Pete's 18th Birthday

 Today is Pete's 18th birthday.

That's it. That's the post.

Eating the Wounded

 So, funny story.

Did you know that when you have a fishtank full of snails, they control the population within said tank all by themselves?

If you did know that, do you know how they do it?

No, they don't fuck less -- believe me, there is a lot of snail-fucking going on in our tank, at almost all times.

They eat their own. They eat their weaker tank residents -- the young, the old, the dead, the enfeebled -- shells and all.

We found this out in the most gruesome way this weekend, as we noticed that our very first snail, Speedy, a "mystery snail" we bought from PetSmart many months ago, did not look like he was doing too well. He was developing holes in his shell and was nowhere near as active or zoomy around the tank (which is what got him his name) as he had been in the past. He was still alive though, still kicking, still wandering around the tank every day. 

Note, we've realized that it's hard to keep this tank properly pH-balanced; the acidity is always higher than we'd like. Daisy has tried various methods of controlling this, from regular water changes and water additives/stabilizers to me adding calcium tablets every two months or to so that the snails (and shrimp, but we'll get to that) have strong and healthy shells. There's only so much we can do, though; having forty or so snails in there really strips the calcium out of the water and makes the tank more acidic than balanced. 

So, anyway, back to the story. These Ramshorn snails, which are basically "pest" snails, were stowaways on the plants we purchased for the tank -- it's the only real explanation as to how we got them, because they just randomly began showing up in the tank once we got the plants for it. And, to be fair, they are fun to watch, they don't really require a lot of maintenance, and they do keep the tank somewhat clean. But, they multiply like crazy. We went from six to twenty in the span of two or three months, and from twenty to at least forty in another two or three months. Each time Daisy cleans the tank, she pulls out a few smaller dead ones, snails who have been born, lived, and perished, all of their lifecycle spent entirely within our tank.

After the population increased to forty or so, we noticed (independently, actually) that our two blue shrimp had stopped coming out for feedings -- I feed the shrimp and snails every other day or so. For a long time, as soon as the new food was put in the tank, the shrimp would come out and be all over it along with the snails. 

Soon, we only saw one of the two shrimp on a regular basis. Then that lone shrimp disappeared over the course of a week or two.

I have not seen either shrimp in the tank in a month. And now I'm pretty sure why.

As Speedy slowed down, we watched some of the younger snails hitching a ride on his back as he zoomed across the tank. I thought this was cute, Speedy being a father-figure for snails who weren't even the same species as him. I then slowly realized the terrible truth: they were eating him.

Two mornings ago, we noticed a giant clump of snails at the bottom of the tank. This is nothing new; they pile on one another in a big ball when they're given food, and they can reduce a few algae discs (one of their primary food sources) to mere crumbs in a few hours. 

Except this time, they hadn't been fed. At the center of the clump of snails was Speedy. All of them were latched onto him, and they were all eating him. 

I don't know at this point that Speedy was dead; in fact, two days later, I am still not completely sure he's actually dead -- but I can tell you that about 60% of his shell has been eaten, and if he's not dead right now, he will be very soon. Will they eat his soft fleshy body inside the shell too? Who knows.

The Ramshorns have latched onto him, and knowing their appetite, soon there will be nothing left. Daisy feels really bad about it, but I'm much more of a "this is the circle of life" guy. 

I did feed them yesterday morning, algae discs to lure them away from Speedy so I could get a better look. Still only about half the ball of snails left him to eat the algae discs, but I was able to see that his shell was, at that point, mostly already gone. So it's possible he was alive and suffering, or it's possible he died, sank to the bottom of the tank, and became food for the other snails.

I now no longer wonder what happened to the shrimp -- they likely died and became food themselves.

I realize this is a somewhat gruesome topic to write about, but still.

Daisy did some research -- snails are opportunistic predators and scavengers of anything in the tank with them that they'd deem as edible, and most snails are known to eat other snails (and apparently, dead or dying shrimp), plants, etc. 

This also explains why their population has not gotten larger than forty or so -- the ones that are weak and/or die are likely being eaten shell and all, aside from the clearly-dead ones Daisy pulls out every few weeks when the tank gets a deep-clean and water change. 

Lucy, our betta, appears to be completely oblivious and/or unaffected; he appears healthy, he's obviously getting enough food of his own, and remains active and social with us. Daisy thinks he may also be eating the smaller/younger snails (bettas can and will do that) but I've never seen it. I've seen him try, on some of the very small babies, but he spits 'em right back out. Lucy gets betta food every day anyway, so he's not starving. 

Anyway, memorial services for Speedy will be held tomorrow at 4pm, and a celebration of life will follow at 5:30. Please bring a covered dish. 

Kidding.

Say what you will about my cats, but at least they don't eat each other.

The Grand Tomorrow, Part IV

 I am, unofficially, back on overnights at my new job.

As part of my "I will do what is necessary and be a team player" mentality -- which is a very strong, important part of my work ethic -- I volunteered to cover overnights on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday this week. This is, generally, way outside of my normal work schedule (well, somewhat), especially as I'd been working Monday through Friday dayshifts for the past month, and as such I was offered comp time for these overnights I covered -- shifts which were 8pm to 8am, three in a row. 

I took the comp time, of course -- and I don't return to work again until Sunday night (Easter).

What am I doing on the overnights?

Next to nothing, honestly.

Myself and about ten other colleagues are, essentially, rebuilding our program from scratch with this new company. Remember how I said I was working with many others who had jumped ship from my old company to the new one? Well, I am. And we're still doing the same things, the same jobs, we had at the old company -- but under a completely new leadership structure and corporate structure. We are trying to make our roles and what we do fit into that structure, and that involves a lot of rebuilding, rebranding, and redesigning our program from the bottom up. That also means we are in no way able to just jump back into owning clients and escalations yet, which is a major part of...well...what we do. At the moment we are a functioning skeleton crew of expatriates who have struck out on their own and dropped anchor in a new port. If that makes sense.

So, on overnights? I am basically sitting there and watching a chatroom on Teams, a room that has all of our corporate overlords' executive leadership in it, and am waiting for one of them to engage me on an escalation that I can pick up and run with/handle. On Saturday I worked one for about three hours, hardcore, and then it came to a stopping point. On Sunday I didn't hear a peep out of anyone, and on Monday night I was engaged on one in the early morning hours before I left, and worked it until I could pass it off to the morning shift. 

And then my comp time started, and an on-call schedule started, and I won't return until Sunday night.

So, I mean, the work is the same. Roughly. It's just very odd right now with the way it's structured. That'll all smooth itself out over the next month or two and things will get back to "normal," more or less. This next week I assume I'll return to more of a "normal" schedule for me and we'll go from there, I guess.

It is what it is. Truthfully, I have a great admiration of the new company's principles and how they do their business, and my higher-ups will always have my respect. I've told them I'm here to help smooth out any transition issues and my knowledge and experience base can only be helpful in most scenarios. So, we'll see what happens. I can tell you I am very glad my pay is much higher than it was before and I am glad to be using a brand new Lenovo Thinkpad laptop instead of the ancient desktop with two giant bulky monitors I had for the old company, so that's a plus at least. If I really wanted to, I could work from my lounge chair in my office upstairs -- and I thought about it -- but to be in more of a "work mode" I have to be downstairs at my desk. There's something about the desk that puts me in the mindset of work.

Anyway, moving on.

As I've mentioned here previously, Daisy and I are now volunteering at the humane society. We've been doing it two weeks now, and it has been an intensely rewarding experience for me. It is also an intensely tiring one. I see volunteers there much older than us who are working long, hard hours -- not staff, mind you, but other volunteers -- walking dogs, cleaning kennels, doing large amounts of laundry in different machines, etc. I myself did the equivalent of probably four wash loads and six dryer loads in my time there yesterday, for example, and when my "shift" was over there was still enough laundry to give another person work for an entire day and night. An immense amount of animals goes through the shelter system every week, both intakes and adoptions -- not to mention the ones that come in who need to be put down because they've been hit by cars (that happened yesterday, while we were there) or what have you. 

It is also a constantly busy, always-moving building -- not only with staff and other volunteers there but with the general public going in and out at almost all times. Most of the actual staff don't tend to be very pleasant or nice (there are, however, a few who are wonderful) and the public is, well, the public. Some of them are pleasant and others are oblivious or look at us like we're in their way. 

Look, I just want to help. I know a lot of it is almost certainly thankless work, and I'm certainly not getting paid for it -- I just want to do what I can. One of the older volunteer ladies a few weeks ago mentioned to us, on the way out, not to get frustrated and urged us not to quit, to rise above the "drama" of the place. We sort of found that statement odd and kind of laughed it off at the time, but it makes a lot more sense now. 

I did get to see kittens being born yesterday -- which I've never seen before -- and we got to learn how to mix food for the kitten feedings. That's likely going to be Daisy's passion project in our volunteering -- she wants to be the feline welfare assistant, the kitten feeder, and there are a lot of people in line for that particular position. I am content, as previously mentioned, being one of the people behind the scenes who takes care of the jobs (like laundry) that hold the place together, and helping out in the background where I can. I'm not in it for the glamour of it, though I will say that next weekend we are helping to run the shelter's youth volunteer day, whatever that is. Our shift is later in the afternoon and we'll be working out of the auditorium, so whatever we can do to help there I was absolutely on board for. If I need to give a presentation on how awesome the shelter is, I can do that on the fly, as I love holding the attention of an audience. We'll see, though. 

We each have three uniform shirts, and I say "uniform" loosely because they don't even appear to be required attire; I see volunteers there every week just wearing street clothes with their name badges and keycards on them. Our first shirts we bought on our first day there -- Daisy got a short-sleeve deep purple tee and I got a long-sleeve sky-blue tee. Our second shirts were free shirts, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Humane Society this year; both are lavender. Our third shirts we purchased yesterday, both are the newest design and are a medium purple (though we had the option to get gold ones as well). 

In case you hadn't realized at this point, I am really into this. And it gives me a lot of exercise I wouldn't normally get via other means or by sitting on my ass at home on the weekends. I am sore and tired when I get home from the shelter after our shifts, but it is a good sore and tired. I've done work, I've done something that contributes to the shelter and to our community. It doesn't have to be fun, and it's not about doing something fun for me. It's for the animals, and for the wonderful institution that has given us four wonderful cats in the past two years. 

That being said, there are perks:

We got to meet these two little beauties yesterday, as well as their other siblings -- all of whom look pretty similar. All are scheduled to be fixed either today or tomorrow and then put up for adoption. We're very fond of the little one in front with the nose patterns; he is a little boy who purrs and is very lovey, just like Charlie was. Daisy is debating on whether we should "reserve" him to adopt before he's released to the adoption pool, as we can, legally, take on one more cat if we'd like. 

I'm not opposed to adopting him if Daisy wants him, but he is one of several beautiful little cats there right now as we are just now entering into kitten season. I told Daisy he's a wonderful little boy and I'd love to have him in the house, but I'm more of the mindset that I'd rather wait for Pete to pass and then have more clarity on what cat(s), if any, we want next. If we'd lost Pete two weeks ago, I told Daisy that I would've reserved this little cute-nosed boy and his more traditional-looking seal-point sister (not pictured) in a heartbeat. As it stands, we're going to see new kittens there every week, sometimes a LOT of new kittens, from now until the fall and it's going to take a very special, almost cat-of-my-dreams-level cat, to get me to be all in on adopting a new one -- but if Daisy falls in love with one she wants in the interim, I of course will not stand in her way.

I also want to give Pete all the love we can with the time he has left. While he's mostly okay, he does have his good days and bad days, just like Maggie and Sadie did during their last several months of life. Some days he's really active and wants to eat a lot and run and chase the laser pointer (which I find remarkable at his advanced age) and other days his kidney-failure scent is strong and he just wants to lounge and sleep a lot. I have a feeling we'll know when it's his time, as it will be quite evident -- as it was for the girls. 

He turns eighteen in five days. Officially, anyway, based on the day I've always marked down as his birthday. Unofficially he's likely been eighteen for several weeks, as I only have an approximate date of birth for the old man. 

Hank turns two next week. There will be photos of both boys with party hats. 

The Grand Tomorrow, Part III

 As I have been writing these entries I must admit that I realize the amount of information I've given you about my new job, about what I do, is very limited.

That is, mostly, by design. While I'm not under any sort of non-disclosure agreement or anything like that, I am forced -- for various smaller and/or legal reasons -- to not really say much at the moment. Once the proverbial dust settles (and there is a lot of said dust), I'll be able to say more. For now, just understand that I am a lot more financially secure now than I was a year or so ago, and that all of this -- all of it -- was a very long time coming. A limited number of us knew this train was coming down the line since around or before Halloween, and I was one of those people.

So, once I can share more, I will. I'm not intentionally trying to be mysterious. 

Pete still seems mostly okay. He's slower than he was before, and I think it's fair to say that he's had some rougher days than others here and there, but he's not dead yet, and honestly doesn't appear to be getting any worse than he ever has been for the past year or so. In fact, over the past week he's gotten back to pretty much normal. Of course, we do know his time is coming and that he's on, essentially, borrowed time now as it is. Not many cats live to age eighteen, which he'll hit in a little under two weeks -- barring any other health issues or nosedives in his current state. For now, he's very much enjoying being taken on walks in the cat stroller and getting as much food and treats as he could possibly want, and being able to cuddle up with me tightly, as my teddy bear, at night when I sleep.

Charlie, as he grows, has become what I would like to refer to as "the nearly perfect cat." This little white boy is so very sweet. He adores being loved on by us and the other cats; he makes time to play with each of them individually (except Pete, who doesn't really play back due to his advanced age). He makes time to play with both Daisy and me, sometimes individually and sometimes together. He will lovingly ask for attention and pets/rubs, and as of late he has taken to sleeping with me at night either on my crotch or at my hip or side. He is an explorer, he is adventurous, he is a food vacuum, and every moment he's awake he seems thrilled to be alive and in this house with all of us. He immediately adjusted to this household and made friends with everyone. I've never seen a cat with a personality like Charlie's -- he is equal parts rambunctious Hank-as-a-kitten and Pete-as-a-kitten, with the intelligence and cuddliness of both of them put together. He taught himself how to fetch from the first day we had him. He purrs like Maggie and trills and cries like Mable when he feels needy. 

There is zero Sadie or Empress in this cat. Mind you, I love those girls very much (yes, even the dead one) but he possesses none of their qualities, their aloofness, their demeanor. Charlie is almost their exact opposite in every way.

We have settled on just calling him Charlie all the time; it is rare that we use the formal Charles with him. He's not a formal cat, he's a drunken frat boy at a kegger with white fur. This is the cat who was so intent on watching me pee that he came running at a full sprint, jumped up on the rim of the toilet, and stuck his head under the stream.

Yes, this happened.

This is the cat who sits on the bathroom counter with me while I shave or brush my teeth, or while Daisy uses the very loud hair dryer, and remains unfazed. 

He's a weird one, is what I'm saying. He may be the most unique cat I've ever seen. And we love him so very much. 

Anyway.

As I'm sure you know if you've been following my page for any length of time, we're not really fans of the political climate in this country right now. I wouldn't necessarily call myself a Democrat anymore, not really; I wouldn't be able to call myself that in good conscience because I believe most Democrats these days are milquetoast and ineffectual -- something I never want to be. I'm more of a liberal independent more than anything else. I'm a big fan of actual action and justice, not just cheap talk. 

However, as I am employed full time again, as is the wife, actual action and justice is a lot harder for us to take part in than for people who have a lot of free time, who don't have five cats, who don't volunteer at the local shelter on the weekends (more on this soon too) and who actually get meaningful/restful sleep. 

That being said, we both -- along with Daisy's mother -- went to and proudly supported the protests in Omaha (which were held in pretty much every other major city too) last weekend. It was bright, it was chilly, but it was so very worth it. We saw several very powerful speakers, such as our mayoral candidate and other local government entities, got to see many, many hilarious protest signs, and wore beads (like Mardi Gras). They expected 5,000 at Omaha's Memorial Park and I'm pretty sure they got and surpassed that. I even got to meet local Tiktok star The North Omaha Cat Lady, who has a giant following both here in town and around the world -- and she was incredibly sweet to her fans who recognized and approached her. I wasn't intrusive but I did say hi, tell her how much I loved her content, and had a brief chat with her about the protest and her kids (she's a schoolteacher, when she's not making content online) before making a graceful exit when she was approached by other fans. 

I think the protest showed a lot of support for basic humanity and a longing to return to some semblance of normal in this country -- if we even know, as a society, what normal is anymore. I say this because I am not even sure what normal is. Look at the past ten years -- we saw the rise of a pseudo-dictator, a worldwide pandemic with millions dead and nationwide lockdowns, price gouging, supply chain problems, a brief return to stability but with a lame-duck president, the opportunity to elect the first progressive woman of color as a president that was soundly rejected by old, white, sexist racists who apparently make up much more of this country than I ever could have imagined, and now the return of the pseudo-dictator with more cronies igniting a giant trade war. 

Most of the world is pissed off at the United States right now, and rightly so. Do you know how bad you have to fuck up to get Canada to hate you? Canada. Let that sink in for a minute. Canada.

This hits home for us a lot harder than it does for most people. As you know, Daisy and I have very strong connections to Canada; we have a lot of family there. Daisy's entire family, aside from a few aunts and cousins on her father's side, are Canadian. Daisy herself has dual citizenship. I adore Canada, and I love our Canadian family very much -- Canadian family who immediately accepted me into their arms and homes without questions or criticisms when I married Daisy eleven years ago now. Canadian family who, since 2015, we have visited four times for long stretches of time, saving most of our vacation days every year to do so. I've written here before that I felt like an interloper, an outsider, on the first couple of visits -- I no longer feel that way. I am the American Husband, yes, but the past three times I've been there, I am a Canadian for the duration of that trip.

So, to see Canada so angry at the US is really sort of a culture shock to me. I mean, yes, I completely understand it. But it is so very different politically, socially, and culturally now than I've seen before. And yes, I understand that they are not angry at the American people, per se, just the government, our dictator-in-chief, and the tariff policies -- because they have brains and compassion and realize that the people are separate from the government and that we're suffering too, as people -- but there is not a lot of separation for many Canadians, honestly. Our family loves us because of who we are and they understand that we're not the government, we don't support the dictator-in-chief personally, but...the very fact that we are American will separate us a bit from the rest of Canadian society when we visit Canada from this point forward, and our reception will be icy in a lot of places.

And that's another question that must be asked, too -- are we going to be able to visit Canada monetarily, time-wise, or legally (I say this because honestly, with the way things are going, who knows) in the foreseeable future? I don't honestly know.

Daisy's cousin, who she's always been close with and who I have developed a closeness with as well over the years, is getting married in October. Daisy and I are but two of a very small number of friends and family who have been invited as the wedding will be a backyard one, a small event, over the weekend of Canadian Thanksgiving (read: Columbus Day for all of us Americans). Daisy's cousin is an awesome person and so is her fiance, who I got to know very quickly a few years ago. He is basically the Canadian version of me, except he went into the Navy and I went into telecom. But, they are great people, and we planned to attend the wedding.

And then the dictator-in-chief got elected to a second term and all hell broke loose diplomatically between our countries, on multiple fronts.

So...what are we going to do?

As it stands, we still plan to attend the wedding. Daisy and I should have enough PTO from our respective jobs to cover it, and we can afford the trip -- even if it's a quick in-and-out, say hi to relatives for a few days, attend the wedding, and fly back home. And it's important to us. Our passports have been renewed, our lives are relatively stable at the moment, and theoretically we should have no obstacles to stop us from making the trip. I'm even factoring Pete's health into this, as I don't think (realistically) he will live until October, but the four cats of the younger generation should be fine for us to be gone for a few days.

But, politically? When it comes to relations between our two countries between now and then? Who knows. October is six months away; anything can happen in six months. I trust approximately zero percent of what is coming out of our government right now. 

The Grand Tomorrow, Part II

 Pete is fine. Last week, we were not sure that was going to be the case.

So, to recap a little -- last Monday morning, we were convinced that his trip to the vet, as he could barely move and was so weak and sick -- would be his last one. To be fair, he is turning 18 this month and he has been in slow kidney failure for the past few years.

I've said here before that our vet is the best vet I've ever known; he knows we are very good pet parents (and told us so) and he knows Pete well at this point. He also knows Pete's history and his medical needs, and agreed with the VCA that it was very likely he had some sort of stomach bug, noted that the antibiotics were perfectly fine for us to give him, and told us that he'd run bloodwork. In the interim he prescribed an appetite stimulant gel that we would rub on the inside of Pete's ear once a day, and gave us a couple of days' worth of anti-nausea pills for the poor old man too. 

Pete was really not doing well. He was very lethargic and still refusing food. He'd drink water, and a lot of it, if we brought it to him on the couch. He would then get up a bit later and go to pee it out in the pan before returning to his exact spot on the couch. His pee seemed normal. At night, when we both went to bed, he became very clingy with us -- me especially -- and would climb up onto my shoulder/chest as if to hold onto me for dear life. It was a waiting game more than anything else. The bloodwork would tell us what we needed to know.

Early the next morning the vet called us with the results of the bloodwork, and we braced for the worst. The bloodwork confirmed our vet's thoughts -- this was not his kidneys finally shutting down, but a stomach bug. His kidney numbers actually looked better than they looked the last time we'd had him in. However, his thyroid numbers were off the charts high, which was probably contributing to how badly he felt and how actually sick/nauseous he was. We'd stopped all of Pete's medications when he began vomiting and having diarrhea because he couldn't keep his pills, or any food/water, down anyway. Based on the bloodwork it was now fine to restart them as per the usual, and keep monitoring him here at home. We were told to keep an eye on him as it may take him a few days to have a bowel movement because of the nausea medication, but the antibiotic should work to clear out his stomach bug, the probiotic powder that VCA gave us (and which we ordered more of off Amazon) would help him feel better too, and the appetite stimulant gel should get him eating again -- basically, unless he got worse or didn't get better at all, he'd be fine. The vet also said we should bring him in again in about a month, just to recheck the thyroid levels to see if they were looking more normal after he got the medicine back in his system again to see if we needed to adjust dosages or what have you.

Remarkably, and rapidly, he did get better. The appetite stimulant gel turned Pete into what I call a food vacuum -- he became aggressively hungry and ate almost everything he could. Treats, dry food, wet food that normally he would turn his nose up at, Churus, you name it. He would climb up on us while we were eating dinner and try to eat food out of our mouths. He was still a bit weak throughout the week though, and it was clear his muscles and joints were hurting him. This also seemed to fade as we entered the weekend.

For all intents and purposes now, Pete is back to normal. He's eating normally, if not a bit more than he used to, he's drinking water, he's using the pans per the usual, and once again seems like the same Pete we've always known and loved. He spends his days with me, while I'm working downstairs at my new job, on the couch next to me -- just like he did most of the time when I worked overnights. At night, he comes up to bed with us, waits for us, and snuggles in between us or on me as is his custom. Usually Charlie or Mable join him/us as well. To those ends, Daisy and I have been doing everything we can to give him some extra love and make sure he's well-fed and comfortable, and we're thankful this latest crisis now appears to be over for the time being. 

So, there's that.

The new job is at times challenging and frustrating. I have, essentially, started over at a new company as a new employee, but I have not done so alone. Multiple colleagues and peers from my old company have done the same with this new employer, and more are coming over between now and...well, basically June. The logistics of this, and the reasoning behind it, I still have to keep you all in the dark here on for at least a little while longer. Suffice it to say that myself and my colleagues are all still cogs in the telecom machine, and that machine is a very large entity with many moving parts. Some parts move slower than others.

I have adjusted now to a life of setting my alarm clock (eew, yes, I know) for 6am -- well before Daisy gets up -- making myself feel somewhat awake, logging onto my work-issued laptop sometime in the 7am hour, and then getting off work sometime between 4 and 5 every day. In the meantime, I have a lunch hour somewhere in there that is an actual lunch hour, I get to see sunlight and daylight again, and in this long transition period I spend my day on group video calls, doing trainings, and generally having a much more relaxed working experience than I ever had on overnights. 

Am I eventually going to return to overnights? Likely, but at this point...I don't know. We have to let a lot of dust settle first. I was brought on when I was due to my longevity, expertise in the job, and my overall reliability. I am, as my executive director has told me many times over the years, "abundantly competent" at my job. I have that reputation with multiple client executives as well, and I must do what I can to keep that reputation. 

But, I mean, there are pain points in all of this too -- the onboarding process for this new job was positively asinine and incredibly personally intrusive, and even though I've been working there for almost a month (yesterday started my fourth week) it is still not completely done. My W4, for example, is broken and I can't update it in their systems (there's a helpdesk ticket open for this, of course). Our client phone systems don't work for most of us yet. I just got access to client tools four days ago. I was finally able to sign up for health insurance last week, and last I checked, my 401k was still glitching when I accessed the site. Etc. It's a long process. Myself and two other managers were brought over early to become the "test bed" for these systems in order to streamline the process for all other new hires, and while our experiences do tend to help with that, it does mean that we'll experience more pain points than most as we try to get our feet on the ground.

I will say though -- it is not bad at all. I am still working with people I've known for a decade. It's a completely different environment, yes, but essentially it's the same people in the same baseline job -- again, I'll be able to elaborate more on this as time goes by. And, in case I didn't mention it (even if I did, I'm going to say it again), I got a 20% raise. The insurance benefits are great and are inexpensive. And I still don't have to go to an office -- my cats surround me every day while I work, and I can dick around on my phone or listen to a podcast in-between tasks. 

I don't know if I mentioned it here before, but Daisy and I are also working to better ourselves outside of any work environment too -- she and I have become volunteers at the Humane Society here in town. We went through orientation two weeks ago, received our badges and shirts, and we start our first official shifts on Saturday morning -- doing laundry for the shelter.

Now, mind you, Daisy doesn't always want to be the laundryperson for the shelter; she's more adventurous than I am and eventually wants to be one of the kitten feeders, cat welfare assistants, etc. -- but, honestly I don't mind it. My time is very valuable and important to me, but with volunteering I know that every little bit helps. And that's all I want to do -- I want to help, I want to give back. Not everything is glamorous. I'll do laundry for the shelter, I'll organize the food stores and donations, I'll do paperwork or clean litter pans or run the front desk or run the cash register in the pet supply store onsite -- I absolutely don't care for the most part. I just want to help. I want to give back to this wonderful shelter who, in the past two years, has provided us with four cats to love -- four cats who have brought so much happiness and love into our home. 

So, as laundry shifts are what's available at the moment...laundry it is. 

Not too much different than any other Saturday for me, I guess -- the bulk of my weekends are spent doing our own laundry for free, might as well do it while wearing a uniform and help out some animals at the same time.

Being a volunteer gives special access and a few perks/privileges that kick in after awhile. For one, as volunteers we get first pick of the new animals that come in, so if our dream cat does eventually come along, we can attempt to snag it first before it hits the general public. For two, Daisy's job will give the charity of her choice something like $500 a year once she completes so many hours of volunteer work there (and it's a ridiculously low number too, something like eight hours). Plus I guess we get discounts in the on-site store, after a predetermined number of hours (I think 100) we can get $100 off an adoption fee, etc. Just stuff like that. Obviously that's not why we're doing it, of course, but still. I plan to ignore most of the perks until there's something we can actively use, because I just want to help the animals and give something back to the community. 

On the wall outside the small volunteers' office, there's a plaque with a long list of brass engraved plates with names and years for "volunteer of the year." Sometimes it's a single person, sometimes it's a couple, and at least one year it was "all volunteers." I told Daisy that there's a primal need in me to have my name on that plaque. She can have whatever goals she wants in volunteering there when it comes to helping out the animals, and I have those goals too, but overall, that's mine -- I just desperately want someone to care and to recognize that yes, I am doing something good. Nobody has to know who I am. I can just be another face in the crowd, but I can't tell you how much I want my name on that plaque.

The Grand Tomorrow, Part I

So, here's the big news.

I have begun a new job within a new company, and three weeks ago, I resigned from my job of ten-plus years. 

This has been a grand process and a monumental undertaking for me that started back before the turn of the year, began moving near the end of January, and finally completed at the end of February.

My new job is in the same field, with many of the same colleagues I previously worked with (including fellow leadership). It is still entirely work-from-home. I got a close to 20% raise (very close, actually). The benefits are better. The company-issued hardware is better. The time off, including paid sick leave and now including bank holidays off -- is better. The company promotes individuality and is a strong supporter of DEI. 

And the best part is that I was finally able to leave the corporation I worked for for the past decade. 

As I said -- this is the big news. This is the news I've been waiting to share here.

It has not been without strife.

The onboarding process for the new company was excruciatingly, painfully slow -- fraught with delays and long wait times between small bouts of communication back and forth with their recruiting and HR teams. I was originally supposed to start March 10th, and that got pushed back. I had to accept two different offer letters because of the date change. I had to provide every form of identification I have short of my birth certificate (but including my passport, twice) to prove that yes, I am who I say I am. I had to leave the house in the middle of the day, go to a very specific clinic 20 miles south of me, and pee in a cup for a drug test on a timer to get it processed on their schedule. In order to get this job I had to, in short, give them pretty much every part of me except for my fingerprints and a vial of blood. 

But, I mean, almost 20% raise, so...

I set my last working day at my old company as February 27 in order to give myself a good solid week of downtime. That became two weeks when they pushed back my start date. I was still technically employed by the old company until the 14th, when final paperwork went through and my final resignation letter was submitted (we were waiting to see if the old company would offer me a severance, which was on the table as they're doing some...shall we say...restructuring, but they did not). 

I will, eventually, be able to give more details than this.

I am currently working normal daytime hours again for the first time in well over a decade -- "on the clock" at 8am, so to speak, and "off the clock" at 5pm. It is a very wild adjustment for me to see sunlight again and to be mobile during the hours that everyone else in the world is. It's also very strange for me to be in bed every night between ten and midnight -- just absolutely bizarre to me compared to my "normal" overnight hours of work.

That being said, I've been trying to make the most of the time I have where possible. Daisy is working during the daytime hours during the week, so my time with her has been rather limited most days. The time we have together has been in the evenings, getting quality time together and running errands, tying up loose ends, and getting all of the important things taken care of.

To those ends, we got Charlie in for his second vet appointment, where he got his next round of vaccines, and we'll take him in again one final time next weekend to get his rabies shot and tags for it. He is exceptionally healthy, per the vet -- our vet thinks he's going to be gigantic, larger than the other cats in the house -- based on his weight and size already. He is currently eighteen (or so) weeks old and is clocking in at just under five pounds. He is larger and more muscular than any of the other kittens we've acquired over the past two years, and he has the longest legs (we call him Mr. Longlegs). He is also now -- thankfully -- parasite-free. Daisy ordered and performed one of the DNA tests on him and we sent it off in the mail a few weeks ago, and they confirmed they're doing the sequencing of it now, so we will eventually get to see what genetics he has inside of him. I will, of course, update everyone here when that happens.

Charlie has integrated very well into the household dynamic -- he makes time for everyone. He and Hank especially love each other, and he's become Hank and Emmy's son for all practical purposes. 

He's also become Mable's "sibling," so to speak, and has hours of playtime and cuddle time with her every day. She loves the little man because he can match her energy. Pete, of course, Charlie cuddles and sleeps with as well, because everyone loves Pete and Pete loves everyone. 

Charlie is the sweetest little man. He sleeps in Daisy's arms at night -- not every night, but a fair amount of the time -- and has cuddled with/slept with or on me on numerous occasions. Many of those occasions have been over the past several weeks. There are times where he wants much more attention from me, and times where he wants much more attention from Daisy. There are also times where he doesn't want either of us and just fucks off to lounge in the cat tree, or tear ass around the house with one or more of the other cats.

Charlie is a voracious eater of treats and Churus, and when he's hungry he'll go to town on a plate or bowl of food too. I call him the food vacuum because if there's food in a bowl that he likes (there is, of course, food he doesn't really like), he will make sure it's gone over the course of 12 hours or so. 

We've begun taking him for walks outdoors in the stroller as well:

That's Charlie and Emmy on one side and the voids (Pete and Mable) on the other. 

Hank does not like the stroller or even the thought of the outside world -- he is an orange house loaf and will not deviate from that mindset.

During this time we've also taken the initiative to get new doctor's appointments for ourselves -- as well as a dentist appointment for Daisy and an eye appointment for me. My bloodwork says I'm basically about the same, if not better than before, though my A1C has risen slightly. I'll go back in six months for another checkup. My (new) optometrist, however, says that my vision is slowly declining, and that I'm right at the cusp of needing progressives or bifocals -- and asked if I'd ever had "lazy eye." 

I haven't, by the way. 

I got my prescription updated, had new lenses put in a pair of my old, expensive (read: not going to donate them anytime soon) glasses from years past, and ordered five cheaper pairs and a pair of sunglasses from my normal glasses supplier. All of them are fine, and I finally have what I like to call HD vision again.

I figured that as long as I had the insurance and was paying for it, I'm gonna goddamn use it. 

My insurance for the old job runs through the end of the month (read: today), and I have not yet had the opportunity to sign up for the new insurance yet. It's there, but half the time the website isn't working or it errors out.

I also got a haircut about a month ago, and re-bleached my hair to dye it again. I wanted to do it a dark, forest-y teal green, and got a bottle of dye in the exact color I wanted.

Turns out though that, when bleached, my hair really latches onto the green hues in dyes and turns them really bright, almost neon -- Joker green. So, I've had to mess with the color a bit, adding in more blue and dark blue to get it to be close to the color I wanted -- which didn't really work as well as I'd hoped. I got mostly there, but the lighter green, now a bright turquoise like I had last summer (think "cotton candy" blue) -- stuck in there a lot and remained visible through the darker colors.

Fuck it, I said, eventually -- and ordered three bottles of the blackest hair dye I could find. 

Base colors of black hair dye are either dark blue/purple or a deep, dark forest green. Sooooo....yeah, it's mostly black now with still some blue and/or green shining through it. 

I mean, it is what it is. I've been told that there's a grand possibility that I'll be put on a video call with higher leadership for our new company, and the darker and less multicolored my hair looks on said call will be better. It's not that there's any specific policy about having strangely-colored hair, but I do want to present myself in a professional manner if I'm going to need to video-collaborate with people who could point at me and end my employment because I don't confirm to some uptight corporate standard.

Not everything is great, though -- and I will be the first to admit that.

We've had plumbers come to fix not just one, but both of our toilets no less than four times in the past several months. At this juncture, they're fixed, but it took four visits and basically all new internal parts in both of them to get them to work correctly.

Pete is also, unfortunately, on his way out.

I did not want to mention this above as I was focusing on Charlie and his growth, but Pete is finally reaching the end of his days. We don't know when it will be, but it will very likely be soon.

Daisy is very distraught. Understandably so.

He began getting sick on Thursday -- diarrhea, vomiting anytime he ate something, etc. By Saturday he was barely eating anything at all, and the vomiting and diarrhea continued. He did not want to move from the bed or couch, other than to occasionally use the pan. 

We rushed him to the animal hospital Saturday afternoon, where they said it was likely he had a stomach bug. They gave him intravenous fluids and a nausea shot, and some probiotics powder/antibiotics pills for what was very likely, to them, as the cat version of a stomach flu.

Sunday he barely moved. He did not want to eat anything, and what he did consume was mostly forced. We made the decision that he would absolutely need to go to our normal vet first thing Monday morning. 

Monday morning came around and he still did not want to move, did not want to eat, etc. We did get him to drink a good bit of water, but he seemed like he was having trouble sitting up from a laying-down position, like he couldn't get the strength to do it. We had not yet started him on the antibiotics, as Daisy had done some research on them in the interim and found that they should be used with extreme caution in cases of cats with kidney failure -- which, as you may know, Pete has been in for some time.

We were both seeing multiple parallels to our dear, departed Maggie -- who died of kidney failure in early 2024 when she'd had it about the same length of time that Pete has now had it. Maggie went from fine to dead over the span of a little less than a week. 

We were also reminded of Sadie, who went from mostly fine -- just older and slower -- to seizing up and being scared and having no strength or real mobility without almost or actually falling over (and, of course, to dead) in the span of about three days.

Pete's the only old one left. 

So, Monday morning, we were prepared to go to the vet once more with a cat and not return home with one. 

We did end up returning home with Pete.

He is not doing that great, but seems to be slowly recovering. He's moving around more now, is eating small amounts of treats and Churu (he still turns his nose up at food, but he's always been a picky eater when it comes to wet or dry food anyway), and is drinking a lot more water. Our (wonderful) vet gave us the OK to give him the antibiotics, and gave him an appetite stimulant and the pill form of the nausea medication the animal hospital injected him with on Saturday.

By the afternoon hours he was up and moving around a little more, went to the pan to pee, ate some treats off the cat stairs, and slowly began to seem like a little more of his normal self.

But, for all we know, it could be very short-lived.

The vet is currently running blood tests -- a full spectrum of them -- to see where Pete is in his kidney failure. Vomiting and diarrhea multiple times per day is not just a sign of a cat stomach flu, it is also a sign that his kidneys may be completely failing him, that his liver or pancreas or both are failing him, or any other number of things -- but mainly those. If numbers are relatively unchanged from his last bloodwork at the beginning of the year, it's likely just a stomach bug that'll run its course with the help of the meds we're giving him and he should be somewhat normal (well, normal for Pete) in a few days.

If his numbers are worse, or much worse, we know that it's time. And to those ends, Daisy and I have already begun some rough end-of-life planning for him. It is very hard to talk about or discuss because there is so much pain and emotion involved. I was convinced that we likely weren't coming home with him on Monday morning, and when we did I was relieved...but it really is just a matter of time. If it's not this time it'll be the next one, or the next one, and then we'll have to make the proverbial call then.

"If it's the end," Daisy said to me, "I don't want to just take him in tomorrow. We can schedule it out."

We should be getting the call with the bloodwork results tomorrow.

I am deathly afraid (honestly, no pun intended) that I'm going to find him dead in the house one morning -- on the couch, on the floor, or between us in bed -- and if that happens I will absolutely lose my grip on sanity. I do not want that. I want him to go peacefully, but I...I really can't see him like that or deal with handling his body.

Daisy suggested that when it's time, we schedule someone to come to the house and do it here -- there are a number of people around town who do that. It would also let the other cats say goodbye to him. There's just something about that which is intensely creepy to me too -- to know the cat still died in this house, in whatever spot it's done in. It may be the best option in the end, but maybe I'm just too emotional about it. I've got a really fragile psyche at the moment and I don't exactly know why. I just know that I'm stressed and sad and Pete is my boy -- I have had him since he wasn't even two months old, he has lived with me across three states and five major moves. He has been my teddy bear, Daisy's teddy bear, and Daisy's son, for all intents and purposes. She loves that cat more than she loves life. He is her child. Losing him, even though we know it's coming, is on some level far worse than losing Maggie and Sadie. 

I will, of course, let everyone know here what happens.

Finally, as if to mark the end of an old era and the beginning of a new one, today the weather has predicted possible violent storms for Omaha.

It can't be helped, of course; we can't control the weather. I'm also happy to say that while we have high winds predicted (possible 60mph gusts) for the afternoon and evening hours, the tornado and hail chances are slim. I am 100% expecting to lose power at some point in the day. Because of the "blizzard warning" and high winds we were under a few weeks ago, Daisy purchased the same high-capacity power bank I did during last summer's storms and I made sure she had it charged so that we can keep our phones at full charge in the event of a long-lasting outage. I also have my emergency radio and wind-up flashlights we can use too. 

When you live in the midwest, you have to be prepared for this sort of stuff. It's very possible we could get nothing today, and it's very possible that our roof gets ripped off the house. You never know what's going to happen when storms/wind like this is predicted and congratulations, you now know and understand the anxiety I go through every spring/summer in Nebraska. March through late June is basically our tornado season up here, and it can get really rough. I dread it every year. This is why I desperately want to move out of the midwest as soon as possible. 

The End Times, Part III

 More is coming soon, I promise you. 

The End Times, Part II: Snailiens

 As I've mentioned here in the past, there are a number of things that I'd like to cover but either happen and pass quickly before I can get the chance to write about them or are glossed over in favor of other, bigger news. 

And, of course, there are some things that I really want to be able to write about to explain some things, but truthfully I really can't yet (or perhaps ever). Because of that, I'm sure some of you have been able to draw your own conclusions on certain events or timeframes and if so, congratulations, you know how to read between the lines. If not, well, pay attention to some context here and there. 

Anyway, moving on.

Did you know we now have a breeding colony of snails?

Likely not, as I've never had the time to write about it here. 

On Black Friday -- way back in November -- we went to the Fish Store™ here in Omaha as Daisy wanted to get some shrimp for our fishtank. Our fishtank had sat empty on the kitchen counter island for many months since the death of our betta fish, Ghost, back in April (we had, purely coincidentally, gotten Ghost on Black Friday 2023). Well, Daisy had gotten it into her mind that she wanted to get a bunch of blue dream shrimp to occupy that tank -- so she gutted the tank, cleaned it really well, and we got five blue dream shrimp and four or five aquatic plants, and she created a shrimp habitat.

Of the five shrimp we put in there -- five because we wanted a decent mix of males and females and wanted them to breed -- two immediately disappeared/died (we never saw them again), a third disappeared/died within a week, and the remaining two we're not sure aren't both males or both females because now, four months later, we still have no babies. I've come to the conclusion that if the remaining two are male and female, at least one of them is gay, if not both -- because, again, no babies. 

But, what we do have, is snails.

About two or three weeks after we set up the tank and the shrimp were living their best life, we wanted to get what they call a "mystery snail" (it's the breed name, not that it's unknown) to help keep the tank clean. I was excited about this as I think, well, snails are cool. We went to PetSmart on a day we needed to pick up litter for the cats anyhow, and purchased a single mystery snail about the size of a quarter for $4 and brought him home. We named him Speedy, as a joke, but it turned out to be an apt name. Speedy spent his days zooming around the tank, up and down the glass, across the rocks and the tank decorations, and up and down the plants. He seemed very happy. 

Several days after we got Speedy, Daisy noticed something moving in the tank that was not a shrimp and was not Speedy himself -- it was a tiny baby snail. And then another, and another. We wondered if Speedy had been pregnant, because this was highly unusual -- we had put no other snails in the tank. Suddenly, we had a population of invaders -- aliens. Snailiens.  

As they grew, we were able to identify them as Ramshorn snails, all of them bright fiery orange-red in color -- definitely not children of Speedy. We first had three or four, then five, then six big ones that seemed to crawl out of the woodwork. This first generation of six snails grew large quickly -- the biggest one becoming about the size of a dime in the course of a month or so (I named him "Monster"). And they co-existed with Speedy and the two remaining shrimp in a happy harmony. We had to assume that they were eggs that came on the plants we'd put into the tank, because there was no way they'd come from anything/anywhere else. Speedy certainly wasn't carrying eggs from another breed of snail. 

I was happy -- "Look at our little aquatic family," I told Daisy. 

Until they started fucking. And fucking a lot. 

Every time I walked by the tank there would be a veritable snail orgy going on. Bump and grind action, juices flowing, sometimes 3-4 snails together in positions that you'd just have to stop and stare at for a few minutes.

And not too long after, we'd see clusters of eggs on the sides of the tank, on the plants, on the tank structures. Soon after that, I would see little tiny specks of baby snails crawling along the glass and all of the plants. Some of these snails would grow into larger ones over a few weeks, some would just disappear (either eaten by the shrimp or the other, larger snails I'm sure). At my first true count of the babies, once they were big enough for me to count, I counted twenty-one new baby snails that were milling around the tank. 

And one really strange one.

"Daisy," I said, "this snail is not a Ramshorn, he has a pointed shell in the back and he's a completely different color."

One of the new babies was very distinctly different than the others; he had a longer shell that came to a spiral point in the back, sort of like a conch does, and he was dark gray/brown in color with a sort of mottled, tortoiseshell pattern on his shell. The Ramshorns are orange-red and Speedy is white. It was very clear that he was not a Ramshorn and not a mystery snail like Speedy. 

Daisy named him "Rusty" and he appears to have integrated well into the tank with the others. We still don't know what he is, but he's about a centimeter or so long now (perhaps slightly smaller) and wanders the tank with the rest of the babies. He seems to be doing just fine in there -- but we have no clue where he came from either, and I find it difficult to believe that one and only one viable egg from some other species of snail was latched onto the plants somewhere and found a way to hatch and thrive.

There have not been any new eggs for a month or so, but there are easily forty snails in our small, five-gallon tank. Believe me, they all come out when I drop some pellets or an algae disc in there to feed them -- the floor of the tank becomes thick with snails. Snails apparently self-regulate their populations (I'll believe that when I see it) and if that is the case, I don't expect many more. But as it is, we definitely have enough of them. 

However...

The entire reason that Daisy wanted to get the shrimp and revive the fishtank again was because she wanted to get another betta in there and have a shrimp-and-betta paradise. Ghost, our last betta fish (ironically not named after the band, as I didn't become a fan of them until long after we'd gotten him), was a white, albino-looking boy who we bought on a whim one day from PetSmart because Daisy said he called out to her and told her he would die there, in his little plastic cup on the shelf, if we didn't take him home. 

Ghost was funny. He was an active little fish, loved attention and loved feeding time, and would dart around the tank enjoying his surroundings. When we got him, Hank was still a fairly little kitten, and would sit on the floor under the tank, watching him dart back and forth, not understanding what he was watching. However, as Hank is Mr. Shortlegs, we never had to worry about him jumping up on the counter to observe Ghost more closely.

Ghost lived from when we got him in November 2023 to early April 2024 -- he slowly got more and more lethargic and ill, and despite medicinal treatments we added to the tank water and more frequent tank cleanings to see if he'd perk back up, he never really recovered. He sank to the bottom of the tank and died about a week before we got Mable. I always say that we gave him several more months of happy life than he would've had in the plastic cup at PetSmart. Daisy was sad when he left us, but neither of us were too upset -- he was a fish. It's not like he was one of the cats or anything. You also can't really bury a fish (well, you could, but what's the point?) and you're not supposed to flush fish down the toilet anymore -- so he was unceremoniously disposed of in the trash can. I did feel bad about that, but...what else were we supposed to do? Cremate him?

Anyway.

Daisy had wanted another betta since Ghost died, but this time we wanted to get one from the fish store -- a place that took really good care of their fish and also carried the more high-end, specialized "breeds" of bettas. They generally had about ten or so in stock at any given time, each of them in their own tanks. However, we were warned by the people at the fish store (and by many others online, on sites like Reddit and the like) that bettas could be predators to blue dream shrimp...or maybe they wouldn't be, if they had no interest in them. This kept us from getting one for a while.

However, with all the snails in the tank and knowing that bettas can and will eat baby snails, I told Daisy that we had to take a calculated risk here in order to try to keep the snail population down, and I wanted to get a big hungry betta to see if the fish would actually do that. While we didn't want to lose the shrimp, we'd had them for four months and they hadn't given us a single shrimp child. And, if they ever did, between the snails and the shrimp I figured it was fine to get a betta and see what happened.

Daisy was thrilled because after months of hoping we could get another betta, I was finally open to it again -- and a few weeks ago we went back to the fish store to pick one out. The one Daisy ended up getting was a multicolored, small-finned male with dark blue and orange accents and bright neon blue spots on him. His breed was "Hellboy," apparently, though don't ask me what that means or why they call the breed that. Daisy named him "Lucy," perhaps because we've been working our way through the Lucifer TV series for the past few months (but I'm also guessing the "hell" in "Hellboy" had something to do with it). I made the joke that he's a trans fish, since Daisy gave a male fish a female name. 

Lucy seems to be pretty happy most of the time with his new surroundings. He's not as active as Ghost was, but he's playful and swims around the tank and is attentive when we approach the tank. He also has no lack of food whatsoever; we feed him daily with the food we gave Ghost, and I've seen him pick off a few tiny baby snails here and there. He also seems to enjoy diving down and eating some of the food for the snails and shrimp that sinks to the bottom (it's designed to). Interestingly enough, he has never really paid any mind to the two remaining shrimp in there -- though they did hide away completely for the first week or so we had him in the tank with them. Now that they've gotten used to him and he apparently isn't a threat to them, they coexist normally. Bettas live a year or three, on average. I don't know how old Lucy is; it's possible he'll kick off in six months like Ghost did, or live for another year or two. None of the snails seem to mind him, but they're not exactly intelligent creatures -- they're slugs with shells. So, we'll see what happens. 

We'd eventually like to get some more shrimp and add them to the tank, or (if Lucy isn't exactly effective at keeping the snail population down) I would like to get a couple of crayfish to put in there, or an assassin snail. Crayfish will absolutely eat all the baby snails and assassin snails are just that -- assassins, they kill and eat other snails. However, crayfish will also eat the shrimp, and I don't want an assassin snail to kill and eat Speedy, Rusty, or Monster. So, it's really a wait-and-see scenario.

The End Times, Part I

 There are a lot of things that happen in our lives that either get bypassed, dropped, or otherwise forgotten about before I get the chance to chronicle them here, or there are times where I will mention something has happened but will gloss over it to get to the bigger picture or story I want to tell. Well, this short series of entries will be more about covering those little things as well as the bigger things.

I also wanted to note, before I begin, that I was wrong about something -- Daisy did not want a flame-point; she thought they were pretty but was always more of a blue-point or lynx-point girl. The only one she doesn't think is cute are the seal-point cats, which are my favorite (and I do slightly take offense to this). So, I must correct myself on something I said earlier -- she did not always want a flame-point cat. 

Anyway, moving on.

Something I mentioned in passing was that we'd been cleaning and reorganizing the house because we had an inspection coming up from the humane society in order to get us legally approved to adopt a sixth cat were we to want to get one. This inspection had been postponed by a week because I'd had a nasty cold which Daisy got right after me, and it hit her much harder -- we'd postponed it so that the inspector would not have to be in the house with her/our germs, and also so that we could both recover and make the house look presentable.

Look, we don't have a clean house. I'm sure there are multiple folks reading this who know me or us in real life, and have been inside our home before. We're not crazy messy or anything like that but we are a very cluttered people in the House of Brandon and Daisy™ -- and it's not for lack of want to have a cleaner, more organized space...it's generally just a lack of time and energy to make it that way, with multiple factors contributing to the general messiness. 

But, inspection. We do have the space and eventual possible want for a sixth cat. It's not something we are actively looking for at all, honestly. I have said many times that I do not want another cat until after Pete dies, and likely won't for some time even then -- Pete is the last of his generation, the first cat I ever had and could call mine, and is the cat Daisy and I have always been closest to. When he goes, it will be an emotional shotgun blast to the gut for both of us regardless of how or when it happens, and while I know it's coming, I don't know I will ever be ready for it. I'm pretty sure Daisy isn't and won't be. 

So, because of the inspection, and because we didn't know what the inspector(s) would be looking for or what they would consider black marks on our record and deny us, we wanted the house to look as good as possible. To those ends, Daisy and I both took great pains to clean the kitchen up and to absolutely gut the dining room, cleaning off the table completely, cleaning out from under it, sweeping and scrubbing the floors, and trashing everything we did not want or need. This also included cleaning out the China cabinet's drawers and cupboards so that we could store our tools and at least five full cases of canned cat food.

I'll explain that last one quickly -- when Sadie was alive, she ate like a horse. She was the biggest eater in the house, and because of her hyperthyroidism had the fastest metabolism. We were going through five cans of wet food per day, three of which Sadie would devour by herself (roughly, I mean, piecing it all together). A few weeks before Sadie died, Daisy needed to order something from Chewy.com -- I believe it was some litter -- and if she spent a certain amount on certain products, she would get like $30 off or something like that. I don't remember the details, and they're mostly unimportant now. Anyway, she already had a case of the Friskies Chicken & Tuna Dinner pate wet cat food, which was the oldies' favorite for a long time -- especially Sadie -- but it was no longer available on Amazon and we could only get it in local stores. Chewy had it, though, and she asked me if we needed anything else so that she could hit the total she needed and to get the cashback amount. I told her at the time just to get another case or two of that food, since we couldn't find it anywhere anymore and if nothing else, Sadie would eat it and probably Pete and Mable too.

Well, by the time we got it delivered, Sadie was able to eat maybe 3-4 cans of the three cases of it we had ordered before she dropped dead, and Pete no longer seemed interested in it at all. It has now become one of Mable and Emmy's favorite foods, which is fine, but...we still have three cases of it and they don't eat anywhere near as much as Sadie did, so we had to make space for that (as well as all of the other canned cat food we had) in one of the deep drawers of the China cabinet. 

Anyway.

The dining room was a grand undertaking. We have a giant, fifteen-foot-long dining room table (no, that is not an exaggeration and for the past six years it was our go-to-place to put shit that didn't have anywhere else to go. So, in that time, it became a giant eyesore of a junk pile, filled with anything and everything under the sun -- clothing, half-empty purses, multiple bags full of paperwork and stuff to be shredded, our toolboxes, mail, canned cat food and treats, Amazon orders for random things we'd gotten and had forgotten about, small souvenirs from trips, Christmas gifts to and from people that we'd considered lost, old holiday/birthday cards, empty prescription bottles, full and unopened bottles of vitamins, supplements, and essential oils, scissors, kitchen utensils, extension cords, boxes of nails and screws, spider traps, string lighting, outdoor lighting and light bulbs, Christmas decorations, fall decorations, empty cardboard boxes, filled cardboard boxes full of shit still packed in there from my house in Kansas, etc. You name it -- there was a possibility it was on or under that table.

The dining room took multiple hours, multiple nights, to clean out. Finally, in a six-hour-long push on the Friday night before the inspection would take place on the following Saturday morning, Daisy and I finished it. We also made a vow to keep it clean and to never let it get that bad again. 

The kids are delighted; suddenly, all of them can get up on the table again. Mable and Emmy especially love just sitting on the bare table and watching us, as it gives them a different vantage point than anywhere else in the house. Pete likes to sit up there as well. I don't know that I've seen Hank or Charlie on the table yet, though I'm sure they've been up there. There's nothing on it anyway but an air purifier at the far end (right above where the litter pans are, to de-stink them) and a big bowl full of their toys in the middle of the table. We left that there on purpose so they can grab toys out of it for playtime, and it seems to have worked.

The inspection was the next morning, between 8am and 12pm. To set the stage here, this was a Saturday -- one week to the day after we'd gotten Charlie and a few days after we'd let him out to explore. We'd just been told the night before that he had parasites and all of the cats had gotten their first doses of their anti-parasite pills. We also did not know when they would show up that morning, so when I woke up after a night of exhausted and fitful sleep and it was already after 8, I leapt up and started getting dressed and ready.

Shortly after 9, they arrived -- just as Daisy was getting up for the day. And it was not who I expected to show up. I expected it to be a volunteer, likely a younger girl, in street clothes with a clipboard. Instead, it was two fully-uniformed Animal Control officers, complete with badges and cuffs and nightsticks and maybe even sidearms (I was so surprised I didn't even pay attention, honestly) -- one female and one male, both around 30 or so. 

We warmly invited them in, and we explained why they were there (they did not really seem to know, aside from it being an "inspection"), and when they found out that it was just so we could get the legal approval for a sixth cat, their demeanors greatly softened. The girl did the talking, asked us a few questions, and got to see Pete, Mable, and Charlie -- none of whom seemed to give a single shit that there were new people in the house. Hank and Emmy had already hid behind the couch. 

They walked through the living room, dining room, and glanced at the kitchen -- seeing that we had three very visible litter pans, multiple food bowls and plates, four accessible water bowls, and a giant cat tree in the corner, and didn't even need to see the upstairs -- we were approved on the spot as our house was "a cat's paradise." I quipped that it's a cat habitat and we just live here. They thanked us for making the effort to keep everything legal and on the books with the city, which I was sort of surprised by, and then made their exit. The entire inspection experience was less than five minutes -- in and out. I was stunned. 

So yeah, if we ever want another one, or if Pete dies and we want to adopt a bonded pair of kittens, we can now legally do so -- it's all in our records. The sixth-cat-permit is a yearly thing and has to be renewed every year when we renew the cats' licenses, but no further inspections are required. I can't remember whether they said there's a fee to renew it or not, but I'm guessing there is. 

Again, we are not looking for a sixth cat. The five we have now, especially with the white goblin being the white goblin he is, are more than enough. It would have to be my dream cat, a kitten I could not live without, before I'd even come anywhere close to considering filling that sixth spot. Hell, I was fine with the four, though I have to say I really love little Charlie. 

A few days after we were approved, as we entered the week, Daisy began getting sick again. She'd been fine for most of the week prior, but suddenly started getting bad headaches, incredible body aches, and a pretty consistent fever that would be low-grade in the daytime hours (99-100) but would spike almost to 102 every night in the overnight while I was working and while she was trying to sleep. This stopped her from being able to get any real rest as she would have to get up in the night, drink a 32-oz jar of ice water, and take ibuprofen to make the fever go down -- by which point she was fully awake and just miserable/unable to sleep. She thought it was the flu or another round of Covid, but tests for both came back negative and she had zero congestion or respiratory issues whatsoever. She thought it could just be a POTS flareup, but wasn't sure. She did a telehealth appointment where the doctor she spoke to told her to just wait it out and wasn't very helpful at all.

Finally, on Thursday she was miserable enough to where she wanted to go to the doctor, which we did that evening before I started work.

Want to guess what the doctors suspected she had? 

"Cat scratch fever," they said. "It's not just a song."

Look, we don't know that's what it is, and neither do the doctors. But, Charles is a kitten with sharp claws and he has torn us both up while being rambunctious and playing, and Hank (while playing with Charles and being hyper himself) ran up Daisy's body the other night leaving deep gashes on her arm with his claws -- accidentally, of course. And she fit all of the descriptors for cat scratch fever, with the exception of visibly-infected scratches or a rash (the scratches had all pretty much healed up by this point, though they were still visible). So, they prescribed her two weeks' worth of antibiotics and sent her on her way, and said to call them if anything else happened.

She is feeling somewhat better, but is nowhere near back to normal yet. 

As for little Charlie, well...he's fitting in just fine:

He is now fully accustomed to this House of Cats™ and when he's not playing with us or with toys, he's cuddling and snoozing with either Daisy or the other children. Pete is his primary cuddle buddy but he does love to cuddle up with the others. It's very sweet how quickly and totally he's been accepted into the household. He's a good little boy. 

There is, of course, a lot more to cover, so stay tuned...

Mable's First Birthday

 

Our little princess Mable turned one year old yesterday.