Barbarian's Curmudgeonly Rantings

Edit: Original subject line was Stop digging to China Australia! ... but then I noticed that subject lines don't support the strike through tag.

The other day Lorenzo was participating in one of his hobbies, namely digging wildly in the downstairs litter box. I made the off hand comment "Lorenzo stop digging like that; you don't speak Chinese!" (Or words approximate to this, at least.)

Of course I spend a lot of time playing with world maps and have a fairly good grasp of geography. I immediately realized that even if my lovely feline could dig that far he wouldn't come out in China since China isn't an antipodal point from our location. I wondered briefly where exactly he would come out, but aside from estimating somewhere in the South Pacific, I didn't follow up on it at the time. Today, I fired up Google Earth and entered an inverse of our geographic coordinates to see where he'd end up. As it turns out, I was off by a bit. He wouldn't end up in the South Pacific, but rather the Indian Ocean, almost in the Southern Ocean. Specifically he'd end up between the South West coast of Australia and the French Southern & Antarctic Lands. Allowing some drift towards a large land mass, I'll allow that he might end up in Perth, Australia. While I do have a friend that lives in Perth, I'd rather not call her to ask her to send back my cat.

How about "Lorenzo! Stop that digging, you don't need a kangaroo!"

Quick update on school: Things are going really well, so far. I'm settling into a nice routine and aside from one homework assignment at the very start of a class, I haven't missed anything yet. (I wasn't the only one that missed that; the layout of the page made it look like part of a lab that we'd finished in class. Still, I feel like it was my responsibility to find it and do it, so I've resolved to not miss another one.) Of course a large part of getting homework done is having the right study buddy ...

( Brace for the cute )

Some of you already know, but we got a final test result from the vet late last night. The spleen aspirate was inconclussive, but the masses on his lung and spleen are probably malignant tumors. His thoraxic cavity is filling with fluid to the point where they drained 200+ mL on Monday and additional fluid on Tuesday. They rate his condition as bad ... meaning he's very unlikely to survive surgery even if they though it would help. clark_parker and merseine0613 came up early this morning and went with us to pick him up from the AECT and will be taking us to Wolf-Merrick hospital this afternoon.

He's obviously not feeling his usual self, but he's comfortable as we can make him. He's spent most of the day so far under the futon in the library with bookwurm and I nearby, but he's snuggled down between us for a few minutes. He's purring and knows he's loved. Right now, he's actually out from under the futon and is up on top with clark_parker. That's my beautiful boy ... a charmer to the end.

Thank you all for the kind words you've sent. Our family of choice has really helped us out with this. As much as this is tearing bookwurm and me up, I think it would be ten times worse if you all weren't there for us.

A few weeks ago I took Pyrite to the vet to have several teeth extracted. About a week later he started acting a little lethargic and not quite his usual self. He was scratching at his chin a lot to the point where he started drawing blood. My lovely isolde_deely was visiting at the time and went with me to take him to the vet. This seemed to go over well with him since he could stay on my lap and "hide" under the cape-like drape she was wearing. We came home with some cream for his chin and for the next ten days bookwurm and I medicated him twice a day. He didn't like this too much and we though his diminishing appetite was due to the smell or taste of the cream.

He got the last of the medication on Thursday morning so we expected he'd be eating normally by the next day. He turned down almost all of his food on Friday, although I convinced him to eat two bites of ham, something he normally devours with relish. (He could have had more, but walked away from it.) This was an obvious bad sign and we decided that we should take him into the vet this morning (Saturday.)

The vet at Wolf-Merrick took an X-ray and ... well, the words on the report are "Pleural effusion." In other words, fluid on the lungs. They lacked the equipment for the recommended follow up lab work and ultrasound, and recommened we go to Animal Emergency & Treatment Center in Grayslake, IL. We stopped by the house to grab my insulin, called merseine0613 to let her know what was going on so she could pass along the details to our friends at a wedding reception we were supposed to attend.

I won't detail the waiting and the ups and downs, but there was a lot of crying and a lot of anticipation. They placed him in an oxygen cage, gave him a mild sedative and drained a total of 340mls of fluid from around his lungs. The vet identified nothing in the pleural fluid at the time, but sent a sample off to the lab, along with a blood sample. The ultrasound shows a small mass on one of his lungs and a larger mass on his spleen. There's a good chance it's a form of cancer. He was able to come home tonight, although we're keeping an eye on him as he comes off of the sedative and decides he can leap for the top of the cat tree. I'm taking him back on Monday morning and leaving him there for a few hours so they can perform a splenic aspirate.

Surgery has been mentioned as an option, although we'll know more after the aspirate. At this point we're mostly trying to find out how much to do that might prolong his life without degrading his quality of life. I'm not going to keep him alive just to keep him alive, nor am I willing to put him through lots of surgery if he's only going to gain a few months. Right now, we're keeping him comfortable and making sure he knows we're here and that we love him.

I still cried when I felt him purr against my fingers as we coming home.

Thanks to isolde_deely for calling me and to clark_parker, merseine0613 and rileybear67 for visiting us. You all really helped me and bookwurm. Also thanks to bookwurm for being there with me today and helping me in particular when I was getting information overload.

I love you all.

So last night before dinner we both decided that if the snow was as bad as they were predicting we were just going to just say "screw it" and stay home today. We then did our best snow dance in the kitchen much to the combined amusement / horror of the cats(*).

Bah! I say, Bah!

While there was a few scant inches of snow on the driveway, the roads weren't nearly bad enough to justify staying home this morning. My commute took about the usual time; road conditions lowered maxium speed, but with lighter traffic the average speed was actually much higher than usual. I did slid one time, but it was when I was turning into the driveway here at the client site ... hardly anything to get excited about.

Still, I think I will be leaving early today. It's best to be safe, you know?


(* - Bella in particular was really unsure of this whole dancing thing, especially since I had scooped her up so that she could participate. She didn't flee in terror from the subsequent bouncing and singing, but she couldn't quite decide if she liked it or not.)