The Week of Stress

I was working on  nice, happy blog. This isn't it.  This week has been pretty awful, really.

The big thing was that my cat Moose, who is 15 years old, was lying on my feet, as usual Monday night, and then sometime in the night wandered off (also usual, but she comes back later)  and then didn't make an appearance for breakfast.  Really weird. She usually appears once she hears me moving about and wants attention and food. 

Jon and I found her behind the couch. Okay, that's not terribly unusual. I figured well, maybe Emma (one of our dogs) was being rowdy and Moose wanted to be left in peace and quiet.  So we both went to work.

I came home on Tuesday and Jon was already home so I asked if he'd seen Moose. Because she didn't come jump on the couch to beg for food or be petted that night, highly unusual. She can be a terrible pest when she wants petted or thinks she needs to eat cheese or ice cream or yogurt or chicken, all those things are her passions.  She rarely gets them, but she loves them.  He said, yes, she was under the bed but he hadn't seen her since. We found her behind the couch.

I dug her out of there, petted her, she didn't purr, kind of looked disgustedly at me, and I set her to the food dish where she refused to eat but decided to drink water for five minutes or so before going back behind the couch. No limp, no nothing, no listing, just slowly slunk behind the couch (no zip in her step either, which is also unusual). 

She is 15 but has had no health issues other than the occasional fur ball and she was sniffling around for a while but we had given some antibiotics and it seemed to take care of that. She is typically playful, willful, and happy. Weighs ten pounds, eats well, drinks well, no issues, so this came out of nowhere.

Jon took her in to the vet on Wednesday even though I had finally observed her eating breakfast.  The vet is running blood tests, which I haven't heard the results as yet and it is now Saturday and I was trying to obtain a urine sample, which is not the simplest thing in the world if you are using equine fresh as bedding. I finally had to dump it and line the litter pan with newspaper.  I still don't know if its a usable sample or if its urine from Moose, likely its urine from both cats because I don't have two litter boxes and the visit to the vet on Wednesday left us dirt broke. Not that he over charges, just that we don't have a lot of money, so I couldn't buy another litter box. 

We have since both gotten paid, but I had the remainder of the car insurance to pay off and some other things...so I imagine I will be dirt broke after going to the vet again. We are to go back, with the pee.

The vet did give us some antibiotics for Moose because, as he said, it couldn't hurt, even though she didn't appear to be running a fever and all her obvious vital signs were good.  She hates getting the eyedropper twice a day, a towel and another person are definitely needed. 

The only thing the vet seemed to think odd were her eyes as he asked Jon if they were always dilated that big.  Jon said yes.  They are.  Have nearly always been. She has odd, big eyes.  They've gotten a tiny bit less bright over the years, age, I suspect, but they are clear and there are no cataracts.  She just has big, owl eyes that don't miss much.

So I don't know what to think in regards to Moose.

Over the past few days she's gone back to her normal routine of sleeping on my feet, and begging for affection and food and her step has gotten a bit more zip to it. 

I thought perhaps she'd had a stroke, but she walks in a straight line, her pupils are both the same size, and her head doesn't list to the side or anything telltale.  So nothing there.

The vet said possibly diabetes, renal failure, all those kind of terrible things but that until tests come back, he is stumped.

I love my animals. They are my friends.  I've had cats live such long lives that I didn't even really think 15 was that old.  I've had a cat live to 20.  My parent's old cat, Spot, died over the winter, and he was 17, I believe.  So yeah, 15 is old but she's been sooooo healthy and so good at maintaining her weight I didn't even give it a second thought.

My entire week was messed up and brutal.  At work, since I had Monday off and no one knew how to do my job that worked that day, I had to play catch up on Tuesday which is a really busy day on its own...then I had to play clean out the backroom on Wednesday because they were so busy on Tuesday night that the feed truck didn't get entirely worked, and I had to clean up the sidelot because Tartar Gate had been there and I had had to ask someone else to unload them because I was already half an hour late getting out due to the feed truck being really late and also because people over the weekend seem to like to leave trash and random shit lying about out there. I don't know exactly how difficult it is to use the forklift to get fencing down from the racks to sell some and then PUT IT BACK INTO the racks really is, but apparently whoever does this can't spare three minutes and it just makes more work for me which I really really don't need.  And Thursday was truck day so of course that was hectic and all deliveries always seem to come on Thursdays....so I had to deal with UPS twice, Fed Ex once and Long's bringing back a repaired logsplitter, and taking a ton of other shit with them.  There is just too much to do. And Friday was all about slogging out the freight which took forever because we had one call off and the Shitty Amber instead of the Good Amber.

Our mortgage is also increasing $100 a month because of a shortage in our escrow, which sucks. All this shit seems designed to just fuck us over.  We were going to buy a tent so that in August when we vacation in the UP with Ruth and Joe we would have something to sleep in, but now, I am trying to cough one up out of my friend Courtney, or anyone else that may have one.  I'm still going to the UP. I haven't been to an entirely new place in a long time and I'm well over due.  If I have to work my ass off to pay all these fuckers that lay claim to my money so that I can't even decide how to spend it, I deserve to go on a vacation at least once every five years, cause that's really how long its been since I've visited somewhere I've never been for more than a day trip. 

I've never been so glad my mom  is generous with her money and made me take a $1,000 check to buy a new mattress.  I'd have never gotten one with all this going on.

The one bright spot this week was that Fat Kat's Pizza got some gluten free dough in just for me.  Yes, they really did. Jon had asked them if they had considered making gluten free pizzas and they hadn't but he explained why.  And, after a few months, they have got some dough in. I tried it last night. Ultra thin crust, crispy, but it was so tasty and much closer than the other pizza place that makes a gluten free crust, so that makes it cheaper in gas.  I think it was a slightly smaller pizza than the other place but it cost $7 instead of $10 and its a mile away instead of 10 miles away so if they would continue to do this, I'd be happy.