Had to take our older cat, Sora, to the imaging center for thyroid scanning today in preparation for the full iodine treatment in a couple of weeks. Our little ball of anxiety was Not Happy.

He’s home safe, though his hind legs aren’t obeying orders properly just yet. And I’m now stuck on the bed because he shoved his head up my sleeve and fell asleep. XD I don’t want him trying to climb up my desk to get to me and hurting himself, and sleep is the best thing for him right now, so this is my life now.

Pictures when I’m able to get to a computer and post them.

The people on our north side sold their house and the new owners are moving in today. Although the house is on the side where we don't have any windows open, Sora is stressing over the noise. Every so often a truck drives up, and people walk around outside, and Sora hears it and growls and just in every way expresses that he Does Not Approve.

Or, at least, he was doing this all morning, in between bouts of soliciting Toby for catnip (something that occupies his brain for most of the day, every day). He fell asleep in a sunbeam about half an hour ago and has barely twitched an ear since then.

Here he is, doing what he best loves to do in the morning: waking me up by sitting on my chest, purring, and placing his paws on my face.

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).

Sora isn't feeling too well, we think (I posted yesterday that he has a cold, and he's sneezing everywhere). Toby reported that Sora opened the closet door in the spare bedroom, slunk into there and curled up on the spare mattress pad we have on the floor (I have no idea why it's there), and stayed there all afternoon. Toby gave him a couple of Pill Pockets, and he ate those, so he's not off his feed too badly, and when I got hom, he let me scratch behind his ears and under his jaw.

He's still in the closet, but we've caught him slinking out a couple of times since I got home. He doesn't really want to be petted, so our best guess is that he just feels like shit and doesn't want attention, but he's feeling good enough to come out when everything is very quiet.

Our plan is to keep an eye on him and see how he's looking tomorrow morning, and decide whether or not to take him in to the vet then.

ETA; Shortly after I posted this, he crept into the room, then eventually jumped on top of my chair and started to come down onto my chest...then sneezed a bunch of times in a row and scared himself and jumped off. So I guess he's feeling a bit better?

Remember a year ago when Sora started having, ahem, inappropriate elimination problems that were diagnosed as crystals in his urine? They seem to have started up again. A couple of days ago, he was shut into the bathroom with me (those of you with cats will understand their desire to accompany you behind closed doors). At some point, he jumped into the (dry!) tub and peed on a dirty washrag. I didn't think much about it other than "weird cat" because he loves to jump in there and rub himself all over dirty washrags. But then last night we discovered a small pile of turds about a foot away from the food dispenser he uses most often, as if he was eating when he was overcome with an uncontrollable urge.

Luckily our weekend had been so packed with stuff that Toby and I had taken today off, so we called the vet and explained, and also explained that we didn't want to have to bring him in if we could possibly avoid it, because he was so terrified the last time. So our current treatment plan is to go back on the spiffy special prescription diet formulated for urinary problems for a while, and in 3 or 4 weeks, for us to sample his urine. This is going to involve shutting Sora up in a bathroom (away from Mama! O the humanity felinity!) with a plastic litter tray filled with aquarium gravel until he pees, at which point we grab a sample with a kit they've provided--a syringe to pick it up and a plastic tube in which to carry it. It can be refrigerated overnight, but needs to get back to the vet ASAP otherwise. (The gravel is so he can scratch, but it's not absorbent.)

Anyway. I NOTE that the Felidae dry food, which we'd been feeding them (wet food in the morning, dry food at night) changed their kibble shape! We think that they must also have changed the formula because we started the new bag, with the new kibble shape, last week and now this. So it's back to the grind of finding a food that the cats will eat. One of the vet-recommended foods was Halo, so we have a bag of that to try tonight. We fed Sora a kibble of that and he loved it enough that he followed us around squeaking, trying to get more of it. Nefer turned her nose up at a kibble, but did lick her lips, so there's that.

I just got the official "send us your address as the contributors' calendars are going out next week" email from Cheezburger Enterprises. (This will be the I can Haz Cheezburger 2013 calendar featuring Sora as Mr. [Some Month], although I fear he's sharing the month with other cats.)

But the salutation and closing made me think - what would it be like working for a company in which your official company correspondence requires you to use "O hai!" and "Baifornow!" in your business letters and emails, as they do?

P.S. I think you'll be able to buy the calendars starting next week, or whenever your friendly neighborhood bookstore starts stockling 2013 calendars. I believe it's a 12-month calendar, with several lolcats on each month.

Yup, I've got the official word that Sora will be included in the I Can Has Cheezburger? 2013 Wall Calendar: A LOLcat Kalendar! (I may have posted about that under f-lock - a pic of Sora I uploaded to the Cheezburger site with a caption by someone else got tapped for possible inclusion in the calendar a few months back. See icon for the picture.)

I have no idea what date he'll be, though!

Sora spent the morning as Toby and I were getting ready trying to persuade us to feed him. I think the only reason he doesn't wake us up in the mornings* is that we don't feed the cats immediately, but wait for a bit before doing so. (I highly recommend this course of action to prevent your cat from waking you up an hour before the alarm!)

Anyway, this morning, as I was opening the bag of birdseed to refill the feeder, Sora apparently thought it might be his food, so came running over, which made Toby laugh. Toby's laugh scared Sora, who turned and ran towards the coffee table.

Toby reports this next bit, as it happened behind my back. Sora was apparently undecided as to whether he wanted to jump up on top of the coffee table and run away that way, or to run under the table and hide. So he jumped directly into the table, smacking into it with his chest, so his front paws were on top of the table, and sending coasters flying.

This caused Toby to fall down laughing. At which Sora took offense, and he spent the rest of the morning slinking off until he finally found a hiding place and wouldn't be cajoled from it -- wherever it was -- by food or by us calling to him gently.

I envision him hiding behind the dryer or something, sniffing plaintively, and mumbling "You're not my real parents!" to himself.




* Usually. Although Toby is the one who feeds him, he wakes me up if Toby forgets to feed him at night. Or if he's lonely and wants to snuggle.

Sora is finally home! I called at 3 and he still hadn't peed for them, and at 4:30 I decided to leave work an hour early and drive by the vet's on the way. I got there, and the tech went and checked, and he'd FINALLY peed - naturally not in his litterbox, but on his mat. So I picked him up, paid the bill (he is turning into one expensive little monster) and went home.

Sora was most happy to be going home - he scrunched himself into the door of the carrier, which was the closest toward me he could get. He also registered complaints out loud for most of the trip.

The vet called me shortly after I got home, and here's the verdict...

( cut for the suspense )