yonmei

08:32 am: Coffee, cats, and dragons
When I looked at the clock this morning, I thought it was 8:30, and in a fogged kind of way, knew I had to get washed get dressed put Bob into carry cage get to vets for 9am.

Then when I was up, dressed, and ready to go, apart from not having had coffee, I saw that it was 6 minutes to 8am.... I was out by a good hour.

So I brewed coffee, and gave Bob her steroid pill - and let both her and Wolf out, since Bob will certainly want to come back soon. I need to leave the house in ten minutes, and I already hear her mrwaring outside the door.

*goes to door and lets Bob in*

Bob is looking pretty good, after a couple of weeks on steroids. Of course she can't compete in the Olympics any more, but sport isn't everything. Best of all, the pattern of fleabites on her back have dried up and gone away. Will report on her weight, later.




---
Update: 3.4 kilos, as last time.

Tags: bob, dragon eggs need clicky, worrying about my cats

10:15 pm: The 2008 meme
( it was 365 days )

Tags: 3 are bastards, bloody job, bob, cats, evil british politics, meme meme meme, working at the forest, worrying about my cats

09:36 am: Hurrah for Bob!
Last time I took Bob to the vet (16th September) she'd lost weight even since that operation. Today the vet weighed her and she'd gained half a pound - she's 3.4 kilos, back to where she was at the time of the operation. So I bought some more Hill's Science Diet kitten food, and took her home and gave her some more of it, and she ate it.

She is in wonderful condition. So is Wolf. I think he's still growing. He's enormous. If I could locate my camera I would do another comparison photoshot, because I think he would now overtop the cat toy I bought for him back when he was a wee thing.

Tags: bob, worrying about my cats

02:55 pm: Bob is 3.4 kilos
The scar on her throat has completely healed over, and the vet snipped out the two stitches. I booked a follow-up appointment for 8 weeks time - bit over; 16th September. Now I just have to feed her up so she regains the half-kilo she lost (she used to be 3.9 kilos).

The fur is beginning to regrow there.

Tags: bob, worrying about my cats

06:28 pm: Bob home...
The vet said the tumour was quite large, but "these tumours are never malignant" - which, given Gallus was killed by a non-malignant tumour, and Cally died because of a (possibly unrelated, but still) tumour in her stomach wall, was not as reassuring as perhaps he'd hoped. Still. She's okay.

But the operation is over (£343! Good thing I'd rounded the vet's estimate up in my head to £350, no?) and Bob seems fine. Is looking at me a bit suspiciously and declining to come over for petting, after I pushed her into her cat basket this morning.

I need to take her back to have her stitches out in 10 days, and intend to have her weighed then - she was 3.3 kilos this morning, so hopefully will have gained some weight even in that small time. And then book another appointment for a senior cat checkup three months after that, by which time she should have put on lots of weight, I hope, and so on - I think I need to start bringing her in for "senior cat appointments" - just to have her weighed and check the tumour isn't recurring. There shouldn't be a charge for these - there wasn't for Gallus.

Tags: bob, worrying about my cats

12:28 am: Wolf, the Mighty Hunter
Wolf just brought me a cow.

(It's about as long as my hand, white-and-black and fluffy.)

He's also yelling at me when the cow doesn't move around enough by itself to be interesting. Unfortunately, while it did once have a string attachment, some overenthusiastic Mighty Hunter broke it some time ago.

( wibbling about Bob )

Tags: bob, wolf, worrying about my cats

11:53 pm: A Week in the Life of Yonmei, Volume 3 (Wednesday)
These are the rules.

( Leith church )

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( trees frame )

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( Growing steps )

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( Stone door )

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( River houses )

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( Cat neighbour )

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( Neighbour cat )

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( Felimazole )

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Tags: a week in the life, cats, meme, photos, worrying about my cats

06:53 pm: Bob and her thyroids
( So I decided )

Tags: bob, worrying about my cats

05:34 pm: Bob and her dancing thyroids
Bob has a tumour on one lobe of her thyroid gland.

She weighs 3.4 kilos - half a kilo less than she weighed 18 months ago. She is otherwise quite healthy.

The vet says he can tell she has a tumour on one lobe because (a) the blood tests confirmed this and (b) he could feel a small swelling. (Which he did not mention at the time, but then, well, that's doctors for you.)

( In which I wibble about the options )

Tags: bob, worrying about my cats

11:09 am: What I did already this morning...
This morning, besides all the usual things I meant to do (get up, have breakfast, make/pack lunch), I meant to water my garden. I also had to call the vet, because when I took Bob in for her booster shot and check-up yesterday, she'd lost a pound (in weight: I don't let her carry cash) and both the vet and I regarded this as cause for alarm and blood tests.

The reason I meant to water my garden is that I did the last planting of clover I'll do this year, last night. (My garden is looking good, by the way, for an unfinished project: the decorative grass is high and seeding, the army of daisies is out and lovely, I have achieved control over the dandelions, the clover from last year is flourishing and beginning to flower, and in the bare patches of earth where I planted clover in May, I am finally beginning to see tiny green sprouts. Also, I think I am going to have a flourishing crop of sunflowers. Someone said what I was after in my garden was not "lawn" but "meadow", and that's exactly right: I want a pocket meadow.)

So just before nine, I went out, and three of my neighbours were standing in the street: which is odd and unusual. They were all talking to each other. Still more odd.

There was an injured fox sheltering under the bush at the corner of my garden by the house: it had been in the next-door garden, and gone through to my garden when a neighbour approached it. She said that the side of its face was battered and swollen and bloody. (And my idiot kitten Wolf had gone right up to it, practically nose-to-nose: good thing it wasn't feeling good, or Wolf would have learned the hard way that foxes are not cat toys.) The SSPCA had been called and had said they would come.

Well, that cut out watering my garden, since I was not about to wave a hose around near where the fox was sheltering. So I went back into the house and phoned the vet, and after some faffing about, I got to speak to him.

Bob has thyroid trouble. Just like Cally did. Only, unlike Cally, she is still in reasonably good shape - so an operation may be possible. (I am wholeheartedly grateful to my skinflint decision to put off her booster shot till June, since if I'd taken her in December - which I'd decided not to on the basis that I wanted to have Wolf and Bob's booster shots due six months apart - the weight loss probably wouldn't have shown up, and she'd probably have gone undiagnosed till either the weight loss got significant enough not to miss it even through her fluffiness, or till the December checkup.) Anyway. I will be going to see the vet next week to discuss the options - operation, medication, both.

I came out of the house again, to head off to work without watering the garden, and the fox was in the middle of my garden. It was a big one, and - I don't recall ever seeing a live fox in broad daylight before - looked startlingly orange-red against my green meadow. I couldn't see any injury. It stood there for less than a minute, and then was out of the garden and down the road. It encountered Bob on the way, the neighbours in the road tell me, but both cat and fox looked startled and avoided each other.

So, well: I watered the garden. The SSPCA, who'd been called to deal with what the neighbour feared was a mortally injured fox, arrived while I was watering, and I told them what I'd seen: heading down the street, moving briskly. They were quite good-humoured about it, and apologetic for not getting there sooner ("the traffic", they said.)

I went over the road after that to tell the neighbour whose daughter is in love with Bob about the vet's diagnosis; to emphasise that Bob will be fine - will most likely live for several years, I told her, to pass on to her daughter - but that she'll probably have to have regular medication, and she will have to be on a proper diet. I know her daughter feeds Bob treats - bits of meat, cheese for all I know: and I know her daughter adores Bob. For both reasons, I want her mother to explain properly that Bob needs to eat proper cat food only, no more filling up on scraps: and I wanted the wee girl to know that, while Bob isn't well, she's likely to be fine for several more years.

And then I went to work. Both Bob and Wolf are in the house, having their daily dominance fight. Yay.

Tags: bob, cat politics, garden record, worrying about my cats

09:48 pm: Cat mews (er, news)
( Cally's doing fine! )

Am filling boxes. With books. Eek.

Tags: cally, worrying about my cats

07:51 pm: My stupid cat has a Very Loud Wail
I mean, really. Loud. Noisy.

( on cats, locks, and wails )

Tags: cats, gallus, work, worrying about my cats

10:33 am: Not a happy bunny
Gallus, my stupid cat, has got herself locked in to the empty flat immediately below mine. It's in the process of being repossessed, apparently - it's empty, it's not listed as "to let" or "for sale" on the espc.co.uk website, and my cat is stuck in there and has (probably) been there since Thursday evening. I assume she's drinking out of the toilet bowl. And, of course, it's a damn bank holiday weekend.

Solutions (which is why this is a friends-locked post):[unlocked, since I decided not to break the window]

1. Break the window and let her out. Maybe call a glazier to fix it. Or maybe not. I'm really kind of pissed with whoever locked up without checking the rooms thoroughly.

2. Call a glazier and/or locksmith, find out how much it would cost to get a windowpane removed (and whether it would cost more than changing the locks).

3. Call the police and ask them for advice.

I think she's probably okay till end-of-day today, and in any case if I'm going to smash the window I'd just as soon do it after dark.

( moaning about physical pain )

And I really, really have to get out of the house and go to Glasgow for a homosamurai forum with brandnewgun. Soon. (I woke up at 6am, stumbled through to the kitchen, made myself breakfast, took it back to bed, ate breakfast... and went back to sleep for 4 hours. Ow, my hip hurts.)

Tags: cats, gallus, work, worrying about my cats

02:56 pm: Okay, NOW I'm worried: missing cat
Cally's gone missing. I let her out into the backgreen about nine o'clock yesterday morning, and she didn't come back for her tea, and hasn't come back for her breakfast, and I am now officially Worried. And missing her. She's probably got shut in somewhere and will be back whenever she gets let out. She's got a tag on the collar round her neck. No one's phoned. So. With missing cats, no news is usually good news. Just, well, worried. And missing her.

Edit: She has returned! Typical bloody feline, I came back from the GS office early (critical hard disk failure in the Outright Scotland computer) and thought I'd just check the backgreen again. And there she was. Knocked on my neighbour's door (having told her Cally was missing this morning, thought I'd better tell her Cally was no longer missing this afternoon) and had a brief positive chat about cats and how they wander off and find someone and pretend they've been starved for years and get fed tinned salmon.

Tags: cally, worrying about my cats