Pets – Page 50

Roar of the Little Lion

I decided it was finally time to tell Sam that we are moving to Arizona. He took it well.

What Matters

If our rental application is approved, we leave for Arizona in a week-and-a-half.

A week-and-a-half.

How can it be that it is time to say goodbye to my home? But it is time. I’m planning to write goodbye posts to a few of my favorite parts of life here, tributes to a place that I have loved to my very core, but I don’t want to give the impression that just because it saddens me to leave the Pacific Northwest that I’m not excited about exploring the Southwest. The Sonoran desert has a unique beauty all its own and I have much to learn on many levels and I’m eager for the journey to begin. I wish I was already there.

But even if the job was in a place I wasn’t excited about, what matters most is our little family will be together.

When our plane landed Saturday night and we took our phones out of airplane mode, my wife had texts from our pet sitter that she and our three cats were at DoveLewis, our emergency vet. She had prepared Ellie’s pills by covering them with pill pockets, but when she let Ellie outside briefly to go to the bathroom one of the cats ate all of Ellie’s pills. With a long history of pet ownership this is not our first brush with an accidental poisoning, I shudder to think how many things Ellie ate in her first months with us as we learned the hard way just how low the bar our pup sets for what qualifies as food.

And of course when I started this blog 12 years ago one of my first posts was about our cat Templeton swallowing a sewing needle right before we were leaving for a trip. Accidents happen, I’m sure all pet owners (and parents) have their own stories.

Thankfully she got all three cats into their carriers (trust me, this is no small feat) and took them to DoveLewis so they were already getting treatment by the time we arrived. It would be easy to panic in a situation like this but I’m grateful she did exactly what was needed.

We suspected Boo was the culprit but until we knew for sure all cats were getting treatment. They gave them medicine to get the cats to throw up but only Trixie cooperated, and she didn’t have any pills (or pill pockets) in her stomach as we suspected. Sam and Boo weren’t revealing their secrets and neither was talking so we left them overnight after talking with both the doctors there and the experts at the ASPCA poison control hotline (1-888-426-4435), while we took Trixie home with us.

The brothers were given charcoal to absorb as much of the medicine as possible, Sam never showed any symptoms but overnight Boo developed an elevated temperature and was anxious and over-reactive, one of the effects the ASPCA predicted, confirming our suspicions about the identify of the pill thief. Those symptoms cleared up by morning and by 2 p.m. they were cleared to come home.

At this point we’re just monitoring Boo, he only ate half his food last night but ate most of it this morning although it took him two passes. He’s been a bit lethargic but not frighteningly so, he could just be recovering from everything he went through physically and emotionally. It could be because he’s upset I recycled all his Boo Boxes. He’s asleep on my legs at the moment, I hate to disturb him but the dog must be walked and I have more to do today than I have time to do.

I’m thankful for my little ones, and so very thankful that we have the income to afford treatments like this when something goes wrong. And I’m deeply thankful for everyone who has looked after our little ones during our stay here, from the sitters to the doctors and everyone in between. We’ll have to find new people in Arizona to fill those roles, and will want to know a good emergency vet before we leave Oregon, one of the many little tasks to be done.

But for now we’re all together and that makes me happy.

Shelter Me, My Brother, and Protect Me From All Harm

Trixie has been a bit on edge lately as she knows something is up from all the sorting we’ve been doing the past couple of weeks. She’s always adored our eldest cat Sam and seeks him out to snuggle with him, but never as much as now. Seeing them like this reminds me of how much comfort Sam took from Scout when he was younger.

The Ball Game

Someone from the moving company came the other day to do a walk-through of our house. Ellie was eager to greet him, as is her wont, but then she got her orange ball and starting tossing it at me. She followed us around, trying unsuccessfully to get me to play, the entire time he was there. When we were finished, the moment he was out the door I turned to Ellie to play with the ball but she wouldn’t even put it in her mouth much less play with it.

You make me laugh, my pup, my heart and my joy.

How To Make Sure They Don’t Leave You Behind

Don’t worry little Squeaks, we are going to great lengths to make sure you and your siblings join us in Arizona. My wife and I fly out on Thursday so we can meet with a realtor on Friday and Saturday to look for a rental house. We know it is going to be difficult to find a place that will take 3 cats and a dog, but we’ll do our best. If we find a place then we’ll move down before I start my new job, regardless of when our stuff can follow us down. I meet with the moving company later today so I might have a better feel then for when they can pack our things and get them started on their journey.

The Boo Box Condo Is Not Just For Boos

Guarding Boo

Tired

When my team got laid off at the start of November, one nice thing the company did was set us up with another company that gives advice to people in our position in starting the job search and updating resumes and online profiles. They gave a lot of good advice which genuinely helped on the job search, but one piece of advice I deliberately didn’t take, even though I think it is a good idea, is to treat the job search like a job and take the weekends off to recuperate. I didn’t do it because I was looking at different industries and different cities and had a lot of research to do. I don’t regret it, pursuing even the long shots as long as they interested me is how I got the job I accepted. But there’s also no question it left me mentally worn out.

And physically worn out as well, the past four months I’ve a hard time getting back to sleep once I wake up in the morning. In the early days it was because the reality of what happened would hit me after being blissfully unaware of it while sleeping, then it was because I started thinking about everything that needed to be done that day while I was searching for a job, and now I think about everything that needs to be done as we prepare for our move. For all that, once I accepted the job my mood became much more upbeat as I’m excited about both the new job and the new place where we’ll be living. This afternoon I even felt a strange sense of euphoria about it, despite so much being unsettled and how much needs to be done before I start. I suppose it’s a mix of being over-tired and legitimately excited about the new adventure we’re about to undertake.

The pup, though, she’s still sleeping like a champ. I prefer when she sleeps in one of her beds as, if she starts running in her sleep, it keeps her leg kicks from getting too violent. In her younger years they were adorable little leg kicks but these days, either from old age or side effects of medicines, she can get into a full-on gallup. Perhaps it led to her injuring herself a couple of weeks ago, but we’ll never know.

The Pup is Up

Ellie wasn’t feeling well, whether from injury or illness we still don’t know, when the snow fell right before my trip to Arizona. She did go out for a short walk that morning and got to experience the snow, even if she wasn’t up for her normal morning walk, and at one point did surprise me by rolling around for a moment in the snow. For a while there she appeared to be in some discomfort and was having trouble with stairs, and on top of that her appetite was off. She’s been on the mend since, yesterday she was up for a long walk and this morning even wanted to go for an hour and a half, which is about as long as she’s ever wanted (although we don’t go as far as we used to as age has slowed her down). Her appetite is back as well, we’ll see if it holds.

Between her kidneys and her heart and other age-related ailments, the vet was pleasantly surprised she’s been as stable as she’s been, so we’re keeping on her current medicine levels. The past few weeks show how fragile that healthy balance is on a dog this old, and I hate that soon we’re going to make her go on a three day car ride to her new home, but there are no better alternatives. Her health isn’t good enough for flying, and besides we know from long experience that she just wants to be with us, even to her own discomfort. I think she’ll do OK now that she’s walking better, our little Subarus aren’t the easiest for her to get in and out of but she should be better on the ramp now. It’s the cats that worry me the most on the car ride but hopefully in a month they (and we) will be adjusting to their new home.

Still Sleeping

Even though I’ve seen Ellie sleep like this thousands of times, at her advanced age there’s something about this pose that stops my heart for a moment every time I see it. Sometimes she runs in her sleep but other times she’s so still I’m afraid she’s passed away in her sleep. Especially in low light it’s hard to see the subtle rise and fall of her chest as she breathes, I’ll watch her until I see an ear wiggle or a tail wag or notice her breathing and then I, too, can breathe.