Cats

Sora is over the cold he had last week. We took the cats in to the vet yesterday for their annual checkup and vaccinations, which took a toll on Toby as Sora scratched the shit out of his hand when we were wrangling him into the carrier. We'd given him a kitty tranq an hour or so beforehand, but it hadn't made any difference. Sora was much calmer at the vet, and they suggested giving it to him 2 hours beforehand, as it takes longer with some cats.

Sora's got a heart murmur. :/ The vet says it can be caused by stress, and he was obviously very stressed, or by congestive heart failure, heartworms, or other things. If it's heart failure, that can be managed. The vet took blood and it's going for tests, so we should know in a few days if it's CFS or something else.

Anyway, Nefer's going to have to go in for a teeth cleaning at some point in the next few months, but that's about it for her. Her heart is perfectly fine (the vet let me listen to both Sora and Nefer's hearts with her stethoscope, so I could hear the difference).

Sora has been VERY LOVING and POSSESSIVE now after his TRAUMATIC DAY. He spent last night glued to me, and when Nefer jumped up on me in the wee hours of the morning, he chased her off the bed (not before she got some scritching, at least).

Gluten-free blueberry muffins

Toby and I are on the America's Test Kitchen panel for testing recipes (you get on it by answering a survey that says "Do you want to be on this panel?"), so over the past few months we've tried out a number of recipes in the testing stage. And hands-down the number one best one was this recipe for gluten-free blueberry muffins. If we hadn't made them ourselves, we wouldn't have believed they were gluten-free. The book they're in is coming out soon, so I can now officially post the recipe, but as that blogger has already done so, I see no point in cutting-and-pasting it here.

So if you or someone you know is GF, we can wholeheartedly recommend that recipe. (And it's a commitment, because GF ingredients are damn expensive! I am literally going to buy the book because we have a giant bag of xanthan gum to use up, and neither of us is GF!)