Salamander
Fire Walking

We’re gaining and losing ground in the feline health department of Salamander’s Swamp. Little Brown Shit has one more week to go on her course of Clavamox, and I take her back to her vet tomorrow for follow-up radiographs to see if there’s any change in the chest x-rays. She’s still doing the hack-hack-swallow-swallow-hack-hack thing, but I’d like to see that fuzzy area in the cranial thorax get smaller/go away. I can live with kitty asthma plus a resolving pneumonia more easily than I can some of the other options available.

Little Back Shit continues to have diarrhea and lose weight, and is only eating a minimal amount of food (mostly gravy-sucking canned food). After she dropped below nine pounds yesterday (over a one pound loss in less than a month) we took her back to the vet through emergency, where she was admitted. She’ll be there through at least Monday, when she’ll get an ultrasound. The failure of her symptoms to resolve under antibiotics means we need to get much more aggressive with the diagnostics. Keeping my fingers crossed here.

The Black and White Shit has benefitted greatly from all the different foods left out to get LBlS to eat. Putting one cat out of four on a diet is going to be interesting ….

Work

The Problem Child was a no-show all last week. I’m not sure what is going on there, and I also choose not to try and find out. She’s supposed to be out next week too, which is fine by my book. The less strife at work makes for happier amphibians all around.

Still waiting for the bill for the “overpayment” of my last year’s salary to arrive. Still have no idea how they are going to calculate it, how much they’ll determine I owe, and how long I’ll have to pay back. I’ve decided to play Scarlett O’Hara on this one. I’ll think about it tomorrow.

Home

With LBlS in the hospital, cat care has become somewhat easier. When I packed up her meds for intake, I ended up packing eight vials, one bottle of oral meds and one bottle of insulin. That was when I realized the damned cat was on (slightly) more meds than I am. I really don’t want her to be in the hospital too long, but I’ll take my silver linings where I can find them.

It would seem that the groundhog guessed lucky this year. Spring is indeed arriving early. This weekend the cherry trees blossomed, the star magnolia’s were all but blossoming, and the crocuses (crocci?) began blooming with the early daffodils. While I realize that all this truly means is that then next snowfall is going to ruin the spring flowers, I’m again seizing what silver lining I can and lulling myself with that sense of false security that only those starved for sunlight and warmth can understand. Even the jammering of amorous song birds at 4:00 DSL in the morning still sounds musical rather than grounds for avian genocide.

Politics

Not my usual thing to blog. Not that I don’t have strong feelings, but it never pays to discuss those feelings unless you are absolutely sure you are in like-minded company.

But SERIOUSLY people, WTF?????? The Man With The Dead Cat On His Head was only ever supposed to be a joke. I have incredulously watched as newscasters continued to cover his early posturing, as pollsters kept finding people who claimed they were going to vote for him, as debaters never seemed to notice that he raved instead of debated, as initial primaries showed that the people who claimed they were going to vote for him actually did vote for him, and now the utter surprise that his violent ravings are giving rise to violent actions.

Still, I convinced myself that this was the rest of the country, not my little slice of the American dream. But now, with Pennsylvania primaries six weeks away, the first of the lawn signs are starting to blossom with the early spring flowers. And except for one poorly constructed “Resurrect Carson” set of signs (made from signs originally intended to promote a local evangelical church revival meeting) the first signs are for Dead Cat Toupée . I live in a relatively affluent, highly educated and culturally mixed county (thanks to Big Pharma being one of the largest employers in my area). There is no way in hell that I ever expected to see a single one of these signs in a ten mile radius of my abode.

One of the signs closest to my house is a “Honk for … sorry, I simply cannot bear to type this name – I just can’t do it … Him" placard. If I thought I could do it without getting caught I’d be happy to honk my car’s horn every time I went past the sign between the hours of 10pm and 5am.

And I’d find reasons to be out at those hours at least three or four times a week.