Catwars

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I thought I had my desk mostly set up, but I guess not. I forgot to make room for my cats. If I don't make a place for them to sit, they will sit on my drawing tablet or stand on my keyboards and just stare at me while my computers and I start making very urgent noises about there being a problem, get paw prints all over my printers and scanner, in Rodney's case he will sit on the floor by my chair and cry plaintively and/or stick his claws in my leg. Nothing can really get done until they have their own spot right in the middle of everything.

First thing I did was make a place for China. I took a cat bed, placed an electric heating pad on it, and put a micro fiber dish cloth on top of that. Heated bed? Oh, she loooooves that, and the dish towel is perfect for sopping up snot. Hey, she is the Cancer Kitty and she needs a nice warm spot that isn't the closet.

Now, check out Rodney, on the right. Does he look like he is looking at China all jealous and stuff? Good, because that is exactly what he was doing at that moment. (And a lot of other moments not captured on film.) Rodney longs for that bed. Actually, he longs for anything China is using at the moment, the catfood dish, the water dish, the hammock in the other room, a certain corner of the bed, the grass on the balcony that he had ignored until China decided she wanted some, etc.

Being a little short of options at the moment, I set Rodney up with one of China's cat carriers (he loves both of them. Every time she comes back from the vet he will squeeze into the carrier du jour and take a nap.) The thing you have to understand is, China is just barely 7 pounds and Rodney is at least 14. (Yeah, I don't know when that happened, either.) He can BARELY squeeze himself into the carrier. Fortunately for me (and for China, who he has actually tried to sit on when she was in her bed) he can and does squeeze himself into her carrier...but of course he still stares longingly at her bed and sometimes manages to aquire it for himself.

Today I ordered a new little hammock bed that should go right beside the desk at the same height. Hopefully both cats will think this is great spot and they'll use it. Meanwhile, the cat carrier HAS been known to fall off the desk with Rodney in it. Ouch.

China countdown: 11

According to my google calendar, as of today my cat China only has 11 chemo treatments left. I think my bf is actually sad about this since we have been having lunch together every time she has a treatment ever since we met. I guess he has a point...I'm not sure we'd ever go to Paradiso in San Leandro for lunch OR dinner if we weren't waiting for China to have her treatment, and Paradiso is a nice East Bay treat.

Besides, there is something about getting away in the middle of a weekday that always feels so decadent.

I was going through China's paperwork yesterday. I was planning to add up all of her treatment costs to find out exactly how much it really was. Argh, there are so many, though. At least they are getting cheaper. Her first trip to BAVS was about $2200...something I totally freaked out about at the time. AND she was going once a week for a while, AND I had to hire a car and driver during that time. Now it's more like $220 or 1/10th the price of the original visit each time and she goes only once every four weeks AND we have a nice lunch. Oh, plus she seems to have finally gotten used to it and hardly freaks out at all. She didn't even hide in the closet when she got home today.

I realized how lucky we are today when I was talking to a woman in the waiting room at BAVS who said she has been taking her pet in THREE TIMES A WEEK for radiation treatments. Whoa. Radiation is expensive and time consuming. It also has weird side effects. China's radiation treatments seem to have somehow robbed her of her ability to purr, and they think that it may have been the radiation that turned her into a crazy sneezing snot-blowing machine as well, although I think that might be from the exploratory surgery she had at the local vet where they also removed most of the lymphoma mass from her nasal cavity before she ever started at BAVS. She now sprays snot all over my monitors, bedding, windows...nothing in the path of her constantly running nose is safe, and I'm afraid she may continue doing this indefinitely.

Hopefully China will actually be looking forward to her chemo trips by next July, because we are thinking of still bringing her there after her treatments are over, just drop her off and go to lunch...it makes such a nice tradition.

Picking China's nose

Yesterday was chemo day for China, once again. I thought her weight was about the same, but they called me while I was at lunch and said she had lost another 1/3 pound and they wanted to run a bunch of tests like abdominal ultrasound, blood tests, xrays and any other really expensive veterinary procedure you can think of. Now, I've spent $15,000 on her so far, so it's not like I'm unwilling to spend money on her because she's "just a cat", but 1.) it would be half the price to have these tests done at my local vet, 2.) when I suggested force-feeding her, they said I have to think about her quality of life if she needs to be force-fed (what about her quality of life if she has to spend all day getting prodded by needles and ultra-sounds and sedated for x-rays?) and 3.) they said I might try microwaving her food to make it "smellier".

I should mention that snot has been coming out of China's nose for months now. They tried to clear it up with several types of antibiotics, but nothing made the snot go away (and she especially loathed taking the liquid antibiotic). She will have these sneezing fits (and I can hear her sneezing right now) where long strands of snot come out of her nose and often go flying all over everything (the wall, windows, my clothes) and sometimes it just gets dried up and crusty. I mostly leave her nose alone, because she doesn't like having it touched.

So I get back to the vet (where she didn't have all the expensive tests, just her chemotherapy) and they tell me I should use saline nose drops on her nose and keep it clean and clear of snot, something they obviously did for her while she was there. Then, when I got her home, she started eating food like crazy! Maybe I don't have to force-feed her again...I just have to pick her nose for her.

You can pick your friends
You can pick your nose
but you can't pick your friend's nose
(but I pick my cat's nose)

Naughty, but good exercise

Rodney is just soooo jealous of China and her rabbit hutch and hungry for all the delicious smells that emanate from behind its bars. Yesterday I caught him hanging off the edge of the table/hutch while trying to snag some food but I wasn't quick enough with the camera. Today...success! And for him, too...in the far right image he has actually snagged a bit of food. I thought of yelling at him or trying to otherwise discourage him, but it's got to be so much work/exercise to try and get an actual morsel that it's not likely to make him gain any more weight and may actually keep him occupied.

Of course, the idea of sitting just inside with a super-soaker and blasting him when he does that is pretty tempting, too....

Petfood Recall

When my mom was here visiting, she asked me if I had been feeding my cats any of the food that was under recall by petfood manufacturers. That sounded vaguely familiar to me, but I dismissively said "oh, I only feed my cats the most natural, premium foods possible, with human-grade ingredients".

Several weeks later, after I ordered China her rabbit hutch, I was on the PetSmart website and I decided to read their recall list. Darned if I didn't have two and a half cases of Blue Buffalo catfood right in my own cupboard! That was a bit upsetting. My trainer said I should "sue their asses" because I have a cat with cancer and I'm spending thousands of dollars on her treatment while this food is poisoning her, and I did contact a lawyer that was looking for plaintiffs in a class action suit, but my bf said lawyers that file class action suits are usually a bunch of ambulance chasers and by joining their suit you'll probably get a check for $25 someday while the real payout is for the law firm.

I was kind of upset I'd been feeding my cats this food, but in the end I decided to listen to my bf and after the vet yesterday I simply took the food back to my local PetSmart. What upset me the most was that 1.) PetSmart didn't contact me to tell me they'd sold me this food and 2.) as I mentioned above, I try hard to buy my cats the highest quality catfood possible. I pay a premium price for it, and then I find out that the petfood manufacturer is getting their ingredients from the same place as a lot of brands that are much cheaper and aren't marketed as a premium food. I'm about ready to start making all my cats' food from scratch. Of course, I don't even know if China would eat that food. The vet seems to feel it's more important for her to eat something she likes rather than what is "best" for her, since she's been losing weight.

At the oncologist yesterday, China weighed exactly the same as last visit! That isn't as good as gaining weight, but it's much better than losing. I think my rabbit hutch idea was a good one, if only I could find a way to keep Rodney's naughty paws out from between the bars. The other night I thought the hutch door was closed but it must not have been...he managed to get in the hutch, eat all the special food, and then throw it back up. Gooooo Rodney! Man, he's getting fat, too. :(

Here is a typical bill from the vet for China:

Chemo: Doxorubicin / MI..........101.46
Chemo: Doxorubicin Bundle
Catheter: IV set up & placement...54.90
Cbc: In House Machine.............47.50
Chem: Bun & Creatinine............18.84
Chemo Premedication...............48.00
Chemo Set Up/Haz Disposal.........16.90
Consultation: Brief Exam..........46.00
Out Patient Care..................34.31
Rad Tx Stt........................10.50
_________________________________378.41

Wheeee! At least it's cheaper than a human. I had a five minute consultation with a nurse practitioner the other day and it was $135.

China in the rabbit hutch

Click to Play

China seems to like the hutch, but the food? Not so much. I have to shut her in not to keep her in but to keep Rodney out.

Excuse: umm...my cat ate my homework?

I hate Tuesday mornings. Every Tuesday morning from 8am to 9am there is a leaf blower going right outside my window. This is a new experience since I moved to California, and I must say I just don't "get" leaf blowers. First of all, they are very noisy...they sound like a chain saw that isn't sawing anything down, and that sound drives me insane. Second of all, they simply aren't logical.

I can see the person who invented them going "yeah, we'll make this thing out of an old chainsaw (since we already cut down all the trees around here anyway) and we'll make it just blow leaves away from one area and into another, like out of Joe Schmoe's yard and into Sam Smith's yard. Then tomorrow, we'll blow those same leaves out of Sam Smith's yard and into Joe Schmoe's! Then back to Joe Schmoe's the next day! I'll never run out of work again...brilliant!" And, it is kind of brilliant. I am especially impressed that they managed to market such a stupid an inefficient idea.

Maybe there is just some weird attitude around here I don't understand. There is a woman who's job it is to wander around my gym and clean stuff all day. She doesn't seem to work very hard, but I don't blame her because I think her job sucks. She probably makes minimum wage and so y'know...she does a minimum wage amount of work. One day, she was complaining because the leaves from a tree outside kept blowing in the door. She said "I keep sweeping them outside and they blow back in." Ummmm...duh??? Leafblower mentality! Welcome to California.

Anyway, the last couple of days I don't know where all my time went, although an awful lot of it went to feeding China. Since she had lost another quarter pound at her last chemo appointment, I really need to work hard to make sure she doesn't lose any more and hopefully gains some. It gets time consuming because I have to shut her in the bathroom to keep Rodney from just eating all her high fat and extra tasty food (beef lung, yum!) Then to make it trickier, she will eat twice as much if I am actually supervising her and stiring up her food going "mmm...doesn't that look tasty? Don't you want some more?" I'm not sure actually saying it looks tasty has any affect, but stirring it up and giving it back to her will get her to eat some more. Now I've gotten extra fancy and when stirring the can of food stops working I give her something else, like veal babyfood. Of course, a whole jar of veal babyfood only has 70 calories in it, so sometimes I give her half and half instead...that has 70 calories in 2 tablespoons! Last night I gave her tuna, although that's a little low calorie and low fat. At least it's something more for her to eat.

I'm a little tired of my bathroom smelling like beef lung (it's pretty gross) so Sunday I ordered a rabbit hutch. That way I can put one of the cats in there (out on the balcony in the sun even, if it's nice) and separate them without yucking up my bathroom. I think it will be nicer for them, too. It doesn't arrive for a week, since it has to be trucked from New Jersey (there's some inefficient distribution for ya) but I can't wait.

Oh and of course Monday was salsa class night! I watched my salsa lesson dvd beforehand to figure out the whole 7-count, 8-count thing, and it's not a very good lesson, it goes on and on teaching you just the lead moves so if you are the follower you are learning basically the wrong thing and then to make it more confusing you are supposed to watch them facing you and follow along opposite. You know, like if you are doing an aerobics dvd the instructor would typically move his/her right leg and tell you to move your left, and you would mirror what they are doing, or else like our salsa teacher she would just turn to face the same direction that you are (with her back to you), but not this guy! He just faces you and expects you to reverse everything he does. Very confusing teaching style...we took a lesson from this guy in person at Club Kokomo, and he confused us then, too. But the important part....the important part is he says towards the beginning that salsa is 8-count, you just don't count the 4 or 8 because you are pausing. So it's like 1,2,3,pause,5,6,7,pause and Jinx is not crazy! So I am not as bad at salsa as I was thinking. And...class was really fun and I think I did okay but there was one guy, he's nice and fun and he is pretty good at doing the steps and has good rhythm and good leading skills, BUT last night the last time we danced he kept doing this boob graze during our "freestyle" dancing. And he didn't say anything or apologize, nor did he modify what he was doing with his arms so it didn't happen again. I mean, he must know he's doing it, right?

Oh well, whatever. I'm really enjoying salsa lessons! Our instructor is having a field trip/party/dance thing for Cinco de Mayo at a local restaurant and I really want to go, but my bf basically said last week that if we go to Monterey on the weekend we probably can't go to the Cinco de Mayo salsa thing so I had to choose. I chose Monterey, but I'm still hoping Cinco de Mayo could work out.

Today...I have just got to get some work done! After the gym I have no other plans beside feed China, so not much excuse.

Excuse: Chemo day

Well, yesterday was China's chemo day. Thank goodness my bf has been taking us to the oncologist the last couple times. I had to hire a private car to do that ever since August, and she used to have to go every week. Of course, now it looks like the money I will be saving on hiring a car and driver will go to having some lump in China's left ear biopsied. Ugh. Like, as if I have that money anyway. If that turns out to be cancerous I don't know WHAT happens then. I don't think she can have more radiation treatments. She has lost another quarter pound (a lot for a cat, especially one that weighs only 7 pounds) and they couldn't give her the planned protocol because they couldn't find a good vein. They even shaved a few new spots on her legs. Instead she got next week's protocol and they'll try again with the intravenous one next visit.

So anyway, visiting the oncologist is not only expensive of course, but it takes hours, what with going to East Bay and all. We go out to lunch, which is better than before when I'd just sit in the waiting room the whole time, but it still takes up much of the day. Once I got home, I had to turn right around and go get catfood for Rodney aka the "dustmite allergy puking kitty". I had the brilliant idea of giving him some canned food in the morning since he was out of dry, and it just meant he puked up canned food instead of dry...and if you know anything about cat puke, you know canned food puke is much messier and hard to clean up. I really, desperately need my carpet shampooed now.

After that, I had to do some There related stuff and then...I don't know...the whole day was just kind of over!

Today I maybe have a little more time because I only spent an hour at the gym. However...I have a bunch of crisis to take care of so in the end...well, we'll see...

Excuse: I had to take a picture of Rodney!

I'm trying to get stuff done, I am! But...on Wednesday my bf brought me a couple dozen roses and last time he did that I woke up in the middle of the night to hear the weirdest sound, which turned out to be my cats chomping on rose leaves. Not really good for a number of reasons. When I told bf about it, he apologized for not bringing my cats any flowers of their own. Soooo...on Wednesday, along with the roses he brought some extra filler-flowers that are kind of like babies breath (which he knows they like) but are purple (which I like.) That's so cute. So I had to prove to him that Rodney really did like the flowers he brought especially for him and that is why I was messing around taking pictures of my cat (see below) and trying at least to send the image from cellphone to cellphone (still working on that one.) C'mon, this is a good excuse, right?

Chomp, chomp!!!