dispensing with her belongings

Cindi took me to FurKids on Friday, where I donated all of Doris' unused food, cat litter, etc. as well as the pet carrier and bed I had. I needed to remove all of these reminders of her to move on and I didn't want it to go to waste. I've saved some unused flea treatment to bring to Aud, since it's expensive stuff and she's got multiple cats. Now it's just a matter of getting that to her house and I'll be done with that part of the process. We both still tear up every time we think of her. I don't think we'll ever know a cat as good as her. She seemed so unique.

road trip today

Watching Sunday Morning. Checking email. Preparing to travel to Pell City, Alabama to visit MonsterMustDie's mother today. His stomach is already rolling like a hurricane with stress. I can hear him groaning while he's updating online auctions.

wet

Had a very good time at Vinophiles last night. Chatting and tasting new things with good people. The rain started minutes after we arrived and Perri and Walter's house, with quite a lot of lightning & thunder. Lights flickered. Candles kept the house from going dark. The storm seemed to energize the entire evening in spirits as well.

It is still raining this morning, though not with last night's intensity. I still need to walk through the house and finish re-setting all of the clocks and timers.

It's been a crazy, stressful week of loss, discomfort, and family concerns. We are without use of our kitchen sink and dishwasher until Monday at the earliest. That's when a plumber is supposed to replace a section of the large old cast iron pipe that has rusted through, leaving our crawlspace wet, nasty, stinky, and propagating vermin.

Sunday, we need to travel to visit MonsterMustDie's mother to check on how she's managing. Family and friends have phoned and emailed him about her condition deteriorating mentally. Seems her memory is completely shot now and it is up to his cousin, her neice, and her friends to come in and clean out her fridge, get her to pay bills, etc. Medications are piled up in her cabinet without being taken. I don't know what the condition of the house is like.

saying goodbye to Doris

Today is Doris last day. She took a turn for the worse yesterday and we both believe she's had enough. The lung cancer has taken most of the life out of her at this point. I can't talk about her without getting weepy. Best kitty ever. We have greatly enjoyed having her around and will miss her terribly.

"ensure" for cats

Doris can't really handle solid food any more but I found a Whiskas product called CatMilk. While Sandra and Chaz were visiting us last night, Sandra looked at the label and ingredients and assured me the ingredients were, essentially, nearly the same as Ensure brand shakes - so I think I've found a very good temporary solution to her inability to eat. She can get the CatMilk down easily and it is designed for easy digestion in cats. Keeping her fed will probably increase the time she has left her. I plan to vary the liquid diet by trying to get her to take chicken broth and other smooth soups. Sitting on my counter waiting to be tried are cans of chicken broth, beef consomme, and cream of chicken soup. I will also try liquifying her catfood in the blender but I don't know how successful that will be. She is already rejecting even the softest canned foods.

She has created a new schedule for herself now. She spends all day sleeping on the sofa and refuses to wake up or move from her perch until her normal evening feeding time at 6pm. She hops down just long enough to have the CatMilk brought to her, laps it all up, and then goes back to the sofa. Around 9pm, she goes to John's office and curls up there most of the night. In the early morning hours, she goes downstairs to use the litter box and stays downstairs until we get up in the morning, at which point she comes up for a dish of liquid food. Then she returns to the sofa for the rest of the day until around 6pm.

inevitability of life

Unfortunately, but not a surprise, Doris has lung cancer. She is home from the vet. We will keep her as comfortable as possible for as long as she has left.

Doris

Things are not looking good for Doris Katz now. The mystery ailment seems to only be getting worse. Shes down to liquids only in her diet, which for the moment means water and milk. I'm thinking of thinning some food into liquid or feeding her low-sodium chicken broth also. She does not seem to be in pain, so that's a mercy. She sleeps all day now, only getting up to drink a bit and say hello when we come home in the afternoon. Our local veterinarian seems to strongly believe that, at her probable age, she has cancer somewhere. With the eye out, one might guess it is already in her brain so I see not treatment option if that is what we're dealing with. But we don't really know for certain, so I have made an appointment for her with a specialist in Decatur. The soonest they could see her is Tuesday morning. Hopefully, she will get through the weekend okay on liquids. Then we might be closer to knowing what, if anything, to do for her.

She pooped.

No work today. No job leads either, so things were pretty quiet here at el Rancho, except for the ongoing health issues with our senior room mate, Doris Katz. She is still on antibiotics for the eye thing of mysterious origin that has her white blood cell count very high. She had not pooped for two days but was till eating until last night. Today we could not even get her to choke down her pill, so I took her in to the vet again. It was nearly time for her first follow-up on the mystery illness anyway, so they took a new blood sample - just a small one since she's a bit anemic of late- and checked her vitals. Still no fever. Blood pressure is normal. The doctor tells me that digestive issues are not a normal side effect of the medication she's on so this is something new.
Good news is that she was so scared, with all the jostling around and prodding at the veterinary office, she finally pooped there on the office floor. We were all relieved that problem is, for the moment, not an issue. She is still not eating tonight. I gave her a bit of soft food that made her gag but she did choke down a few bites.

Tonight, MonsterMustDie and I went out to dinner with a group of good friends to Young Augustine's. Very good meal, as usual. We started with an order of duck fries for the table. I had the enormous plate of fish and chips. Kisa Bastet's hubby had to help me finish the plate - I did not want to take leftover fish home since it probably would not make very good leftovers by the morning. MonsterMustDie ahd the carnita & kimchee tacos. Gilli had the brussel sprouts, which was another generous plate and looked delicious. Kisa had the shrimp-scallion pancakes and her hubby had the pork belly sliders. Kel had the short rib grilled cheese sandwich. Other people's selections are rapidly disappearing from memory now. Time to shut down and call it a night.

We got a last minute invitation to Captain Chantelle's house for the Grateful Gluttons dinner and Halloween planning. We had dinner ahead of time at Young Augustine's and got to Chantelle's in time to listen to the planning of this Halloween's float.
Two things are constants now on Halloween: The Marching Skeletons and the bluegrass band, composed of various Grateful Gluttons. This year's new theme is "Tiki Terror!" Perhaps the Tiki Gods are angered by how we are treating the earth, with the gulf oil spill, etc. There will be future discussions on fund raising events and sales to buy materials for float building and costume making.

Speaking of Young Augustine's, we had such a good dinner that we decided we must go back soon with friends who haven't tried it yet, especially so John can have other beer-snobs to share in the joys of the huge selection of drafts and casks. And the fries cooked in duck fat, of course.

I tried to set up up a group dinner there on a Friday night within the next month but things are too busy already. Every weekend is starting to fill up again, starting with the big party at the House of Cats. Then various people are out of town for business. Then the geeks have DragonCon all Labor Day weekend. Then it's holidays from Halloween through New Years and beyond.

So we are going to meet for dinner at Young Augustine's tomorrow evening. It's dinner only, so we're hoping it will not / can not possibly be a late evening - much like the Buford Highway Restaurant Crawl nights, without going to a separate place for desert.