FINALLY
SHORTY’S STITCHES ARE OUT
I NO LONGER HAVE TO WATCH HER WITH THE SQUIRT BOTTLE AND BOTTLE OF BITTER STUFF READY WHEN SHE STARTS LICKING TO MAKE SURE SHE DOESN”T LICK/CHEW THE STITCHES (not that she really bothered them anyway, about 99% of this was due to my own stupidity and having looked at a website that listed all the possible complications of a spay including what can happen if they gnaw their stitches out–with fucking pictures)
AND IT TOOK LONGER FOR ME TO GET HER INTO THE CARRIER THIS MORNING THAN IT DID FOR THE VET TECH TO REMOVE HER, DE-STITCH HER, INSPECT WHAT WAS LEFT OF THE INCISION, AND STUFF HER BACK IN THE CARRIER
I am a little relieved that this spay recovery is happy end, can you tell
*tears hair out*
Tuesday morning: Shorty goes to vet and gets spayed.
Tuesday afternoon: Shorty is released from vet; vet tech says “try to keep her from running and jumping on stuff.” “OK,” I say.
Tuesday night: Shorty mostly chills and behaves.
Wednesday morning: Shorty goes LOL IMA DO EVERYTHING THE VET TECH TOLD YOU TO KEEP ME FROM DOING. I call the vet. Vet tech laughs and goes “Yyyyyyeah, they do that sometimes.” We agree that putting her in the bathroom with food, water, litterbox, and sleeping rug–i.e. the usual routine of Putting Shorty to Bed, except at 10 in the morning–and keeping her there most of the time is the best course of action.
Thursday: It is time to give Shorty a fucking enormous$8 pill because she apparently also had tapeworms. I mush pill into a wad of cheese. I eye the wad of loaded cheese and think fuck, this is never going to work. Shorty snorfs down loaded cheese like a champ! And then spends most of the day in the bathroom again. I regain a few sanity points.
Today…
Shorty: *le chilling in living room being good and not running and jumping all over the place*
Me: Wow, you’re being very good this morning.
Shorty: *poing!* *le flipping the fuck out and running and jumping all over the place*
Me: -_-; Okay, is it time to put you back in the bathroom?
Shorty: O_o!? …*le peeling out and running full speed to bathroom*
Me *le putting food in bathroom and quickly closing door* *le quietly having nervous breakdown*
okay look self you have been looking at her incision like ten times a day, she’s not licking it or nibbling on the stitches or anything, it’s nice and calm and normal-Shorty-skin pink and not oozing anything, there are no strange lumps, she’s eating, drinking, peeing, and pooping, you are doing everything you can do to keep her from running around like a crazy animal short of tying her up in a pillowcase with her head sticking out, you are doing everything right, so fucking chill already
Ladies and gentlemen, I present:
Shorty, the Simple Cat.
She was one of the Work Cats. And she’s actually kind of been my cat sort of for a long time now, she just didn’t live with me.
Well… now she does. She always wanted to be an Inside Cat, when we’d open the back door to feed the Work Cats, she’d just stroll right in like she owned the place and look terribly surprised when we caught her and put her back out.
We thought she was dumb as a bag of hammers, but it turns out she’s either some kind of idiot savant or she was just saving up all of her SMRT for learning how to be an inside cat. Because I was sure there were going to be box training issues, seeing as how she’s lived outside and peed wherever for the entire year and a half of her life… but she peed on the floor one time, one time, and then after being shown the box again has never peed nor pooped anywhere but.
…of course she also takes naps and plays in the cat box. And since I don’t know how the hell to break her of that without breaking her of using the box for its intended purpose, you know what, I’m okay with that. We’ll just use clumping litter and be especially vigilant about cleaning the box. Which is not hard when there is this little kitty aria of whiny meowing that basically translates to “I’M POOPIN!!!111!1!” every time she uses the box.
She also spent a solid hour the first day I had her home tripping balls on her reflection in my DDR pad and looking behind it to see where that other cat was. Oh, and she also throws toys in the water bowl. Which is something I thought only Spazz and Mini-Me did.
I think she’s probably going to be an only cat. There’s another one of the Work Cats I’d kind of like to adopt, but Shorty seems perfectly capable of entertaining herself while I’m gone, plus I’m not sure I could stand losing one cat and having the other one grieve itself to death again.
The first two days after Spazz died, Mini-Me was fine. I got her a new toy mouse, she played with it, she came running up to me to see if I had any Other Cat Smells on me when I got home as always, she ate like she always ate, she could be bought out of my chair with treats, and I thought she was fine and everything would be okay.
Over the next few days she ate less and slept more, and maybe gave her toys a halfhearted swat if I lobbed one in her direction. She lived in my lap most of the time. But she was still getting up to eat and drink and use the box and could hop up in my lap unassisted, so I thought okay, she’s realized that Spazz is gone and he’s not coming back, and she’s never been an only cat and she’s adjusting to that.
Yesterday, she stopped eating, aside from a few halfhearted licks of some gooshy food mixed with baby food.
Today I did not fuck around, I called the vet the minute they opened and took her in, sure that they were going to check her over and go oh yeah, she’s just depressed, we’ll shoot her up with some vitamins and give her some fluid and if she doesn’t start eating in a couple of days bring her back.
Nope. Kidney failure. And the vet said even the most aggressive treatment option they could offer me wasn’t likely to save her–she was younger than Spazz, but not much younger.
So we put her to sleep.
The vet told me, as I held my cat waiting for the sedative to kick in, that she didn’t want to say it in so many words before because she could see I was upset about the possibility of losing two cats in a little over a week but she knew this would be the best thing to do and she believed I had made the right decision.
Maybe someday I’ll start to believe it.
Two cats in a little over a week. This is not fucking fair.
This is my favorite ever pic of Spazz and Mini-Me, because it looks like I caught Mini-Me trying to stuff Spazz down the drain.
Spazz stopped eating yesterday, then acted like he was doing a little better today and ate a little bit of chicken and a treat and drank some water, and then all of a sudden he got a lot worse. I bundled him up into his carrier, and my stepmom and I took him to the emergency vet, but he died before we got there.
He was 16. I’d had him since he was 8 weeks old.
Goodbye, buddy. I love you.
Two things:
First thing:
Doot doo de doodled at work yesterday.
Second thing: required viewing, presented with no further comment.
It was $20 and cute, okay
Yeah, I got Nintendogs 3D. I got the Golden Retriever version because it came with the dachshund available right out of the box, and I was going to roll a black and tan and name him/her Bratwurst.
And then I just had to go and look at the other breeds.
Like the Shiba Inu. Which almost did me in. But then I saw the pugs, and saw this little gal, and… well.
Her name is Stinky (because she has a skunk stripe… sort of). She can sit and give paws.
And apparently I will be able to go back to the kennel at some point and also get a kitty.
oh sweet mother of crap YES
OH MY GOD HASBRO IS BRINGING JEM BACK
DO YOU PEOPLE HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HAPPY THIS MAKES ME
ALSO HASBRO I BETTER SEE SOME LIGHT-UP JEMSTAR EARRINGS THIS TIME OR THERE WILL BE TROUBLE UP IN HERE I AM JUST SAYING.
