Pets and other problems

Good grief, what a week! I looked back at my post last Sunday and it said something about how we didn't have much of anything planned for this week except the cats had a vet appointment and Rocket Boy was getting a haircut.

A few other things ended up happening.

I'm not sure when I wrote last week's post, what time of day, but I think Rocket Boy and I had already been to Longmont to take his brother to the hospital. He had a hurting tooth and his dentist told him to go to Emergency and get a prescription for antibiotics. Since he doesn't drive, Rocket Boy and I went up there (it's about 20 miles) and took him to the ER -- it seemed like a strange use of the ER, my dentist would have just called in a prescription to a pharmacy, but whatever. Rocket Boy and I had a nice time. We went out to lunch on our way up, and also bought his brother a birthday card and cake, because his 70th birthday was Thursday.

Then I decided to be nice and volunteered to take him to his actual dentist appointment on Wednesday. That was less fun -- I just drove 20 miles, took him to the dentist (he goes to a discount dental office called Dental Aid), waited for him, took him home, drove 20 miles back. At that appointment, they determined the tooth was broken and needed to be pulled right away. The soonest appointment they had was on Friday at their office in south Boulder. I said I'd drive him.

So Friday I got up at 7:15, brought in the milk, put out the recycling, gave the cats some meds (more on that in a minute), and left the house at 8:30 to drive 20 miles to Longmont, get RB's brother, drive him 20 miles to south Boulder for his appointment at 10, wait until 10:40 for them to take him in, wait until 11:30 for the appointment to be over, stop off at our house to use the bathroom and get another cup of tea to keep me awake, drive him 20 miles back to Longmont, and drive myself 20 miles back home.

A lot of driving. But this is only a tiny part of what happened this week.

On Tuesday I was watching the Jan. 6th hearing, and I noticed that Baby Kitty couldn't seem to sit still. He kept jumping out of Rocket Boy's suitcase where he likes to sleep, going to the litter box, jumping out again, running to the back of the house where the other litter box is, running to the garage where there's a third, running back to the suitcase, and then repeating the whole sequence. Finally he ran under my bed and stayed there.

Idiot that I am, I didn't realize what was wrong. I thought, oh well, the cats have their appointment at the vet on Thursday, we'll ask about it then.

And then suddenly I realized that it wasn't OK, this could be bad. So I called our regular vet, and the receptionist had me leave a message for the technicians. By the time a technician called back, I'd managed to coax Baby Kitty out from under the bed, and he was sitting next to me on the bed, cuddling. I told her that, hoping it meant he was going to be OK after all. "You really need to go to the emergency vet immediately," she told me. "This can't wait."

So I called the emergency vet and they told me to come in immediately, so Teen A and I and Baby Kitty headed off. After dropping him off we had to wait a long time (on a bench outside, where we were hassled by a security guard, but that's another story) and they finally told us he had a urinary blockage and it was very serious and they needed to catheterize him and keep him at least 36 hours and it would cost almost $3000. 

And I said OK, because what else could I say?

Thursday morning, Baby Kitty was still at the emergency vet, so I couldn't take him to the regular vet. But I took Sillers, who had spent the last two days straining to poop and not going anywhere -- not in the box, not in the hallway or any of her other places, not at all. So I told the regular vet about that, and she felt Sillers' abdomen and determined that Sillers was blocked (intestinally) all the way up to her stomach. So Teen B and I had to leave Sillers at the regular vet to be unblocked. She came home at the end of the day (her tail wrapped in yellow tape, making it look like a pale, thin carrot sticking out of her butt), to the tune of $550. But fortunately Baby Kitty (who came home earlier that afternoon, with one shaved foreleg) only ended up costing $1700. Still. It's so much money. And now we know they both have these problems, and there will be more money to be spent in the future.

I've got to get a job.

Baby Kitty is on two medications for pain and one for urethral spasms, but I think he'll be done with everything by the time we go. Sillers is on a laxative and ear medicine, because on top of everything else she had an infection in both ears -- but we'll finish that the day before we leave. So the pet sitters won't have to do much, just try to keep an eye on both cats and make sure they don't die. I think we can skip Sillers' laxative while we're gone. Oh yeah. In the meantime I'm spending a lot of my time grabbing cats and forcing medications into their mouths or ears. Fortunately the emergency vet clipped Baby Kitty's toenails after he scratched her. (And despite that, they told me he was absolutely adorable and they wanted to keep him.)

So, let's recap. Sunday was a trip to Longmont. Monday was a quiet day -- following the FlyLady's instructions, I "blessed the house" as best I could, and Rocket Boy was impressed. Tuesday was Baby Kitty's emergency vet day, Wednesday was Longmont again, Thursday was Sillers' vet day, and Friday was back and forth and back and forth to Longmont.

Also, it's so hot. Did I mention that yet? In the 90s all this past week, 97 today, and tomorrow it's supposed to hit 100. The coolest day will be Wednesday, when it's predicted to be only 92, but there's a 40% chance of rain that day, so it will be humid. And of course we have no air conditioning and no swamp cooler.

We leave for St. Louis on Friday, and it is going to be horribly hot every day from now until then. It will also be horribly hot driving across Kansas (in the 100's) and of course equally horribly hot (and so humid) in St. Louis. I just can't fathom how this is all going to work.

Saturday morning I sat down and made a list of all the things I could think of that we needed to do before we leave, and we started working on it. Rocket Boy hung some pictures that I wanted moved around, I ordered some cans of Baby Kitty's special urinary diet from Chewy.com, I took books back to the library, called in a prescription refill for myself, and paid bills. Today we bought Teen A a new (used) bike off Craigslist, went out to Eldorado Springs to get 20 gallons of spring water for our next door neighbor and tenant whose van is in the shop and who has covid, and did some major furniture moving in the kids' room (to prepare for high school).

We watched "Little Miss Sunshine" while we worked on the room. We watched 30 minutes, then moved something, then 30 minutes more, then more moving, etc. That's such a great movie. I hadn't seen it since 2007, the year after it came out. The kids actually watched it with us and actually enjoyed it. They were playing games on their phones and they actually looked up from their phones and laughed at many of the scenes.

When we got their room into slightly better shape than the photo above shows, we went out to eat at IHOP, even though I was prepared to make French toast for dinner. It was just so hot! Too hot to cook and too hot to sit in the hot house and eat hot food. I felt awful because this was our third "meal" out that day -- we went to Starbucks in the morning, which was the kids' breakfast, we went to Jamba Juice after buying Teen A's bike because it was just so ungodly hot, and that was my lunch, and then IHOP for dinner, just to be able to experience their air conditioning. 

We'll be eating out constantly on our drive to St. Louis, and probably a few more times before we go for the same reason -- too hot to cook in the house, too hot to eat in the house. I just paid off my credit card, even though the bill's not due until early August, but I wanted to have it done before the trip. That does NOT give me an excuse to charge lots more stuff on it.

I've got to get a job.

The week ahead looks dreadful (did I already say that?). Tomorrow there's nothing on the schedule, but lots to do -- cleaning, laundry, errands, more prep for the trip. Tuesday a guy is coming to measure the kitchen and bathroom because we need to replace the flooring in both rooms (the kitchen floor has a big hole in it and the bathroom floor has missing tiles). Scheduling that was one of the "before we leave" projects yesterday. That afternoon we meet with the lawyer who's going to draw up our wills/trust/etc. On Wednesday I have to go to the orthodontist to have my wires removed, then to the dentist for a cleaning, then back to the orthodontist to have the wires put back on (and tightened). On Thursday the twins have their dental cleanings, preceded and followed by Teen B's visits to the orthodontist, similar to mine.

And Friday we leave.