Musk Ox Farm

One of the places we visited in Alaska was the Musk Ox Farm in Palmer.  My parents and sister and I had previously visited in 2002, and it was fun to go back.  I highly recommend it to anyone visiting that area of Alaska!

I always love seeing a furry animal, but we learned a lot, too.  Native Alaskans had traditionally used mux ox hide, but only relatively recently had started using yarn made from the musk ox undercoat (aka qiviut).  At the farm, they comb out the undercoat (so they can get a clean collection, and it doesn't get mixed with dirt, twigs, and poop on the ground if it falls out on its own).  They send it to Peru to be made into yarn, which I thought was interesting.  It made me wonder if there were similarities between qiviut and alpaca fiber.  

Musk ox are also pretty tough customers.  The guide showed us places where they had headbutted the fence.  We were also instructed not to crouch down to take any photos.  

We were lucky in that the critters were obligingly hanging out near their fences when we toured.

Losing Stella

 A few weeks ago, our beloved cat Stella had to be put to sleep.  She had had some months of ups and downs.  It was startling how quickly the final decline took hold, though.  One day  I was telling Scott that we needed to bring the cat sitter over to show her where Stella's food was ahead of a trip we were planning.  The next day, she stopped eating and didn't start eating again, no matter what we offered her.

I think euthanasia is one of the odder duties of pet ownership.  Nobody wants to have to make the decision about when an animal will die.  Yet, very little of it was truly in our hands.  Stella stopped eating when she stopped eating.  Ironically, it was a couple weeks before both Scott and I would be free for the summer, and not a great time for either of us to miss work.  But since death was inevitable, we wanted it to be quick and humane.  The vet who ultimately came to the house to euthanize her cautioned us against waiting too long.

The bright spot in the sad situation is that we both got to spend time with her at the end.  Due to a primary election in the district where I work, I had the day off the day before Stella died.  I had the opportunity to check in on her and see that she truly wasn't eating.  The day she died, Scott and I both made the call to just stay home.  We spent time with her until the vet arrived, and stayed with her, talking to her and petting her, throughout the process.

Perhaps inevitably, losing Stella made me think of when we lost our old cat Laila.  She was also euthanized after a series of ups and downs.  With Laila, I was less aware of signs of decline in cats.  I also didn't think to arrange at-home euthanasia, so one of her last actions in life was taking a car ride, which no cats really like.  I was also in the midst of my dreadful grad school 2.0 program, so I went to campus, and even dealt with a bunch of tiresome drama, before heading home to spend time with her before we took her to the vet.  This is a regret of mine.  I'm grateful that things were different this time for Stella and that I am no longer under such pressure to minimize actual life events (the principal at my school, who only rarely responds to emails I send when I need to take time off, responded about how sorry she was about my cat and encouraged me to stay home with her).

Right now, it just seems way too quiet at home.  We even miss the things that drove us nuts, like Stella consistently waking me up ten minutes before my alarm and yowling during our phone conversations.  She and Laila both added a lot to our lives--two very different kitties with very different quirks.  I think the best tribute to both of them is to give a home to another kitty, and I know in time we'll be ready to do that.

Sometimes It's Worth The Money

 Our cat Stella is a nervous and sometimes grumpy old cat.  We adopted her from a local animal shelter as an adult.  When we brought her home from the shelter, she hyperventilated and yowled the whole way.  She was initially very skittish with us, flinching even when we opened or closed the blinds.  Over the years, she's become more comfortable with us, but she has her limits.  Perhaps not surprisingly, trimming her claws is one of those limits.

We used to be able to trim a front claw or two at a time occasionally before we moved to our current home.  We think the move stressed Stella out as much as it stressed us out, and even though we've been in this home for three years, she hasn't cooperate with claw trimming.  Occasionally, Scott will be able to trim a rear claw while she's sleeping, but that's about the extent of our success.  Every time we take her to the vet, we pay for a nail trim.  But honestly, vet visits with her are stressful (and expensive!) so we try to be sparing with those.  It was becoming increasingly clear that she needed at least her front claws trimmed more often that she visits the vet.

I learned recently about a local pet sitting company that also does nail trims and other grooming at home, so I made an appointment.  I was somewhat skeptical; I was going to get charged for the visit whether the person could successfully trim her claws or not, and it seemed like an expensive gamble.  But I was also desperate.

When the pet sitter/cat groomer came over, I was immediately impressed.  She came armed with not one, but two kinds of treats that I hadn't seen before.  She made liberal use of the treats to ingratiate herself with Stella.  She also spent a good 45 minutes at our place, waiting for Stella to warm up to her before going in for the trim.  Stella made some motions of yowling and trying to get away, but honestly, it was a pretty feeble effort, and appeared to me to be more about principal than anything else (and believe me, I've seen her when she's making an honest to goodness effort to get away).  In the end, all of her front claws were trimmed and nobody got bitten or scratched in the process!  Count me impressed.

This was a good reminder to me that sometimes when you have the money, it's worth spending it to make your life easier.  This person clearly has a skill that I don't have.  Now, I don't have to worry about Stella getting her claws stuck in something or about being stabbed when she kneads her paws on me.  It's definitely a service that will become a regular expense.

Caring For A Sick Cat, Part 2

 I first wrote about caring for a sick cat when our old cat, Laila, was approaching the end of her life.  At that point, we were pretty sure she was nearing the end, and it was a matter of exactly when it would happen and trying to maximize her quality of life.

Stella's situation is different, in that we don't think she's approaching the end of her life, but we're trying to prevent her early demise.

Stella has always been a loud and vocal kitty, but she had gotten louder and more persistent, especially at night.  There were times when her meows ventured into scream territory.  The first time this happened, I bolted out of bed, fearing that she had hurt herself.  She seemed fine.  Internet searches suggested this was a behavioral issue and that we try to give her a lot of attention during the day and then ignore her at night, so as not to reinforce the behavior.

I had wondered if there was something else wrong, but I wasn't getting any clue as to what.  Taking Stella to the vet is always very traumatic for her; plus, we had a bad experience with the vet we took her to after moving to our current home and we needed to find a new one.  We ended up pushing this until it was time for her annual physical, and we made an appointment at a veterinary clinic that is just for cats.

Stella was not shy about airing her grievances at that appointment, so the vet had an idea of how loud she could be.  She said that sometimes loud meowing/screaming is due to high blood pressure--they think cats get headaches from that.  She checked, and sure enough, Stella's blood pressure was dangerously high.  She gave Stella a first dose of blood pressure medicine right then and there.

Blood pressure checks are often not a part of routine veterinary examinations (at least of cats), so I intend this to be partly a public service announcement for other cat owners.  But it's also a chance to write about caring for an animal with a chronic health problem.  The good news for all of us is that Stella does seem calmer and happier since starting on her blood pressure medicine.  The bad news is that this cat who loathes being loaded into the cat carrier and riding in the car has earned more frequent trips to the vet to monitor her.  Also, we get the pleasure of administering her medication.

We started out with pills, which were relatively cheap.  The vet recommended that I crush them into her food.  I did as she recommended.  The problem is that since Stella rarely eats all the food in her bowl, it was impossible to tell how much--if any--of her dose she was getting.  I told the vet what was happening, and we decided to try the medicine compounded into treats.

The blood pressure treats were significantly more expensive than the pills, but I thought they were at least worth a try.  However, by the time they arrived, Stella was due for a blood pressure check at the vet.  Her blood pressure was borderline low at that appointment, so they suggested we try a lower dose.  The expensive treats had to be put aside, at least temporarily.  Fortunately, they had some samples of transdermal blood pressure medicine at the lower dose that they gave us for free to try.  The way this works on cats is that you rub this on the inside of their ear (one of the few parts of cats that aren't covered in fur) and have to periodically clean their ears so that the residue doesn't prevent the medicine from being absorbed.

On the whole, I think transdermal medicine is way easier to administer than pills.  I have to wear a finger cot or disposable glove while administering it, so as not to absorb any medicine through my own skin (I'm usually successful at avoiding contact with it; if my blood pressure takes a sudden drop, we'll know why!).  Stella doesn't like having her ears handled, but if I can get her when she's drowsy and lying down, she's usually pretty cooperative.

Well, we had another vet visit the other day to check Stella's blood pressure.  Her blood pressure is now borderline high.  Apparently, there is no in-between dose of this medicine, so we have to alternate giving her the higher dose one day and the lower dose the next.  This has a real potential to be confusing.  I've ordered the transdermal version of both doses (which, like the treats, are significantly more expensive than the pills) and think I'll need to get a calendar and some way of marking the syringes to keep track.  In the meantime, I decided to try her on one of those expensive blood pressure treats.  I cut it up into pieces and put it in her breakfast yesterday.  She must have been able to smell a difference in her food, and spent the morning avoiding it and complaining bitterly about the ever-fragrant cat food being contaminated with potentially lifesaving medicine.  But after I left for work, she did eat most of her food, according to Scott, who got home before I did and fed her dinner.

Caring for an animal with a chronic health problem, as opposed to an acute and possible end-of-life health problem, is a new experience for me.  It will be a logistical issue we'll have to think about for as long as Stella is alive.  But I myself have a chronic health condition (Hashimoto's disease), so I've experienced firsthand how proper treatment is a complete game changer for quality of life.  It's been rewarding to see Stella appear calmer and more content, and I hope this medicine will bring her more and happier years.

The Downside To The Cicada Merriment

 Earlier this summer, I wrote here about the emergence of cicadas in the DC area. They were a fairly polarizing insect in this area, I believe with many more people hating them than loving them.  I actually like them, but am now experiencing an unforeseen (at least to me) downside to their emergence:  oak mites.

I had never even heard of oak mites before this summer.  Evidently, they are very small insects that eat cicada eggs (hence their large population this summer in the DC area).  They can be carried by the wind, land on people, and bite.  Though I have no way of definitively proving it, I believe both Scott and I have been bitten.

Scott was bitten first. He had a bite from something on his back. It didn't quite look like a mosquito bite, and he said it was much itchier. Then I saw a post on our community's nextdoor.com that described similar bites and advanced the theory that it was oak mites. I subsequently saw news coverage of oak mite bites and how people were flocking to urgent care clinics and dermatologists for relief.

More recently, I had two bites on my back which were much itchier than mosquito bites. I tried using hydrocortisone cream, but I didn't get much relief.  I was having a fairly uncomfortable night of sleep, punctuated by the cat stretching next to me and clawing my itchy bites. Fortunately, I remembered that someone had who had posted on nextdoor.com mentioned getting relief from putting gel hand sanitizer on the bites. I have no idea why that would work, but I tried it, and fortunately, it helped. So, consider this a public service announcement to anyone else who is similarly afflicted.

Not that I get any say in this at all, but I did enjoy the cicada emergence enough to think it was worth the oak mites now. That being said, seventeen years from now when this brood emerges again, I might consider enjoying the cicadas but then taking a long vacation somewhere else until the oak mites have had a chance to come and go.

Cicadas!

 Much to the envy of bug watchers everywhere, the DC area was recently a focal point for the emergence of Brood X cicadas!  This brood of cicadas emerges only once every 17 years, so for a bug event, this one was big.

As anyone who has ever lived with me can attest, I'm not really a bug person.  Cicadas, though, are one of the few bugs I actually do like.  They don't bite or sting, they're too big to fly into your eye or up your nose, and I'm fascinated by the varieties that spend years at a time underground.

The coverage of their 2021 emergence started many weeks ahead of time.  There was much hand-wringing by people who lived in the area in 2004, when they last emerged, and didn't enjoy them that time.  They were delayed in emerging due to a snap of unseasonably cold weather, and when they finally did, I was pretty underwhelmed and disappointed at first.  For all the coverage, I was expecting a Big Event, and I felt like I was mostly seeing a few stray wings on the ground.

They picked up as time went on, though.  I never felt like they were that numerous where we lived, but they were very thick on the ground (and in the sky and the trees) near one of the schools where I worked.  Walking to the bus stop at the end of the day made me feel like I'd gotten a true cicada immersion experience, between the deafening humming as I walked under trees, and cicadas actually landing on me from time to time.

Here are a few pictures to commemorate Brood X of 2021, along with a cicada necklace I made to welcome them in style!

Pandemic Daze: A Uniquely COVID-Era Annoyance

 We took Stella to the vet a few days ago for her annual check-up and rabies shot.  This was our first time going to a new veterinary practice.  The one where we took our cats before we moved is an uncomfortably long distance from our new place, particularly for a cat who gets motion sick.  Plus, our favorite vet at that practice had moved on.

As is the case everywhere (well, at least in states that aren't encouraging a germ-swapping free-for-all), there were certain COVID protocols to abide by.  Among them were that I needed to call them when I arrived rather than just bringing Stella into the building, and that I needed to wear a mask (which I'm doing in public places anyway).  When they gave me the go-ahead to bring Stella in, it turned out they had the following additional procedures in place:

1.  Questioning pet owners about their recent health

2.  Giving me a disposable mask to put on on top of my cloth mask

3.  Checking my temperature before allowing me past the entryway

4.  Making me use their hand sanitizer (the icky foamy kind that leaves a lot of residue)

5.  Making me sit in a room down the hall from where they examined Stella, rendering me unable to try to comfort her as she yowled like a banshee

Then, after all of that, the vet came in to talk to me...and was wearing her mask under her nose.

Pandemic Daze: Cat Ownership During Quasi-Isolation

One feature of our current quasi-isolated state is that we're getting lots of time with our cat, Stella!  I think she was excited to have us home for the first couple of days.  Now...not so much.  I think she'd gotten used to a routine in which we were gone for large swaths of the day and she had some cat alone time to do whatever it is that cats do when humans are not rudely interrupting.  Don't get me wrong, she still seeks us out sometimes, but we've noticed that she's spent more time hiding, and we've tried to give her some space.

One thing that I've noticed but can't explain is that she's more vocal and demanding at night.  She's always gotten up on the bed to wake us up, but I feel like the nighttime interruptions have become more frequent.  Also, last night, she decided to pounce on my legs with her claws fully extended...

We got an email from our veterinary clinic the other day.  They're staying open as an essential business, albeit with reduced hours and different procedures.  Until further notice, when we bring an animal in, we're supposed to sit in the car and call them.  Then, a vet tech will come out to retrieve the animal.  At the end of the appointment, the vet will come out with the animal and discuss/answer questions.  We're also supposed to pay over the phone via credit card. 

Stella seems pretty healthy, so we're optimistic that we'll be able to avoid vet appointments in the near future (although I think her annual rabies vaccine may be due in May).  But having had relatively recent experience with a sick cat, I know that sometimes vet appointments can become very frequent very quickly.  I'm glad our clinic had thought creatively about ow to stay open while minimizing everyone's exposure to the corona virus.

A Different Kind Of Sewing Project

Wallaby joey pouches

For years, I've thought that out of the slew of issues I care about, climate change was at the top of my list.  However, like so many other people, I also hoped we had more time before we would start seeing the impact.  But the increase in severe weather-related events all over the world combined with a torrent of discouraging news from climate scientists have made me feel very pessimistic.  In recent horrible events, it appears that climate change has at the least contributed to the severity of Australia's bush fires with high temperatures and prolonged droughts.

There has been a good deal of media coverage of the suffering caused by these fires, including the toll on Australia's wild animals.  So when I received an email from Mood Fabrics describing a project to make pouches for rescued kangaroo and wallaby joeys, I decided to contribute.  You can read about it here; I decided to use Piccolo Studio's free tutorial and downloadable pattern.  As anyone who sews can attest, it is not uncommon to have a healthy stash of perfectly nice fabric that is languishing for any number of reasons, often because the pieces are too small to make a garment out of but too large to throw away.  In the spirit of sustainability (and decluttering my home) I used some of these fabrics, and feel that they were put to very good use.

To keep things relatively simple and to squeeze out more pouches from my selection of fabrics, I opted to make the smaller wallaby joey pouches instead of the kangaroo ones.  All five pouches I made are lined in flannel.  The blue one in the picture that doesn't have a scooped front is intended to be a night pouch that will be harder for the joey to peek out of while he/she is sleeping.

I'll send these off today to the person who is collecting them to send to Australia.  I hope they'll be useful.  And I fervently hope that we can all collectively take action to rein in these changes in our climate that are contributing to so much misery.

NC Coast Pictures

Ugh, I think this has been my longest stint of not blogging yet.  Something about end-of-semester drama and a respiratory illness that has been hanging on for weeks made me feel less than inspired to write.  But I think that some pictures from my after Christmas trip to the NC coast with my family is a good way to ease back in.

I should say first that I find seagulls very entertaining, and love to take pictures of them.  So when my dad decided to pack up an uneaten biscuit from breakfast to feed them, I was very excited.  (On a side note, the restaurant where we ate is excellent except for the biscuits.  But you know how some restaurants have this sort of bread-y item that looks like a biscuit, but the texture is all wrong?  That was what we wanted to feed to the seagulls!).  I couldn't see what was was going on in the viewfinder very well because of the glare from the sun, so I had to point, click, and hope for the best.  These are my favorites from the seagull shots.  The last one was taken around the time I thought I'd better run for cover.

Also, a few other shots:

Clouds over the water

A night heron!  Due to their tendency to appear at night, this is the best picture I've ever gotten of one.

I saw a few washed up jellyfish this year.  It seems to vary a lot.

Impressive barnacles on driftwood.

Driftwood festooned with shells.

I think this was supposed to be a heart in my latte foam, but the overall effect seems quite different...

Killing Mice, In A Manner Of Speaking

See this furry gray miscreant who's avoiding looking directly at the camera?  She's decided she likes to walk across and sit on laptop keyboards.  I wonder if it's a texture thing, sort of like how most people like to feel soft beach sand on their feet.

Yesterday, I was trying to use my computer to listen to a podcast while I worked on something else.  Stella walked across my keyboard several times, and after I shooed her away, the cursor had frozen.  I tried restarting, which is my standard trick for anything that goes wrong with my computer.  No dice. 

Using my phone, I looked for solutions to the problem (aside from restarting, which is evidently everyone's standard trick for anything that goes wrong with computers).  I stumbled upon an article that suggested that my mouse might have become disabled.  This article specifically implicated cats walking across the keyboard--apparently, they have a talent for stepping on the right combination of keys to cause problems.  So I tried going into the mouse settings (all of this had to be done without use of the mouse, mind you--hurray for mouseless navigation!) and sure enough, my mouse had become disabled.

Good thing I learned how to fix it because about twenty minutes later, Stella walked across my keyboard again and the cursor froze again.  Sigh.  I just hope she shows the same enthusiasm for killing rodent mice if they show up in our apartment again.

Stella Shares My Hobbies!

See this picture?  This is a picture of a cat taking a well-deserved rest after defeating a large piece of paper.  This is also a cat who puts a decidedly feline spin on human hobbies.

I've talked some on this blog about sewing.  I'm still sewing when I have time and am becoming increasingly happy with the results.  Not only am I ending up with more items that I'm willing to wear in public, I'm actually ending up with favorite items that I wear whenever they're clean.  I'm also learning ways to streamline my sewing process so I can spend less time prepping projects and more time actually sewing.  One of these ways is to pay to have PDF sewing patterns printed out on large sheets of paper so I'm not stuck taping small sheets of paper together.

For the uninitiated, there are two ways to buy sewing patterns.  There the ones that come printed on thin tissue paper, and there are PDF patterns you can download and print out at home.  I like the patterns that come already printed, and often buy those.  But some independent pattern companies sell only the PDF variety.  Also, sometimes the PDF patterns come with more sizes or other extra features.  So there are times when it makes sense to buy the PDF patterns.  But I always hated printing them out at home--there were so many sheets of paper to tape together.  And no matter how careful I was, something was always slightly "off" in the end.  Some people take the PDF files to copy shops to have them printed on large sheets of paper, but I was always hesitant to do this because I was afraid it would be prohibitively expensive.  But through someone's sewing blog, I found a company on the internet that will print the patterns on large sheets of paper for a very nominal fee and ship them.  Problem solved!

What I didn't know was that Stella would find her own way to participate in my sewing.  I learned the other night when I was tracing a pattern from one of these large sheets of paper.  The paper was dangling over the edge of the table I was working from.  All of a sudden, I heard a series of popping-like noises from under the table.  I looked, and there was Stella treating the paper that was dangling down like a punching bag.  Pretty amazing for a cat who startled at any and every noise when she first arrived here.

Usually, I put these large sheets of paper away for future use, but I sometimes keep them out when I'm still working on sewing something, in case I forgot to mark anything from the original pattern.  So, I caught Stella boxing with this pattern again last night.  Then, exhausted by her victory, she curled up on it and took a rest.

Meet Stella!

Scott and I had such a great time being owned by Laila the cat that we decided to venture into cat ownership again!  Meet Stella, aka the Russian Blue Menace!

We adopted her from the animal shelter a couple weeks ago.  Just like when we adopted Laila, the selection process was pretty overwhelming.  Stella was found as a stray, but I think she was probably someone's pet at some point, judging by her insistence upon sleeping on the bed with us at night.  The shelter staff think she is about 7 years old.

This kitty has clearly had some trauma in her life.  The shelter staff--who move animals around all the time--had quite a time getting her into her carrier so we could take her home.  She then proceeded to throw her weight around, yowl, and pant the entire ride home.  I had never actually seen a cat pant before. 

Fortunately, she calmed down once we let her out of the carrier.  But...it is generally agreed upon that pets should occasionally leave their homes for veterinary care.  At a bare minimum, our county (and I imagine, most counties) want proof of an annual rabies vaccination.  The shelter itself wanted us to get Stella a vet appointment within 7 days.  We decided to give her two weeks to settle in before attempting to take her anywhere.

The day of the first vet appointment came today, and of course, we had to try to get her in the cat carrier.  "Try" is the operative word here.  We failed after many attempts, and I had to call the vet's office in defeat.  I have a couple of souvenir scratches on my arm (she didn't swipe at me; I got them from her hind foot while she was trying to spread herself out so as not to fit into her cat carrier).  I just dropped a bunch of cash on Amazon ordering a larger pet carrier and some pheremone spray that is supposed to make the cat carrier seem more calming.

Wish us luck.  We rescheduled for next Friday morning.

A Seagull Vignette

We went wading in beautiful Lake Champlain.

A seagull decided to investigate our shoes, which we left on the beach.

Still there.  I didn't think our shoes smelled great, but do they really smell bad enough that the seagull views them as a potential food source?

And he finally walks away, greatly disappointed.

Life's Little Triumphs: I Caught A Mouse!

I complained recently about the smart mice in my apartment.  I kept the trap out, but had pretty much despaired of ever catching anything. 

But yesterday morning, when I walked by the trap, I saw a blob that looked significantly larger than the peanut butter bait.  I took a closer look and and saw a gray mouse! 

Hoping to avoid questions from other people on the elevator, I put the trap in a bag and carried it outside.  When I set it down and lifted the door, the mouse made a run for it (in the opposite direction of my building, I'm happy to report).  I don't know what fate awaits the little guy, but I noticed that it had eaten the entire blob of peanut butter, so I can at least say I sent it off with a good meal.

So, don't lose hope, fellow mouse-sufferers.  No matter how well your mice seem to avoid your traps, they only need to slip up once.  In my fairly limited experience, humane traps are neither as efficient nor as enjoyable as having a cat, but for now, they'll have to do.

How Did I Get Stuck With All The Smart Mice?

I'm pretty sure that everyone who met our cat Laila liked her.  After all, she was friendly and entertaining.  The only living creatures that are celebrating her demise are the mice that live in our building.

We currently have at least two mice spending time in our apartment:  one that runs like it's drunk, and one that runs normally.  I occasionally see them scuttling between the coat closet and the kitchen, usually making a beeline to go under the oven.  (I guess the silver lining here is that I haven't found them elsewhere in the apartment?).  I'm sure they would have already met a brutal end if Laila were still with us, but in the absence of an accomplished hunter, I had to take steps on my own.  I ordered a couple of those humane traps from Amazon--the kind where you put in some food for bait, they run in, and a door closes behind them.  Then, I guess the idea is that you can take them outside, where they can freeze to death, be run over by a car, or get eaten by a wild animal instead of someone's indoor pet.

Except that in this case, they're not taking the bait.  Per the instructions on the trap box, I put in a blob of perfectly good peanut butter (which may or may not be rancid after having spent several weeks in the trap), but they are not even remotely interested.  I've tried to angle the trap to match their trajectory between the coat closet and the oven, but at least three times now, I've seen them actually run around the trap to avoid it.  Are these battle-scarred mice who were previously humanely trapped, taken outside, and made their way back into the building?  Or mice with genius-level IQ?  We'll never know...

The Mice Will Play

I wrote here last month about caring for Laila as her kidney disease progressed.  At first, I hoped--perhaps unrealistically--that I might nurse her back to health during my winter break and that she might be with us for longer.  Then, as time went on, I hoped that I might just be able to buy her a few more weeks or months with a reasonable quality of life.  Sadly, that did not happen, either.  We had Laila put to sleep toward the end of January.  For anyone who hasn't made that sort of decision for a beloved pet, I can say that it's possible to simultaneously feel very confident that you made the right decision and feel terrible about it.

I have not yet adjusted to her being gone.  I still find myself expecting a little cat to greet me when I come home, meow loudly while I try to sleep in on the weekends, and jump up on the table to steal my food and water.  I keep thinking I need to feed her or scoop the cat litter. 

Occasionally, though, her absence feels very clear in my mind.  Yesterday, when I saw a mouse scuttle across my kitchen, it occurred to me that there would be no prolonged hunt to witness and no dead mouse body to find on the floor later.  On top of all the ways in which I feel sad, I'm also concerned that an onslaught of mice in my apartment is imminent.  You know, when the cat's away....

Caring For A Sick Cat

I'm so sad to say that our talkative, affectionate, mouse-slaying cat Laila may be approaching the end of her life.  We adopted her as an older kitty a couple years ago; the animal shelter estimated her age to be 10 years, which would make her 12 now.  Some time ago, our vet told us he thought she was a couple years older, judging by the evidence of kidney disease in her blood work.  He warned us that she would eventually get to the point of being very lethargic, and that we would have to give her subcutaneous fluids.  This time has come.

It seemed to come on suddenly.  When we left to spend Christmas with my family in NC, she seemed to be fine, although in retrospect, I think I can see the lethargy was starting to set in.  The biggest clue we got that something might be wrong was that our pet sitter mentioned that Laila was leaving a lot of food in her bowl.  I assumed she was just out of sorts because we were away.  But when we came back, she still ate very little.

We already had a vet appointment scheduled for her annual rabies vaccine, which our vet urged us to hold off on.  The news from that appointment was that she had lost a lot of weight, and that she would potentially benefit from receiving regular doses of subcutaneous fluids. 

Giving subcutaneous fluids is supposed to be a relatively simple task--simple enough that vets trust pet owners to be at least somewhat successful when given instruction.  And it seemed simple enough in the vet's office.  The first time we tried at home was a comedy of errors, though.  Laila tensed her muscles (as I supposed anyone would when being approached by a needle wielded by someone who doesn't know what she's doing), making it difficult to grab a pouch of loose skin.  Then the needle kept not being in all the way, causing the fluids to leak all over her fur.  At one point, she got away entirely, and fluid shot through the needle into the air.  The process has improved somewhat since then, although we're definitely on the clock with it.  The needle itself doesn't seem to bother Laila much, but the feeling of fluid going in under her skin must be pretty strange, and she always reaches a point when she just tries to walk away.

Then there has been the issue of trying to get her to eat.  I've tried all kinds of things--cheap cat food, expensive cat food, tinned fish, boiled chicken livers.  From day to day, there is no telling what she'll want to eat. 

There has also been the issue of her wobbliness and clumsiness.  She's always been a bit wobbly, but she has become noticeably more so lately.  She also alarms us by tumbling to the floor when trying to jump on things.

I've had a long winter break, so I've gotten to spend a lot of time with Laila, following her around to make sure she doesn't hurt herself and making her several meals per day to try to cajole her to eat.  I don't know what will happen when my semester starts and I become insanely busy again.  I also don't know what her latest round of blood work from yesterday's vet appointment will tell us.  I'm glad I've had this time with her.  She's been a wonderful companion, and I want her to feel like she's had a friend as the end of her life approaches.

A Bridge Too Far

I had been feeling regretful recently about my lack of both time and material to update my blog.  The time is still a problem (still two weeks left in my semester!), but I now have some (completely unwelcome) material:  There. Is. A. Centipede. In. My. Home.

My building is unfortunately home to various unwelcome critters.  I've written here before about the rodent problem.  Laila usually keeps the mice at bay (she killed her sixth mouse a few weeks ago!).  However, the flip side of having a cat take care of the rodents is that her food attracts roaches, another one of the unwelcome critters.  In general--if I must live in a building with infestation problems--I'm okay with this trade off.  As gross as roaches are, I prefer them to the mice.

However, a centipede is another matter entirely.  Centipedes have always given me the creeps.  They run really fast, and I've hear their bites are painful.  They also just look awful.  Years ago, in another apartment, one somehow got into my closet light fixture and died there.  It was illuminated every time I turned the light on.  I took it as an omen that I needed to move.

Anyway, this current centipede is on the wall in the closet that holds my washer and dryer.  It's high enough up and wedged enough into the corner that it would be difficult to kill.  I'm afraid of I go after it with a broom, it'll just fall down and run off someplace (or worse, somehow fall on me).  At the moment it's hanging out and moving its antennae menacingly when I try to do laundry.  I don't like seeing it there, but I know if it disappears, I'll worry about where else it might show up. 

I'm hoping for less revolting material next time I write here.  Anyone got any great tips for dealing with centipedes that somehow get inside?

The Limits To Feline Companionship

I love having a cat, and Laila adds a lot to my life.  But I realized recently that she is utterly lacking in empathy when it comes to human sickness.

I've been sick with a cold for about the past week and a half now.  I initially thought I'd be able to kick it pretty fast since, after all, it's just a cold.  But of course colds come in gradations, from the "just a cold" variety to the "monster viruses that bring on secondary infections and leave your abdomen sore from all the coughing" variety.  My cold belongs to the latter category.  Throughout this ordeal, it has been clear that Laila doesn't like my coughing, particularly when I have a coughing fit while she's in my lap.  But she hasn't seemed to connect the annoying sound to any discomfort on my part.

Her lack of empathy became very apparent Friday night, when I had hoped for a good night of sleep that would put me on a fast track to feeling better.  I got up for the second time at around 4 AM when it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to sleep because of all my coughing.  When I came out to the living room, Laila concluded it was cat breakfast time and started meowing loudly.  I told her it wasn't time for breakfast yet, and started making myself a cup of hot herbal tea to try to calm my cough.

The worst moment was when I sat on the couch with my hot tea in hand, started coughing before I could set the cup down, spilled scalding hot water on my thigh, and yelped.  Laila's response?  Industriously scratching the couch.  She didn't even look up at the sound of my yelp.

I still highly recommend cat ownership to anyone.  After all, cats are fun most of the time.  But don't buy expensive furniture if you're going to have a cat.  And don't expect any concern from them at all when you're sick.