Friday, May 22, 2009

Goodbye Gatsby


I had Gatsby put to sleep today.

She went downhill very quickly this week. She was lethargic and withdrawn, had trouble moving around, wouldn't eat. It was clear that she was slipping away, and I didn't want her to suffer. It was pretty peaceful, but still terribly hard.

In the course of all the drama over the past few weeks, I got a glimpse into what her life might have been like before I adopted her. Some x-rays were taken during the trip to the pet emergency clinic, and they showed some old buckshot or BBs in her abdomen. No way to know how they got there, but it can't have been pleasant. I take some comfort in knowing that she was safe and happy and loved with me.

Still miss her, though. I suppose I always will.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Gatsby Update

The past two weeks have been an awful roller coaster with the kitty. Here are the highlights:

May 6 - Take Gatsby in for surgery. Get a call later that day that they can't operate because her pre-op blood work shows an extremely high blood glucose level. Seems she's diabetic. I freak and cry a lot.

May 12 - Go back to the vet for a consult about this whole diabetes thing and find out what kind of prognosis we are looking at. Sounds like things are not as hopeless as I feared, and she'll probably do ok on 2x daily insulin pills. In the interim since we were last at the vet, she hasn't been eating much, so the vet sends us home with medication to stimulate her appetite. Need to get that back to normal before we can start on the insulin.

May 13/14 - Gatsby is very upset and agitated, and seems to be in pain to me. So, we make a late-night visit to the pet emergency clinic in the wee small hours of Wednesday night/Thursday morning. The vet on-duty does a bunch of tests and thinks she has a cancerous mass in her abdomen. More freaking and crying ensues.

May 14 - Follow-up with the regular vet the following day. She tells me not to freak out, she sees no evidence of a mass and thinks the ER vet was looking at part of her kidney. Says the agitation was likely a result of the appetite stimulant. We'll try taking her off it and see how she does. The vet also extracts an infected tooth, which may be the source of the eating issues.

Today - Kitty still isn't eating normally; I'm going to put her back on the medication and hope it works. We have another vet appointment in a few days.

Lots of frustrating ups and downs, and all of it pretty emotionally and mentally exhausting. Here's hoping things even out soon, because I'm not sure how much more of this I can handle.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Mother's Day Socks

These are the socks I made for my Mom for Mother's Day. It's another Knitty pattern, one which I attempted last fall (intending them to be a Christmas gift) without success. I took another run at them this spring and finally cracked the code.


The pattern reminded me of quilt squares, which is why I wanted to make them for Mom - she's a quilter. I'm so pleased with how they turned out. Perhaps I'll make some for myself one day - hopefully it wouldn't take me 7 months to complete a second pair.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

Monday, May 4, 2009

Happy Star Wars Day??

I've learned that today is Star Wars Day. Why, you might ask? (I wondered too.) It's because today fans can say "May the Fourth be with you."

(Groan) I am so not a fan of puns.

Anyway, in celebration of this momentous occasion (you'd think I would have had a bank holiday) enjoy this video of a non-fan who has never seen the movies explaining the plot. Hilarious.

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.