Thursday, Sept. 18, 2003 - 12:29 p.m.
Greetings,
So I get up this morning and do my daily trudge into the bathroom to wince at the light, wash my face, brush my teeth and then trudge out into the kitchen to get the cats their breakfast and to clean out the litter box – complete with sopping wet puppy pads.
Except when I go out into the dining room I discover what seems to be an endless, magical supply of piles of cat yak. Everywhere.
Ditto for the kitchen and even into the laundry room.
So I wipe them all up and notice blearily that the paper towel I’m wiping with looks rather bloody.
I look down and all the cats are in the kitchen with me, none of them look like they are going to yak.
I make the coffee, tell Tommy we have a sick cat but I’m not sure which one, and then he tells me that he had to squirt Agatha twice with the water bottle last night for trying to sleep on the cable box.
She’s got a fluttery tummy to begin with, so I figure with her being all nerved up, the yak must be her reaction to the squirt bottle.
Then right on cue, a cat yaks and then yaks again. But it’s not Agatha. It’s Pandora.
That’s when I realize she was not there rubbing against my shins as I got down the coffee filter and made the coffee. She didn’t rush to her bowl to eat first thing when I filled it with food.
And she looked pretty miserable for a cat.
She rallied a bit after my shower and showed signs of purring and following me about, but then just before we left – yak, and yak again. And it looked bloody or perhaps bile-y. Gross at any rate.
So I took Tommy to work, got caught in hella traffic and when I got to the office called the vet.
Then I had to race home, pick up Pandora (who very obligingly waddled into the carrier when I showed it to her) and bring her in.
The vet examined her, weighed her, exclaimed over the seven toes she has on her front and back paws, told me that the clumpy chunks of matted fur on her back were due to the fact she was so fat she couldn’t reach to distribute the oils in that area, felt her stomach, looked down her throat, and stuck an anal thermometer up her ass.
Needless to say, Pandora objected to these procedures. But she only growled and struggled – no biting or hissing.
She had a bitty temperature and so now she’s currently spending the day at the vet’s being observed.
Opinion: she has a huge hairball she cannot bring up.
That was good news to hear. Hopefully the prognosis will stay the same. I am picking her up after work.
We have tomorrow off so I can watch her, if need be.
On a side note, she weighs just under 17 pounds! I was actually expecting her to weigh around 20, but 17 is pretty impressive.
She hasn’t been to the vet since the last time she was boarded there during the Pontalba apartment days back in 1997/98. She was a bit smaller back in those days, although she still was pretty hefty to carry around in the Furrari. Especially when Meow was in there too.
We weren’t supposed to have cats in the apartment, so every time the maintenance people came in to spray for pests (which thankfully we never saw because they did this service), we’d have to board the cats at the vet.
This occurred on a monthly basis. The first Friday of every month was spray day. So the Thursday afternoon before, Tommy would have to take a long lunch and walk home from One Shell Square, corral the cats and catch a cab Uptown to the vet.
Then after work on that Friday, he’d have to take the streetcar Uptown, collect the cats, and take a cab home.
Oh, and in-between lug the Furrari up and down four flights of stairs.
It’s safe to say Thomas despised the first Friday of every month. With a passion.
Poor old Doofus. The vet even said she was getting to be an “older” cat now that she’s seven.
So Meow must be an “ancient” cat because she’s 15.
And Stela and Agatha at 6 are middle-aged.
Pretty soon it will be like a Retirement Home for Aged Cats at Crescentwood.
So that’s been my day so far. It can only get better! And it will because it’s a three-day weekend this weekend! Oh, and tomorrow? Pay Day! (Betcha you thought I was going to say “Caftan Night”, huh? Well, HA!)
Until next time,
Olrun
