Our Cat Has Pneumonia
Yes, indeed our beloved feline has pneumonia. I didn’t even realize that could happen to cats. This poor kitty picked his parents well when he adopted us. He has been the most high maintenance cat I’ve ever had. My sneaking suspicion it is because he’s male. I never had these problems with female cats. Oh, just kidding…well no I’m not, actually. Human males can be a bit high maintenance as well, in my experience.
In retrospect, Mr. Kitty had been trying to tell us he’s not ok with bizarre behaviors; inappropriate urination – on the stove, my shoe, a pile of laundry, hacking up unmentionable ectoplasm all over the house, pawing at us and then running to hide. But when he started gasping for breath we finally figured out he was in crisis and rushed him to the vet.
So now we have a kitty with pneumonia and have to give him medicine twice a day and hope for the best. Giving a cat medicine is no easy task. Of course it doesn’t take him long to figure out our nefarious plan and hides. Then it falls to me to drag him yowling, hissing and scratching out of whatever his hidey hole du’ jour is. We wrap him up in a bath towel like a burrito, so he can’t claw us to shreds, and then give him a dropper full of antibiotic and an anti-congestion pill. He of course struggles, growls, tries to get loose from his towel straight jacket and in general acts like we are skinning him alive for sport.
Just like a child, Kitty doesn’t understand that all these horrible things we are doing to him are for his own good. It reminds me of a sister when she was a kid. She fought like a banshee every single time she needed to take meds. She never did figure out that it was inevitable. She absolutely would not take medicine without a fight. It took 5 of us to hold her down. One sibling to each arm and leg, and one kid to hold her nose long enough for her to open her mouth so my Mom could pop in the medication. It’s sort of ironic really, because she’s swung to the opposite extreme in her adulthood and will take anything she can get her hands on.
My Cat is Trying to Tell Me Something
evil cat via sodahead.com
My cat is trying to tell me something. Just wish I could figure out what the heck he’s trying to say. I know he thinks he’s had the last word, but this is getting ridiculous.
This morning I wandered into the kitchen in my typical just woken up peaceful state of mind and proceeded to start the coffee-making process. I had a few technical difficulties so I was in the kitchen longer than usual. I put the ground coffee in the place where the filter goes without putting the filter in first. Woopsie.
As I was putting things to rights to get the coffee going I noticed a weird stench. I sniffed the dish rag, nope. The garbage disposal passed the sniff test also. I checked under the sink, nothing going under there.
Then I noticed some sort of bizarre ectoplasm on the stove top. It looked like a pot had boiled over, but there were 2 things wrong with that theory. It was around the back right burner which neither I or Hubman ever use for some reason. Also the house keeper cleaned the living daylights out of the stove on Thursday. (She even puts the burner racks in the dishwasher, so I have to reassemble the stove the next day.) Furthermore we were out to dinner on Friday so no cooking happened.
Then I sniffed it and viola the source of the stench was revealed. I leaned in to check out the stove hood to see if something was dripping from up there. I half expected to see some alien pod attached to it. What can I say, I watch a lot of sci-fi?
Finally I daubed a paper towel in the substance and to get an up close olfactory diagnosis. The mystery became obvious. Our G* D@#m cat PEED ON THE STOVE!!!!!????!!!! I’ve heard of cats weeing in your luggage when you are packing for a trip, or on the bath mat, or even on the bed if they are really ticked off about something. But the stove, what the hell is up with that? How do I figure this one out? Does he want us to cook for him? Or was he mad because we went out to dinner? Bleh, who knows?
At first I wondered if the storms upset him, but the tornadoes happened on Wednesday night. The urinary infraction occurred sometime in the Friday night – early Saturday morning time frame.
Was this just mischief? Does he have a legitimate beef of some sort that he is trying to convey? I swear I briefly considered the possibility of finding him a new home. But, I love the little critter even though he is frequently a royal pain in rear.
I’m seriously stumped here. Maybe it’s time to hire a cat whisperer?
At the Crossroads Again
I ran across a joke website a few years ago and it cracked me up laughing. It was a blank page with 2 lines that read “You Have Reached the End of the Internet! It’s time to go outside and get on with your life. I guess there is a limit to things you can find or do on the internet. I’ve researched everything I could possibly imagine 8 ways from Sunday.
So I’m standing at the crossroads again. It’s time to crawl back out of my temporary shell and get on with my life. Oh, if it were that simple. I’m leaving Saturday for a week-long beach trip with 2 girlfriends. Looking forward to the vacation itself, but not looking forward to packing or the airport. And I’m really, really not looking forward to doing the spread eagle in that body scanner machine. It’s just yucky, there’s no other word for it.
I wish that I could just wiggle my nose and magically be on the beach with an ice-cold mojito in my hand. But I have to pack and hate that. I’m afraid that if I start packing too early my cat will get in a snit and pee in my suitcase. Have you ever had the feeling that you have to hide the fact that you’re leaving from your pets? Like you’re doing something wrong and you have to be all furtive about it. But you can’t hide – they know you’re up to something. They’re little furry 4 legged mind readers.
I snuck a load of laundry in today and tried to keep a straight, innocent face. Like “hey, I do laundry all the time – nothing going on here.” Mr. Kitty will bust me though when I start sorting my toiletries and stacking clothes on the bed trying to decide what to bring with me. There’s no fooling him. I wish I could just sit him down and explain “Kitty, it’s true I am leaving town, but the big furry beast, the Hubman, is staying here. You won’t be left alone, God forbid, or packed up in a crate and shipped off to the cat hotel.
Animals are so real. They act on their emotions, no bull about it. “You have offended me oh great one, therefore I shat upon your bath mat!”
But, I’m going anyway; I’m not going to let a cat run my life.
How to Declutter Your Relationships
A good sign of when a relationship needs a good decluttering is when there is a huge communication breakdown. Are you reduced to sending an e-mail to someone who is physically sitting in the next room? If the answer is, yes, then there is definitely a problem. Yesterday while in the depths of anguish and “what the hell happened to us, and why are we fighting” I e-mailed Hubman an article called “Cold shoulder, silent treatment do more harm than good.” Bazzinga! Take that, I may suck at communication at times but I can search better than you can.
We tend to have these showdowns at the Not So OK corral when fighting. It ends up being a game of who can suffer through the isolation the longest. I always end up thinking things like ‘Bubba, I am the master of handling lots of pain for extended periods of time. Forget getting shot at, try giving birth, Rambo!’ But does not help either of us individually or our relationship.
I assume he read the e-mail because he appeared at my office door with a death grip on his coffee cup, eyes wide and asked “So do you wanna talk, or what?” Not exactly a graceful entrance, but I have to give him extra points for his excellent dismount from the high horse upon which I remained firmly seated. At least he took action. I was still pouting away in my office wondering if it was possible to drive to Mongolia and if so, how long it would take.
We started with the basics, “you interrupt me all the time!” He was mad at me for getting mad in public. (this blog) Actually I was flattered for a moment. You mean that my blog is important enough to be considered ‘in public.’ Cool! Er uh, I mean… I’m really sorry, my intention was not to paint you as the bad guy so much as I was trying to make a point about interrupting people sucks on multiple levels.” But I could see and understand his point of view and knew that I hurt him. I countered with “well my blog is mainly about marriage, if marriages were perfect, there would be nothing to write about.” Furthermore, I’m not good at suffering in silence. As a matter of fact I think I’m the noisiest sufferer I know. When I had my son I didn’t emit a few dignified groans while a nurse dabbed at my forehead with a cool cloth. Oh hell no, I screamed bloody murder.
So, just for the record I want everyone to know that I do love the Hubman with all my heart and soul. He is my best friend, companion, and cohort in mischief. When we are not getting, along it’s a horrible alone type of feeling that is difficult to describe. What do you do when you need to cry on your best friend’s shoulder, but your best friend is in the other room temporarily hating you?
Maybe I need a contingency plan. I need a bevy of best-ish friends. Best implies better than all other options. But I need someone to go to for help and tea and sympathy when my best friend option is not available.
Anyway, we talked a lot yesterday. I think my tongue has blisters on it. Or that may just be that I drank my coffee too hot this morning. We talking about doing things together, traveling together, setting aside time each day to talk. I aired my grievance that so far, he has refused to go with me to a town near here and eat the world’s largest donut together.
We squabbled about the cat and then the cat litter box and took it all the way back to the beginning. Since I didn’t want a damned cat in the first place, why was it MY job to clean the litter box. That box is the very reason I didn’t want a cat in the first place. Been there, done that, scooped enough poop to last a life time.
Then we moved on to “chores,” I don’t do many. There really isn’t much to do in this department because we have a housekeeper, but there is still plenty to scuffle about. He asked why I never do the grocery shopping. My response was “there are many mornings I’ve woken early and decided to do the shopping but…I can’t …read…your writing.” It’s tiny and illegible. I even tried one time to decipher it with a lighted magnifying glass, but that didn’t work either.
Wandering around trying to match up missing items in our larder to this list doesn’t help. This whole list thing is hard for me to begin with because I never really used lists for the grocery store before taking up residence with Hubman. For me, “we need to go shopping!” = we’re out of food. For Hubman, “we need to go shopping!” = uh oh, we down to our last 50 gallons of milk. For the first 50 years of my life grocery, shopping was reserved for when there was something that I wanted to eat bad enough that it was worth going to the store for. Otherwise it could wait. I can subsist on cheese, crackers and the occasional apple for long periods of time. There are no growing children in this house to nourish so what’s with all this rush?
So we ended up airing quite a few grievances yesterday and made a decision to make more time for each other. I’m hoping we made some progress. Ain’t love grand?
Buy a Roomba at Your Own Risk.
Friend or Foe?
I’ve fantasized about owning a Roomba from time to time. What could be better? A little mechanical vacuum friend to work silently and clean your floors. Then a friend told me about her son and his new wife’s experience with one of those demon gadgets.
They thought they wanted one too. So they put it on their wedding wish registry list at good ole Bed Bath & Beyond. The Wedding came and went without a hitch. Then the marriage began. The happy couple set up their handy-dandy Roomba and away it goes. It worked great for a while and they loved it.
Until the night from hell. They woke up one morning to discover an interesting and rather bizarre gigantic brown star pattern on the living room rug. The rug was white or some other light color as I recall. Oh and did I mention they had pets? There is a reason pets and poop both start with the letter “P“. P stands for “oh Please, not this again.”
But this innocent couple had no earthly idea what was in store for them. Who other than Steven King could think up a scenario as yucky as this? One of their dogs, and they would only know which one by doing DNA testing on the brown stain, had an accident on the rug during the night. Why do we call pooping on the rug an accident? It’s not like the dog doesn’t know what it’s doing. It’s more like “I have something to say, but I can’t talk because I don’t have the right vocal cords, so here it is…gruunnnt! Ah, it feels good to get that said.” I am almost but not quite ashamed to say that there have been a few extremely unacceptable situations in my life where I wished that was an option, but I can talk so I have no excuse.
So, anyway the Roomba, on its nocturnal sojourn, discovers the offending mess and dutifully attempts to vacuum it up. But it failed on the first attempt. So it made another attempt, and another. It must have spent the majority of the night scooting back and forth and back and forth and back and forth……. but that darn lump of mess just wouldn’t come up. The Roomba finally scooted off in a corner somewhere and crapped out. Pardon the pun, but it’s just too good to pass up.
So the bride and groom faced the grizzly task of cleaning the carpet and the Roomba in marital solidarity. This is one of the “for worse” parts of the marriage vows. It has to be. They are no longer married unfortunately. Perhaps this early test of their resolve was so traumatic that they didn’t make it through to the other side.
I won’t be getting a Roomba anytime soon because I have the “Oh Please”, I mean pets.
I’m a woman of a certain age living and loving in Texas. Can’t get real specific because I’m a work in process. I Like to read sci-fi, steampunk and historical fiction, travel all over the planet, stay home on rainy days, go shopping in the middle of the night, and stay be in bed when I should be doing something.
Pampered Chef – Laurie Diltz
