The Hips Don't Lie, Part I

 Man, I am this close to starting a series of "2025 Can Suck It" posts, like I did last year. 

So, yesterday morning, I was sitting downstairs at my desk finishing up work for the night. It was dismally rainy and foggy, and Mable came downstairs to get some treats (as she normally does around that time). She'd been upstairs all night with Daisy, sleeping as per the usual. Most of the time Mable doesn't sleep downstairs with me; she is very much a mama's girl. 

Anyway, I noticed that it seemed like she was having a bit of trouble getting around -- like, she was stumbling a bit and having trouble getting on and off the couch. This was very odd, as Mable is young (born February 8, 2024, so almost 16 months). She yelped a little bit and was trying to hold up or otherwise not put weight on her right back leg. 

I examined her both physically and visually; I could see nothing wrong. Both legs had normal motion and neither of them seemed tender or broken, she didn't have anything stuck in her feet or legs, and interestingly enough she didn't seem to mind when I moved and gently flexed the leg that seemed to be the issue. But, if she tried to move a lot, she cried/screamed, which woke up Daisy. It woke her even more when the boys began to chase her and try to bully her because they knew something was wrong. I was not going for that at all, and she safely made it into my office where, with a little difficulty, she was able to get up onto my ottoman and get some treats. I rubbed her belly, she rolled gingerly (with pain) over onto her back and purred at me.

I had zero clue what was wrong. She got down off my ottoman a few minutes later, in pain, and cried -- she just became one with the floor and laid there, with wide eyes. Mable has not had an injury before, she has not experienced pain, and I'm sure she was very confused and scared. 

Daisy immediately called the vet's office as soon as they opened and booked an appointment for 9:30am -- not with our normal doctor, but with one of the other doctors on staff. Any port in a storm, right? We needed to get her looked at to determine what the problem was. I thought she'd maybe pulled a muscle or strained something while playing or jumping up or down off the bed or cat tree, but honestly I did not know -- she had been upstairs sleeping all night and had been fine the last time I'd seen her, and then she'd come downstairs somehow mysteriously injured. 

I tried to stay awake, but I couldn't -- there was no way. I can no longer force myself to stay awake past 8 or 8:30 or so in the morning anymore after I've worked a full night -- the sleep just takes me. If I fight it, my adrenaline kicks in and I won't sleep for another 18 hours or so, and then I will completely crash. So, Daisy gently put her into one of the carriers and took her in, and I passed out.

The next thing I remember was waking up around noon and hearing Daisy moving around, but also hearing no cries of pain from Mable whatsoever. 

"Is she okay?" I asked, half asleep, when Daisy entered the bedroom. "What's wrong with her?"

"She has a broken hip," Daisy replied. 

Whaaaaat? What the fuck. What the everliving, actual fuck.

The vet had performed exams and x-rays and had determined that Mable had the cat-equivalent of a hairline fracture at the hip joint's growth plate on the right side. How did this happen? Who fuckin' knows. It could have happened while she was running/jumping/playing or it could have happened spontaneously, with zero cause. Because, apparently, in some cats that's a thing. 

She will require 6-8 weeks to heal from it. During that time she will need to be on some painkillers and anti-inflammatories, and we have an option to have a surgical consult done with a pet orthopedist to see if he/she thinks that Mable would benefit from a minor surgery to put a pin in her hip. Said surgery must be quick and fairly simple because it is done in our vet's office itself and not at an animal hospital or somewhere else. It is also possible and maybe even likely that it will just heal up on her own without surgical intervention needed. We still need to discuss our options with our normal vet to see what he thinks -- Daisy is going to have that likely-difficult phone call with him in the morning; she has to give him an update on Gary the Conqueror anyway. 

Regardless of whether we do surgery or not, she will need to be kept in a crate for the next 6-8 weeks without the ability to run or jump, so she can heal without putting stress on the joint. Daisy ordered a large cage (4-foot by 3-foot I think) to assemble and put next to our bed, big enough to house the cat, a litter pan for her, a bed -- or some towels, whatever -- and food and water. And that 6-8 weeks is pretty much a hard non-negotiable; like, even if she acts like she's feeling better and is moving around normally, no -- no running or jumping, you're staying in the box, little girl.

Obviously this is going to be difficult for her and on her, and likely on us as well. If she needs the pin put in her hip, I'll pay for it of course, without a thought. I just want my little girl to feel better and heal up. 

Right now, and since Daisy brought her home yesterday, she has been closed up in our upstairs bathroom; it's the only somewhat safe place for her where she can't run or really jump. Now, mind you, she does jump up in the tub sometimes and up onto the sink, but I don't think she's going to try either of those because Mable is on those good drugs right now. She was injected with a three-day opiate yesterday at the vet's office, and spent the entire day/night high as a fuckin' kite with big pupils and a desire to just roll around in the (clean) litter pan in the bathroom until she did, eventually, sleep. We have gabapentin to give her too -- twice the strength of Pete's daily pills -- and an anti-inflammatory as well that we'll start her on come Saturday. 

Today, she's a little more lucid and moving around, but it's clear she's still having trouble of course. She'll go eat and drink water and move from the pan to a blanket-like robe Daisy put in there on the floor for her and back again. She tried to get up into the tub earlier but realized she could not, so she gave up. The crate/cage thing gets here tomorrow.

I honestly don't know what to say about the entire scenario; I'm just saddened and stressed by all of it and I feel so bad for the little girl. Like, of course it's not a life-threatening injury, but I also don't want her to be in pain and locked away from us and everyone else. Depending on how it heals she may walk with a slight limp her whole life, or she may heal up and go back to normal only to have the same thing happen to the other hip eventually (this is, actually, a possibility). Not to mention I'm now paranoid about it for the other cats -- it is more common in males, apparently, and we have four of those, with three of them still young enough to have that happen to. And those three boys play hard.

So...we're going to see what happens, I guess. Eight weeks puts Mable's "release date" as July 23rd. That may vary a little here or there based on her progress and whether we get the surgery for her or not (if she needs it of course).

More to come as we attempt to figure this out.

Kept Apprised

 

Gary, in his adjustment time, has gotten very comfortable within the household. He and Charlie are best buds and spend a lot of time together -- playing, but also cuddling. 

Yes, he has become a cuddler with the cats of the house, slowly, one by one. First it was Charlie, of course, and then Pete -- who treats him much like he has the other kittens: with acceptance and love. He therefore got comfortable with Pete quickly. He also laid up against Emmy the other night and she didn't really seem to mind (though she is a bit wary of him still) and he'll lay next to Hank but not snuggle in. Hank is also slightly wary -- it's been an adjustment process.

I did catch him and Emmy playing yesterday though, chasing each other through the house here and there.

Mable is not exactly the most social or docile of cats except when it comes to us, Pete, and Charlie. She and Hank don't really interact, and she does not get along with Empress at all. 95% of the cat-fights in this house are between Mable and Emmy, mostly because Mable antagonizes her. As such, it's just been the last few days where she doesn't automatically hiss at Gary when he approaches her -- this is even after the two of them got to interact and smell each other, see each other through the baby gate when he was being isolated, too. It's an adjustment for her, still. She is slowly coming around. I give it another week at most before she is teddy-bearing him as she did, and still does sometimes, with Charlie. 

Gary himself seems very content most of the time. He loves being with us and always wants to keep an eye on where we are (unless he's asleep or we're upstairs). He also seems to be completely comfortable in the house, having explored every bit of it he can get to. He has not caused problems, he has not been destructive, he has not tried to get into things he shouldn't -- his personality is very chill most of the time. 

However, he is still not without his issues.

A couple of days after we let him free-roam, his diarrhea came back. He has still been eating nothing but his prescription diet food, so there is something still wrong with his guts -- at the very least, they're still not completely balanced (we know, of course, that he doesn't have any parasites). We consulted with our vet, who told us that he's had great success with the same antibiotic we gave Pete when he had his stomach bug a while back -- and that antibiotic helped Pete snap back to normal within a mere few days. So, he prescribed a round of it for Gary. With Pete, it was a pill. For Gary, since he's so small and so young, it's a liquid we (read: Daisy) has to squirt down his throat twice a day.

He hates it.

But, for the past two days, he's had solid poops. Like, normal solid poops. So we'll see.

Gary's final appointment for shots and checkups is Tuesday morning. If he falters on the antibiotic and goes back to the poops, and he's heavy enough (he's gaining a little more weight every day, and he's almost twice the size he was when we adopted him), we will likely press for a blood panel to see if there's anything else wrong with him. While I doubt there is, it's about all we could do at this juncture. If his guts seem to stabilize and stay stable, we'll know it was very likely just a stomach bug that because of his age he wasn't able to fight off completely himself.

I asked about that, as an aside -- normal adult cats will usually be able to shake a stomach bug pretty quickly. It's the very young ones who are still developing (Gary) or the very old ones with other underlying health conditions (Pete) are the ones who are really bogged down by them. It's apparently pretty common and not a huge cause for concern; i.e., it happens.

Otherwise, Gary is a really active, inquisitive, and loving little guy. I say that even after I mentioned that he was "chill," because he is both -- he really loves to play, and play hard, but he also very much loves just lounging around the house or with us on the couch, and he'll come to me to get love and attention. If we were within the colder months of the year, Gary would likely be the perfect "hoodie cat" -- a cat I could zip inside my hoodie with me for snuggles and love. 

Basepaws (the company who does the DNA tests for the cats) have confirmed they've received Gary's sample and that it is about to enter processing, with his results available in an estimate of 4-6 weeks.

Speaking of that...

So, this is Charlie's DNA results, which we got back a few weeks ago (I've been busy and tired, sue me). 

It is...far different than I expected it to be. Note that "Siamese" isn't a breed they look for, it's not exactly a standard recognized breed (why, I don't know). "Thai" is the breed that encompasses the Siamese traits...which he has 0% bloodline of. Himalayans, though, are the cats with the flame point traits Charlie has, and...he's also 0% there too. So who knows.

10% Siberian, almost 8% Maine Coon (the lowest of all our cats tested thus far), and trace amounts of the other breeds they track is interesting to me, but the most interesting thing is the amount of strange/exotic and otherwise untraceable (read: polycat) breeds in him. I expected the western stuff, I expected the domestic shorthair/British shorthair, etc. But Peterbald (a marker Pete also has), Persian, Egyptian Mau? That's fascinating to me. Charlie does not physically look like any other cat we have -- he looks almost alien, especially with his giant blue eyes. I guess he does have the really slender build of exotic/Egyptian cats though. I am surprised about his percentage of Maine Coon, as I was expecting nearly zero -- he has almost no behavioral traits (or physical traits, really) of a Maine Coon, save for how intelligent he is. 

The rest? He's genetically, for the most part, a mutt. I didn't really expect that; I expected 2-4 breeds to leap out very strongly in his genetic markers, so I am very surprised. That really makes me wonder more what Gary's results will be, or if they'll align at all with what I'm expecting (Ragdoll, Maine Coon, and Norwegian Forest Cat). Gary's coat pattern is not normal, and it's got the shape and feel of Emmy's fur. He has her eyes, too, and the two of them are the only cats I've ever seen with their eye shape and colors. I'm expecting a large amount of Maine Coon to be in his bloodstream, but from his face shape and fur patterns I am absolutely expecting Norwegian Forest Cat and Ragdoll. 

We shall see, I guess.

Over the past few days I've been trying to make the best of things, to look on the bright side of things, and distract myself with material possessions and purchases to keep myself occupied. As you likely read in my last post, I've really, really been on edge as of late and not a lot seems to be helping me relax or feel like I'm getting true downtime. Distracting myself, getting myself little things that will make me happy, and making plans to look forward to are generally things that help.

Yesterday, we did our morning volunteer work at the shelter and got to see a bunch of new kittens (it is kitten season, after all). We have also now made it a sort of weekly tradition to stop by Natural Grocers afterwards and get a snack and a drink, and then head over to the parents' to see them for a bit before coming back home. Well, we did that, and in the interim stopped by the optometrist's office (it's in the same plaza) to get an eye appointment set up for Daisy -- it's easier and faster to just do it there in person than do it online, as their website is god-awful slow. That eye appointment is on the morning of our wedding anniversary, so we have at least one thing to do that day that'll get us out of the house.

I have told Daisy that because of the way our anniversary falls this year -- the week after Memorial Day, not the week before or during that week -- that we had a little leeway with what we could do with ourselves for it; I am, of course, working the holiday overnight, which gives me a comp day for it. That comp day will be Sunday, June 1 -- so I have a longer weekend than normal. We don't really want to go anywhere and we really can't afford to at the moment anyway, especially while we're planning to see my parents this summer and hit Canada this fall (as long as we're able, of course), so yesterday in the car after we finished our volunteer work, I told Daisy that I want to do something that makes her happy -- it doesn't matter what it is, just something that she'll love and enjoy, something we wouldn't normally do. Not necessarily an adventure, but things we wouldn't normally take the time or money to do in the hustle-bustle of our daily lives, like...let's go get pedicures, get Daisy's hair professionally cut/styled/colored, etc and then have a nice meal somewhere different that we don't normally go to or have never been to before. Stuff like that. I told Daisy I wanted her to feel special, I wanted her to feel loved and cherished and pampered. 

She doesn't know what she wants to do yet. I told her that's fine, we have two weeks to figure it out, and we're already starting off the morning of our anniversary with her eye appointment, so we'll already be up, out, and about. We won't be volunteering that day and her parents will be unavailable, so it's entirely up to us, and the sky is the limit.

Note: I don't really remember what we did for our anniversary last year. I think we went to play rather disappointing mini golf and then I passed out once we got home. Time is a blur, reality is a construct, etc.

As for myself, I've been doing some improvement-ish things too. Well, sort of.

Last weekend I sent a friend a long video of myself talking to her through an app called Marco Polo -- it's like Snapchat but more user-friendly (at least I think so) and she responded telling me she thought I looked like I was losing a lot of weight. I balked at that as I've been eating like a supreme asshole for the past few months, and really haven't been taking care of myself in that fashion -- and since I changed jobs, my insurance changed and I had to go off my Trulicity for some time. So I thought there was no way possible that I'd lost any weight.

I was wrong -- I'd dropped ten pounds since I last weighed myself in March, and have now lost 71 pounds since 2018. I am, apparently, five pounds away from hitting my first goal weight. 

This is...quite impressive and interesting to me, because I have done nothing different -- nothing except start volunteering for two hours every Saturday and occasionally taking the cats on a walk in the stroller with Daisy. Surely that can't be it. But, I mean, the scale doesn't lie -- I weighed myself twice and got the exact same weight both times -- so something is clearly working. 

I am back on the Trulicity now, by the way -- but I wasn't when I weighed myself, and hadn't been for about 2-3 months.

When we go to Daisy's vision appointment, I have a pair of old Ray-Ban frames (they were originally Daisy's, but she hated them) that I'm going to have new lenses put in so that a $400 set of frames isn't just sitting in the house gathering dust.

Over the course of the past few weeks I've bought several new packs of socks and underwear to replace my old worn-out ones with. 

I've switched deodorants to a more cost-effective, better-working (and smelling) brand.

I have prepped my hair -- which is growing out again, as I didn't have it cut incredibly short this spring when I got my last haircut -- with black dye and have been slowly adding purple back to it. This gives it a base color of black with a deep, dark purple sheen in direct light. It'll take a few treatments and I may mix some blue into it eventually, or give it another coat of black if the purple gets too bright. We'll see.

I've gotten two new pairs of nice sandals from Costco, and two pairs of cheaper everyday sandals from Walmart.

I've ordered a new pair of shorts from Amazon and several new shirts for the summer, including a couple Tragically Hip shirts (I've become a fan in recent months) and some other odds and ends.

Despite the fact that I'll get new lenses in Daisy's old frames, I ordered a second pair of sunglasses and another pair of normal glasses from a glasses website called Fytoo that I used to use occasionally back in the day. They'll get here in a few weeks. 

I spent all of Friday doing various chores around the house, like washing the bedding and all of the other laundry, cleaning the cats' water fountain and their daily dishes, running the dishwasher twice, making sure the mail was sorted and taken care of, and helping Daisy do a grocery run.

Daisy's front driver-side blinker went out, so yesterday on the way to the parents' we stopped by the auto shop and had them replace it. It's the latest little thing to go wrong with our ancient, falling-apart car, but thankfully it wasn't anything big. 

Not everything is great or easy, though, nor is it about me or us. 

Today, Daisy is not home; she is instead over in Iowa visiting a close friend who is dying of cancer and does not have much time left. I was originally going to go with her, but I have to work tonight in a few hours -- so once she made plans for today, it became sort of unspoken that she would be doing it alone. I know this friend but only in passing; she was at our wedding and I've seen her and talked to her maybe twice since then, but Daisy has been very close with her for many years, so her cancer diagnosis has been really hard. The distance between us though, even though it's maybe 30 miles, made it sort of hard for them to keep in touch on a regular basis. Daisy is essentially going to say goodbye, as it will very likely be the last time she sees her friend alive. 

[Edit: It was; her friend died the next morning, less than 18 hours after Daisy had visited.]

Things like that are very hard. I've had friends die, and some die of cancer, as I told Daisy, but those friends died very suddenly. Well, relatively suddenly. I had a friend in high school, a very good friend, named Whitney. After high school, when I was in college, I found out that she'd been diagnosed with an aggressive cancer -- I can't remember if it was uterine or ovarian or what-have-you. She'd gone through  whatever treatments were necessary, they took successfully, and she was in remission -- but you know how you lose track of people after high school if you're not talking to them every day, and Whitney was one of those people who was always on the go, always had something to do that didn't involve sitting at home in their time off on the computer, talking for hours on AOL Instant Messenger like I was. 

One day, after I'd already graduated from college and was working at the grocery store in my little town on top of the mountain in West Virginia, she came through my checkout line -- and she looked good, she looked like her old self. A little older and wiser maybe, but still her old self. It was probably the first time I'd seen her in 3-4 years at that point. She told me that day that she was fully recovered and was in remission and everything was looking good, but seemed...uncomfortable about it. We weren't surrounded by people or anything, it was just the two of us talking. I thought the interaction slightly strange, given how close we'd been a few years prior. At the time though, I didn't really think much else about it other than how I was happy she was better.

A few years later, when I was working at the newspaper in Kansas, I got a text from another friend, Whitney's cousin, who told me she had died. The cancer had come back, it had spread, and she decided the second time around that she just wasn't going to fight it, that she just wanted to go peacefully.

Well, apparently she did. This was over fifteen years ago now, and I still think of Whitney often and with kindness. 

I wrote here a few months back about my friend Jordan, my former student, who had succumbed to diabetes-related illnesses at the age of 35. I hadn't seen her in over a decade either, but we were still in touch pretty frequently until her sicknesses got really bad. 

I also recently found out that an acquaintance of mine, from my grad school days, died of pneumonia in March. His name was Mickey; he was quite a bit older than me, but I met him at a grad school sleepover with one of the ex's friends about fifteen years ago, and we'd kept in touch for many years. Ironically, his home was originally Omaha, but when I met him he was a student at KU in grad school there. He was Ukranian, or at least had a lot of roots there, and had been living in Kiev when the war broke out. He had been able to escape it, emigrate to Berlin for a while and then back to the states, and once he was back in the Omaha area we'd made rough plans to go out for lunch at some point -- but never solidified those plans.

After a while here back in the states he announced on Facebook that he was returning to Kiev, finally, as a lot of the fighting had gone down there. I saw a while later where he said he was back there safe and sound, but other than that didn't think about it much until I saw a friend of his share his obituary. I can't say I was super shocked or anything like that, but my first thought was that he was very militantly anti-Putin, so I'd wondered if he'd joined up with some militia forces and died in combat. I was, in a bittersweet way, glad that was not the case. But, still, pneumonia is a rough way to go. 

I mean, they're all rough ways to go, aren't they?

Going Home

 As we are now entering the summer months and temperatures are hitting the 80s and low 90s pretty frequently, our summer plans are beginning to kick in and formulate.

We're a week out from Memorial Day weekend (this weekend, in fact, is Victoria Day weekend in Canada, and we were up there for it two years ago this week), which is the unofficial start to summer here in the states. Pools open up, mosquitoes and bees/wasps start coming out, gardens get planted, etc. Kids finish the school year and graduate.

I graduated from Wichita State University with my MFA twelve years ago today, and graduated from WVU with my BA twenty years ago this week. 

I am a much bigger fan of the midwest in the summers than I am in the winters. In the summers I'm not usually too uncomfortable -- our air conditioner, when it isn't blowing up every other week/month, is a really good one and keeps the entire house very cool and temperate. It'll sometimes get stuffy upstairs in our offices, but truthfully I can deal with that most of the time. 

As we enter the summer, those summer plans are beginning to unravel a little more:

1. Daisy is looking forward to getting plants for the garden and putting them in
2. Our 11th wedding anniversary is coming up at the end of the month
3. Daisy's parents' 50th wedding anniversary is the same day
4. Daisy switches her schedule at work to, essentially, 2nd shift after Memorial Day weekend
5. We need to slightly "summerize" the house, which means trimming some trees and cleaning out parts of the yard/landscaping, run the string trimmer, etc.
6. The summer is when most of the cats have their yearly checkups and vaccinations
7. "Spring" cleaning of the house needs to happen
8. I begin wardrobe upgrades for the year -- including dropping off donations at Goodwill and restocking my closet with new socks, underwear, shorts, sandals, and shirts as necessary

And finally, we start planning our travel for the remainder of the year.

Now, mind you, we usually do this as well in advance of said trips as possible -- however, I had a job change this year (and with it, a schedule change for some time that is still slightly variable at times), and because of that, I was paid out all of the PTO I had from my old job, and am now slowly accruing time at the new one. Even though I got a 20% raise compared to the last job, I'm still at the bottom rung for PTO accrual because I'm a "new" employee. 

I have spoken to my executive director about this -- this doesn't really matter that much, I'm salaried and when you're salaried, time off is basically a social construct; I still get paid the same regardless. As long as I let people know it's less of a problem and more of a "thanks for the heads up" sort of scenario. 

Daisy is kind of in the same boat, but slightly different -- she has the time to take to do whatever we'd like to do, but she's required to work most holidays (I am not, but I'll have to work some of them). So, trips that we'd take over holiday weekends and the like? Yeah, we can't do that anymore, at least not this year. That means any travel we do will need to be planned out during times where there are not upcoming holidays. 

Here's the thing, though...we do have some wild new benefits to our jobs that we didn't have this time last year.

Daisy gets bonuses for performance -- like, large ones -- for the work she does and for accomplishing her business goals. There's a payout schedule for them; like, it's not immediate or anything. And she is doing very well in accomplishing her business goals. I am very proud of her. I am also very impressed, as I could not do the work she does (or if I could, I wouldn't be able to do it nearly as well). 

My job gives out quarterly bonuses too. They're variable and strange on how they do it (it's based on business unit performance and profits on the whole, for the entire company, and then split up based on salary level and position -- etc., it's confusing). My first one will pay out on next Friday's paycheck -- but based on when I started and how long I've been there, it'll only be about $100 or so and likely will go directly to taxes. However, in a few months when the next ones pay out, it should be much more substantial. I don't plan on going anywhere anytime soon, so this is a great thing compared to my old company, where I got maybe a 3% raise every year and maybe a $50-100 bonus once a year if I jumped in to cover an emergency over a holiday or something like that.

My point is, we're in a much better financial position -- for once -- this year compared to last year or most other previous years. 

And we have two trips to plan.

The first is a trip to see my parents in NC again, which I've been adamant about -- as long as they're alive, I need to take the time and money every year to do. My mother turns 65 this year and my dad turns 75. This is a big birthday year for them, and to be a good son, I need to be present as much as possible, especially as and when I have the means to do so. I am guessing I only have a few more trips like this before their health really begins to fail them and they're no longer able to host us or really enjoy our visits because of medical issues, and while they're here and healthy it is very important I see them as much as I can. I can see Daisy's parents any day of the week as they're fifteen minutes across town -- my parents are not. 

The second is a trip to Canada (as you likely guessed), but this year it'll be in early October for Daisy's cousin's wedding. I've mentioned this before here; her wedding is over Canadian Thanksgiving (read: Columbus Day) weekend. This one is going to be more difficult to plan; Mama will likely be traveling with us again, and flying into Halifax is ungodly expensive this time around (thanks, Mr. President), so we'll likely have to fly into Bangor and then drive up across the border. We've done this before, and I love doing it, but it adds a day of travel and gas money to each end of the trip...and, well, we have limited time we can both be away from home and work. 

Plus, of course, there are always variables and emergencies we'd have to prepare for as well. If someone dies, if there's a grievous injury to a family member or something like that, etc. So, we don't really have as much freedom or wiggle room as we'd like. 

We're only in the very beginning planning stages for the trip to NC. Daisy still needs to see what days she can get off -- this will likely be in August, as they wanted us to come around their birthdays and it's not around any holidays (I originally wanted to go in June, or July, at the latest). Round trip tickets in and out of Wilmington aren't awful in price and the travel times/layovers are fairly minimal. We've got some wiggle room on the dates, so I'm trying to be as flexible as possible there. I don't have any real goals for the trip other than to get some downtime and see my parents on or around their birthdays.

Well, I mean, we'll go eat at the vegan restaurants we loved last time, too.

And we have a free whale-watching pass to use, because we didn't see any whales on our trip last year.

And the Gabe's in Wilmington is legendary.

So, I mean, those things.

Ahem. Anyway.

My parents are excited; they want us to be there on or around their birthday because they have a party planned at the local Mexican place (which, in two visits so far, we've never been to with them). I tend to eat like a raccoon trash goblin when I'm on vacation anyway, no matter where we go, so I'm down for this. I've also lost ten pounds in the last month, inexplicably, so eh -- I can be a little fat on occasion. However, we likely won't be able to book the trip until late this month or early next month. I gave my boss the heads up that I'll be out sometime in that mid-August window. 

I am also fully aware that in the Carolinas, that's prime hurricane season (it is every year when we're there) and the legit hottest time of the year -- but the latter was part of my want to do it in June or July. I want the full Carolinas beach experience, and that includes people and sun and heat and not being there in an off-season time or at the end of the season (read: Labor Day, the last two years we were there). We obviously can't be there for Memorial Day as that's next weekend, and July 4th is out of the question too -- my mother says that's the worst time of the year to visit as you can't even drive around through the town since everyone possible uses the island as a vacation destination on a holiday weekend. We saw a bit of that over Labor Day the past two years, but a lot of it was rained out last year. 

So far though, it's just a lot of brainstorming and planning/anticipation. I can't really start "preparing" until after we have a timeframe and the flights/rental car are booked. But, it gives me something to look forward to, something to keep living for. 

This is, primarily, because I'm just so tired of working again.

Don't get me wrong, I am very glad that my job change is essentially a promotion -- I got a 20% raise, I kept my title and position, and the overall workload is a bit lighter than before -- but my sleep schedule is a wreck again now that I've gone back to overnights, and now that we've gotten back into the swing of things and some dust has settled, I again find our overnight team wildly shorthanded and under-trained. I also find myself, again, left holding the bag with no real support on escalations or any other idiocy that comes in during the overnight hours. I do not have the time, patience, or energy to do everything myself, and my team needs to have some agency and autonomy to handle large chunks of the work or it really is just me doing everything myself. And, if I'm doing everything myself, what's the point of having a team under me at all?

I digress. This coming weekend, Memorial Day weekend, will be a welcome reprieve from the craziness. I am not working next Sunday night into the holiday; it is already covered by other leadership, and I volunteered to work the night of Memorial Day Monday because normally I'd be there anyway, and they needed the help. I don't know that they'll really need it, but I'll be there. I have to keep up appearances with the other leadership because there's not that many of us and we're all going to have to double or triple-up on holidays this year for coverage. 

My biggest concerns currently are that over the next two days -- starting this evening -- we're under the threat of severe storms and/or tornadoes. April, May, and June are angry months in Omaha when it comes to severe weather. Occasionally, a storm will hit outside those months and cause significant damage -- as the one did last summer at the end of July that took out our power for three days, or the snow/ice storm that hit in late March this year just as I was starting the new job -- but generally it's within this three-month window when we see the most severe weather. 

I didn't used to let any of these weather forecasts affect me, of course -- for a long time I lived in an apartment, and if a storm rolled through I didn't really have much to worry about when it came to bodily harm or harm to my dwelling. Our vehicles in the parking lot didn't have protection, but eh, full coverage insurance exists for a reason. Now that I own my own home, and am responsible for all repairs and the safety of ourselves and the six cats within it -- and after we had not one, but two giant maple trees removed from our front yard after storm damage, to the cost of something like two grand, I am far more paranoid and cautious. 

I am also on edge because it feels like nothing in this house will hold together and stop breaking. Over the course of the past several months, we've had the toilets (both of them) repaired or maintenanced five times total, have had three different repairs done to the HVAC system, had to replace two doorknobs and one faucet, the bathroom fan stopped working, a lightbulb blew out in the bathroom and almost started a fire, and (not internal to the house, but) Daisy's car door handle broke off and she and I spent hours repairing it. It seems like every few days there's a new stressor or something else that breaks or otherwise stops working correctly, and every time that happens it's more time or money or both that have to be spent on it. 

Add to this constant care for six cats, working overnights, Daisy's schedule changing soon to where I essentially won't see her during most of the work week, endless bills, endless tasks around the house and in the yard that need to be completed, and the near constant threat of severe weather at least once or twice a week and you can see how I would want, or need, a vacation -- I need everything to just stop and let me breathe, let me exist.

Some of you may be saying "yeah, all of that is part of being an adult" or "yeah, that's home ownership, and everything else in there are poor choices," and to some extent I would agree with you. To a greater extent I would also ask haven't you ever just needed a break?

The Meatball

 On Thursday morning, we received a call from our vet regarding Gary. Based on our recorded observations, his weight gain and size increase -- as well as his activity levels (read: Goblin Time) -- and his mostly-recovered guts, of course...our vet's recommendation was that he was likely just fine and that his stomach would continue to get better as time went on and he essentially "grows up."

This meant that yes, we finally had clearance to let him loose into the house to explore his new environment and interact with the other cats. If his guts had not been getting better, if he hadn't been gaining weight and hadn't become active and super-playful like a normal kitten, that would have been a cause for concern and a sign that there was very likely a larger issue or illness at play. But, in a week and a half of being sequestered in our master bedroom, he gained over a pound of weight (on a kitten as small as Gary, that is very significant), his stomach began to regulate more and more by the day on his new food, his appetite surged and he began eating like a horse, and he became really active and playful -- running back and forth across the room, running up and down the cat tree, pouncing on us and chewing our fingers, etc. Based on those things alone, the vet was comfortable in saying the chance of him having any sort of debilitating illness was very slim.

Now, mind you, this is a now sixteen-week-old kitten who is tiny (not even three pounds, but very close) and has not really had the opportunity to be socialized a lot with other cats -- he had spent most of his life in a cage or locked in a room. He had a calico sister in his cage with him at the shelter who was not sick, so she was removed from said cage and was adopted out long before him. So, he attached very hard to both Daisy and myself, and was absolutely crazy curious about the other cats beyond the baby gate in the rest of the house:

By far, he was the most curious about Mable and Charlie, who showed the most interest in his existence inside the bedroom. Pete didn't seem to care -- he just knew he couldn't get into the room. Hank would take one look (from afar), growl or hiss slightly, and then run back downstairs. Emmy was very cautious and would approach the gate, and then Gary would notice and run up on her, which would make her jump and then spit-hiss and slink off.

Mable and Charlie would generally just sit there, as if holding a conversation with him. Occasionally Charlie would hiss at first, but as the days went on they began to play footsie through the mesh of the gate and try to touch noses. We discouraged that (as Gary was still, essentially, in quarantine), but Charlie was so curious and excited to have another little child in the house.

I will note here that Mable and Charlie are the sweetest "siblings" I've seen in a very long time. Mable adores Charlie -- well, everyone adores Charlie, but Mable especially loves him:

She watches over that boy, she cuddles and licks him, she holds him like a teddy bear, and they play together every single day. She is a fantastic big sister to him. 

And yet, now we have this new child in the house. An interloper, a little fuzzball with a strong personality who keeps trying to break out of the room to get to meet everyone. I absolutely did not want Gary to wreck Mable's relationship with Charlie, or have her be left in the dust because the two rambunctious boys would rather play with each other than the big sister. Yet, I also wanted Mable to form her own bond with Gary, because he is a lot like Charlie in his love language and energy levels, and when Mable plays, she plays hard and needs someone who can go toe-to-toe with her, not cower away in a corner when she gets rough. 

So Mable would sit there, much like she is in the picture above, and observe the child. Occasionally she'd inch close enough to sniff him or play footsie with him, like he did with Charlie, but she was more easily spooked and would hiss and hop away if he ran up on her. Most of the time she'd just observe.

I think that "observation time" is a really important thing in introducing new cats to the other established household members. Charlie wasn't having any of that and wanted out into the house as soon as he could get out there -- his isolation time was the shortest of all of them; he was out and free in two days. Mable was a process, as Hank and Emmy immediately strongly disliked having another cat in the house. Empress was a process, even -- she was sick and vomiting/having diarrhea as she'd just been fixed, and had to spend a night or two in the bathroom until she was better. Hank, as the first cat we'd brought into the house, had a very brief introduction to the oldies where Maggie and Sadie hissed and ran when they realized he was alive, and Pete wasn't a huge fan of him either (Pete peed in Daisy's shoes and began marking around the house again when he hadn't done so in years) until he got used to him.

Gary had had enough time in isolation; our master bedroom, while way more comfortable than the shelter or wherever he'd been kept during the brief time he had been fostered, was still just a bigger cage. He needed  that social interaction with the other cats and he needed to be able to run and be free. If his health had not been an issue, I would've wanted him out and interacting with everyone within a short few days, but we wanted to be as cautious as possible.

So, Thursday evening, we finally let him out to explore and interact with the cats. 

We thought Pete would be thrilled; he gave zero shits whatsoever about Gary. Normally Pete loves the kittens, wants to meet them and make over them and be all "lovey grandpa" with them -- not this time around. He gave Gary some sniffs and limited interaction, but Pete was happy to be able to come back into the bedroom again and sleep on the bed with us more than anything else. His reaction was sort of like Sadie's reaction to the kittens once we started adopting them regularly -- knowledge and acknowledgment of their existence, but in a "you got another one? cool, he's cute, tell him to leave me alone" sort of way.

Mind you, Pete is very old now and he may just be "over it" when it comes to interacting with new kittens. He doesn't mind them -- in fact, he adores Mable and Charlie, and has ever since they came into this house -- but with Gary he has close to zero interest whatsoever. So far, anyway.

Charlie immediately began playing with Gary, both of them going hard on each other (but not in like, a fighting way). He holds his own and stands up to Charlie, and will chase him. He does the same with Mable, but in more of a limited fashion. Mable was still a little spooked and apprehensive, and hung back a bit to watch the boys play. So, he will occasionally try to play with Mable and mostly fails.

From across the room, Hank and Emmy quietly observed, rarely letting their eyes off him. They did not appear scared or honestly, really angry, but I would describe them as concerned. Hank would approach Gary, smell his butt or follow him from room to room, but if Gary turned around to face Hank, Hank would slink back and growl a little. Emmy's behavior was much the same. Gary tried to run up on Emmy in an attempt to get her to play, and she was like "oh, there will not be any of that yet" and stopped him in his tracks by lightly bapping him on his forehead with her paw. 

A house this large for such a small kitten presented an entirely new experience for Gary, and we could absolutely see that he was getting sensory overload with all the sights and sounds and smells, not to mention five other cats who were watching his every move. 

He did very quickly find the litter pan(s) and began to navigate the larger pieces of furniture -- he figured out how to get into the front window very quickly, figured out how to get under the TV stand, up and down behind the couch, and where the water bowls and fountain were. However, I worked on Thursday night, and with all of these cats watching him at all times, with him exploring, and with how I never know how my night is going to go, I told Daisy that I'd like him to remain in the bedroom for the overnight hours on Thursday night and then we'd test on Friday with him to see if he could be out full time.

Gary did not like this idea. He howl-screamed when he was put back in the bedroom, like someone was beating him. Any time the bedroom door opened he did a flying leap and began climbing the baby gate like King Kong climbing the Empire State Building to see if he could escape back into the house before we could catch his little kitten ass. 

Eventually he did settle down on Thursday night and he was fine.

On Friday morning, I got off work and had to shower and sleep fast -- on Thursday morning, our AC had blown out again (same issues as before) and we'd scheduled the repairman to come back out on Friday afternoon. I would have to sleep beforehand and take care of it once he got to the house, since Daisy is working and is chained to her desk and phone all day for her job, with little opportunity to get away during her shift. So, I slept in the bedroom with Gary, who snuggled up at my side or lounged in the cat tree all day.

Once the AC was repaired -- more rodent damage to the wiring that had not been caught the first time around, but was fixed this time -- and once Daisy got off work, we were confidently able to let the little meatball roam the house again.

Yes, that's what I've, lovingly, been calling him -- the meatball. I can't exactly call him the boychild (as I did for Charlie) or the tribble (as I did for Mable). He's just a little meatball with fur on him and a long fluffy tail. 

Daisy haaaaaates that I call him this as a nickname, by the way.

The meatball has also been given a DNA test, as we have done for all of our cats -- that went out in the mail on Saturday. We desperately want to know what's in his genes, as given his patterning, the ear tufts, and the tufts between his toes we are so very confident that we have a Norwegian Forest Cat/Ragdoll/Maine Coon on our hands here. I would bet so much money on those being his three biggest breed contributors, likely in that order, based on his coat and overall appearance/demeanor. It'll likely be close to the end of summer before we get the results back.

He has not been sequestered in the room again since Friday night. He wanders the house to get the lay of the land, but he is not destructive or antagonistic. Generally he interacts and plays with the other cats very sweetly and mostly respectfully (I say mostly because there are times where Charlie wants him to stop going after him for playtime and he won't, and vice versa), and tends to find places to lounge and be comfortable. He has a big bowl of his special food downstairs -- we had to pick up the cats' other foods so that he doesn't eat them and get sick with his stomach issues -- and the other cats can graze on that as well without any adverse effects. When we feed the other cats their normal food, we either make sure Gary is preoccupied or being held by one of us so that the older cats can get a chance to eat as much as they want and won't be free-feeding until Gary is older and his guts can handle more complex foods. Daisy wants to eventually switch all of the cats to timed meals and get rid of free-feeding altogether, and I told her while that's a great idea in theory, I think it is going to be very difficult to put into practice in a household of five other cats who have always had access to both wet and dry food, as well as treats, anytime they've wanted any of that for their entire lives. 

I also have qualms about doing that as they're not all hungry at the same time, and if a cat isn't hungry during their mealtime then they don't get another chance -- I don't want to give all of them anxiety or stress about their food at the same time we're bringing another little goblin into the house -- cats are very pattern-based and when those patterns are disrupted, they begin acting out. I don't want Pete to start peeing all over the house again, or show Hank and Charlie that doing so would be an appropriate way to voice their own protests. Daisy relenting to allow me to put a big bowl of Gary's food down in the living room as something everyone can graze on, and Gary himself can eat when he wants, was her compromise. And to their credit, the other cats do seem to enjoy that food. They can also come into my room to eat some treats or Cat Chow anytime they want, as I keep both in here and make it available to them when they come in. 

Anyway.

Friday night, Gary wandered the house and was fine. I was shocked how easily he integrated and how little the other cats seemed to be bothered by his presence. Now, to be fair, they all knew he was in the house, and they all interacted with him to some extent via the baby gate in front of the bedroom door. When we went to bed on Friday night, Gary did indeed come upstairs and sleep with us, though he wanted to harass Charlie to make him play with him in the middle of the night, and I took Charlie into my office with me to sleep on the ottoman away from the rambunctious meatball. 

He was fine. He didn't get into anything, he didn't destroy anything, he just found a comfy place to sleep and conked out. When I got up Saturday morning to use the bathroom, he and Pete were just chillin' together in the hallway. Not cuddling, not interacting, just he was lounging on one side of the hallway and Pete was on the other. When we left on Saturday morning for our shelter volunteer hours, when we returned he was sleeping in the cat tree in the living room. When we left again and came back after taking Daisy's mother out to lunch for Mother's Day, he was sleeping in the cat bed in the front window. 

He is...pretty chill. He's a normal kitten. He likes playing with the other cats and if he's not playing, he's basically exploring, wandering, or doing his own thing. He seems to be a bit more independent than the others were -- he has not exactly begun the bonding process with any of the other cats yet. I haven't seen him cuddle with any of the other cats, or flop down and show his belly as an act of submission. He will cuddle up with us, but in bed -- not on the couch yet. He eats like a horse and has tons of playful energy, but also gets a lot of quiet downtime where he's just in the same room with everyone, and everyone knows he is there, but none of them mind. 

But I do find it wildly interesting that he is that much more independent than the others were -- that he has not attempted to cuddle up with any of the other cats yet. Mable laid on top of him on Saturday night when Daisy went to bed and Gary joined her, but I'm not sure exactly how intentional that was. He does seem to want to be around us when we're awake and he's awake, or at least within sight of us. Last night when I was working, he spent most of the night in the bowl scratch pad, in the cat tree, or in the little cat bed I put on my desk for him:

He is a very sweet, playful little boy. We can't really gauge his intelligence levels yet, and we can't really gauge his kindness and lovey-ness levels yet like we immediately could with Charlie, but I think we will soon. He's still adjusting. What I can say is that he seems...happy, at peace, and feels safe. He feels completely safe with Daisy and myself, and around the other cats I think there will need to be a little more of an adjustment period before he really starts to come out of his shell and we can see what his real personality will be like. 

Gary the Conqueror, Part IV: Pending Release

 I am happy to report that Gary is progressing wonderfully. He has not had diarrhea in a couple of days, though last night he did have a wet shit (Daisy's words, not mine). He's very clearly growing, and every time we weigh him he's bigger than before -- though at this juncture he is still under three pounds. Daisy is going to talk to our vet within the next couple of days to give him the full progress report and we'll go from there as to whether we should release him into the wild unknown of the rest of the house.

He is a gorgeous boy.

The AC guys canceled on us on Friday due to the weather/workload they had and rescheduled for this afternoon. Apparently, a rodent (of some sort) chewed through a four-inch length of wire on the AC unit, which shorted it out. The short blew out the power supply/relay to the house fan as it did not have a fuse on it. 

"Do you have an outside cat?" the AC guy asked me.

"Nope, all of mine are indoor house loaves," I replied.

"Might want to get one," he said, and held up what was left of a very fried mouse he'd pulled out of the AC housing. 

So yeah, that was that. Parts were replaced and our AC is once more ice cold.

I've not been sleeping well. It's either been too hot or too uncomfortable in bed during the daytime hours. I could try to sleep in my chair, but that ends up hurting my knees if I do it too long, and my knees have felt particularly awful over the course of the past few weeks. I know part of this is the onset of the coming summer -- it gets warm here quickly in Nebraska and generally stays hot from April until...well, like October -- and I know part of it is stress and going back to overnights at my job after working dayshift for well over a month.

Going back to overnights has been fine from a job perspective -- we're still working on somewhat of a skeleton crew while everyone gets re-aligned and acclimated to the new company structure, so the bulk of my job tends to be working one or two escalated issues a night, which usually finish around midnight-ish...and then spending the next seven hours watching through Star Trek: Enterprise episode after episode to kill time because there's not much else to do.

Mind you, I've already seen Enterprise, but haven't watched it in a decade or so. I'm starting the fourth and final season this week. I have not skipped a single episode or fast-forwarded through anything. 

I don't expect this level of silent running on overnights to last that much longer. Another week or two maybe, give or take. But, I've also been saying that for going on a month now. I do not yet have a team, and I do not yet have a purpose other than "hey, this is hot, handle this please." We're still very much in the rebuilding stages. I'm trying to enjoy the downtime as much as possible, but it makes the week very long and very boring sometimes. And I've got two more nights to go this week before a few short days of freedom. 

A Typical Saturday

 I know some of you are likely curious as to what a typical weekend day is like for me. So, today's entry is just that -- a detailed rundown of what my day is like, at least on the weekends. There's some generalizations in here as well, but for the most part, this is focused on my day today.

3am to 6am (somewhere in there):

Awaken for the day after having gone to bed sometime in the evening or night hours. I was in bed last night around 10pm, and began my wake-up process today around 5am.

5:42am:

Actually get out of bed after cuddling Gary for a bit, putting on my glasses, checking my phone messages and posts, and playing a bit of Pokemon TCG on my phone in an attempt to wake up my brain for the day. Daisy continues to sleep. Gary cuddles up with her to sleep with her.

5:45am:

Pee. Brush out hair in bathroom mirror so I look like less of a wild bushman. Let Mable into my office for father-daughter bonding time, and also to prevent her from wailing in the hallway. Put on bathrobe, crack open a Monster, and eat a Clif protein bar. Tell Alexa to play my "flash briefing" so that I can listen to the day's news. I take my morning pills. 

6:10am:
Open a new session of Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds on my PC to help wake up my brain some more, and put in my earbuds.

6:39am:

Game crashes, as it often does, and I return to reality.

6:43am:
I really want to go back to bed.

6:56am:

I get dressed in my work "uniform" for the Humane Society -- a black tank top under one of the Humane Society's 150th Anniversary 1875-2025 t-shirts, a pair of my Duluth Trading Company work pants, black socks, and hard-soled shoes. Mable is asleep in my lounge chair. I take allergy pills and pre-emptively take ibuprofen as I've already been in a lot of pain for the past few days, and the day's volunteering session isn't going to make that much better.

7:45am:

After watching Youtube for a bit, I go downstairs to make sure the cats have food, water, and treats -- and make sure Pete gets his pill, the cats get a Churu, and the fish and snails are fed. 

8:25am:

Ten minutes after Daisy's alarm was set to go off and 35 minutes before we're supposed to be on shift working at the shelter, I enter the bedroom to find Daisy still in bed and Gary sleeping on her back. I make sure she gets up and starts going through her morning processes to get ready, because, yeah, in 35 minutes we need to be at the shelter and working. 

9:01am:

We are in the car on the way to the shelter and are officially late.

9:06am:
We finally clock in.

9:15ish am:

We begin our first loads of laundry for the day, which is what we're there for on the schedule. It's a really quiet morning, without a lot of staff or other volunteers around.

9:30am:

We stop in and check on all of the cats on the adoption floor. One giant tuxedo cat ("Tux") is enamored with Daisy and wants all the love from her. He's a big, big boy and does not like being alone in his adoption cage, and he is beautiful and vocal. He will be adopted by the end of the day. 

9:40am:
After the first load in the dryer finishes and I can move it to the bins, I move the load that had just finished to the dryer and begin folding the dried stuff. Daisy wanders off to see puppies, as we'd found out that there were a fair number of new ones that had come in recently.

10am:

As I am switching the next set of laundry loads, I run into our staff friend. We talk briefly, I show her pictures of Gary on my phone, and she asks me if Daisy is working this morning too. I tell her she went to look at puppies. She tells me they're really shorthanded all around the shelter this morning and wanted to know if she can get our help doing some stuff in the cattery or the kitten care areas. I told her sure and would be happy to once I finished up the laundry I was working on. She goes off to find Daisy.

10:25am:

Our staff friend has found Daisy and has put her to work cleaning out the cat cages/rooms upstairs for the cats already on the adoption floor (the shelter has just opened at this point). Our staff friend comes back to me, in the laundry room, and tells me where she is going to be so that when I finish, I can come help her. I start the next load of laundry, finish folding everything I'd been working on, and join her in the "overflow" area for cats -- which is, basically, doubling as a cat ICU. I text Daisy to let her know.

10:40am:

After meeting all of the cats hidden back in the overflow area -- some of whom are not exactly friendly or immediately adoptable, I help to sweep the floors and clean up the room with our staff friend. She tells me that a few of them back there may need to be put down for health concerns, including a giant boy that looks like he either has bad diabetes or kidney failure, and a big guy on the end who is in quarantine because he viciously bites. If these cats cannot be rehabilitated into "barn cats" for pest control -- because, of course, this is Nebraska and there are a lot of farms and barns -- they generally get euthanized as their health or behavioral concerns will not allow them to be adopted out. This is sad, of course, but likely true at any shelter. 

10:50am:

Daisy, having received my text, arrives in the overflow area. Our staff friend mentions that the help she needs is primarily feeding the kittens in the baby area, which is in a separate building across the parking lot (why, I don't know). Said building requires PPE when you enter it and interact with the animals there because none of them have been vaccinated for anything yet, all of them are too young.

11am:

We are in the second building and are forced to don booties, Tyvek suits, and two pairs of gloves. It is 80 degrees in said building. There is no air conditioning in said building. Tyvek is used in homes as insulation and insulation covering. We begin the process of learning how to feed milk and kitten wet food to these kittens -- most of them 4-7 weeks old and needing to be syringe-fed. I watch the process but let Daisy do the actual feedings with our staff friend, who is very kind and helpful.

11:40am:

We move to the real quarantine room, which is what necessitated the PPE -- the ringworm room. These are all kittens who have or are suspected of having ringworm infections, but are also young and also need to be fed and cared for. All of them are absolutely adorable.

12:20ish:

We are finally released from our duties for the day, peel off the PPE and clock out. Mama isn't feeling well; we talk to her in the car and offer to bring her something that helps her feel better -- I personally offer Chick-Fil-A diet lemonade and fries -- she declines. We tell her we'll stop by shortly, as we just got off shift.

12:30-1pm:

We stop by Natural Grocers and get some drinks and something to snack on, and get Mama a giant jar of raw honey (we'd gotten this for her before and she loved it).

1:15pm:

We arrive at the parents' and begin to decompress. We tell them the stories of what we'd seen and done at the shelter. Mama feeds me two rhubarb muffins she'd just made, and they're both amazing. Note: Daisy and I, as we have not returned home, are both still in our shelter uniforms. However, thanks to the PPE we were wearing over them, we're not covered in germs or animal excrement, we're just hot and a little sweaty. 

3:30pm-ish:

We leave the parents' to head home. I am exhausted and hot, and desperately need to shower the shelter off me and take a nap. But, the grass needs to be mowed, and it's the first good day we've had all week to do it. I absolutely don't have the energy or ability at this point of the day, but Daisy does -- she gets out the mower and mows both the front and back yard over the course of the hour I take to shower and get a little food in me. 

5pm-ish:

After showering as quickly but efficiently as possible, and eating a haphazard meal, I drag my very tired and aching body into the bedroom to take a nap with Gary the Conqueror. He sleeps next to me or on me throughout the entire nap.

9pm-10pm hour:

Eventually, I awaken, very groggy and still in aches/pains. I don't remember much of the time after awakening; everything is a haze. I vaguely remember eating something and watching some Youtube before Daisy goes to bed and I pass out in my chair again around 3am.

And the cycle continues....

Gary the Conqueror, Part III: The Goblin Side

 Anyone hoping for a positive/progressive update on our kitten's gut health will need to wait a bit longer. Gary had diarrhea last night, so he's still having some issues here and there.

It can be a frustrating process at times, taking care of a cat that is not completely well and ready to integrate into the rest of the house. We're makeshift doctors/nurses here just trying to care for a patient, so to speak, and are hoping to see progress more and more every day -- and when that doesn't really happen, or there are no real changes from the baseline, it can be heartbreaking and/or frustrating when you're trying to do everything right, or seemingly doing everything right.

There is a little positivity to report -- he has gained a little weight, and I do think he is a bit bigger today than he was when we adopted him a week ago. Gaining weight is a big deal, it is important. It means his body is starting to process and retain nutrition from what he eats, even if he's still having occasional diarrhea. Gary is a tiny kitten, only a little over two pounds at fourteen weeks. It's possible he'll remain small his whole life -- our vet thought he might be a "runt" of the litter -- or his size could explode and he could quickly get gigantic after his gut issues are cleared up. We won't know for a bit yet since he's still very young.

The other cats are either intensely curious about the little boy or they don't seem to give a single shit that he's in the bedroom. Empress and Pete are over it; they know he's in there but don't really seem to care that much anymore. That will likely change when he gets out, of course, to explore the house. Hank is still a little wary, and hissed and growled at him through the baby gate last night. Gary's response was to walk right up to the baby gate, look Hank in the face, and bap him on the nose with his little paw, as if to say "oh, shut up, I'm a child."

This is, by the way, what endeared Emmy to Hank, and after that they became inseparable.

Gary did the same thing to Charlie. Charlie's reaction to Gary is much like Hank's is -- very resistant to change, very apprehensive and somewhat frightened. Charlie's personality is very similar to Hank in many respects.

It'll pass. Hank has been big mad about any and all new cats we've brought in until he meets them, and then he absolutely loves them and takes on a father figure role. I'm sure Charlie will be perfectly fine too. Charlie loves to play, so I have a feeling he will adore playing with Gary and running around with him once he is able to. 

Gary seems to have zero fear when it comes to seeing and interacting with the other cats. They can growl and hiss at him through the baby gate and he'll walk up to them (and sometimes run up on them against the gate) and be like "Hi, I'm new, don't be a dick." He doesn't run, he doesn't cower and back away when they growl or hiss, he's just like sir, that's uncalled for, why are you like this? 

He's had the most pleasant (and sweet) interactions with Mable through the gate. She watches him but doesn't hiss or growl, and it's very clear she wants to be in there with him to see him and get to know him, but she's cautious. Gary, in response, reaches through the gate to try to touch her, wants to smell her, wants to touch noses -- we are not allowing the nose-touching of course in case he's sick with something transmissible -- but Mable looks at him with a sadness and a longing to love on the little boy. She was and is such a fan of Charlie, and I get the sense that she really, really wants another little child to love on and make over like she does with Charlie:

Charlie is as much Mable's child as he is Hank and Emmy's. She adores that little white boy so much. I have no doubts it'll be the same with Gary. 

As an aside, the house dynamics are so adorable:

Pete: the father/grandfather figure to all of the cats. All of them. Loves me and Daisy pretty equally, but definitely has times where he favors one of us over the other.

Mable: sees Pete has her father, absolutely sees Charlie as a little brother she must love and protect. Does not get along well with Emmy -- it's a tense sister-rival situation. Doesn't interact with Hank a whole lot anymore. Loves me and Daisy pretty equally, but has times where she definitely favors one of us over the other. 

Empress: sees me as the dad figure, Pete as the old man/grandfather figure. She cuddles with both of us and always tries to make sure Pete is comfortable and okay. Lover/wife of Hank, definitely sees Charlie as their son, definitely has a strong sister rivalry with Mable, almost completely ignores Daisy unless Daisy can do something for her.

Charlie: sees Pete as a dad/grandfather figure and adores him, but tries to get him to play when he's hyper, and Pete's not really into that much anymore since he's old. Definitely sees Hank as his cat father and Emmy as his cat mom. Absolutely sees Mable as a big sister and loves playing with her. Charlie adores everyone and makes sure everyone gets time and attention with and from him, including Daisy and myself. He also doesn't like conflict between the other cats (Mable and Emmy, or Hank and Emmy) and will run to break it up and put himself in the middle of it. Basically the perfect cat.

Hank: the grumpy old man/orange house loaf of the household. Sees me and Daisy as his parents and slightly favors Daisy most of the time (read: he's a mama's boy). Sees Pete as an old man/grandfather figure that he doesn't interact with much now that he's no longer a kitten. Emmy is his wife and lover, and Charlie is absolutely Hank's son (which is exactly what I wanted him to be); he adores Charlie and takes care of him, loves on him, and plays with him a lot. Mostly leaves Mable alone as she could beat the piss out of him if she wanted to/if he tried to dominate her.

I don't yet know how Gary will fit into all of these dynamics. My guess is that he'll love Pete as all the other kittens have, and that he'll become Mable and Charlie's new little brother and Hank's second son, but who knows really. They may all hate him, and he may just be the independent outcast who just loves us. And he does love us. That little boy is an absolute little lover, a cuddler, who has bonded with me and Daisy hard since we brought him home. Yesterday, he curled up in my arms to sleep like a teddy bear -- similar to the way Pete does -- and when he wasn't sleeping there, he was sleeping on my back across my shoulder blade. He wants to be with us and loves our attention. Daisy has reported similar sleeping patterns and behaviors with him. 

Yesterday, when I woke up, I sat up in bed and put on my glasses, resting my back against the headboard. Gary was out of food and wanted to make sure I knew that, so he ran up onto my chest, headbutted my nose, and then ran back to the food bowl, bashing at it with his paw so it clanked against the water bowl and got my attention. When I did not immediately get up to feed him, he returned to my chest, tried to take off my glasses, and gently bit my nose to show his displeasure. 

He is a smart little boy. And a goblin in training. As he gets more used to us and more used to the room, he's becoming bolder and is getting more active, climbing the cat tree to the top, running and jumping and playing with toys -- becoming a goblin. I had to get him a stuffed "kick toy" because he likes to wrap all four paws around our hands, arms, or legs, and then kick and chew. And those little kitten teeth are sharp. Luckily they trimmed his nails at the shelter and they're all still blunted. 

Anyway.

Today is my day off, so I have the delight of dealing with repairmen -- our AC went out on Monday morning. It's not been hot this week (highs in the 60s for the most part) so it's not been a huge concern for us at the moment. It is, however, frustrating. I also don't think it's actually the air conditioner unit, but I think the house fan on the furnace blew out because it won't turn on regardless of what we do. Could be a simple part/repair or we could need a new blower motor or something like that. I'll have to wait and see what they say, honestly. They get here between 8am and noon, so I'm up early to help handle that when they do. Daisy will be chained to her desk all day for her job, so this is one of those responsibilities that falls on me. 

Yesterday was Hank's 2nd birthday. The pictures I got are...not great, so I won't share them here. He was grumpy and did not like the hat on him. The next birthday up is Empress in November. It would've been Maggie/Sadie later this month, but, well, they're both dead now.