called the vet on Wednesday afternoon to make an appointment to get her in as soon as we could. I'd dealt with the lack of hydration, even though fluids had been given, in the past. It didn't bode well. I said "blood work and then, depending on the results, we will be saying goodbye".

Thursday morning, we were at the vet's by nine. One of us was able to go in, with mask. That was me. I explained all that was happening with her, the lack of appetite, the hard stools, the dehydration. She'd only lost a few ounces since last September, which was surprising. They took her into the back and drew blood.

I waited for the test results, Brian was out in the car (only one person at a time in the examining room, unless....) and I called him and told him what was going on. The wait was about twenty minutes or so.

And the results were horrible. The worst part was her phosphorus count, way above ten. The vet explained that it's almost impossible to bring that down to safe levels when it's gotten so high. Her advice was to say goodbye.

I called Brian in (this is the "unless" part - euthanasia you can both be there). Rachel was taken in the back and sedated, brought back into us, we said our goodbyes, petting her and talking to her.

The vet came in, gave her the final injection. She was gone in seconds.

Rachel was the last office cat. The only time she left the office was to go into the bedroom and get a drink from the crock in there or to potty in Brian's bathroom. Sometimes she'd go outside, maybe drink from the fountain, cruise the yard. But, most of the time, she was on her blanket on the desk. A nice big space under the window, spreads and towels and blankets to make it nice and soft. For all of the room that was there, no other kitty spent any time on it. She didn't have any kitty buddies. It was just her and us. She would come to me in the morning for attention when I set up in the morning. Then, when Brian came in, she'd go over to him and just lay in his lap. She'd hang out on our desks, making it hard to type or do paperwork and, most of the time, we'd work around her.

There have been office cats since I started the catcam all those years ago.

And now, there are none.

It's a sad goodbye.

 

rachel    kidney disease    goodbye   

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lisaviolet is seventy something, married with no kids, takes care of lots of cats, likes taking photographs, loves Southern California weather and spends altogether too much time avoiding her responsibilities.

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