Nanni

In other, less spill my guts style news, we adopted another kitty a few weeks ago!

Her name is Eliza and she's a calico! She likes watching the world through windows and talking to her new humans. Also, fighting cat toys.

Welp. That was a week.

( Cut for kitty health issues )

Good morning, good morning, the little birds say!

Feed me, feed me, the little birds say!

Jazz station, jazz station! the little birds say!

I'm having breakfast have breakfast with me! With me! The little birds say!

What can I say, she definitely keeps me on track.

The Ginger kitty is sick again, but luckily it's just another UTI.

So, a course of antibiotics for her, and a course of having my fingers bitten for me.

I gave Octavia new clumps of raffia to play with and her crest steadily went uuuup and uuuuuup and uuuuuup - - -

and then she pounced!

Meet your doom, intriguingly rustley plant matter!

We bought the Ginger cat a little harness today, so that she can go outside without her agoraphobia resulting in Lost Cat and panicked hiding in the bushes.

Now she and I and Mom and Peter and the Mikey dog are on the patio doing work. The harness is, it turns out, not really that great and we'll have to try another one, but this one was deeply discounted so that's okay, and it is adequate for the present purpose. The present purpose being allowing Ginger to hang out on her cushion next to me at the picnic table, sniffing the air and chilling with her people.

The vet still hasn't got back to us about what to do for Ginger, so she's been stuck in the laundry room for several days, except when I take her out to snuggle her.

The snuggling is all well and good, but she doesn't really appreciate it. Forget snuggling! She wants to run and play and patrol and climb the walls!

It looks like the Ginger kitty's sick.

We're taking her to the vet in the morning to see what they say.

She's fourteen. It's been a year since her sister, Katrina, died.

Katrina died yesterday. We had to ask the vet to put her to sleep because the tumor in her central body cavity was pressing on her stomach so hard that even though she kept trying really hard, she couldn't keep anything but water down long enough to do her any good.

She was really always my kitty. I sat with her as much as I could yesterday, and she sat on my lap and I skritched her the way that was always her favorite. Even though she was hurting a bit, so we couldn't do that as long as we usually would.

I'm really sad.

On Saturday we took the Katrina kitty to the vet. They ran blood work and asked us to come back in Monday.

We came back, as requested, and they did x-rays. Katrina has abdominal cancer.

She's about thirteen and has been losing weight, so this is not super surprising. Anyway, we are now in kitty hospice care mode. She doesn't seem to be in too much discomfort, so that's good. I am the preferred person to give her her meds, because she takes them from me. She wiggles, but she also swallows down all her oral antibiotics like a good girl. She spits them back up for Dad, and of course my brothers, in addition to lacking the requisite ruthlessness necessary to getting a syringe in a cat's mouth, are also lacking in general cat authority. The cats like them, but they don't listen to a single thing they say.

I have no idea why they do what I want, it's mysterious and bizarre. I am a Mary Sue. That's not important. It's beside the point back to the point -

I've got Katrina in a box with egg crate foam, plastic lining, and snuggly old towels on the coffee table next to me right now. The Ginger kitty is jealous of her sister's box, and the Mikey dog thinks its looks like fun, can he get in and share? Or maybe she'll smack him, that would also be fun.

She's not sharing. It's her box.

So I guess we'll ease her through this passage and, if God is willing, it will continue not to hurt her.