nekosensei

And...I got bit by the insomnia bug last night. This time, I woke up sometime after 4:00 and couldn't get back to sleep. After tossing and turning for a bit, I picked up my pillow and some blankets and headed to the couch downstairs. Surprisingly, I was able to get a bit more sleep. I'm finding that, sometimes, a change of scenery helps when I'm having trouble sleeping. And the good thing about the basement couch is that it's cooler down there and I don't have the husband or the cats poking at me.

I was finishing up my breakfast and surfing the web, when I heard Cosette jump up onto a dining room chair and immediately let out a distressed yelp. I think she pissed off her knee again because she's walking a little bit stiff-legged. Also, when I tried to get her to jump up onto the dining room chair next to me, she didn't want to do it. She would put her front paws on the chair, make like she wanted to jump, and then decide not to. It ended with her looking up at me, sitting on her hind paws, and moving her front paws up and down. In her idiolect, that means, "I want something, but can't get it / do it myself. Can you do it for me?" So, I picked her up and put her on the chair. And yep, that's what she wanted because now she's sitting on the chair and asking for pets.

On the bright side, she doesn't appear to be in any more pain. She's walking around fine, albeit a little stiff-legged, and she's not making any more distressed noises. It's just that she doesn't want to jump up onto anything. For those of you who have just friended me in the last few months, one of Cosette's many health problems is that she's got a bone chip in one of her knees that occasionally get aggravated and another chip starting to form on her other knee. I've taken her to the vet before, and there's nothing they can really do about it short of surgery, and they're reluctant to do that because she has so many health problems. Fortunately, it's one of those things that, if you give it time--and when it's really bad, pain killers-- it will get better on its own.

Oy! My poor lame kitty.

My next-door neighbor's kids found an injured sparrow late this afternoon. They can't keep it because of their dog, so now I have it. (doomsey volunteered me because I'm the animal person). Oy! Anyhow, I explained to them that wild birds taken into captivity often die of shock, so don't be sad if he doesn't make it. Harsh, but better to be upfront. If somebody had told me that before I took in a certain fledgling back when I was a kid, I think it would have saved me a little heart-ache.

So...now Mr. Bird is resting comfortably in a box out in my garage. (I'm not bringing it inside in case it's sick. I don't want to expose myself, my husband, or the cats to anything). Mr. Bird also has some food and water. The little guy looks hungry because he started chowing down as soon as I gave him the food. I watched him for about five minutes while he was eating and then picked him up and took a closer look at his legs and wings. It doesn't look like anything is broken, so honestly, I think either he ran into something and stunned himself or he's sick.

I tried calling Willowbrook Wildlife Center, but they closed at five. I think, what I'm going to do his hold him over night and, if he makes it until morning, hand him over to the specialists at Willowbrook when they open at nine.

This morning I got a phone call from my vet informing me that Cosette had won Pet of the Month. Every time I go in there, I enter her name in the contest and this time she won. Part of the package is that she gets her picture in the paper and a little blurb describing her.

So...dear friend's list, this is where I ask you for help. Which picture should I submit?

( Pictures Under the Cut )


And here's the little description I wrote:

"When I went looking for a cat 14 years ago, I didn't pick Cosette out. She picked me. I opened up her cage door and she jumped into my arms and my heart. I named her after a character in the musical, Les Miserables, because the white stripe running down her nose made her look like a sad orphan.

Cosette is fond of tuna, catnip, and long naps in patches of sunlight."

And in that last LJ post I made, I meant to say that I saw three young raccoons blinking down at me, not three squirrels. That's what I get for posting late at night. :P

* Work has been a pain in the neck...literally. I had a horrible migraine triggered by my pissed off neck muscles on Monday. (My neck has been screwed up ever since I got a neck sprain in 2007). I spent most of the afternoon laying on the couch downstairs being hurty and sick to my stomach. Needless to say, I didn't manage to get out for my walk that evening. :P

Cosette is on Adequan for her arthritis issues and it's been working for her beautifully. She's much more playful and you can tell she's feeling better. I'm almost tempted to ask the vet and my doctor if I can start taking it for my neck. Or I could just say fuck it and shoot myself up with some of it and see what happens (it has to be taken subcutaneously). Hey...they say some athletes use it for doping so it has been used in humans before (not what I would use it for doping, but if it lets me read for long stretches of time like what I used to do, that would be awesome). And, apparently, Adequan acts a lot like Heparin so it would help with all of my clotting issues too. And no, I won't actually do this, but right now it's looking so so tempting right about now.

Or maybe I should suck it up and start taking glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate....

* It's going up to 92 degrees today. That is pretty damn hot.

* My second cat, Arwen, has a lump on her back. I guess I'm going to have to take her to the vet in August to have things checked out. That is going to be nicht gut because she acts like a hellcat when you take her out of her natural environment (aka our house). The vet and the techs have to handle her with welding gloves. She's not their worst patient-- their worst one managed to bite a tech through the welding gloves-- but she's pretty damn close.

Hmmm...now the question is, which vet in that practice am I going to subject her to?


* doomsey has been talking about pestering some friends and finding out whether they're free this evening. My reaction? Meh. We're going to a play tomorrow, and I don't feel like doing much of anything today. We've had a lot of weekends this summer where we've been booked solid, and for me, that tends to get draining after awhile. Yeah...I'm such an introvert. I think I'm going to do some reading and then see if maybe doomsey wants to watch the rest of Torchwood's "Children of Men." We have about three episodes left.


Links:
* Jewel goes into undercover into a Karaoke bar and starts singing her own songs. The results are epic. (Blame doomsey)

* Commercial done for a library using the same style as the Old Spice commercial. Hilarious! (Via happyfunpaul)

Hey! I've still been so busy that I've been finding a hard time to post. I'm still reading my friend's list and making comments when I get the time.

So...here's some of what's up with me.

Cosette's appetite has been a bit off for months now, and she's losing some weight here and there. She hasn't been throwing up like she used to, and she's still showing an interest in food because she comes up to me and starts begging when it's dinner time. She just doesn't hoggie doggie it down like she used to. While we were in San Francisco for a wedding, emygination, who had been baby-sitting our cats, remarked that she didn't think Cosette was eating enough on Friday. Fortunately, her appetite picked up on Saturday and Sunday. emygination thought that it might have been because she missed us, but doomsey and I talked about things while we were in San Francisco and we decided that it wouldn't hurt to bring her into the vet again and have things checked out anyway.

So...I stuffed Cosette into her crate Thursday morning and trotted off to the vet's office. She decided to take another X-ray because she hadn't had one done in awhile. She pointed out that one of Cosette's kidneys are shriveled, which is not a surprise because she does have kidney issues after all, and that her intestines looked big. She doesn't know if it's a gastro-intestinal problem set off by the kidney issues or something more ominous such as cancer. She told me that she'd do an ultrasound, but it only detects advanced cases. She also doesn't want to do an intestinal biopsy because of all of her health issues. So...we don't really know which of the two things it is. Honestly, I'm not too worried about it right now. I doubt that it's cancer because the vet has been saying for several years now that her intestines are big or feel full, which back then we used to chalk up to her eating too much. And, as I said before, she has the kidney issues and that could be causing the thickening of the intestinal walls. If, by any chance it does turn out to be a slow growing cancer, well, she's just turned fourteen years old this month. She's had a good life. I'd hate to see her go, but, you know. I don't want to put her through any treatments that will make her miserable.

The vet also noticed that Cosette has bad arthritis in her spine and that she has about two areas where the disc space between vertebrae is thin. She thinks part of Cosette's change in appetite might be caused by pain and that's what we should treat first. I'd also like to point out that occasionally during the day, I pick up Cosette's food dish and put it in front of her wherever she's sitting...even if it's on the couch much to doomsey's chagrin. She doesn't refuse to eat. Instead, she goes "oh hai! there's food here," and will start eating some of it. It's quite possible that her not eating could be caused by the fact that she doesn't want to physically get up and go to the food dish because her back is bothering her.

To treat her back trouble, the vet prescribed her 24mg of Adequan once a week. She did take this drug in the past for arthritis in her back and knees, but had to go off of it because it made her stomach problems worse. She doing much much better now that she's getting 10mg of Pepcid a day so I don't think it's going to be a problem. I gave her her first shot on Thursday morning, and I noticed that she was eating more Friday during the day so I think things are looking somewhat hopeful with that.

Also, and don't laugh at me, I have to take Cosette to an animal chiropractor to have her back adjusted. My sister-in-law has done this with her animals, and she says that it works beautifully. The only problem is that I just have to find the time to bring her in. The chiropractor is only available 8 to 5 on Mondays at the vet's office I go to, and unfortunately, I work most of that day. I could probably make it if I went early, but I won't be able to do it at all during the fall though because of my work schedule. doomsey offered to take her in on Mondays. I suppose it would work, but she's much better behaved when I take her for her appointments. Alternatively, I could see what the chiropractor's schedule is for Tuesday, Thursdays, and Fridays. The only down side is that I would have to drive out to whatever animal hospital he is at that day. I left a message on the chiropractor's answering machine explaining everything, but haven't heard back from him yet and probably won't hear back from him until Monday.

I wish life weren't so crazy busy that I can sit down and read my LJ. Unfortunately, I've only been able to read things here and there when I get a chance. If there's anything going on with you that you'd like to share, drop me a note in the comments.

( What I've been up to )

Hmmm...this got kind of long. Maybe I'll write about what went on this week in another post.

I survived wrangling kids today. It was fun, but also very tiring. Oh...and at one point, I entertained my nieces by showing them baby animal videos on YouTube. They asked me to play this one at least fifteen times. I don't know why they thought it was funny, but they did. This one is my favorite. So cute!

It turns out that I don't have to babysit tomorrow because my brother is going to be there to help out. That's a big load off since that means that I won't have to wake up at the ass crack of dawn again.

Okay...time to fall over now.