cat – Page 69

A Night With Scout

Scout’s emergency transfusion was successful, it not only saved her life but left her strong enough that they let us bring her home for the night, as she’ll be under much less stress here. Since we still don’t know the cause of her anemia, we don’t know how long the good effects of the transfusion will last, but we’ll evaluate her tomorrow morning and afternoon and bring her back in if she regresses.

The x-rays came back looking good, there were no obvious signs of cancer or any metal objects that might have caused internal bleeding. They took a test from her spleen this afternoon as it’s swollen a bit, it isn’t unusual with her level of anemia but they want to rule out cancer in the spleen itself. We’ll get those results back tomorrow. Depending on those results, and how she’s doing tomorrow, they may run another test to evaluate the quality of the red blood cells her bone marrow is producing (thankfully we do know it is producing them, a condition known as regenerative anemia — she’s generating red blood cells but her body is destroying them).

In the meantime she is getting medicine for two potential causes of anemia, infection and an auto-immune disorder. I’m hoping the cause is one of these two, as they are treatable to at least some degree. The infection possibility is unlikely but the easiest to treat. The auto-immune disorder would require her to take steroids for the rest of her life, ruining her shot at playing ball in the big leagues, not to mention putting her more at risk of some other diseases, but I’ll take it.

We’ve got her isolated in our bedroom for the time being to minimize her stress, I’m staying with her while my wife is sleeping downstairs with the other pets. We kept her here when she first fell ill and it helped calm her down substantially. She’s been eating and moving around nicely since we brought her home, a far cry from where we were a couple of days ago, and especially this morning.

At the moment she’s curled up on my legs, purring, about to fall asleep, her black-and-white fur gently rising and falling as she breathes. I took this picture of her fur a few days ago, I didn’t take any tonight to avoid adding stress to what has already been an exhausting day for her (and us).

It sure is good to have her home, and in good spirits. Here’s hoping she feels the same in the morning.

A Night Without Scout

Scout suddenly started feeling ill a few days ago so we took her into the vet. Of the possible causes our initial hope was hyperthyroidism, as there is not only medicine to treat it but even a cure, but the problem turned out to be anemia from an unknown cause. She was transferred to a clinic with more diagnostic equipment and underwent a battery of tests yesterday that didn’t reveal the cause, but no red flags either, and at least she seemed stable.

She spent the night there and took a turn for the worse this morning when the oxygen levels in her blood dropped to dangerous levels. She’s getting a blood transfusion now to try and stabilize her, and then more tests this afternoon once she’s stable. The doctor gave 50/50 odds it will be treatable, but it’s hard to say until we know the cause. It’s pretty serious and I’ve been a wreck the past few days, but hope to know a little more this afternoon.

Upstairs, Downstairs

Sam looks down from atop the landing at the top of the stairs.

Birdwatcher

One of my favorite pictures of Emma, she was watching the scrub jays and flickers and hummingbirds that are regular visitors to our wildflower garden. She spends more time watching the garden than the rest of the household combined. While redecorating my office I tried to figure out a way for me to sit there instead, but access to the closet behind her was a sticking point I couldn’t get past. The cat tree fits in that space quite nicely though.

Besides, how could I deprive her of her favorite non-string related activity?

Cat Signal

Like Batman, I can be summoned with a signal cast upon the heavens. He with a silhouette of a bat, I with cat ears. He to fight criminal masterminds, I to evict trespassers in Scout’s bed.

We all have our roles to play.

Suddenly Salmonny Sam

Sam and Emma get a serving of Tiki Cat wet food in the mornings. We’ve alternated flavors over the years, sometimes even getting a variety pack where they get a new flavor every couple of days. That was all good and well but now they’re hooked on Wild Salmon and won’t touch anything else. Emma I can kind of understand, she’s always been a bit picky, but little Samwise was a surprise as he’ll eat anything that isn’t a vegetable.

If they ever discontinue Wild Salmon, may God have mercy on our souls.

The Comforter Has Come

Sam lay beside me on the loveseat, too agitated by the 4th of July fireworks to sleep. Scout came in but walked past her normal spot in my lap or her cat bed and instead lay down beside him. Sam immediately curled into a ball and fell into a deep sleep, safe and secure in his sister’s shadow. Sleep wouldn’t come so easily for Scout, but hours later exhaustion took hold and she too fell asleep.

Soon sleep beckoned me as well and I walked to the bedroom with the darkness murmuring at my feet. The murmurs jumped onto the bed as I approached and I eased myself under the covers so as not to crush them. As Sam and Scout curled up on me the murmurs turned to purrs, the purrs to silence, and at last we all were at rest.

Mr. Ambassador

I’ve been doing a lot of work on my home office lately, but it isn’t just my physical life that’s getting organized. I’ve been shooting digitally since Christmas of 2000 and over the years my pictures ended up pretty scattered around. Worse yet I have gotten hopelessly behind in sorting and editing. Worst of all I wasn’t sure which ones were properly backed up.

So it was time to start getting my digital life in order too.

Thanks to a few days of drudgery, all my pictures are now stored in a common directory format on one big hard drive, loaded into Aperture, and being backed up onto a second hard drive as I type. While loading in my older pictures, I couldn’t help but take a break every so often to play around with a few.

For some reason I never edited this picture of Templeton back in the day, he was inspecting my 15″ Powerbook shortly after it was delivered in May of 2004. I’ve written about the two of them before, so it was kind of funny to see them together at the moment the laptop arrived. I was rather ambivalent about cats until I met him, but he was such an ambassador for the feline kind that I can’t imagine my life without them now.

What a wonderful little creature he was.

Room to Snuggle

Heretofore the only real place to sit in my office has been the Throne of Kings, the recliner we bought when we moved here a decade ago to replace my beloved window seat from the previous house. It’s a Scandinavian style recliner, incredibly comfortable, yet small and lightweight and easy to move about, perfect for my small office. But it has a fatal flaw — there’s no room for a sixty-five pound lap dog.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to re-arrange my office to be able to both have something large enough for Ellie to curl up beside me, yet where I could still recline so that Scout and/or Sam and occasionally Emma could curl up on me as well. A visit to Ikea this weekend appears to have solved the problem. This Kivik loveseat is big enough for Ellie & me, while the footstool on the left is big enough that I can recline on it and the cats can sleep on me as before.

So how come it is Scout curled up on it in this picture (and Sam & Emma are sleeping there now), and not Ellie? Well, she somehow hurt her rear leg and is limping a bit, so she’s confined to bed rest in the basement for now. Not that she’s at all happy about it.

Soon, Ellie, soon.

WWDC Postscript

I loved watching Steve give Apple’s keynotes, even if I wasn’t interested in the products Apple was introducing, as it was infectious to see the enthusiasm he had for the company he founded and the direction they were taking the industry. So hats off to Tim & the team from Cupertino, for while no one on stage today could replace Steve, their love for what they were doing was obvious and I enjoyed the show from start to finish.

What I hoped to glean from the day was what my future computing setup might look like. I’m about to start on the second half of renovating my office and wanted to know what sort of desk arrangement I should plan for. I had been thinking that a MacBook Air / iMac setup might be better for my photography work, but after today I’m not so sure that an iPad / MacBook Pro solution isn’t a better bet.

The biggest surprise from the week came not from Apple but from Emma. She normally likes sleeping on the floor so I’ve kept a bed there for her, but lately she’ll only use the beds of Sam and Scout up on my desk. So I need to make sure my new setup has room for the cat tree, my TV, three cat beds up high, a couch with room enough for Ellie & me, and a desk for my computer.

A tall order for my little office, but I’m not complaining, I love snuggling with the little ones.