Packing my bags

I called Landon’s Dr. to get an appointment for his 2 year well child visit. I have every Friday off and the closest Friday to his 2nd birthday is…his birthday. So I scheduled it for that day and the receptionist/appointment booker lady basically called me mean. And told me he would remember his 2 year old visit. And told me that we had to get him some really big presents to make up for it. And I told her to mind her own beeswax and that if I needed her parenting advice then I would ask for it and also, would she like to pay me my normal wages to come in on a day I don’t have off, if she thinks it’s so terrible that I bring him in on his birthday. Except I didn’t. I possibly mumbled something about his party being the next day and that he wouldn’t know the difference.

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A couple weeks ago I took Ivan in to the vet for his annual cortisone shot. He’s allergic to mosquitoes we believe, and basically we wait until his ears are all red and bleedy and gross and his nose swells up and get him a cortisone shot and it all goes down and he’s happy until the next year when the mosquitoes come back. He also gets his annual shots when this happens and I tried to combine this appointment with Alexander’s well cat visit, but when I went to gather the cats, the yard guys were making as much noise as humanly possible and only Ivan fell for the old tuna trick.

Well, as it turns out one of his lymph nodes is swollen in one of his hind legs. The Dr. aspirated it and didn’t see anything that indicated cancer or lymphoma saying that not only are the typical cells not present in the sample she took, but also that normally a cat with lymphoma has all his lymph nodes swollen, not just one. But she gave him an antibiotic shot and sent us packing with a huge vet bill. Thank God Alexander was hiding, because if I’d had them both there and had to pay for his shots too, I’m not sure we would have made it out of there without having to wash dishes or something. She said to call in 3 weeks or so and check back in about his lymph node.

Well, she called to check on him. His lymph node is still swollen. She said she has to recommend a biopsy. And I felt like a jackass, but I asked “how much money are we talking here?” She added the histopath and the anesthesia and came up with about $300. “And what happens if it comes back as cancer? Cat Chemotherapy?” Yeah, pretty much.

And here’s where I then have to choose between money and cat chemotherapy.

Cat chemotherapy will probably only actually extend his life a year. A sick year. A year of 2 daily pills and a shot every 3 weeks. Basically, a year of hell. And since I suck at remembering to administer pills probably less than a year. On a cat that seemingly is pretty durn healthy at the moment. I didn’t even ask how much that was going to cost me. She did say it was pretty reasonably priced. This vet also told me that the shot antibiotic I had opted for over the pills was about the same price and very reasonable ($90 is NOT reasonable for a cat antibiotic.)

Bottomline, I’m not going to go for cat chemotherapy – I’d rather watch him live happily as he is doing now, and when/if I see a decline in his health we’ll reevaluate the situation. She said if I wasn’t going to do the treatment there really no reason to biopsy. Honestly, I think that it was probably inflamed due to an infection from the mosquito bites and once it’s all good and healed he’ll be fine. Plus, he’s an outside cat, and he’s 6 years old and he’s already outlived a lot of his siblings.

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The dog next door is still there, but they did get his fur cut. So yea for the system. Except, he's still alone 99.9% of the time and I still feel bad for him.
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Have you seen the commercial where they ask President Bush if he ate dinner with his family growing up and claim it keeps kids from doing drugs and committing crimes? He says he did, and then Barbara chimes in about it...does no one remember his convictions for cocaine. Is he really the best spokesman for that spot?

Ethical dilemmas continued

FAIR WARNING, THIS IS NOT A STORY FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. It's a little gory and very sad, you may want to skip this post. And also not read it either while eating or shortly after eating
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Ok, I warned you.

On Friday morning, Clint left for Gun Barrel, and I was preparing to take my girl scouts to Lake Limestone. I had a bunch of errands to do, and one included taking Ivan to the vet for what seems like will be his annual cortisone shot for his mosquito allergy. Apparently we can’t do anything to prevent this, without allergy testing and weekly allergy treatments, so, he had an appointment on Wednesday, Clint left work early to take him and then couldn’t find him. We rescheduled for Friday morning, so I was looking for him. The cat knows when he has an appointment and knows exactly where to hide, because I couldn’t find him either and ended up calling and telling them that I would need to call back if he resurfaced.

In my hunt for him however, I was in the backyard, since we have a section of fence that’s like at a 45° angle and has been for a few weeks, I thought that as long as I was out there, I’d go see what we’d need to do to fix it. Ever made a decision in which you truly wish you could turn back time? I come up to the fence and notice a particularly foul odor. And I’m looking and I see what I think is possible fangs from a snake and maybe and eye and some skin that looks scaly. And I looked on the bottom side of the fence.
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It’s not a snake. It’s not fangs. It’s a claw. Now, I can’t tell if it’s a raccoon, or a cat or a possum. But I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. I ran back into the house, horrified. Remembering the other night when I heard a cat crying and I couldn’t find it. Remembering the nights that Scarlett was back in that corner of the yard and I could not for the life of me get her to come in.

I called Clint, one of his household duties is the removal of dead animals. He used to share this duty with Shane. I have issued orders of removal for a mouse, a squirrel and now, this – what I hoped was a raccoon. I told him of my grisly discovery, and went on to the Girl Scout trip. I can honestly say that animal was in the back of my head all weekend. (I did find Ivan and took him to the vet and all is well with Alexander, and also the gray cat that does not belong to us, but apparently we feed.) So when Clint finally got home, and went to inspect the dead animal, he said he needed my help in its removal due to the angle of the fence. I asked if he could tell me it was a raccoon. And he was silent. And I knew. And he said slowly, “I … can … tell … you … it’s … a … cat.” And I said “NO!!! Tell me it’s a raccoon.”

And all I could think about was the week I was missing Alexander. How during that week all I wanted to know was where he was. If he was dead, I wanted a body, I needed closure. Here’s the thing, this animal, which I would still like to believe may not have been a cat, had already lost a significant amount of hair, there’s no recognizing a cat by its skeleton and dried up skin. And there had been lost cat posters around the neighborhood a few weeks ago, but not within the last week or so. That cat has been hanging on our fence for at least 2 weeks. We put him in a black trash bag; he’ll go out with the rest of the week’s trash on Wednesday. How do I get over this? How do I live with myself for not being able to tell someone what happened to their cat? What if I call the lost cat poster people and it turns out not to be their cat? Or worse yet, what if it is? And who’s to say which of the lost cats is the one we have? The cat, like ours and so many others in the neighborhood had no collar. I’m heart broken for this cat, and his/her owners. And I’m mad at myself for not looking harder for that crying cat a few weeks ago, when I may have been able to save him.

I know now, that when I hear a cat crying, I will walk the fence of our yard. But that doesn’t save this cat. This cat that I'm still hoping is actually a very skinny raccoon.

A productive, expensive weekend

My brain is scattery – I probably didn’t get enough sleep, this is not the flowy post you’re used to.

Landon’s paternal grandparents were supposed to come this past weekend. But it didn’t work out, so in retaliation we spent a ton of money instead. I can’t remember exactly what we spent money on during our Saturday outing, but I remember telling Clinton that my head was about to explode and we needed to go home before we spent any more money.

We got in the hot tub on Saturday night. Which was nice, and Landon really enjoyed it too.

I had compiled a list of things I wanted to get done, and figured I’d have time, what with the extra entertainment for the dictator, and my arms being free to say…put away the Christmas decorations. Of my list, only one thing got done (and it was not the Christmas decorations, or Valentine’s Day stockings as I’ve been affectionately calling them – I guess that makes them Easter stockings now.) I did finish and submit our taxes. We did get other stuff done and had a very productive weekend anyway.

* We hung Landon’s swing on the back porch.
* We trimmed the sago palms and sprayed them for scale.
* We repotted a plant we got from Julie – oh the irony…it’s a money tree (you’ll see.)
* We repotted a plant I won at Kandi’s bridal shower
* We miracle gro-ed all our potted plants.
* We put Tiki torches around the pool
* We replaced one of the skimmer baskets in the pool
* We sprayed the clear coat on the mosaic armadillo and cow skull

(When I say “We”, it’s code for “I watched while Clint…”)

We spent a lot of time outdoors this Sunday, which was nice, it was a really pretty day. Our goal is to try and do that more often, 1 or 2 nights a week when the weather permits, have dinner outside, and when it warms up, swim a little. Landon seems to really enjoy being outside, and who can blame him?


Anyway, after a weekend of spending money and doing house projects, having done only about half our laundry…our dryer died. Just when Landon had already worn all his feetie pajamas that fit and they were soaking wet in a sad little pile in the bottom of the dryer. It smelled like burnt copper. Apparently that’s what money smells like when it’s leaving you. Clint took the clothes to Jay’s to put them in their dryer, and I picked them up Monday night when I pick up Landon.

Monday night Clint took the whole dryer apart and tested parts of it. Motor is blown, according to the internet a blown motor in a Maytag also means a blown circuit board, and based on prices of parts, even if we could fix it ourselves completely, we’ve almost spent what a new dryer costs. So…we went dryer shopping, and ultimately decided to give it one more day and sleep on it. When we returned to Lowe’s on Tuesday night to make the purchase all the dryers were moved around. Apparently ours is the old model as of Tuesday and therefore $50 cheaper. SWEET!! Finally procrastination works in my favor.

So my cushion in the bank account now looks like a big white box with knobs and a little door. Goodbye, money.

The upside is that maybe this new one will alleviate us of having that faint cat urine smell in the utility room while we dry clothes.

Oh and someone killed a bird and left it on the driveway for us. I don’t want to name names, but I have a few suspects.

(Oh and hey, check out the side bar, I got to delete some stuff!)