The Second Half

Friday Cat Blogging: Lizzie's Feeling Better

So just about the time little Leo was doing poorly, Lizzie became ill, too.  She had a couple of days in December where she stopped eating and started vomiting.  These are alarming signs, especially from a cat who has been robustly healthy and very much a cat's cat, and certainly signs that should be treated immediately.

Our regular vet is a housecall vet, but this kind of issue needs a visit to a vet facility bc, at the very least, an x-ray will likely be required, possibly an ultrasound as well.  We had an appointment to bring her in around mid-day, but, early that morning, we decided not to wait any longer and brought her into the emergency vet at Animal Emergency and Referral Associates in Fairfield, NJ.  Several of our pets have been there before, either for emergency reasons or to see the specialists there.  If she needed surgery to remove something or some kind of tricky treatment, we wanted her treated there.

We were especially concerned about surgery  to remove an obstruction bc we thought she might have eaten a chicken feather.  Lizzie loves cat toys that have feathers attached to them.  Since we have chickens, Kevin gave her a couple of feathers that Sandy had dropped since she was molting at the time.  She went bonkers over them and first started showing symptoms the same day she got the feathers.

The ER vet thought the x-ray might miss a feather.  I later showed an actual chicken feather to the Internal Medicine vet, who thought it would have been noticeable on the x-ray.  The feathers on the toys were different from Sandy's feathers in that the former were softer, lighter, more pliable.  Sandy's feather looked and felt stiff, like a small quill feather for writing.

Lizzie stayed overnight for observation, tests, fluids and some hand feeding.  She was eating on her own the next day and, since there was no identifiable problem, she came home.  She's been doing very well since then.

We have no idea what the problem was, which I find a bit disconcerting.  I like to have as much information as possible wrt our pets' illnesses so that we can make the most informed decisions wrt their care.  I also like to know if it's a one-off thing or if it might recur.  In this case, it looks like we won't know what caused her to get sick.  I'll surely take a healthy kitty, if I have to choose between that and an answer, and hope it was just a bug or something like that.

Despite the funny looking eyes, here's Lizzie feeling better and hanging around at the top of the stairs, as is her wont.  She particularly enjoys sitting about two steps down and staring at the gap in the trim left behind by some contractors who ditched us toward the end of the project.  I think she hears things from there and is lying in wait for The Thing That Lives in The Wall.  I think there was something(s) living there at one point, although I think they moved on when the roof was replaced and sealed up tight last year.  But kitties have long memories for these kinds of things and, actually, I trust a cat's judgement wrt these matters over mine.

Sanctuary

The other day, when I blogged about Leo's recent health issues, I mentioned how I like to see him looking relaxed, comfortable and secure.   I thought about that a bit and I realized that I, too, like to feel relaxed, comfortable and secure at home!  Stephanie, after whom one of our chickens is named, once noted how calm my home is and, after thinking about that a bit, I realized that I do put some effort into keeping that way (that is to say, a person noted this, not a chicken).

Firstly, I suppose it must be admitted that the absence of children probably contributes a great deal toward a calm, quiet home.  We do have a fair number of pets, but they're pretty mellow, too.  The chickens are all hens, so they usually just chatter here and there, you know, bok bok bok.  They tend to vocalize a bit right after laying an egg, but that's it.  Apparently, some hens start to crow a bit as they age, but that's probably a ways off for our girls yet.

The cats don't make a lot of noise.  It did seem really quiet after Dolly died in November.  I don't know if this is correct, but I always figured she got loud bc she went deaf and couldn't hear herself.  But she was talkative and loud, so her absence was quite noticeable.

The rabbit makes very little noise, although his cuteness is deafening.

So basically there's just the two of us to make noise and we don't seem to be very good at that.  There's the tv, but we don't watch a ton of tv.  There's music, but we don't blast it very often.  (For some reason, I save that for the car.)  We don't argue very much (sometimes I wonder if we should argue more, i.e., if we're both too non-confrontational) and, even when we do, it's more of a "discussion" than a holler fest.  I think I can count on one finger the number of times I've raised my voice in anger.  And for some other reason, I don't like to yell throughout the house, say, from downstairs to upstairs.  I don't know why; what would be so wrong about that?  I don't know, yet I always have a little misgiving when I do it.

Maybe that misgiving is bc I really, really count on being able to come home and feel safe and secure.  Not so much from any specific threat, e.g., crime.  It's more an appreciation that I can shut the figurative door on bad news, lousy weather, whatever happens to be flooding the news channels at the moment (politics, tsunamis, scandals, royal weddings, etc.), annoying people, basically any kind of stupidity, etc.  And it's not so much that I want to always ignore tsunamis and elections and whatnot; or that I don't care about people suffering; it's more that I appreciate knowing I can get away from most anything by shutting the door, grabbing a diet Coke, sitting in The Comfy Chair and luring a kitty onto my lap.

I said that I put some effort into keeping the house calm, but now that I think about it, it doesn't seem like very much effort.  I certainly avoid inviting over offensive people, but that seems like a no-brainer.  Some people feel they have to invite person X bco a family reason or something like that.  Sure, I'll invite someone who's a little annoying if they're, like, married to someone I like, but that's about as far as I'll go.  Positively speaking, I invite people whose company I enjoy, who add to my life rather than suck the lifeblood out of me.  And I would have no qualms about giving the heave ho to anyone who harshes my mellow chez moi.

I also don't like having a lot of stuff going on at one time.  E.g., I would never schedule two big things, such as having the roof done and the garage built, at the same time.  I also wouldn't schedule them too close back to back.  That's just asking for trouble.  Just as it's true that construction work will cost X% more in the end, it will also take X% longer than planned to complete.  So yeah, I kinda take it easy wrt that kind of stuff.  It's just not worth it to me to have so much stuff going on right where I live.

So I guess I do manage things in such a way as to preserve quietude on the home front.  As much as I like people and I like going out to do stuff, I like knowing that I can come back to my little burrow and do my own thing.  I don't think I've ever not looked forward to coming home.