Fluids

Or, Dan and Emily's Excellent Adventure, part the first

Last week, Dan got a cold. It was right after we'd done a big hike on Mount Bierstadt and I'd chalked up his difficulty with the altitude to just that, but on Monday he informed me he was getting sick.

"Great," I thought, but luckily it wasn't too bad a cold so we figured he'd feel better by the time we left on our trip. Many times, when Dan gets sick I don't (luck? I've already had it? Who knows?) but unfortunately, this time, I had no such luck. Late on Thursday I started to feel the telltale throat tickle, and I cursed my immune system. Or at the very least, I shook my tiny fist at it in impotent rage.

Friday, it was still mostly just a throat tickle and I felt kind of run down, but had no problems working an entire day or having lunch with my friend and her now 9-month-old (I was careful about breathing on him or swapping secretions). But Saturday morning, the day before we were supposed to leave, I felt like cold fried shit. We spent the day sorting and folding laundry, packing, prepping the house to leave for three weeks, packing the car, and, finally, shoving the kitties in their carriers for a trip up to the Dan'rents abode. Loki's an old hat at this visiting thing, but it was Robin's first trip, and boy did she voice her displeasure.

YOWL YOWL YOWL. YOWL. YOWL YOWL.

We were serenaded for a goodly chunk of the voyage by Robin letting us know in no uncertain terms that she Did Not Approve of riding in a car in a kitty carrier. Loki, on the other hand, made absolutely no noise. I was keeping one eye on him, though, since he has a tendency to be car sick, and he was looking as though he didn't feel well. It was hot, in the high 80s, and our car has no air conditioning, so in between Robins Yowls of Displeasure she panted, so finally I tossed the one thing I had in the main part of the car that could keep the sun off her over her carrier. And then, I smelled it.

"Did you fart?" I asked Dan.

"No..." he responded, with a look of growing horror on his face.

I turned around once more to see Loki moving away from a giant log of poop he'd deposited all over the front part of the carrier. I guess I was somewhat lucky to be congested from the cold, because the smell was not nearly as pungent as it would otherwise have been. Dan rolled down his window and I manipulated things to be open the carrier, shoved Loki out of the way, and used a good supply of car tissues to wrap up and mop up his fecal mess. It was totally disgusting.

Not two minutes later, Loki peeped his "I'm gonna yak" peep and horked up his last meal. The car smelled of cat shit and cat barf, and once again Dan moved his seat forward while I used the towel in the bottom of the carrier and some tissues to clean up the cat barf as best I could while we hurtled up I25 at 75 miles per hour. I'd nearly finished my work when suddenly Loki decided that two emissions weren't enough, and he peed all over the back of the carrier, looking miserable.

That's right. Cat shit, cat puke, and cat piss, all in less than five minutes. And I got to clean it all up, or at least do the best I could, while Robin yowled away in the carrier above Loki's. He's never peed in his carrier before, so I don't know if it was just a coincidence, or if his system decided it needed to purge itself in every possible way.

The pee was really the last straw, as I didn't want to use any more of the tissues and the towel was already covered in poop and puke and I just couldn't get it all, so I asked Dan to pull off the road to a gas station at the next available opportunity. I got out of the car, depositing all of the soiled tissues in a garbage can and going inside to wash my hands while Dan used some of the paper towels they supply for windshield cleaning to finish mopping up the pee out of the back of the carrier. I cleaned as much puke as I could off the towel and wadded it up, soiled bits on the inside. The funny thing was that after we got going again, Robin didn't make a single noise for the entire rest of the trip north. And thankfully, Loki had nothing left in his system after his three-orifice extravaganza, and the rest of the way was peaceful.

* * * * * *

Dan and I left bright and early on Sunday morning, after I'd hardly slept at all Saturday night what with the being sick and the Robin climbing all over me and the anticipation of getting up so much earlier than usual. I felt absolutely miserable for the first several hours of the drive through Colorado and Nebraska. About eight hours into the trip, just inside Iowa, we pulled off into a campground Dan had found online and we staked out a spot for our tent. Tent camping wasn't super-formal, so we paid our fee and set up the tent in a nice area under a tree and near the water. There were fire pits and picnic tables aplenty, plus a volleyball court and a basketball court and a kickass awesome jungle gym/big toy-type thing that got quite a bit of use over the course of the afternoon and evening, but there was absolutely no running water, potable or otherwise, unless one had a hose or some other sort of hookup in the RV area. I'd really hoped to at least rinse off my head after such a long, hot day in the car and all the humidity we'd encountered, but no dice. So I pouted and read a book in the shade and felt like ass, and later Dan and I played on the playground and reminisced about the playgrounds our elementary schools had had (and how much less pinchy swing chains coated in plastic paint are, and how much safer playground equipment is now). Eventually we made some dinner sandwiches, played our customary hands of gin, and watched the fireflies get eaten by bats and evening birds. As we went to bed, grass around us damp, we listened to the horny cows and the bull frogs and the cicadas and all of the other creatures that lived next to the stagnant lake.

I woke up when the sky started dripping on me. We'd opted not to put the rain fly on the tent because of how warm it was, but some time in the middle of the night it started to rain so I threw on the fly in my sleep stupor and hoped it would keep us from getting soaked. The tent was pelted with rain for the rest of the night, and in the morning what had been damp grass was sodden with rain. It was warm and humid, and my feet didn't feel dry for nearly an hour after we got going.

Pincushion

It's been so long since we had a kitten that I had kind of forgotten about some of the downsides. Things like kittens who get very excited about playing in the bed when it's 3 AM. Things like kittens who like to climb, all the way up to your shoulder, even when they're getting really big and heavy and they use your various parts as assists to get to where they're going, regardless of how squishy they are or how painful it is for you. Things like how freaking sharp kitten claws can be. I currently have a series of scratches in various states of healing on my hands, arms, shoulders, upper back, and chest (and by chest I mean BOOBS). My right nipple is still a little sore from when Robin used me as a way to get from the couch to the chair; my boob just happened to be in her way and it provided a stepping stone, I presume, though for me it felt like a very unwanted free piercing.

Robin is still freaked out by Loki. It's understandable, considering he'll go a week ignoring her or, when noticing her, jumping up just to sniff her or look menacing, but then (like last night) he'll get some sort of bad idea in his head and attack her. The squirt bottle is getting a workout for the first time in years, and sometimes he's so vicious I have to physically pull him off her. I don't understand why he does this. We think it's better and he's gotten over having a Strange New Kitty In His House. They'll even sleep within inches of one another, Robin on Dan's lap and Loki on mine. They'll play with the same toy at the same time. But whenever Robin's stationary and Loki comes near, she'll hiss and growl at him, ears back, and I'm sure he finds it terribly rude because he'll go from minding his own business to fight mode in 3 seconds. 90-95% of the time, all he does is bluster and show how big he is, but that 5-10% I can't blame her for the hissing and the growling.

Anyhow, because Loki is Big Scary Kitteh, Robin uses us as conveyances from one room to another, from chair to bathroom counter to bed. She still goes in her room every night with the baby gates up, and most nights she comes into our bed at some point. She stays at the head of the bed while Loki sleeps, as always, between Dan's knees. I'm sure part of Loki's problem is that he never ever had to share any high up spaces (backs of chairs, counters) or the bed before, because Petra couldn't jump and was scared of our room and especially our bed. So not only is there Strange Kitteh, there's Strange Kitteh who Hangs Out In His Spots. I'm sure she keeps to high places in order to keep an eye out for him, but he finds it pretty offensive I think. As Robin gets bigger (and oh, how bigger she is getting!) we have taken to putting her down on the dreaded floor from time to time and it takes her at least 2 or 3 seconds to get up on the nearest safe high surface.

Loki, meanwhile, has claimed my lap as his own. Any time I'm sitting on the couch he is on my lap, regardless of whether the laptop's there too, or whether I'm knitting, or whether I'm even in a configuration that promotes lap-sitting on his part. It doesn't matter how many times I get up and sit back down; he is ever vigilant and must be On Me. Of course, because it's winter and it's cold I'm usually wearing comfy yoga pants. And Loki, being a Very Large Heavy Strong Kitty, has sharp, strong claws, because we can't clip them. Normally it wouldn't be a problem, but when he decides to give me a kneading in the soft part of my upper inner thigh, it HURTS. And when he's sitting in my lap and I'm cross legged and the claws on his back feet poke into me, it HURTS. And sometimes his claws get stuck in the material of my pants and I have HOLES in them now.

So here I am, battered and covered in cat scratches, with my holey pants, and 2 cats who must be supervised together at all times, but it'll get better eventually, right?

Sidekick

Let me tell you a little about Robin.

She likes the bathroom. We call her Bathroom Cat, sometimes, and when you go in the bathroom and she's in her spot on the sink she purrs and rubs against the faucet until you turn it on for her to drink from.

She does this silent meow when you talk to her. It's quite endearing, and might lead one to believe that she does not make noise. That, however, is entirely not the case. In the mornings, when my alarm starts going off, so does her increasingly loud "Hey, I'm in here, pay attention to me!" noise. I rescue her from the room where she sleeps at night (still keeping her separated from Loki overnight, primarily to allow her some time to eat and use the litter box without fear of being pounced upon). I get up and pee, and Loki is already crouched right outside her door waiting to be let in. I open the door and say good morning, and she runs over to me and puts both paws up on my leg to be picked up. I carry her into the bedroom and deposit her on usually-still-sleeping Dan before I get in the shower.

When we brought her home from the shelter in the cardboard box with holes, this tiny kitty managed to shred the inside and nearly escape from it; I had to hold it closed on my lap. She also yowled up a storm like someone was pulling out her guts with a grappling hook.

Everything about bringing home a new kitty says to keep New Kitty separate from Existing Kitty for at least a week, so we did our best to follow every instruction. After multiple successful escape attempts (through two baby gates and 3 feet of cardboard duct-taped to the doorway), we realized she was just going to figure out how to get out of anything. Since then, she's avoided floors whenever possible and uses us as conveyance from room to room (bedroom to bathroom to living room to her room) so she can avoid being pummeled by Loki, who doesn't quite understand yet that it isn't nice to sneak up on her.


They share the window, reluctantly

She loves just about every toy we've tried, seems thoroughly interested in People Food in general (something we do our best to discourage), and purrs at the drop of a hat. She's made it very clear to both of us that we are her people.

Robin became Robin for a multi-part reason. First, Dan's brother has always called Loki Batman, because he has a mask on his face. Fair enough. Robin will be Loki's smaller sidekick. Robin is also an escape artist and an acrobat. And she's got a reddish chest and belly.

Yesterday morning I had Loki in my lap and Robin snuggling up to my leg. It was the closest they'd been with no hissing or yowling since we brought her home, and both napped peacefully, Robin's head inches from Loki's tail. It's taking him quite a while to get used to having a new kitty around; I'm sure he's still mourning Petra, and he's always been extremely territorial and Alpha Male, and we're doing our best to let him show Robin that He Is The Boss.


Please excuse my unwashed hair.

It's been less than a month, and we're both already quite smitten. Robin has a lot of personality traits that are similar to Loki's, and some that are similar to Petra's. Plus, she's got some things that are Just Hers, and I'm sure as she continues to grow (and grow and grow, sheesh, she's probably twice as big now as when we got her!) we'll learn more about our new friend.


Loki, circa 2005


Robin, who is already taking after her big brother

We have a new friend.

She needs a name. Suggestions?

Ten Good Things about Petra

1. Due to her origins as a rescued, injured, shelter kitty, we never knew what Petra's breed was. It's possible she was a ragamuffin or a British shorthair - she had a round, pumpkin-faced look, and the softest, thickest fur I ever felt on a cat. She was black and white, but not like most black and white cats. When you saw her fur in the sun, you saw how true black and true white she was - no hidden stripes underneath. She felt like a rabbit when you petted her, and was incredibly docile - she let us hold her like a baby, hold her upside down, and she enjoyed being petted backwards. Petra had perfect kitty eyeliner, a black nose with a tiny pink spot, and black freckles on her white front legs.

2. Petra was a fighter. Despite all odds, at around 8 weeks of age she managed to survive either an attack by an animal or a run-in with a car long enough for someone to find her and rescue her, and for the shelter to remove her leg. The vet who cared for her liked her so much she fostered Petra herself until she was well enough to be adopted out. Then, when she swallowed the needle, the only indication we had that anything was wrong was a couple of days of coughing like she had a hairball and a recurring respiratory infection. As soon as the needle was out, she was back to her normal self again. In this final illness, she lived longer than either of us expected, and even rallied a couple of times toward the end before her final decline.

3. Petra loved to sit in the sun and watch the birds and squirrels outside - we called it the kitty show. She made little "excited, want to hunt" meeshing noises whenever she saw something really interesting, whether it was something on the Kitty Show or a moth or other bug inside or a reflection of light on the wall. Seeing Petra get excited about something was one of my favorite things, ever.

4. From the very first time we met her, it was obvious that Petra loved Dan the most. When she was a kitten, she had a habit of sitting on Dan's chest at 4 AM, purring and making biscuits, and giving him head butts. Dan called it "morning lovey time." The first time we left her for a few days, when we came back, the first night she woke him up with lovey time about 6 times. Her habits revolved around getting Dan to pay attention to her, and he was the one who could calm her down best when she had scary phantom-limb pain episodes.

5. Petra was very particular about things she liked and things she didn't like. Sitting on laps: bad. Throw rugs on the floor: good. She was never much of a talker or vocalizer but there were a few things she said that were unlike the way any other cat said them (brrt moo brrt, for example). The last six months or so, most of what she said was moo. The loudest we ever heard her vocalize was on car trips to and from Dan's parents' house - man, did she ever hate that, and she let us know about it.

6. Our kitty had a great talent for fitting herself into unusual places, whether that be sitting on spiky box lids or finding hiding places where nobody would think to look. Last Christmas we stayed up at Dan's parents' house for several days, so of course we brought the cats with us. When it was time for us to leave, we managed to corral Loki into his carrier pretty quickly, but we couldn't find Petra. We looked in all her usual hiding spots and everywhere else we could possibly think of, multiple times. We knew she couldn't have gotten outside, so we were pretty much at a loss. Finally, I found her hiding up inside an old desk; she had squeezed through a little hole and crawled up behind one of the desk drawers. I don't know how she managed it, but her hour+ of run-around was that much longer that she didn't have to be in the cat carrier.

7. One of the most important things to Petra was cleanliness. She insisted on bathing herself multiple times a day - up to 10 times, maybe, on some days. She also bathed Loki quite frequently; I think part of the reason why he is so soft is because she gave him baths. Bathing was like a meditation for her and sometimes she'd fall asleep right in the middle of one.

8. Along with the cleanliness issue came a distaste for just about anything that she thought smelled bad. If Petra smelled so much as a molecule of poop or old food or something else she deemed offensive, she'd cover it up with the nearest throw rug or piece of paper. We often came out in the morning to find one of the living room throw-rugs folded over because something on it didn't smell right to her.

9. Because she didn't have her left back leg, Petra would often sit with a glazed look on her face, stump twitching, when her left ear itched. Every time we noticed it we told her that she didn't have that leg, and we'd give her an ear skritching.

10. Petra was all about making good trades. She gave us a trick and we gave her treats. We gave her pets and she gave us purrs; it was the best trade we could imagine and we always felt we were getting the better end of the deal. The last few weeks while she'd been so sick, Petra never purred, even when we were petting her, so we knew she didn't feel well. This morning, after we'd made the appointment to bring her in, both of us sat next to her, petting her in all the best places. After a few minutes, she started to purr. It was the best thing she could have given us.

Read more about Petra here.

Radio silence

This past week has been a scary roller-coaster ride of emotions, primarily when it comes to the cat. She went in for a vet visit on Wednesday and her kidneys were smaller and she'd gained a little weight, which seemed like promising signs. The labs came back on Thursday and the tiny bit of hope we had was dashed to pieces, as they told us that her kidney function has declined significantly (again). (We did manage to get rid of her e.coli infection, so that's something I suppose). She didn't eat much on Thursday or Friday and was lethargic and disoriented, so we had some friends over for dinner to say goodbye to her, since what we were doing, pallative-care wise, seemed not to be doing much for her anymore. She did eat a little bit of rotisserie chicken on Friday, but we didn't have high hopes that she'd ever do much getting out of the little nest she made for herself on the couch.

On Saturday we talked about our options, and made some plans for her end-of-life care that would have put Loki at Dan's parents' house, us in the car driving to California, and Petra in the ground this Thursday. We watched with tears in our eyes as Loki bathed her and kept her warm in her little couch nest. Sunday we saw Dan's parents and asked if we could bury her at their house, and then we went to the same Christmas tree farm as last year and found our Charlie Brown tree. When we got home, Petra seemed more energetic and far less disoriented than she had in days. She actually looked and acted like herself again, going so far as to do her trick for kitty treats eight times in a row last night, eating and drinking, using the litter box, and stretching out on the throw rug in the kitchen. She even begged for some chicken from my dinner plate as I was sitting next to her couch nest while eating last night, something she'd never done before.

The only thing we can think of is that she's rallying a bit thanks to several days of prednisalone treatment, a steroid we're giving her to help control her kidney inflammation. It won't make her better in the long-term but I guess in the short-term it's helping her feel a little better. The form of cancer she has is very aggressive and cats don't tend to live very long; she's already outlived the 4-6 weeks generally cited.

So now we don't know what to do. We want her to have as much good quality of life as we can. We know now for sure that it's renal lymphoma so she doesn't have very much longer at all, and we're (for the most part) at peace with that. But how do you know when is the right time to say goodbye?

Loki loves Petra

Petra decided to hang out with my knitting on the couch, where she almost never goes. Loki decided to hang out with Petra.

Petra: likes and dislikes

Things Petra likes:
Dan


Sunny spots
Warm spots
Catnip
The water from a can of tuna
one particular brand/flavor of kitty treats
very small pieces of turkey bacon (sometimes)
being held
being held like a baby by Dan
throw rugs (for flopping upon)
being petted backwards
having her left ear scritched (she doesn't have the left back leg, so she can't scratch her left ear!)
licking plastic (mmmm, plastic)



sitting in unusually shaped containers
warm soft things, especially if they smell like Dan


playing in bags
playing in boxes
sitting on paper
string toys


snuggling with Loki
warm days
watching squirrels and birds on The Kitty Show (aka when the back door is open or when she climbs up in a window)


the blue chair
cushions
moths, mostly to meesh at, sometimes to hunt
reflections or flashlight or penlight on the wall


bathing Loki's head for him
seeing what Dan is doing at the kitchen counter or sink (I hold her up for this)
sniffing flowers and greens
sniffing things in general
fresh water


drinking out of the glasses that the humans are using


the bird that lives at Dan's parents' house




Things Petra tolerates:
Me
being held like a baby by me
dancing around the kitchen with me
being bossed around by Loki


Things Petra Does Not Like:
Taking pills
being jabbed with a needle every day
Flying Kitty
cold weather
being sat upon by Loki
when Loki bites her stump
when her stump has phantom limb pain
the cat carrier
riding in the car, especially on the highway
when there are no rugs to flop on
loud barking doggies
sitting on laps (she seriously Will Not Do This unless she is scared shitless)
sitting on most furniture
being on our bed

Unforgettable

Petra likes string and string toys. This is important for the following story:

When Petra was around eight months old or so, she started making a noise that sounded like a duck quacking. Then, she started sneezing and acting like she maybe had a kitty cold, so we took her in to the vet. She went on a 10-day course of antibiotics, and got better. Then, a few days after going off the antibiotics, she got sick again. On: fine. Off: sick. The last time she was on 3 weeks of antibiotics and got sick within 2 days after going off. I finally bit the bullet, called the vet, and made an appointment for a few days later. In the two days between making the appointment and bringing her in, Petra got REALLY sick. Not eating or drinking, wheezing, sneezing, coughing/spitting up mucus and saliva. Really unhappy kitty. She sounded like Darth Vader all night and the things that had helped before, like putting her in the bathroom and running the shower on hot so the steam could clear her pipes, didn't help anymore. I decided she couldn't wait any longer and we took her in to the vet at 7:30 in the morning. Dan and I were both really worried that she had Feline AIDS or Feline Leukemia or something that was affecting her immune system. We were really scared.

They did X-rays. They did bloodwork.

The vet called me at 8:30 (while we were at breakfast) and said the X-ray showed that Petra had a NEEDLE AND THREAD loged in her windpipe (well, in the flesh around her windpipe). She had SWALLOWED A NEEDLE AND THREAD two months previously, and had been sick from the secondary infection of having a foreign body in her windpipe for two months. We figured that what had happened was we'd had the pincushion out from working on a couple of different sewing projects (each of us, at the time, was sewing something) and she'd probably seen thread dangling from the coffee table. She likely played with it, swallowed it, and the needle it was threaded through came along for the ride.

So he got the needle and thread out, and told me that he also thought she may have a bowel obstruction from more thread that could have traveled further down, and wanted to do exploratory surgery to find out what was causing it. I gave the go-ahead. He called me back and said it wasn't thread (yay! no necrotic tissue! nothing unhealthy in her bowel!), but that she had a bunch of scar tissue that had kind of rerouted her bowel, back from when she had whatever accident caused her leg to get mangled (and the ultimate reason why she lost the leg). He fixed that up, so it wouldn't cause her problems later, sewed her back up, and tells me she was resting comfortably and we could bring her home the next day.

Two months of antibiotics, having a needle removed from her windpipe, and exploratory surgery, was pretty darn expensive. But Petra was only 10 months old at that point, and it was worth every penny to have a healthy cat again. Plus, the vet tech was really excited to have a unique x-ray to bring in to show her class!

* * * * * * * * * *

When we brought the cats in for that exam two weeks ago, it had been a while since they'd seen the vet, and in the meantime he'd switched from one veterinary practice to another. The vet came in the room, asked who he was seeing, and we reminded him of Petra, who only had three legs, and who had once (more than five years before) swallowed a needle. "Oh, yes," he said. "I could never forget that!"

The enemy's gate is down

About two weeks after Dan moved in with me, we went to the Denver Dumb Friends League to find a kitty. I'd wanted one since I moved to Denver, and had purposefully found an apartment that was pet-friendly. But I wanted to wait until Dan moved in, since I knew he was going to, and figured it would be easier to wait until after that happened.

Luckily, Dan was amenable to the idea of kitty-having. So we went to the DDFL and looked at the kittens (I wanted a kitten. Sue me.), but didn't see any that seemed like OUR kitty. A week or so later, we went in again. Our neighbor Paulene was a volunteer there, and when we got there we put our name on the waiting list (for a "hang out with a kitty" room, and the option of hanging out with three different kitties) and wandered around, looking at our options. We saw a few that looked promising; they'd just gotten a couple of big litters of kittens in so we figured we'd find one in that bunch. Right after we came in, a couple with a little girl came in as well, so they were just below us on the list.

We brought in one kitten. It wasn't ours. We brought in a second kitten. Not ours. Paulene came by to see how it was going, since she knew we were there to find a kitty, and she asked us, "Have you seen the little one with three legs?" No, we had not, and opted to visit with her next. She was brought in the room and we were instantly smitten, particularly Dan (I suspect she stole his heart right then and there). "This is our kitty!" we knew, just as that family with the little girl was walking by, pointing at our new friend, saying how that was going to be her kitty.

Sorry, little girl. We were first, therefore, she was ours.



We brought her home and spent the next couple of weeks trying to determine her name. The shelter had named her "Bug" (as in, cute as a? I'm not sure. She didn't look like a bug.) but we knew her real name was something entirely different. Our kitten was strong, a fighter. When she had been a tiny kitten, probably no more than six or eight weeks old, something had happened to her, and someone had found her at the side of the road with her left back leg all mangled and smashed. They brought her in to the DDFL, who amputated her leg. The vet who had cared for her there was so enamoured that she fostered the little kitten herself for the month that it took for her to convalesce and get healthy enough to be adopted out.

Over that first week or ten days when we had her home, we ran through any number of names. Miette, maybe, after the scrappy girl in The City of Lost Children. Or Leeloo, after the character of that name in The Fifth Element. One afternoon, we had our door open and she ran from one of us to another, hiding behind us and other obstacles in her path to get to our neighbor's door on the other side of the hallway. "The enemy's gate is down," I said, and we knew right that her name was Petra, after the girl soldier in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. It was perfect.

Petra charmed everyone she ever met. All of our neighbors loved her. How could you not, with a face like this?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Two weeks ago, we took Loki and Petra to the vet. It was partly because they needed booster shots and a checkup, as it had been a while since their last visit, but also partly because we'd noticed some disturbing things. Petra had peed a few times outside of the box, something she'd never done before. She seemed thirsty all the time, and would get really excited about having her water dish refilled or the tap turned on in the bathroom sink for her to drink from. She was also throwing up water, and seemed like she was losing weight. Thinking maybe she had diabetes or something else managable, yet still scary, we told the vet about the worrisome symptoms we'd noticed.

Loki was given a completely clean bill of health (and later, when his lab results came back, the vet told us that he was about as healthy as a kitty could possibly be...so, yay!)

Petra was a different story. "We'll have to wait for the labs to come back," he said, "but it's entirely possible it could be one of many different things - none of them good." Her kidneys were enlarged, and that on top of her other symptoms pointed to either renal lymphoma or a congenital kidney defect, neither curable. He asked us about her breed background, if we knew anything about it, and asked if she'd ever tested positive for FeLV, since that was a primary cause of kitty lymphoma. At home, we went through her records from the DDFL but didn't see anything that said she'd tested positive for FeLV. The next morning, the vet called with her lab results: an elevated white blood cell count, which could point to a bacterial infection. We put her on a ten-day course of antibiotics and waited to see what would happen.

Nothing happened, except that she got really pissed about having to take a pill twice a day. She didn't get any better. She continued to drink a lot of water, puke water, and lose weight. So yesterday we brought her back in for the news we'd been dreading, the news that I'd had nightmares about all Monday and Tuesday night. The vet said that we could do an abdominal ultrasound, an asperation of the kidneys, a biopsy. But with her symptoms, and the fact that she'd lost almost an entire additional pound in two weeks, and the fact that her kidneys were an additional 25% larger, made it pretty clear. Petra has renal lymphoma.

Lymphoma in cats can be treatable but is not curable. And after doing some extensive research online last night, we realized we had made the best choice about what her treatment will be. Some forms of feline lymphoma respond well to chemotherapy, giving pets an additional five or six months, a year, even two years in outlier cases. But renal lymphoma, especially at the stage where Petra probably is, does not respond as well. We would rather have her for a few more weeks and give her a good quality of life, where she is happy and comfortable, rather than put her on chemotherapy (when who knows how she will respond to it, if it will make her feel worse, etc.), and try to prolong her life at the cost of her happiness. We will be treating her with administered-at-home subcutaneous fluids (to help her kidneys function better) and prednisone, a cortical steroid that will help slow the progress of the disease. But she is not going to get better.

I don't know how much longer we will have with our friend Petra, but we plan to make the best of it. We're going to take lots of photos and videos, give her treats every day, and make sure she knows how much we love her. And I'm going to write more about her, about her other brush with death, about her likes and dislikes, about the things we are going to miss so much when she is gone.

Heat makes knitting less than fun

Just for posterity's sake: the finished blanket I made for the soon-to-be-appearing baby of the person who teaches some classes I take at the gym. I've been taking classes from her for nearly two years and we're pretty friendly, so I thought I'd put together a simple blanket. She told me the nursery for her son was going to be bright colors, so I took that and ran with it.


The yarn is big and fat and soft, machine washable and dryable of course. Loki kindly provided some scale for me.

It would have been finished weeks ago, except it's not especially fun to knit when it's hot outside (and inside, since we don't have A/C).

Contrary Colorado, Cute Kitties

Remember how, merely yesterday, I waxed rhapsodic about spring in Colorado? This morning, when I got up it was cold and dry outside. 20 minutes later it began to snow. 40 minutes after that there were three inches of wet, heavy snow built up on our back porch, and I stood at our front window watching the snow accumulate on the white-blossomed trees across the street.

My walk to work was far wetter and colder than it had been in quite some time. I held an umbrella over my head, which succeeded in keeping my head dry but the rest of me got quite covered in ploofy (yay! ploofy!) wet stuff. I snapped a few photos to compare with the ones I got one week ago today.


I stepped through the door of work, hands aching in my crappy gloves (the good ones were still in the car from this past weekend's trip), only to find that everyone was being sent home. Apparently, we're supposed to get over a foot of snow today, perhaps even more, and the conditions were absolutely wretched and unsafe and will probably only get worse. I'm the only one who walks to work, so I can still make it in even if there's three feet piled up, but I'm not going to say no to a snow day at home with my husband. One of the two people left at work by the time my hands warmed up to merely uncomfortable kindly gave me a ride home so I didn't have to walk back in the nastiness. There's warm chai in my mug, two cute yet confused kitties winding around our legs, and the ploofs are still coming down outside.

Speaking of cute kitties, here's something I've been meaning to post for a while. Our cats have very different habits and different personalities, and I've caught each one doing something endearing recently.

Case in point: Petra loves to sit in things that are just Petra-sized. A box lid on the floor will soon have a small black and white cat perched inside. This was some packaging that came with the router when we got our very own internets last month, and Petra wasted no time in depositing herself inside.


Loki is our lap ho. He is especially pleased to help when one is using a laptop, and will likely drape himself over both hands and arms, sure his assistance with ball-warming and hand-pinning will be welcome.

Finally, I finally got around to getting their most interesting behavior captured on video. Each of them developed a trick in order to get a kitty treat - neither of them were trained to do so, yet each one does something unique. Dan was kind enough to edit the video down for me (the original had each cat doing a trick and taking a treat three times).



Also, this is why I will do my level best never again to live somewhere with white linoleum in the kitchen. This is what it looks like when it's CLEAN.

A new junkie in the neighborhood (plus, Friday links)

We found a junkie in our backyard yesterday, and I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.

Let me back up a bit. A few weeks ago we bought plants (veggies, herbs, a few shade annuals) to put in our yard and a few to put in pots. Dan thought it might be fun to get a catnip plant to keep in the house for the kitties (we'd never tried growing catnip before) as Petra loves the dried stuff. We planted all the things that needed to go in the dirt right away but it took longer to get around to putting the other things in pots. One morning I left for work and noticed the catnip plant was missing - not knocked over, not in some other part of the yard - completely and utterly missing.

My first thought was that Grey Kitty or some other neighborhood cat had taken it. Grey Kitty is a female cat that obviously lives somewhere on our block because we've seen her in other people's yards and in the alley. I have no idea where she lives (in fact, it's possible that several people consider her their kitty). She doesn't have a collar but is sleek and healthy and quite well cared-for. She also likes to torment our cats by coming in our yard and hanging out where Loki can see her. Our cats are Indoor Only and Loki is uber-alpha-male, so to have a strange kitty in his yard that he can see and hear and smell but not chase away or fight is very difficult for him. On more than one occasion, they've faced off through a window or the screen door, yowling and poofing up tails and Loki being Very Put Out that there is a strange kitty in his yard. Sometimes when I'm out in the backyard the kitties will watch me through the screen door and let me know they'd very much like me to come back inside, and they get really upset when Grey Kitty comes by and rubs against my legs. I don't pet her, but I do talk to her.

Anyhow. Later that week, Dan put the potted plants in larger pots and found the remains of the catnip plant - a clump of dirt with two sticks emerging from the top. He realized it was probably the catnip and put the dirt clump up on a little table.

Last night, while Dan was making dinner he called me to look out the back door. There was Gray Kitty, lovingly snuggling with the clump of dirt, rolling around in ecstacy on the back patio area. She looked thoroughly drugged and thoroughly pleased with herself for finding the remnants of the plant she so efficiently demolished a week or so before. I've never in my life seen a cat making love to a clump of dirt, but it's something I'm going to remember for a good long while.

And here are the best things I've found on the internet this week (both today, actually). Watch Cookie Monster face off with Steven Colbert here.

The coolest wine glasses I've ever seen. But you'd have to find the perfect wine for each glass.

Cantalope arms, and the cutest alarm clock I ever did see

(Photo of Polie, taken by Oldest Friend)
Friday afternoon we packed up some clothes and two crane mobiles and flew to Los Angeles. I'd already checked us in online and printed our boarding passes, and we weren't checking any bags, so though we had to park in the crappy long-term lot (as opposed to the slightly less crappy one), we made it to our gate with plenty of time to spare. At which time I realized I'd forgotten to bring any reading material. The in-flight magazine provided a modicum of entertainment, but there was no SkyMall catalog, and I spent the flight using whatever brain cells I seem to have left by doing the easy crossword and three of four sudoku puzzles.

We landed at LAX right on time, and then I realized I'd forgotten to do something very important, which was print out the email from travelocity telling me with which rental car company I'd reserved our vehicle. In most airports, this wouldn't matter, since they have in-airport reservation desks all near one another, or all the rental car companies in the same off-site location. So we took a gamble and took Avis's shuttle (I knew I hadn't rented with budget or hertz) but lost the gamble. They gave me a list of phone numbers to other rental car companies, but most of them didn't work. Then we got the bright idea to call someone who could get into my email to tell us which rental company it was. The trouble with this idea was that it was 5:10 PM on a Friday, Pacific time, which meant it was even later in Colorado, and everyone we knew in California would be out doing something or on the way home from work. I took a chance and called Monkey, and luckily she was at home near her computer so was able to tell us the appropriate rental company (Thrifty). So we walked the 3/4 mile to the Thrifty lot, and they gave us a Dodge Caliber, which is apparently the only small car they rent (I'd asked for their smallest car, and it felt really big to me). We headed north on the 405 freeway toward Oldest Friend's house and arrived around 6:45 PM.

Oldest Friend lives in the cutest little house that is a perfect size for one person (or two people who really, really like each other). And we immediately fell in love with her cat, who took to us right away, purring and being cute and being all tiny and such (she was the runt of the litter). We sat and relaxed for a while, and then we changed clothes and drove over to the restaurant where we met Monkey and Big Bird and Big Bird's college roommate (who was once a professional triathlete) for dinner. Everything was super tasty - the sangria, the nachos, the enormous appetizer samplers (one regular, one seafood), and by the time main dishes came out I was already full - but I did my best, and wasn't able to even touch the beans and rice that came with. It was a fabulous evening of conversation and laughter and I have to say I found Big Bird and his cantalope arms (and his college roommate) to be thoroughly charming.

We returned to OF's house and were warmly greeted by the kitty again, who did her best to convince us she should be let outside (OF had asked us to keep her in so she'd have access to her food/water over the weekend) and then she played with us and kept us company in the bed. A scant few hours later, she decided it was time for us to wake up, sitting on Dan's chest for some morning lovey time, purring in my ear and being exceedingly cute. It was 5:45 AM, and while I dozed a bit after that, we were out of bed by seven, showering and packing and getting ready to head north. We stopped at a Ralph's on our way out of town to get a few things to eat for breakfast in the car. We headed west to PCH 1 and drove north through Malibu, noting the June Gloom (a yearly phenomenon of fog/overcast/clouds during this part of the year). It was not at all warm, so our plan of stopping at a beach or two along the way seemed to be a less-than-good idea. We drove through Oxnard, toying with the idea of trying to find a comic book shop run by one of the bloggers Dan reads, but ultimately decided to keep driving north. The gloominess continued through Ventura and Carpinteria (where we hit ugly traffic) and only started to clear up once we got halfway through Santa Barbara.

Things that have amused me this week

Loki is now approximately twice Petra's size, but he still tries to squish himself in to the space where she's curled up. Sometiems when he does this he can convince her to give him a head bath; other times he's just trying to annoy her so she'll get up and he can have the space she was occupying. Petra has decided this is her Warm Spot; it's cold out now and there's a heating register on the other side of the door opposite this weird little corner. The heat goes under the door and ends up on Petra. She likes warm spots.

Loki just likes to be where Petra is.

At the grocery store yesterday, I found this alien living amongst the parsnips. I think it's genetically similar to a squid, but obviously it lives just fine on land. It appears to be not entirely sure why it ended up living with root vegetables at the grocery store, but perhaps someone will buy it and take it home to make soup out of, and the alien can secretly creep into the person's room in the night and eat her brains, then inhabit her body and she'll be a Pod Parsnip Person. I will not become a Pod Parsnip Person, because I didn't buy the alien.

Sunday Reminiscin' 3: Kitties I have loved

My family always had at least one cat while I was growing up. In fact, there's been a cat where I lived most of the places I've lived in my life. It's difficult to imagine life without Petra and Loki, or without having cats around in general.

My mom had a cat, long before I was born, who was her most favorite cat evar. The cat's name was Ulysses until it turned out to be female (got knocked up) and then the name was changed to Lissa. Lissa was, apparently, the most amazing cat ever to walk the earth - she was potty trained, even (pee, not poop) and my mom loved her so much that years later she named a daughter after the cat. My mom acquired two cats while she was with my Dad before I was born - one named Felta after the school where she worked, and one named Tanka who I barely remember. Felta and Tanka didn't want much to do with little kids, and I think they both died when I was pretty small. Then we got Tai. Tai was a gorgeous little cat, a very dark tortoiseshell who came to us from a family friend, already pregnant (though we didn't know it at the time). When we figured it out, I was pretty excited because I loved kittens. Tai wasn't very old to be having babies, but she figured out what to do when my mom fixed her up a nice bed in an old cardboard diaper box to have her babies in. Being a cat, she decided to have her babies in a place that SHE determined, and one night I woke up to squirming and weird sounds, discovering that Tai had birthed her kittens on my bed on top of my feet. I was six.

Tai's litter wasn't very big, only three babies, but we loved them all. There was a tortie (Pansy, named after the rust-colored spot on her head) and two brownish-gray tabbies (Tiger and Violet). Not long after the kittens were weaned, Tai ate some cat food that somehow some antifreeze had dripped on, and she died. I was very sad. But we still had three kitties to manhandle and love. Tiger didn't stick around for very long, despite being neutered; it was about then that we got a new dog and he didn't like her. So he took off. We were down to two kitties, which was fine. They were both excellent mousers and often left us presents of mice guts on the step outside our front door.

We moved to the next town over when I was ten, and both Pansy and Violet adjusted to a diminished range in which to roam. They also cleared out my mom's yard of lizards and probably a few songbirds. I loved Pansy more than Violet, both because of personality and because Pansy was prettier, but I loved Violet as well. One night in college, I had a dream that Pansy and Violet died, and they spoke to me in the dream to tell me they were fine and happy now. The next day, my mom called to tell me Violet had died (she was 13; it was a respectable age for a mostly outdoor cat).

Pansy lived another three years. She was a Poor Old Kitty when she died, all bones and cold all the time. I loved her a lot and cried when she died. After all, she was born on my bed.

There weren't any kitties in the dorms when I went to college, but my sophomore year I moved into a co-op. One of the people in my house had a kitty named Mia, a big fat gray cat that was probably a Russian Blue. I didn't really love her, but I liked her and she hung out with me sometimes. She liked living in a house with lots of people, I think. When College Boyfriend and several of our friends moved into the Big House together, they got a cat, an orange tabby named Kitty who was probably one of my most favorite kitties ever. He was very special. I helped to raise him from a very small kitten, and he turned into a giant intelligent medium-haired orange tabby who resembled a lion. I kind of hope Leah and Simon's cat Linus turns into another Kitty. Unfortunately, despite my misgivings, the guys who lived in the house thought nothing of letting Kitty come and go from the house. One day he didn't come back. They looked for him for days, in shelters, put up posters, to no avail - either he got hit by a car, or someone else took him in to love him. I hope that second one. He was an awesome cat.

A few years later I moved in with QIR and another friend. QIR had Tasha, dowager princess, a tiny Russian Blue with tiny feet and a weird alien head. Tasha doesn't really like people except QIR very much, but she liked me OK and I did have a dream about her once that led to her return home when she'd been gone for a few weeks. I think I wrote about that before. And then I moved to Denver, and waited about 8 months before getting Petra. She needed a friend, so we got Loki a year later.

My mom has two cats now, another gray-brown tabby (Merlin) and a tabby-tortie type (Ginger). I like them both OK, but since I've never lived with them I've never really developed much of an attachment to them. I'm definitely attached to the kitties we have, and they've been very cute the last few days, snuggling together and bathing each other in a warm spot because it's been so cold out. But someday, I want another orange one. They're awesome.