welcome to camp telophase

We took the last trip to the vet this afternoon. Her kidneys had failed her, and while aggressive treatment involving a 3-5 night stay at the clinic, IV fluids, and IV fluids at home twice a week might have bought her a few more weeks, we chose not to put her through that.

I got Nefer in December 2004 from a shelter, where she'd been brought in after fighting with a dog. The vet estimated her at about a year old at the time.( Read more... )

I'm going to leave comments open, but you'll understand if I'm not up for replying to them. I will instead say thank you now for your kind wishes.

Just got a call from the vet--Nefer's labs came back totally normal, so she has been cured! Woo! We took her and Sora in yesterday, and we were pretty sure the I-131 injection had worked, as she'd gained a chunk of weight when previously she'd been losing. (Sora had gained a pound, too, because we'd been free-feeding them for few months in an attempt to encourage Nefer to eat more. Once she went in for the injection we started scaling back on the food, so he should be losing slowly now.)

Anyway, here, have a picture of the cats to celebrate:

I spent the weekend at FenCon, and ended up selling 3 pieces, which mad enough money to cover the money I dropped on two pieces of pottery in the art show. :)

However, I cut Sunday short and headed back ASP after I could pick my unsold pieces up, because Toby texted me that he'd taken Nefer to an emergency vet that morning.

( Cut for vet details of yesterday and today. Nefer's fine but cranky right now )

We were originally going to take her to a specialist this week to get her evaluated for possible iodine irradiation therapy for hyperthyroidism, which the vet diagnosed her with a couple of weeks ago, but that's been postponed until we deal with the acute issue right now.

Headache. Maybe due to the storms coming in, maybe due to Toby waking me up at 5AM. :) He heard something that sounded like 4 knocks on the front door, and his brain went immediately to "home invasion!" so he jumped out of bed, turned the light on (which is what woke me up), and tore out of the room with no explanation. He spent some time out of the room, during which I was mostly fuming that if he turned the light on just because a cat had thrown up (which is what usually wakes us up), then I was going to be so angry. After a bit he came back, having discovered nothing wrong, and explained it, after which I was still grumpy because now I didn't have a rally good reason to be grumpy (you know how that goes). We looked around more after we got up for real and discovered nothing out of place, so the current working hypotheses are (a) Toby dreamed it or (b) pranksters knocking on doors and running.

Other than that, it's been mostly dull around here. Well, I lie. Nefer had to go in to the vet Thursday and got 4 teeth out--3 were holey and 1 was a tiny one the vet thought she might have damaged as she was removing another, so removed it also but didn't charge us for it--and spent a couple of days locked up in the spare bedroom so we could check if she was eating or not, since Sora eats food from every dish that's out. She wasn't eating by Friday noon so Toby went to the vet and got some super-stinky food that the vet characterized as "Wendy's hamburgers for cats" and an anti-nausea pill. She still didn't eat the super-stinky food, nor her favorite food (saltine crackers, wtf?), so I came home early and we tag-teamed her, held her down wrapped in a towel, and shoved a portion of the pill down her throat. By the end of the day, it looked like she'd nosed into the stinky food a a bit, and by Saturday morning she had definitely eaten and hit the litterbox. So, yay. She wanted to come out of the spare bedroom then, so we let her out.

By Sunday afternoon she was begging me for pieces of raw chicken as I was prepping food for dinner, so I think she's all better now. :)

A short, unscientific survey of my received comments on LJ over the past three months shows that you guys have stronger opinions about food and duvets than just about anything else.

Also, Nefer had a BIG ADVENTURE last night, which consisted of getting locked in the garage for four hours. Apparently she snuck out of the kitchen into the garage while myrialux was getting his laundry out of the washing machine and I was cooking Brussels sprouts (and the rest of dinner). I didn't notice a lack of Nefer for a couple of hours, and checked the bed where she'd been nesting for the past couple of days in my clean laundry*, and didn't see her. I thought it was a bit odd, but as she'd disappeared before into various hidey-holes around the house for several hours at a time, I didn't bother to look for her.

Two hours later, after I'd watched Top Chef and two episodes of House Hunters International, I noticed that she still hadn't shown up, and mentioned it to myrialux, who poked about the house for a while, then opened the garage door. In came Nefer.

She seems to be none the worse for wear after her experience - her fur wasn't even cold, which leads me to think she nestled up against the washing machine or something - but she did snuggle up to my leg as we were falling asleep, which she usually doesn't do, preferring to sit on the warm heating pad thing I heat up for her on cold nights. (Ans also threw up in her food bowl. God only know what she ate out there.) And when we tested her by opening the door to the garage, she looked at it with interest and started walking over before we shut it.

I, however, am a TOTAL WRECK when I think about it. Which I know is overreacting a wee, tiny bit, as she's fine, no harm, no foul. It's just that I'm oversensitive on the subject of my cats. Hell, if I take a shower and afterwards find one of them sitting outside the bathroom door, I feel all guilty that I couldn't hear them meowing and let them in. So, y'know, four hours in the garage, no water, no food but for bugs, at some point of which she must have meowed next to the door, unheard... WAAAAARRGGGHHHH!!!! I mean, she was TRAPPED OUT THERE IN THE GARAGE WHILE I WAS TYPING OUT A POST ABOUT BRUSSELS SPROUTS! THE HORROR!

I am, however, wondering if another aspect of her behavior will change now that she's fully familiar with the garage smells. myrialux reports that he's seen it several times when I'm gone all day for work, and I've seen it once when myrialux has left to go game for the day: she picks her stuffed hamster** up in her mouth, trots over to the garage door, drops it on the mat, and meows at the door. She often takes the hamster around the house, drops it, and meows, but we didn't know if it was a sort of instinct, calling for kittens to come so she can teach them to hunt, or if she's doing it for attention, or both. The garage-door thing means that she's made the connection with us leaving the house through the garage, and may be calling for us to return.***

Or we may, perhaps, be witnessing the birth of a religion.




* I dump it on the bed in the morning, so that I will have to put it away before I go to bed. What happens is (a) I dump it back into the laundry basket right before I go to bed instead of putting it away and (b) Nefer makes a nest and sleeps in it.

** A Hamtaro which is, alas, not much longer for this world. I'm in the market for a small stuffed animal no larger than my fist, about 4" on the longest axis. We found a stuffed quail, but it's a bit too big and she doesn't pay any attention to it. Any leads?

*** EVEN MORE HEART-RENDING, I TELL YOU