Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

First: The cat in question seems to be basically well.

So, cattitude has been worrying on and off that our cat Kaja was getting skinny. A few days agp. that got to the point of calling the vet and then taking the cat in for a check-up.

At the exam, the vet told Cattitude that Kaja has not lost weight; if anything, she has gained an ounce or two. What's going on is, the cat has lost some muscle mass, which has led to some redistribution of her weight, and what Cattitude noted was that her legs were thinner. The vet said it was probably arthritis, drew blood to test for some more serious problems, and sent her home.

We got the results this morning, and they are reassuring: Kaja's kidney function, liver function, and thyroid are all fine. So is her blood sugar.

The email said we could have them do X-rays to check for arthritis, but that would require sedating the cat.

Or, they can assume it's arthritis, and give her monthly injections of a pain-killer to treat that, and see how she's doing in a few months.

The third choice is to just monitor the cat's health for now, and give her omega-3 supplements. We need to discuss the choices, but it's Saturday, and none of them involves "so call the vet and set this up right away."

A day or two ago, I was reminding myself that there's no wrong way to feel, no "proper" shape of grief. Today, well, I'm feeling calmer than I had been: not cheerful, but I really wouldn't expect to me. Even if I wasn't mourning, I still have the assortment of health issues, one of them depression, and the state of the world continues to feel dire.

In response to my post about Mom's death, one of my high school friends expressed sympathy and said that she remembered that my mother was always kind. This seems worth noting because Dawn hadn't seen my mother in at least 40 years.

We took the cats to the vet for their annual checkup today: the vet did a basic physical exam, and drew blood for tests. They have improved the feline rabies vaccine, and it's now good for three years. So, having had the vaccine a bit over a year ago, they're fine for a while. Kaja's teeth continue to be a problem, and they're probably going to have to extract at least three. Kaja's bloodwork is necessary before they do that, and Molly's is just in case, because we're pay for annual memberships for both cats, which cover routine bloodwork, among other things.

I'm seeing my neurologist on Monday, for what I hope will be a routine appointment, and will be having a colonoscopy on Thursday. That will involve a couple of days of a low-fiber diet, followed by one day of clear liquids only, and then a strong laxative that they call the colonoscopy prep. They gave me an afternoon appointment, which I think means I can get a few hours sleep Wednesday night, then get up in the middle of the night to drink that stuff, rather than expecting to be up all night.

This feels like a busy week, in part because we had to reschedule the trip to the vet. (We've only been home from London for a week.) I'm sleeping surprisingly well, going to bed, turning the light out almost immediately and falling asleep quickly, rather than reading for at least half an hour and then lying awake a while after I turn the light out.

MyChart now contains "automatically released" results from both MRI scans, which look as though nothing significant has changed. Also, they have added the name of ny neurologist to the list of providers, so I can use the MyChart system to send her a message if I want.

I overheard adrian_turtle talking on the phone to her mother, and as I listened to her talk about our cat Molly something clicked. Yes the cat now has trouble seeing a treat two inches from her paw, but she's still leaping onto my desk from the floor or a chair without a problem. So, I suspect the cat isn't going blind, she's just becoming far-sighted, which would be much less of a problem. I don't think there are eye tests for cats --it's not as though you could get a cat to wear glasses or contact lenses--so that will remain somewhere between a guess and a working hypothesis.

We took our cats to the vet yesterday, their first time at this vet. It went well, I think. The vet and a tech examined the cats, including listening to their heartbeats and breathing; drew blood for some routine tests; vaccinated them; and clipped their claws. The vet called today with the test results: Molly's are all "just fine," and Kaja's sodium and amylase levels are a little high, but the vet said the sodium might be a lab error, and the creatine level isn't high enough to worry about. In particular, she told me that both cats' kidneys are fine.

Sometime in the next 30 days, cattitude will get urine samples. for which they gave us a kit, and a stool sample, and we'll bring them to the vet. Sometimes the vet has been able to take a urine sample, and other times it hasn't worked.

This morning, I went to Somerville to have my wart zapped again. This time, I have instructions to apply a salicylic pad to the wart, changing it every other day, and tips on keeping the pad from falling off when I wash my hands, and a follow-up appointment 12 days from now, for another round of treatment. I am not optimistic about keeping the salicylic acid pads on my hand for 48 hours, and suspect that when I wash my hands, some of the salicylic acid will wind up in the water instead of on my hand. I suspect I will be sending Andrea a MyChart message asking what to do.

And I have to get blood drawn for some tests, sometime in the next three weeks (before my Ocrevus infusion). I got a call about this after lunch, and just wish they'd called this morning, when I was already on that side of the river.

Mostly for my reference:

Our cats get a prescription "urinary care" cat food. Since we no longer live near the vet's office, we've been having it delivered by Chewy. Chewy is intermittently out of stock of the kind of we cat food we need,

( discussion of cat food, deliveries, and the supply chain )

Yesterday I took our cats to the vet for their annual exams rabies vaccines, which meant standing around on the street for about 3/4 of an hour, because the vet is still having people drop the animals off and wait outside (or in their cars, or at home if it's close enough) rather than going into the building. fortunately, I got two very helpful Lyft drivers, one in each direction. (We're still taking the cats to the vet a few blocks from our place in Somerville, because somehow with the pandemic we haven't gotten around to finding somewhere more convenient.)

Today I went to the dentist for a cleaning; given my (lack of) immunity, I called Lyft to get there as well, rather than taking the bus.

I discovered when I got there that the restrictions on how many patients are in the room at once were lifted sometime in the last few months. I discovered this because there was a patient in another chair, several feet away but in the same physical room. I was considering getting up and leaving, but the hygienist asked me to wait a moment, and came back to say the other person would be done in three minutes.

I let her convince me to stay, and am not at all sure if that was the right decision. But my teeth have been cleaned, quickly, and I let her apply the fluoride varnish after she assured me that it would take less than a minute (which it did). My next appointment will be at 8:30 a.m., that being when they open, sacrificing convenience for what I hope is greater safety. I may postpone it by a month or two; I've been getting my teeth cleaned every three months, after needing the unpleasant deep gum cleaning in 2020.

The post title is a slight exaggeration: I've also been going to see adrian_turtle. But visiting her is the only non-medical indoor thing I've done in a couple of months..

Molly and Kaja both got veterinary exams today, one in the morning and one in the afternoon (it seemed easier for us than taking them both there at the same time). Both cats have had the necessary vaccines, and we had the technician clip Kaja's claws, which she did not like.

We took them to Union Square Veterinary Clinic, because it's in easy walking distance from our new apartment.

We couldn't find the previous paperwork quickly, but I still had scans of their adoption paperwork in my email, and I called the vet in Washington and asked them to send the other records over. I did that between Molly's morning appointment and Kaja's afternoon one, but the email hadn't gotten there when we went back. This also let me confirm that Kaja is the older of the two: it seems easier to remember "one is a year older than the other" than "Kaja is a year older than the other." Those ages are approximate at best; we adopted them as adults, and are relying on their previous people having given correct information to the Humane Society when dropping them off.

Molly is heavier than the vet likes, but trying to limit how much she eats would be tricky, given than Kaja defers to her about food. So, more exercise (play) may be called for here: she's also more likely to be happy with that approach.

(I first titled this "now the cats are medicated," but all they've had are rabies and distemper vaccines.)

Our cat Kaja will eat tangerine.

cattitude was eating one, and offered the cats a chance to sniff a segment. Molly did her "what is this thing? That's not food" bit, which she does with most of what we eat (sometimes including something, such as chicken, that she has accepted the day before), but Kaja sniffed it all over and looked interested. So I took a tiny bit of tangerine pulp, and she sniffed at it, and ate it—and then accepted another bit from Cattitude.

OK, this isn't julian_tiger's "this is the best thing in the world! More!" reaction, but that makes two cats out of five that we've had in our time together, and before Julian made himself clear on the subject we didn't offer tangerines to our cats because everyone knows cats dislike citrus.

(Kaja, like Molly, is prone to turn down even poultry and salmon, which she sometimes likes, depending on mood or something; she doesn't have Julian's omnivorous enthusiasm.)

adrian_turtle is visiting for a few days. Yesterday she, cattitude and I went to the Chihuly Glass Garden in Seattle Center, and had a nice time looking at Chihuly's glass sculptures. Much of the display is indoors, including a very colorful ceiling; the garden part is very well done, with the plantings well matched to the glass sculpture.

Adrian has also discovered that our cats actually understand and will obey a firm "no!" I suspect this is because (according to their paperwork) they used to live in the same household as a dog. Whatever the reason, it is already making our lives easier, because we're spending significantly less energy keeping them out of closets.

I have uploaded a few pictures—two of Kaja, one of Kia—to Flickr for anyone who wants to see what our new cats look like. My username there is rosvicl, and the photos should be publicly visible.