News. Pull Up A Chair.

Where did the summer go? School starts up again Monday, and I'm not terribly pleased about it. I seem to recall something about getting a little bit of a vacation this summer ... ha! Here it is the middle of August, and I haven't even managed to get to a single baseball game yet. (And since it's painfully obvious that the Rockies aren't heading anywhere near the playoffs this year, time's a'wasting!)

All my grand and glorious plans for my garden fizzled out, too. Funny how working 40 - 50 hours a week at a nursery can make one not terribly interested in spending free time outside working on planting things. I did manage to get a little salsa garden planted, but it looks like the onions are going to be the only real survivors. The tomatoes and peppers both got wiped out by hail, and while the plants themselves are hanging on, they aren't really producing anything. The strawberries I planted were turned into a litterbox for some neighborhood cats. I did get a few other things planted ... one peach tree, three lavenders and three catmints. The peach tree and the lavender were "rescues" from work and the catmint was rescued from a Master Gardener project. Pretty much everything that I actually spent money on is still sitting in its nursery pot on the patio. Pathetic.

And then of course there are the cats. Are you seated comfortably for this next bit? You might want to go get a beverage.

Life on the feline front has been increasingly chaotic around here. For a while, problems seemed to be coming at us from out of nowhere, but reflection has shown that things have been building for quite some time. I'll spare you the long, drawn-out story, but basically it boils down to an increasing unhappiness about the amount of time the humans are spending at home, plus some territorial aggression issues, along with some "social maturity" issues, and one big urinary tract infection to top it all off. Since I started back to work in late March, the relationship between the Little Grey Kitteh and the Big Yellow Hallway Monster has started to show some strain. Throw open the windows and doors in the spring and summer weather and provide the chance for BYHM to come face-to-face (through window glass and screens) with various neighborhood cats and suddenly we're dealing with a cat who not only has some weird sort of abandonment issue, but is now also feeling insecure about all these "new" cats. Redirected aggression and "marking" (yep ... kitty pee on the walls) ensue. Stress levels continue upward. The Electric Mayhem moves from being viewed as something of a plaything to something of a target. She gets cut off from litterbox access and now we have sneak-pees behind the furniture. New litterbox on the main level helps a little, but not enough. Humans make big mistake and move new litterbox into the basement. LGK does not approve of the change - more pee stains on the carpet. Humans blow outrageous sum of money on Nature's Miracle and Feliway. Massive, hardcore three-cat fight triggered by visit from random tabby outside the kitchen door. LGK attacks everybody and will not stop. LGK is relocated to the guest room with his own food, water and litter for a while to calm down. (LGK likes this arrangement so much that he's still not really inclined to come back out.) Situation is discussed, books are consulted, decision is made to re-introduce LGK as if he were a new cat. Vet visit reveals that LGK has a urinary tract infection - LGK is sent home with a week's work of antibiotics, "calming treats" and a syringe full of transdermal goo that is supposed to calm him down. (Humans think that for what they paid the vet, the goo should go in their ears!) Reintroduction process begins, starting with Big Acoustic Kitty ... and nobody seems unduly stressed about anything. Hmm. Observation of the two remaining downstairs kittehs reveals that while the carpet-piddling has ceased, spraying and redirected aggression remain ... turns out that BYHM seems to be the root cause of the problem and that LGK had apparently just reached his limit the day he blew up at everybody. Humans consider what will be involved in getting BYHM to the vet and then separating and reintroducing him to everyone, have a matching set of nervous breakdowns, sell the cats to a wandering band of gypsies, run away from home and join the first cat-free ashram they find.

Not really on that last part, but we're not ruling it out quite yet. Seriously, I have no idea what we're going to do with him. He's a huge love, but the idea of quarantining him for however long and then going through the whole reintroduction process with him and all three of the other cats and retraining him to try and defuse his whole redirected aggression issue is just about more than I can get my head around. And how exactly are we supposed to "eliminate the causes of the aggression"? We've already made the sunroom off-limits after a rather impressive fight a few months ago. We now have freezer paper taped to the sliding glass door in the kitchen so he can't see out. We live in a colonial-style house where all the 1st-floor windows are less than a foot off the floor ... are we supposed to soap them all up for the next 10+ years of his life? The book that is our go-to for cat issues is less than helpful on this. "Discourage" cats from coming around by removing bird feeders and possibly keep a water pistol handy to scare them off. Right.

So. One step at a time, I guess. All I can say is that the vet better send us home with a whole vat of that transdermal goo this time.

If you're wondering about the mama cat and her kittens in the backyard, well, nothing much has happened. The house across the backyard from us is finally occupied again after sitting empty for most of the past year. The new folks have a dog, and I think that has caused the kitties to relocate their home base. We don't see them as often, and we haven't seen all four of them together since right after the last time I posted about them. The kibble I was putting out kept disappearing, but they always seemed to come by in the middle of the night. So ... we haven't completely ruled out doing a TNR on the little family, but I don't know if it will actually be possible now. I feel guilty for not doing more, but I keep telling myself that the energy we have for dealing with cat problems needs to be focused on the four we have indoors with us. Hopefully St. Francis or some other cat-friendly being will take care of mama and her brood.

So that's our life ... how have you been?

Confession of a Horrible Kitty Mama.

Erg. I'm still all oogie-feeling over this one. And while I take full responsibility for what happened, I still place some of the blame on the vet. And my mother.

See, back when Mr. Big Acoustic Kitty was first starting on his whole diabetes rollercoaster, he had developed some serious grooming issues. His poor orange fur was just matting up something awful, and he couldn't/wouldn't do anything about it. But he certainly could still protest if we tried to do anything about it. After one especially memorable visit in which the vet techs scrubbed his nether regions (which resulted in some behavior on his part that still embarrasses me!), the vet suggested that we buy a beard trimmer from the drugstore and try to work on his mats ourselves. (Was this a polite way of telling me they never wanted to repeat that particular experience? I think it was.) We were deeply distrustful of the entire idea, but thought we'd spend the $25 on the trimmer just so we could say we'd tried. Amazingly enough, as long as I was the one who used the trimmer on him, and as long as he could keep his face buried in a pile of gourmet kibble while it was being used, he actually tolerated it. So now he looks like he has mange. But that's neither here nor there.

So there's the vet's share of the blame. I'll get to my mother's in a minute. (Hi, Mom!)

Since his insulin O.D., we've been focusing on other things than his mats, but over the past couple of days I've been noticing that he's grown some new ones that need attention. So I plunked down a pile of Blue Wilderness and grabbed the trimmers, only to find that the cheap-o generic batteries that had come with it were about dead. After changing the batteries, things zipped along much better. I whipped off three or four mats on his neck, made some progress on one on his side, removed one from his shoulder ... and then ran the trimmers through his whiskers.

AAAAACCCCCCCCKKKKKKKK!!!!

I had to stop and look at what I'd done for a good minute or two, just to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. But sure enough, his lower left whiskers are now only about an inch long. The freshly-shorn whisker tips were strewn around the remaining bits of kibble.

You might wonder why I blame my mother for this. In point of fact, I don't blame her for the trimmer incident. I blame her for this horrible queasy feeling I have in my stomach. You see, when I was a little girl, I loved to play with scissors. And I thought that trimming the kitty's whiskers was simply a nice thing to do ... they were all different lengths, and not nearly as neat and tidy as the rest of her dark tabby coat. (Looking back, she was remarkable tolerant about the entire incident.) But my mother took the scissors away from me and explained to me that you never, never, never trim a cat's whiskers, and that doing so is actually very mean because it takes away some of their ability to sense what's around them. It was a good, motherly, responsible thing to do, but considering that I was already well set on my path to full-on cat-personhood and very much in love with our cat, it gave me a horror of every doing anything damaging to a cat's whiskers. I even get a little OCD about "abandoned" whiskers that I find around the house. (I have a jar full of them. Yes, I'm sure there's something in the DSM IV about it.) So when you take a person like me and have her cut a bunch of whiskers off of her elderly, blind cat ... well, let's just say I'm not looking forward to any dreams I have tonight.

However, like Chinese did 30+ years ago, BAK took the whole thing very well. He didn't even flinch. So I'm hopeful that he'll get through the regrowth period pretty well.

And I do have that jar. Maybe some prosthetic whiskers and some glue ... ?

(Oh, calm down. I'm just kidding about the glue.)

Updates: Kitty and General News

Okay, let's get this out of the way first: Big Acoustic Kitty continues to enjoy not being at the vet (he made it very plain that he was thrilled to be home with us, and has continued the cuddle-fest for the past week) and is now back up to 1 unit of insulin, 2X per day. We're hoping things continue to be calm for a good long while. Many heartfelt thanks for all the good wishes that came in BAK - we all really appreciated them!

In other news, I am up to my clavicle in end-of-semester stuff, so don't expect any new posts from me for the better part of the next month. I'm gainfully employed again, finals are looming large, and spring has sprung and I'm way behind on getting my garden squared away. So if you don't hear from me for a few weeks, just hang tight and I'll be back around Mother's Day. (And speaking of mothers, I'm sure mine will let me know when I've let the blog languish for too long. She's good at it.)

Additional Sogginess

Well, it's now about 5 1/2 hours since my last post, and we've had another "incident". Unfortunately, this time there's no doubt that the culprit is the Big Acoustic Kitty. I got up and discovered that the bathroom mat was all rumpled, and when I went to put it back, it was all wet on one end.

I realize that it's about 4:30 in the morning and I'm tired and I'm stressed and I don't feel very good on top of it all, and these all combine to make this the worst time to consider this situation. However, I am up and I am considering it and I'm not happy. BAK just celebrated his Adoption Day on Friday (11 years since we brought his grumpy self home, yea!) which means he's somewhere in the range of 14 - 16 years old. As I wrote about a few months ago, before all the horrible stuff with Ziggy came along, it's been obvious for a while now that he's moving toward the end of his life. Some days he does really well and I can think that he still has a good piece of time left. Other days, well ... today is not going to be one of those days, apparently.

Obviously the next move is to keep a close eye on him and to call the vet on Monday to bring him in. He's on Metacam for his arthritis** and I know that stuff has a problematic track record when it comes to kidney function, so I'm sure that will be the first thing to investigate. Also, we have a somewhat high-sided litter box that might be giving our little old man some access problems. As I said in the last post, the other kitties - including the Electric Mayhem - have been upstairs more than usual lately, and he might just be upset about that. Too many kitties making free with his box, and all that. A similar situation brought on a bladder infection in the poor guy several years ago, so it might be something as simple as that. There are many avenues to go down before a full-on panic is called for. However, at 4:30 in the morning, full-on panic likes to crowd its way to the front of the line.

If you've ever been here before, you know that the Amazing Husbandini and I are not the type to call "deal-breaker" over this. BAK is our little old man kitty, and he deserves (and will get) a full investigation into this new problem of his, and all necessary steps will be taken to fix things. However, at 4:30 in the morning, thoughts about what on earth we're going to do if it turns out to be unfixable do arise.

Hugs and good thoughts are requested, and I'll keep everyone posted.

**I don't expect this post to suddenly bring throngs of people to the site, but let me try and fend off any potential problems by saying this: Yes, I am aware of the horror stories about cats and Metacam. I have read all the information and I have talked to our vet and precautions have been taken since Day 1. So, unless you have something constructive to share on the subject, please don't send me any messages about how I've signed my cat's death warrant by giving him this medicine. I really don't need that right now.

The Final Thursday

(Disclaimer: I haven't a clue what's going on with the font here today. Just bear with me.)

Here it is, the last Thursday of the semester. (For me, anyway.) Tomorrow through next Wednesday will be spent busting my hump to get through semester projects and their respective presentations and the two “stick and twig” finals in my plant ID classes. By all rights, I should probably be spending today buckling down and working on all this. But since I’ve started taking Thursdays “off”, I find that my mental state is greatly improved. And since I really need all the help I can get to power through these last few days, I’m enforcing today’s off-ness.

Over the last few weeks, it has really come home to me that I am way past due for figuring out some kind of workable stress management systems. It’s not that I have some that aren’t working efficiently for me, it’s that I don’t have any at all. My main reaction to stress is to get irritated and then go up the anger/frustration scale from there. Yeah, not good. I become a scary, scary woman when this happens.

In college, I briefly flirted with managing stress via alcohol. Very quickly, the problems with this became apparent:

1. I’m cheap, and alcohol isn’t. This problem was not overcome when I graduated and started having money to spend.
2. Alcohol on it’s own doesn’t really taste good to me. There are a couple of exceptions to this (and I do mean “a couple” – as in two), but when you combine #2 with #1, it’s pretty limiting.
3. A good buzz does take the edge off, no doubt about it. But I never perfected the art of getting and then maintaining a buzz without going over the line into full-on drunk – and that’s just not a hobby to which I felt it was worth dedicating my time and money.

So what does that leave me? Well, exercise is good. The new house is in quite a nice little older neighborhood, and if I time it right I can get out and take a nice long walk with a minimum of school and commuter traffic to deal with at the intersections. However, this is Colorado and we do get days like today where there’s snow on the ground and it’s seven degrees outside. And I loathe the treadmill. Walking and walking and walking and not actually going anywhere makes no sense to me at all. Going out for a walk not only takes care of the exercise goal, but the distraction of the scenery works towards the stress reduction goal. Going back to my college days for a moment, I found that a 45-minute walk around the park near my apartment was a good way to manage stress. (It also helped me go down four dress sizes in under a year. While I’d love to be able to do that again, I’m really more concerned about the stress issue at the moment.)

However, while walks are nice, what I’d really like is something a little more, shall we say – aggressive? Demolishing the funky basement that came with this house will go a long way toward relieving stress, but demolition does eventually come to an end. So, I’m thinking punching bag - one of those big heavy bags that you have to bolt into a support beam. Surely I can find one of those and some gloves on Craigslist for not too terribly much money? I’ll keep you posted.

Finally, for those of you who want to know how our new additions are doing, I’m afraid that you’ll just have to make do with a quick, “everybody’s fine” and come back in a week or two. But I will say this: We’re thinking that we’ve figured out why such a sweet cat like Thing One every managed to find himself in a shelter – the boy will NOT SHUT UP. He’s got this tiny, slightly whiny meow that is cute when heard occasionally, but downright insane-making when played on a constant loop. I am not ashamed to say that when I discovered that he would quiet down for a little catnip time, I dumped the ENTIRE bag of ‘nip on the family room floor just to get 20 minutes of silence. And I’ll do it again.