A weekend in May
On Friday, I took Chief Inspector Taz of Catland Yard to his follow-up appointment with the vet in Marblehead. Did he want to go into the carrier? No he did not; and Nora has the scars to prove it. According to the ultrasound the bladder crystals have not dissolved. The vet hemmed and hawed a little, but eventually recommended that Taz should have surgery to remove them. There are pros and cons: he is a perfectly healthy cat at the moment and the surgery does have the risk of complications. We could be taking a perfectly healthy cat with a chance of something bad happening down the line and turning him into a cat with chronic problems. However, if one of the crystals moves downstream and causes a blockage, it could become life-threatening very quickly.
I think we're going to get a second opinion at another vet in Salem; she comes highly recommended from a colleague of Nora's. Another reason for taking Taz to another vet is that the vet in Marblehead was pretty blunt about their current success rate on this kind of surgery: not good. I'd rather have Taz treated somewhere other than the place where the last few bladder operations "did not go as well as we would have liked".
I got some new food from the vet and for the first time, dried food was offered as an option. I'm still not sure about giving him dried food, so I just took a small sample bag. Since Taz had had a hard day, we gave him some dried food in addition to his usual dinner can. He attacked the dried food like he hadn't eaten for a month. Sure enough, he made himself sick. The vet said that we could leave a lot of dried food out and Taz would only eat what he needed to. That might work with a cat who has any self control around dried food whatsoever, but for Taz I think it would be like using an addict's kitchen to store all your spare heroin.
Nora had started to feel unwell on Friday and by Saturday was full-out on the couch drinking juice sick. I popped over to Marblehead to check out the Garden Club plant sale, but there wasn't really anything that I was interested in. I was going to pop into the garden center on the way back, but I decided that I was sick of Marblehead and all of its shenanigans. I went up to the farm, which was very crowded; I think it must have been the orientation day for new CSA members. They had pansies, which is all I really needed right then, so I picked up enough for the window boxes.
The rest of the day was a combination of bursts of energy and collapsing on the couch. I planted the window boxes and did some light weeding and tidy up in the garden. I dry-hopped the bitter that's currently fermenting and took a sample for testing. The gravity is at 1.007, which is four points lower than I was aiming for and puts the ABV at 4.8%, so it's definitely out of range for an ordinary bitter. Tastes pretty good, though. It will be a little dry, but that should make it a refreshing summer beverage.
On Sunday we drove down to Connecticut for Mother's Day. Nora figured she was well enough if she took it easy and I offered to do all the driving. Unfortunately, her dad had been in charge of organizing the day and he had flaked sufficiently hard that her mom and grandma had decided to spend as much time in Christmas Tree Shops as was humanly possible. After waiting for them for an hour and a half, we were able to chase them down and force them to have a light lunch with us at Uno's. Afterwards, we did a few light chores for Nora's mom and dad and chatted for a bit before heading home.
When we got home, Taz wasn't too mad with us, although he had moved his food bowl towards the kitchen door so that we wouldn't miss the fact that we were half an hour late feeding him. Nora, Taz and I had family time on the couch, watching Doctor Who and Survivor. We cracked open the first test bottle of my Rye IPA - it's actually pretty good. Not quite as hoppy as you would expect given the quantities I put in there, but a nicely drinkable IPA. It should improve with age.
I think we're going to get a second opinion at another vet in Salem; she comes highly recommended from a colleague of Nora's. Another reason for taking Taz to another vet is that the vet in Marblehead was pretty blunt about their current success rate on this kind of surgery: not good. I'd rather have Taz treated somewhere other than the place where the last few bladder operations "did not go as well as we would have liked".
I got some new food from the vet and for the first time, dried food was offered as an option. I'm still not sure about giving him dried food, so I just took a small sample bag. Since Taz had had a hard day, we gave him some dried food in addition to his usual dinner can. He attacked the dried food like he hadn't eaten for a month. Sure enough, he made himself sick. The vet said that we could leave a lot of dried food out and Taz would only eat what he needed to. That might work with a cat who has any self control around dried food whatsoever, but for Taz I think it would be like using an addict's kitchen to store all your spare heroin.
Nora had started to feel unwell on Friday and by Saturday was full-out on the couch drinking juice sick. I popped over to Marblehead to check out the Garden Club plant sale, but there wasn't really anything that I was interested in. I was going to pop into the garden center on the way back, but I decided that I was sick of Marblehead and all of its shenanigans. I went up to the farm, which was very crowded; I think it must have been the orientation day for new CSA members. They had pansies, which is all I really needed right then, so I picked up enough for the window boxes.
The rest of the day was a combination of bursts of energy and collapsing on the couch. I planted the window boxes and did some light weeding and tidy up in the garden. I dry-hopped the bitter that's currently fermenting and took a sample for testing. The gravity is at 1.007, which is four points lower than I was aiming for and puts the ABV at 4.8%, so it's definitely out of range for an ordinary bitter. Tastes pretty good, though. It will be a little dry, but that should make it a refreshing summer beverage.
On Sunday we drove down to Connecticut for Mother's Day. Nora figured she was well enough if she took it easy and I offered to do all the driving. Unfortunately, her dad had been in charge of organizing the day and he had flaked sufficiently hard that her mom and grandma had decided to spend as much time in Christmas Tree Shops as was humanly possible. After waiting for them for an hour and a half, we were able to chase them down and force them to have a light lunch with us at Uno's. Afterwards, we did a few light chores for Nora's mom and dad and chatted for a bit before heading home.
When we got home, Taz wasn't too mad with us, although he had moved his food bowl towards the kitchen door so that we wouldn't miss the fact that we were half an hour late feeding him. Nora, Taz and I had family time on the couch, watching Doctor Who and Survivor. We cracked open the first test bottle of my Rye IPA - it's actually pretty good. Not quite as hoppy as you would expect given the quantities I put in there, but a nicely drinkable IPA. It should improve with age.