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Friday Cat Blogging: A World of Difference

Here we have an aerial shot of Nosey and Edison.  Yes, they are two male tuxedo cats, but that's where the similarity ends.  Once upon a time, my brother Greg and his family came to visit.  They met our cats as they (the cats) sauntered by to check out the newcomers.  They met Nosey.  Later, Edison came strolling by and Greg said, 'What's his name again?  Nosey?'  I said, 'Oh no!  That's Edison.'  Then he asked -- I still can't believe this -- 'How can you tell them apart?'

Firstly, well, duh.

Secondly, Greg may not be a Crazy Cat Man, but he grew up in the same house as I did, the same house that always had at least one resident cat and various neighbor cats that passed through.  How he made it this far in life w/o recognizing the subtle yet telling differences between individual cats...I'll never know.

Thirdly, and I can't stress this enough: Well, duh.

Fourthly, even when not seen side by side, there is a world, nay, a universe of difference between the two.  Most striking is the fur.  Nosey is mid- to long-haired and he generally appears slightly disheveled (he cleans, but not fastidiously).  Edison's fur is a very sleek, shiny coat that lies quite close and gorgeously so.

Then there's the VanDyke on Nosey's chin (hence, the shelter christened him VanDyke, which remains his official name for legal purposes) and the noticeable lack thereof on Edison's chin.

Then there's body shape and size.  Nosey's about 16-17 lb.; Edison's about 11-12 lb.  The former is about 1/3 larger than the latter.  Nosey is longer, although Edison's no shorty himself.  Nosey has this funky hump on his back; don't know what that's all about (he also has a funky sternum which is not obvious to the casual observer; I often wonder if his odd skeletal issues have anything to do with his chronic respiratory, uh, thing).  He also has a bit of a paunch, kind of like guys get when they get older, drink more beer (usually while watching football) and spend more time on the couch (usually while watching football).  Edison is very sleek, slender, lean...quite athletic looking.

Don't even get me started on the differences in personality!  Of course, personality isn't generally noticeable upon the first casual meeting.  The bottom line = more than a cursory glance will reveal differences between cats and, once you see these differences, you'll consider them gulfs that cannot be bridged.

And now I'm off to enjoy Nosey's company as he purrs next to me while I surf the internet.

Friday Cat Blogging: Lizzie's Been Sleeping In Nosey's Bin

The sun was shining right onto Nosey's bin...it was just too tempting for Lizzie to resist climbing in and making herself comfortable.

Nosey certainly couldn't complain; he wasn't using it.

 But he complained anyway.

He can be so grumpy sometimes!  Miles ignored the whole scene.  Although just a few feet away, he was in the throes of the 'death scene' yoga pose.

Just another day in the life of housecats. 

Friday Cat Blogging: Snuggle Buddies

Miles and Lizzie.  Buddies.  Snuggling.

Friday Cat Blogging: Backyard Boys

Longtime readers will recall that only the mature, staid and responsible NoseyCat goes outside...and only on supervised jaunts at that.

However, whenever Miles see Kevin and/or myself and/or Nosey outside, he yowls his head off.  That's pretty much the only time he uses what we call his big boy voice.  It's not so bad if the windows are closed, but if they're open the noise is pitiful.  And he's loud enough to disturb the neighbors.  So we either shut the window or bring him outside.

Thing is, we can't trust Miles not to run up a tree or crawl under the back porch so he goes out in his kitty stroller:

I'm sure he'd rather be let loose to be born free, free as the wind blows and all that, but I'm not going up the tree after him.  And although the volunteer dept. in town loves pretty much any excuse to take the rigs out, I really don't think they still respond to cat in distress calls.  Although maybe if I offered free beers all around at Johnny's afterward....

Anyway, Miles does well in the stroller.  He's a pretty mellow cat and he's been fine hanging out in the stroller and going for walks in it.  Lizzie isn't crazy about it, but will do okay if Miles is there, too.  The others really don't care for it...it stresses them out too much...so we don't take them out in it anymore.  Here's a close up of his handsome self in his ride:

Friday Cat Blogging: Dishwasher Dolly

Our beautiful DollyCat resides mainly in the kitchen.  We confine her there bc she needs to get medicine 2x/day and it's too difficult -- and stressful for all parties -- to chase and catch her 2x/day.  She's 15 yo, but still scrappy, agile and fast enough to elude us if she had the run of the whole house.  Plus, after 14 years with us, she still hasn't figured out that we are not going to wring her scrawny little neck once we get our meaty hands on her.

 

Another benefit of her staying in the kitchen is that she's in the kitchen with the food.   She had lost weight a number of years ago when she developed hyperthyroidism, but mostly due to a stomach problem.  The vet thinks she at least has inflammatory bowel syndrome or something of that ilk.  A definitive diagnosis requires an endoscopy, which some of our other cats have had due to similar issues, but Dolly is such a high strung cat that we've tried to avoid invasive procedures on her.  We've found a combo of drugs that worked to greatly reduce her vomiting, diarrhea and weight loss.

We're in or through the kitchen a lot, so we have plenty of opportunities to see if her dish needs filling.  More often it's that she's grown bored of her food and wants something different.  She generally licks/eats all the moisture out of it.  You can fluff it up once and she might eat it, but no more than once.

For a tidy little kitty otherwise, she eats like a slob: she bites at the food, shakes it (to make good and sure it's dead?) and then she eats it.  So she ends up flinging food bits all over the dishwasher and counter. 

Putting the weight back on has been a slow process.  She recently topped 7 lb. which was great news bc it had been so long since she actually gained weight.  She has a small frame so I expect a good lower weight for her would be 8 lb.

She does get out and about occasionally, e.g., if it's a really nice day and the other cats are enjoying the sunny enclosed porch, I'll let her out so she can enjoy it as well (although she also has one of those window garden thingies all to herself in the kitchen where she can lay and get baked by the warmth of the sun through the glass).  The key seems to be to not let her out so much that she no longer thinks of the kitchen as her home base.  E.g., she will snuggle on our laps readily enough.  And she'll cuddle up to us through the night.  It's just that she doesn't do getting picked up.  If picked up, she'll reluctantly allow us to cuddle her and she may even enjoy it in spite of herself, but she's not nearly as comfortable with it as that lumpa blumpa, Miles.  So as long as she returns to the kitchen for meals 2x/day and we can medicate her, then she's brainwashed enough to go to the kitchen when she's nervous.

I leave you with another picture of Dolly on her favorite kitchen perch, the dishwasher.  Her high strung nature comes through in these pictures in the way she's not settling down while we were both there and I was taking her picture.

A Tale of Two Dents

To quote Charlie Brown, 'Aaugh!'  Last night I found a note under my car wiper: 'I'm very sorry to have hit your car.  Please call me to discuss.  [Name & number]'   I usually park on the side street by work (there's no parking for the building).  This is the second time in about a year that someone's hit my car while it was parked there.  The perp didn't leave a note the first time.  That is most annoying.  I ended up paying around $1,500 to fix it.  I don't look forward to having to get another dent fixed...getting the estimate, trading insurance info or having the guy pay for it, dropping off the car at the body shop, picking up the car, etc....but at least the guy had the decency to leave a note so I'm not very upset this time.  I'll call the guy today...and hope it goes well...I have an idea who it might be bc a lot of store/restaurant employees and owners park in the long term spots on the side streets.  The person from last time, who didn't leave a note?  Scum of the earth.

Sadly, finding that someone hit my car was not the low point of the day.  Apparently, I am an asshole.  Not just me...I share that attribution with my co-worker/friend/fellow crazy cat lady/and now fellow asshole, Stephanie.  Some patron was upset bc she couldn't take out a book for her kid's summer reading book report which is due on Wednesday (which he had, ya know, all summer to do it) bc she owed too much money in fines.  If you owe >=$5 in fines, you can't take stuff out or use the computer or put something on hold....  Suffice to say, this patron owed a bit more than $5.

If possible, we generally try to work out something with patrons.  I can't speak for Stephanie, but once this lady got going, I admit I was kinda speechless.  She informed us rather pointedly that she knows the mayor.  That might impress in NYC, but Boonton?  There's only about 8,000 people in town...it seems that a large percentage -- perhaps a majority? -- of town residents are (is?) related to somebody else in town...who doesn't know the mayor?

It's fortuitous that I've recently been upping my public response chill skills.  Earlier this year, I decided to pretend I was high or on medications (that is, more meds than I'm really on) when someone was especially challenging.  Recently, I've added the wait-a-bit-before-I-open-my-mouth strategy.  It's always tempting to say the obvious flat out, e.g., to the lady leaving her kid's report to the last minute (and they're not the only parent/child combo that does it; she's just one who reacts badly) I was tempted to get into that saying about how lack of planning on her part doesn't constitute an emergency on our part.  Not that that would've been helpful; most certainly it would not have been.  But it's tempting to say that.  Or smack them upside the head.  Mmm, that's rather unhelpful, too.  Although saying nothing was probably not helpful, it was probably not as hurtful as more satisfying alternatives.

Any road, I have a spare.

Off today for a couple of appointments.  I had a breast MRI this morning.  I'd had a mammogram a couple of weeks ago.  There was a dense area in my right breast that was not there on previous 'grams so I went back for more pix.  They also did an ultrasound that day.  Then they decided that I needed an MRI, which was this morning.  I didn't expect to hear back for a couple of days at least, but the doctor reviewing my films and MRI called this afternoon.  Apparently, odds are that, whatever it is, it's benign... a cyst or, as they say, 'debris'.  How vulgar.  The ultrasoundist (?) mentioned that there weren't any signs of blood flow to the area in question, i.e., it doesn't look like there are any blood vessels feeding the area, which makes it less likely that it's malignant.  So today's doctor suggested two options:

1. Get a biopsy done.

2. Get follow up 'grams and maybe further tests done in 6 months to see if there's been any change.

My ob/gyn is closed for the day today, so I'll talk w/my doctor tomorrow and see what he thinks.  Today's doctor put it this way: 1) If I can't sleep at night wondering what is that thing in my breast --> get the biopsy.  2) If I'm deathly afraid of needles and the idea of getting biopsied freaks me out --> do the follow up in 6 months.  I'm neither 1 nor 2, but I think I lean toward just knowing sooner rather than later.

This afternoon we brought Edison in to AERA for a lesson on how to express his bladder.  As mentioned the other day, he's had some problems urinating.  The short story is that he's had numerous exams/tests, been on numerous drugs, tried a special diet (it was disgusting as special diets often seem to be...dunno why they bother), been in the hospital for observation and, finally, had surgery last week.  He should be able to urinate easily post-surgery and early reports from the hospital post-surgery and then at home indicated that he could do so.  But then he stopped urinating of his own accord.  Kevin brought him in on Sunday afternoon for expressing.  We tried again last night and even Stephanie of Du, The Incontinent Cat came by to try...nothin'.  We ended up heading out to AERA late last night, but apparently just the thought of getting squeezed by the doctor there got him urinating and defecating (bonus!) in the carrier before we got very far.  We had today's appointment already scheduled so we went ahead to learn how to express him.

It was not as easy as I thought it would be and I was unable to squeeze anything out of him.  The doctor ended up finally squeezing something out of him.  We'll try a slightly different combination of his drugs and see if that helps.  I sure hope he improves.  The positive is that at least now he can be expressed, we just have to learn how to do it properly.  He was near impossible to express pre-surgery and often had to be catheterized.  Being expressible, he should be able to avoid potentially fatal toxin build up.

Well, I'll be a dirty bird, but I cannot find an appropriate cheezburger cat for this post!  Either a) there is one and I just haven't found it or b) there isn't one, thus the end is surely near.

Friday Cat Blogging: Feeling Better

My beautiful Edison has been having a tough time as of late due to difficulty urinating.  He's doing much better now.  I would go into details about it, but it was a bit of an ordeal (for all of us), although actually quite interesting, so I think I'll just leave it at that for now and maybe come back to it later.

In the meantime, here's a picture of my handsome Eddie from before his recent problems.  The kits, they all seem to love fresh, clean laundry.  He does look a little annoyed here.  This was just one of many pictures I took of him that day and I think his patience was wearing thin.

 

Sockington

Heh.  Fans of cats and/or silliness (sp?) will enjoy the newest twitter celeb, Sockington the cat.  There's also a Sockington facebook page.  A 'publicity photo' from his facebook page:

 

Apparently, Sockington's twitter feed was highlighted by twitter as a feed to follow and before he knew it he was shooting for at least 500,000 twitter followers (as of now, he has 550,298).  That's pretty much his claim to fame.

HIs twitter style has been described (somewhere, I can't remember where) as 'free jazz prose' and that sounds about right.  He twits in alternating caps and lower case which adds something, though I can't quite put my finger on it, to his twits.  E.g.:

OH SURELY WE CAN DO BETTER THAN THIS I have pondered the issue and have decided I am capable of 5-10 times more meals READY FOR EXPERIMENT

FIVE YEARS AGO MOM SAID GO WAIT BY SUBWAY STOP AND GET FREE FOOD mom was right thanks mom

lick lick lick OH DELICIOUS PAWS you are like four little journals of voyages past and floors well met

My personal current fave:

sniff sniff sniff sniff THESE ARE THE MOST UNINFORMATIVE PANTS I'VE DEALT WITH IN A WHILE you washed them didn't you REVISIONIST

*snicker*

Uh oh!  Running out of time and battery!

Friday Cat Blogging: Maggie, In Memoriam

Maggie is my SIL Karen's late cat.  (She's the orange tabby; Murphy is the black & white cat lolling around on the back of the sofa.)  Maggie died last November.  I've had her pictures in a draft blog post until I figured out what to say.  Finally, I had the brain busting idea to simply share what Karen said about her.

We have some sad news--our sweet little orange cat Maggie passed away Saturday morning at the ripe old age of 18.5 years. We found her curled up on a blanket in her favorite spot--the glider in the baby's room, so it seems to have been a peaceful passing, which is the best we could have
hoped for....

 

We have had a wonderful 12 years with her, and I know that she has touched some of your
lives as well as ours.

 

...make sure to give your furry friends an extra hug and kiss tonight in memory of Maggie.

 

Will do!