The Litterbox

Odds and ends and bits and pieces, all bundled together with flushable clay.

Thursday, February 24, 2005 , evening

La gastronome?

In the previous entry I really wanted to refer to Chelsea as “la gastronome”, but I was sure the noun was masculine, and didn’t know if there was a feminine version of it.  La gastronomée?!  If you know, please tell me.  Chelsea only ate once yesterday—and it was just a tiny bit—but she was willing to eat another tiny bit again today.  She’s most interested in eating first thing in the morning, when I guess she’s most hungry.  We had one more vomiting incident today but I hadn’t given Chelsea her Reglan, and it obviously makes a big difference.  Tonight she came by the sofa and practically asked to be lifted up, but she wanted nothing to do with me and only wanted to hang out and be cute with Nancy.  I feel like an under-appreciated Mom :p Oh, and Chelsea pooped today!  I didn’t know if that function was working, so it was a relief to cross one worry off the list.


Here’s a little photo of Chelsea and her thousand dollar shaved belly:

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We’ve been having a lot of problems because of the excess rain, and on Monday I discovered a big wet spot on one of the garage walls.  I figured the water was leaking in from a spot outside, and I called in a warranty request to go with our “please repair our leaky window” request.  The warranty rep came by today and pointed out that water was leaking from the roof of the garage too, so it’s not just one little spot in the middle of the wall—it’s a much bigger problem.  He then wanted to go charging upstairs to look for leaks there, and got very annoyed when I told him that if he wanted to go poking around upstairs in the master bedroom, I’d really need him to come back next week when I could prepare better.  He was not happy with me and gave me a little, “We need to get moving on this” lecture.  You know, I want the leaks fixed too, but I think it’s okay for me to ask for some advance notice if some strange guy wants to go traipsing through the room that we never bother tidying because no one ever sees it but us.  He was also annoyed because I hadn’t emptied the garage cabinets so he could move them, but I didn’t know he’d need all those things done!  His job only seems to be to coordinate repairs, so I didn’t bother getting the house repair-worthy.  He doesn’t carry around tools and fix-it things—he just looks at stuff and makes irritating phone calls.  It’s been over a month since we asked to have our window repaired and it still isn’t fixed, so I think I had pretty good reason to not empty out the garage in anticipation of speedy repairs.

After he left and my blood pressure sank a few notches, I did some measuring and comparing and poking and prodding and I can safely say that there is no leak upstairs, anywhere.  I’m sure he’ll still insist on looking for one, the bastard.  We’re going to run to Target perhaps this weekend and buy some really big plastic storage bins so we can put all our books away and move the bookcases, and then the master bedroom will be a bit more presentable.  Those poor sad bookcases have to go, anyway… I think their time is about up.  It’s my dream to build wonderful built-in bookcases which run from floor to ceiling and have doors on them, so the books don’t get dusty, but that will be an awfully big project to tackle.  I’m still working on the damn cat tree… I finally did the carpeting but ran out of carpet scraps before I was able to finish the top perch.  I either need to find some scraps at Home Depot, or figure out how to hack a chunk of carpet from the 200 sq. ft. piece which is all rolled up and hanging from the ceiling in our garage.  Oh, one more garage-related item—I got an estimate today from Closet Masters for a great garage workbench with some storage cupboards.  I love the design and really want the cabinets, but can’t place an order for anything until the leak is fixed.  Bah.

It rained some more today, and I had to stay home while Nancy went to a birthday party because there were thunderstorms in the area.  I didn’t want to come home to Eli with a broken leg or something from panicking during a storm.  It ended up being an uneventful evening, and Nancy rewarded me with cake and a peppermint mocha.  Kate, if you’re reading this, I want you to rest assured that I’m eating all the sugar you gave up long ago, so there is still equilibrium in the sugar universe smile

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 02/24 at 08:58 PM
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Wednesday, February 23, 2005 , late morning

Chelsea, le gastronome!

Newsflash!  Chelsea ate all by herself today!  She actually only ate about a tablespoon of food on her own, and then I had to tube feed the rest of her meal, but she did show an interest in eating and perhaps this is a light at the end of the tunnel (or, a light at the end of the feeding tube, although that suggests she swallowed a flashlight or something).  Thank you, Friskies Chicken with Gravy!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 02/23 at 11:16 AM
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Tuesday, February 22, 2005 , evening

The secret lives of snails

I don’t really know anything about the secret lives of snails, but I do have a lot of snails.  They’re in my aquarium, and I think they came as stowaways on plants long-ago destroyed by the plecostamus.  He just can’t have nice things.  Now I’ve got one Chocolate Chip Spiny Pleco, about two dozen snails of indeterminate species (not Black Mystery or Apple snails—perhaps Zebra Nerita), and about two thousand baby snails on the way.  These things produce like rabbits, and while I would toss the egg clutches without guilt, I can’t reach them.  I’ve considered buying some loaches to eat the snails, but then I’d feel like a serial killer enabler.  I’m conflicted.  One thing I will say about the snails is that they may be called “peaceful” aquarium dwellers, but they’re very cantankerous with each other.  If two snails accidentally cross paths on the way to a particularly delectible patch of algae, they’ll poke at each other and push and shove until one turns around and heads in a different direction.  They don’t do the ant thing, where they just climb over each other and keep going.  They seem to engage in pretty serious brawls, and I guess if I was smart I would film these battles and market them.  I could call it “The Ultimate Fighting Championship” and then in teeny-tiny font I’d write “snail-style”.  So in conclusion, what I’ve discovered about the secret lives of snails is that they seem to be quite ill-tempered.

I’ve also discovered that I need a new book to read (oh, I’ve got plenty to chose from, I just need to pick one off the shelf).  I’ve currently got three different books of “short non-fiction” on the go, and I keep starting a new one because I can’t seem to finish any of them.  I like them all individually, but I think I need a “real” full-length book to keep my mind occupied.  I think I can only read short stories in small doses.

I’m listening to a CD, Jane Siberry, “A Collection: 1984-1989”.  It brings back a lot of good memories of seeing Jane live on a couple of occasions, and of always hearing something new in her music.  Oddly enough, before the CD arrived in the mail I’d had some lyrics from it running through my head, “I know you must be there because people stop and talk to you”.  I once dated that person too :p

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 02/22 at 09:30 PM
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The further adventures of Chelsea’s esophagus

Chelsea continued to vomit her way through the President’s Day weekend, so today she went to the vet and had her feeding tube adjusted, complete with new bandages and stitches.  She also got anti-nausea meds, and I hope this will finally put her on the road to better health.  While killing time at the vet’s office, I was holding a 7 week old kitten who needed to be adopted.  He was soft and adorable, and every once and a while I’d glance down and find him staring up at me with his big grey eyes.  I felt absolutely no compulsion to bring him home, which should give some indication of the pet stress I feel.  The other pets are doing well, although the big dogs have some moody cabin fever from all the torrential rain—I think we all have cabin fever now.  And the birds are a bit restless as well… part weather-related, part seasonal, and probably also partly because they’ve sort of been attention-starved since the cats came.  I’ll try to make it up to them.

The weather is SO HORRIBLE.  Water ran in torrents on the main street in front of our house last night, and a couple of blocks away the water was so deep from the rain that a manhole cover was literally floating away.  Today the street is filled with mud and more run-off, with more rain in the forecast.  Our yard looks like a Florida swamp with green moss growing in places where nothing should be able to grow, and the weeds are flourishing.  Our kitchen window has sprung a second leak, and the window-repair people can’t come and tear it out until we’re assured of a couple of weeks of dry weather.  Oh, and there’s a new leak in the garage wall.  The homes here just weren’t designed to tolerate this much water.  At least our home is more solid than the vet’s office, where wet tiles are literally falling out of the ceiling, and at least we don’t live in California where we might be sliding into the ocean by now.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been getting estimates for an electrical “panel upgrade” on the house.  I’ve got the 4th and final estimate on Wednesday, then we’ll make a decision.  The first company sent a very nice and personable man to give the estimate, but he gave me some misinformation about the local power company, and also over-stated what role I’d need to play in the upgrade process.  He had me calling all over the city for permission to upgrade, permits, etc., yet it wasn’t anything which actually needed to be done (I eventually discovered this).  That really bothered me, and made me wonder if the work the company would do would be thorough.  The third electrical company sent a nice young man who was friendly, but did the “scare tactic” thing—he recommended all sorts of expensive add-ons, (like whole-house surge protectors), and promised dire consequences to all our possessions without them.  He also said we could get a 10% discount on the price, a little over $200, but only if we decided to go with them within the next 48 hours.  I don’t mind if an estimate has, say, a 30 day validity period, but I don’t want to be pressured into making a decision with the promise of a discount.  So, right now it looks as if we’ll go with company #2, although I’ll wait and see what happens with company #4 tomorrow.  Let that be a lesson to you if you give estimates as part of your job—don’t act like a car salesman because it’s creepy.

The Western Veterinary Conference is in town at Mandalay Bay, but I can’t attend because I’m not a real vet, I just play one at home.  The most-talked about exhibitor has been Genetic Savings and Clone, who offer the perfect gift for the person who has everything, yet wants another in the same size and colour.  I wouldn’t mind a Genetic Savings and Clone gift certificate if you have money to burn, as I think it would be fun to have another Eli.  This time around I’d try to make sure to raise a dog who wasn’t afraid of thunder.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 02/22 at 02:23 PM
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Saturday, February 19, 2005 , late evening

Fill My Workshop

I could write about how Chelsea vomited ALL OVER the bathroom today (into nooks and crannies I didn’t even know existed), or I could talk about how it’s still raining, or I could talk about how disappointed I am that the NHL season now looks truly and officially over.  However, those are all depressing things, so instead I want to talk about what sort of tools I need for my super-cool garage workshop.

I have no idea what sort of tools I need for my super-cool garage workshop.  You’ve been a great audience!  Goodnight!

Seriously, I don’t know.  I love woodworking stuff, and love the idea of being able to build something beyond a cat tree one day.  I have most of the common hand power tools (although my jigsaw sucks and I need a proper one), and I’ve got a couple of bench tools—a table saw, a midi-lathe, and a bandsaw for cutting glass.  What else should I have, though?  Do I need a bandsaw or a scrollsaw?  Do I need a sander or a grinder?  A radial arm saw or a miter saw?  What about a drill press?  A router?  What the hell do all those things do, anyway?  I think a lot of them seem awfully redundant, and I’m sure there’s some sinister plot going on to make people purchase twice as much as they really need, but I’m not informed enough to figure out the details.  Yet.  By the way, what the hell’s a “kerf”?  It had better not have anything to do with vomiting cats.  I’ll really try to have something new to talk about tomorrow, sigh.

I’m sure many of you have seen this before, but if not, here’s a catchy little tune to stick in your head today: Dragostea Din Tei

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 02/19 at 10:03 PM
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Friday, February 18, 2005 , late evening

The Daily Grind

It rains and rains and rains… it’s very depressing.  I miss the sunshine and have the “muddy yard blues”.  I’m a bit cheered, however, because Chelsea has improved today—it seems as though she had a bad reaction (understatement!) to the Clavamox.  We stopped by the vet’s office today and picked up some nose drops for her and I’m to stop giving the Clavamox… no need to twist my arm about that.  The nose drops are quite easy to administer, although she has teeny-tiny nostrils and it’s a bit hard to get the drops where they need to go.  Chelsea ate a full can of a/d today without any problems at either end, so I hope that NOW we’re on the road to recovery.  The funny, funny woman at the vet’s office tried to talk us into adopting a pot-bellied pig today.  Ha, she’s hilarious.  I’m sending her my therapy bills.

Nancy finished the refinancing paperwork today so we’ve got a green light to start our new business ventures, once we figure out what they are :-p It’s more like a yellow light, I guess, as we don’t have the actual cash in hand, and that will take about a week.  Then we’ll be attending the ARA Awards & Recognition Association trade show to find ourselves a business or two.  The ARA website is horrid and hokey, but we do think we could have a future doing glass engraving/sandblasting, and/or dye sublimation printing.  It would let us be creative and work our own hours while still doing a lot of marketing via the Internet.  We’d seriously looked at purchasing a laser engraver last year and starting an engraving business (awards, plaques, trophies, etc.), but it just seemed so dull. And expensive—even the basic starter models of laser cost the price of a new car.  We’ll attend the ARA show to get some ideas about business opportunities, and as if that’s not enough, we’re also going to attend the International Sign Expo!  I know you’re green with envy, or perhaps you’ve just got an upset stomach.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 02/18 at 10:08 PM
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Thursday, February 17, 2005 , early evening

Crap

Chelsea’s been sounding a bit “gurgly” for the past couple of days, as if she’s growling at me while under water.  I thought it could just be a side-effect of her feeding tube, but to be safe we took her into the vet this afternoon for a quick checkup.  Normally I enjoy visiting the vet’s office (as long as none of the pets are seriously ill, of course), but we’ve been there four separate times in the past week, all for at least an hour, and it’s getting a bit tedious.  Today we did something a bit different, and used the vet’s computer to bid and win an eBay auction while we waiting for our appointment.  We’d been watching an auction which closed during the time we were still in the waiting-room, but the staff were kind enough to let us use one of their computers to access the Internet, make a bid, and ultimately win the auction.  Soon we’ll probably just take a sleeping bag and start camping in their lobby for make our lives more convenient.

So, it turns out that Chelsea has an upper respiratory infection, and she came home with Clavamox that I can just stick in her feeding tube.  She had a bandage change and a weigh-in, and has gained .4 pounds in the past 72 hours.  We came home, I fed her, and all was fine until a couple of hours later when I heard her throwing up in the hallway.  Upon further inspection she’d thrown up everything I’d fed her earlier into the litterbox, which is technically very tidy, but still sort of hard to clean up.  I think I’ll need to do a full litter change tomorrow as I just couldn’t scoop out all the liquid bits.  She then came and sat by my desk and threw up some more, but she did it on the plastic mat under my chair, so again, it was easy to wipe up.  As I was cleaning though, I noticed a little wet brown mark on the floor which looked more like poop than vomit.  I went and did a quick inspection of Chelsea’s butt (the fringe benefits of being a pet owner :p), and found her sitting on “Eli’s couch” in a big pile of her own feces.  Blech.  Blech blech blechity blech.  The only good thing is that Eli’s couch is really just a gigantic dog bed at this point, and with the sofa cover in place, the main cushions were mostly protected.  I now have to wash the sofa cover but that’s the least of my worries.  The most horrible thing was that I needed to gingerly carry Chelsea into the bathroom to try to clean off her entire rear end—legs, feet, butt, the works—because they were covered in diarrhea.  You know, if you sit in the stuff, it tends to get stuck to you.  She was NOT a happy camper about my paper towel and soap technique, and she screeched and yowled and came about this close to sinking her fangs into my hand.  She’s now (mostly) clean, the sofa is clean, the bathroom floor is clean, the litterbox is clean, and she’s asleep in the recliner.  In retrospect I don’t think she’s pooped in an eternity (certainly not in the last week that I’m aware of), so I’m sure she’s back-logged and constipated, and perhaps the pain of that made her vomit.  She’s a tidy cat and certainly not one to poop outside the litterbox if she can help it—I can’t imagine her purposely laying in her own feces.  Aren’t you glad you read this entry tonight?

Okay, so now we get to the good part.  Right after I wrote the above paragraph, I heard a scratching sound coming from the other room.  I thought it sounded just like a cat digging around in a litterbox, except there’s no litterbox in the area from where the sound is coming.  I go in the room, turn on the light, and Chelsea has had more diarrhea which she’s trying to cover up.  The effort was in vain, as the poop is in the middle of Eli’s $200 Orvis Indestructible Dog Bed.  Arrrggghhh!  Now we’re washing a load of laundry which includes the dog bed cover and the towel which was on the recliner and which had some poop on it.  In a few minutes we’ll put in a second load (ha! that’s like a “poop pun"), the sofa cover.  In the interim I completely changed out one litterbox and put all new litter in it, and I retrieved the smaller, “backup” litterbox and stuck it in the livingroom so it’s closer to Chelsea.  I’m afraid to go to bed.  I’m afraid to wake up.  I don’t want to find whatever surprises I might find in the morning.

I’ve read a lot about blogs lately, and about how some people feel they serve no purpose.  I think that by writing three big paragraphs about my cat’s bowel problems I’ve perhaps proven that theory.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 02/17 at 07:56 PM
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Tuesday, February 15, 2005 , evening

Why won’t anyone take my junk?

For the last couple of weeks I’ve had a leather reclining chair sitting in the middle of the living room, along with a brand new “abdominal exerciser” (as seen on TV!), and numerous boxes of household goods, a couple of portable air cleaners, etc.  I’ve also got a nice white wicker dresser/chest of drawers combo waiting to be moved into the middle of the living room.  What do I want to do with these items?  I want to give them away to charity.  Why am I complaining about it?  NO ONE WILL COME AND PICK THEM UP!  This is good stuff, people… it’s not broken crap, it’s nearly-new and barely used and has a combined value of at least $500, yet no one wants it!  I’ve called Goodwill, who won’t come and pick stuff up, the Vietnam Vets, who don’t take large furniture, Big Brothers, who don’t take furniture, etc.  I’m running out of people to call, and am left with the gay-hating Salvation Army.  Blech.  I don’t really understand why charities are so uncooperative about donations.  I tried to give Big Brothers, Big Sisters—the charity organization intended to help kids—a barely used telescope worth about $300, and they refused to take it.  They said they don’t take donations of stuff like that.  It doesn’t make any sense.

The telescope is a good segue to my cat tree photo, as you can barely see it in the background, off to the left.  It’s the white thing near the gargoyles that Eli is sniffing.  What, you don’t keep gargoyles in your garage?  Anyway, this is the cat tree pre-carpeting.  It’s not perfect.  I know it’s a little off-center, although I’m not sure why as my math was right.  Whatever.  I’ll sit on it if the cats don’t want to use it.

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An update on the Chelsea situation—I’m better at tube-feeding, now that I learned to mix the food with a bit of water to thin it out.  I wish Chelsea was a better patient, as she lies in the litterbox and sulks the entire time that I feed her (I have to shut her in the bathroom with me or she’ll run away while I feed, but I doubt the litterbox is doing anything to stimulate her appetite).  I really hope she’ll figure out that if she starts to eat on her own, I’ll go away, so that we can put an end to this nonsense asap.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 02/15 at 09:19 PM
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Mr. Blue Eyes

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage ol’ blue eyes himself… Derek!  And please throw dolphin-safe tuna.

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Posted by Leigh-Ann on 02/15 at 11:33 AM
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Monday, February 14, 2005 , evening

Time management

I must have time management issues, because my days seem rushed and filled to capacity, and I’m always exhausted, yet it seems like I never get any work done.  Today we were up at 6:30 am so we could get Chelsea to the vet for surgery/tests, and stop by Starbucks for breakfast.  I had an electrician come by around noon to give us an estimate on a “panel upgrade” (125 amp to 200 amp, that’s what I learned today), and I spent an hour or so trying to fix a problem with our digital cable box which was preventing all the “normal” channels from showing up (and which caused us to miss “The Simpsons”, “Arrested Development”, and “Desperate Housewives” last night!  Grrrr!).  There were a multitude of crises with the Wild Parrots movie website which I resolved during the afternoon.  We left the house around 4 to pick up half a dozen Chanticos from Starbucks to take to the staff at the vet’s office, and then we hung out there for probably close to an hour while we waited to get Chelsea and find out what sort of care she needs.  Then a quick stop at the grocery store, a run to the Thai place for soup, and we were home.  We watched an episode of “Mad TV” from Saturday night, and then “24”.  And I’m so, so very tired.

Chelsea had her liver biopsy today, and we’re crossing our fingers because it looks as though it’s just hepatic lipidosis.  That means force-feeding until Chelsea decides to eat on her own again, so the vet surgically inserted a feeding tube in Chelsea’s neck, a “esophagostomy”.  I have to mix up her Hills a/d food and stuff it down the tube with a syringe and you know, it’s not as easy as I had hoped.  Perhaps I’ll get better with practice.  We were quite lucky in that Chelsea’s former owner offered to chip in for the bill and gave the vet’s office a $500 payment on our account.  We spent over $1000 between Friday and today, so that money really helped a lot.  The former owner suggests we bribe Chelsea with “Friskies Chicken and Gravy”, so hey, we’ll try anything.  Here’s a photo I took tonight of “Franken-chelsea”:

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Here are some other things which happened at our house today.

Eli had a hangover after a wild day with the Shriners:


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Dante rocked the Casbah:

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The almond tree bloomed:

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We apparently received a fez in the mail today from the great guys at Art Parts, in case you hadn’t noticed.  Oh, and it’s now February 15th—half-price chocolate day smile

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 02/14 at 08:49 PM
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