Miscellany

Amy picked some flowers and asked for a vase to put them in.

Two neighborhood kitties paid a visit. There was much hissing — from our kitty. The outside ones were cautious of her but seemed to want our attention — perhaps they smelled her food.

Sweater progress. I tried spacing the front increases evenly across each increase row, but they still ended up rather stacked — I’m going to rip back that much and stack them on the sides just in front of the armhole instead.

I got a $0.75 bag of largish checkers at the thrift store the other day. They came with what I thought at first glance was a cloth mat, but it was thin cheapie plastic. I happened to have black and red/white striped fabric lying around, so I made my own cloth mat. In my research into quilting (I’m going to attempt to make a quilt for Amy) I learned about strip piecing, and that made this project go so quickly. Now I just need two more red checkers and three more black ones.

Amy fed the cat

She likes to help me feed the kitty in the morning. She holds the bowl, sometimes pours the scoop of dry food in, carries it over to the corner, and takes the old bowl to the sink.

But this afternoon, while we were in the kitchen, she suddenly grabbed a can of wet food and took it somewhere. I was distracted at the time, but later saw it there in the bowl and had a good giggle.

Not a solid surface

Had the big flannel sheet spread over the laundry basket because it was still a bit damp out of the dryer. The cat evidently tried to lie down on it.

Loafing kitty

Looking like a loaf:

Demonstrating the ability to find the softest and warmest thing in the house:

Kitty in the window

Containers

My sourdough starter. The bowl is cranberry pyrex — just so you don’t think the starter is pink. If you look close you can see the bubbly active layer on top. That’s a piece of old stocking for a cover — needs to be something that lets air and yeasties and lactobacteria in but not bugs. It actually smells nice and fresh like rising dough.

Amy loves to dump her tea set (or any other container) out and leave the basket or box empty, and the kitty loves to squeeze herself inside and act like she’s all comfortable in there.

Squirrel cat

Every once in a while I hear this weird gravelly crying.

And it’s the cat, at the sliding glass door, looking intently at birds.

She sounds like a squirrel.

Convalescent

The kitty came home yesterday late afternoon.

Her incision looks like it should.

She’s mostly sleeping it off, occasionally coming out for some attention.

No more stone

Kocka went through surgery just fine, and although she was not well-pleased to have a catheter taped to her leg, she was eager to eat and seems to be recovering well so far. She will likely come home tomorrow.

During the surgery, the vet found that the bladder was small, not very elastic, rather thick, and malformed, a little indented on top. They are sending away a piece, I suppose for biopsy.

The stone was quite small; perhaps it irritated things by dropping into the urethra and blocking it.

Stone

There was no feeding of the kitty tonight. No purrs or snuggles. There will be no litterbox scrabbling waking us up now and then.

The kitty is boarding at the vet’s, where she awaits surgery to remove a stone. We could have tried a different prescription food for a month that might have dissolved it, but after three months of medications and discomforts and collecting samples, I am ready to be done with this, and to get this kitty feeling better as soon as possible. I feel like we’ve wasted so much time (and money), and if she ever has any urinary tract symptoms again, I’m going directly to x-rays and sterile (vet-collected) urine samples.

The vet was planning to collect urine directly from the bladder, via a needle. They were going to try at the appointment this afternoon, but we all knew that this kitty is so irritated in that area that she wouldn’t have a nice full bladder to work with.

As the vet was checking her out, she noticed lots of little hard stools and an empty bladder, and decided not only would they keep her overnight, they’d give her an enema. Not long after Amy and I got home, they called us to say that they did an x-ray and found that there was a stone, and gave us the two options.

This is a fair amount of money to spend on an animal. We are not so bound up in our pets that we’d do absolutely anything no matter what, but this kitty is a very good kitty, is not old, and is otherwise pretty healthy. I wouldn’t feel right putting her down just because we don’t want to / can’t afford to spend the money for this surgery.

Whatever happens, the vet says she should stay on the prescription diet forever, to prevent future stones. I don’t really like that idea. Expense is a small part of that, but mainly it’s got lots of crappy ingredients and smells kind of nasty. I might want another few opinions on that, but it can wait until her health has settled down some.