So the deadline to pay for the cruise is fast approaching, and I have not fully made up my mind. Each day I lean one way more than the other. More than just trying to get the dissertation done by the end of the year is now affecting my decision. There was Moo Kitty’s unexpected and expensive trip to the vet, as well as my work schedule for the spring. I’m teaching at least 2 classes, one I’ve never taught before (but it’s archaeology so I’m excited at the same time). There is possibly a 3rd as well. The 3rd however may not happen for many reason, my choosing not to take it being one of them. While the money would be nice, I’ve quickly learned the hard way the amount of driving I’ve been doing is taking its toll on me right now with everything else going on.

John and I briefly discussed vacation alternatives should we not do the cruise, and it would be something local. I really would love to see Salem as well as Plymouth Colony . . . . however January might not be the best time of the year to do so! I also suggested Great Wolf Lodge in the Poconos. Heidi and I went to one in Wisconsin and it was so much fun. It’s basically a giant indoor water park/hotel. Plus there would be other things to do nearby, such as skiing. I’ve never done it, but think it would be fun. John is not a fan of the cold, and said I’d probably be over it in about an hour. Emily said I’d probably break my leg. Truth be told, both are probably right

John suggested New York and Broadway. “Priscilla Queen of the Desert” hits Broadway early next year. Broadway is always fun, but NY is a day trip at most. I have a hard enough time relaxing on vacations as is (my mind thinks about what I need to be doing and should be doing instead). Add in NY and you just have too much stress. I like NY, but it’s as I said a day trip. NY in January really isn’t much fun. It’s cold, windy, miserable and god forbid it snows. You can’t go anywhere because you can’t get a taxi.

While I have a good number of reasons to just cancel the cruise this year, many of them also become reasons to go oddly. I’m so stressed right now, that a vacation will be wanted and possibly needed by January. Plus it’s the only time of the year John and I can get away together and just both relax. Okay I try to relax as much as I can, but it would be easier honestly if we could go away during the summer like normal folks rather than the week before another school semester starts!

Aside from vacation ponderings, I have yet to motivate to decorate inside. John’s brother, who is now regularly here on the weekends, noticed I didn’t have the Halloween village out. I carried some of it up last night, and it sits in boxes in the living room right now. My friend Keith comes this weekend, so I figured I better put some of it out. Only a few pieces are going up this year, just on the mantel I think. In years past I’ve put pieces all over the living room. Truth be told, I just don’t wanna deal with taking it all down this year I might motivate to decorate while watching my shows tonight.

Our house currently smells like cat piss. Moo Kitty apparently has some abdominal swelling from the surgery the vet thinks is putting pressure on his bladder, which makes him feel like he has to pee a lot. So rather than making it to the litter boxes downstairs, he just pees wherever. I am however developing an alternate theory. I think Moo Kitty is just angry and is pissing anywhere out of spite. Given how much I paid to save his life, I am hoping the swelling theory is correct and this stops soon. Cat piss SMELLS and it never comes out. He has pissed on brand new carpet John put down on our steps and the kitchen nook, which now needs to be replaced. I am spraying and shampooing it as much as I can, cause it’s not going to be replaced till January when John is off . . . and the SMELL!

Our crotchety old neighbors are moving. Or they are trying to I should say. They are LOADED, have a nice house (set far back on their large property) and are either 1) going to get taken to the bank in this poor housing market or 2) just not be able to sell it right now. John says whether they can sell or not, they are moving. They had originally thought of dividing the land up into four plots and selling them as well as the plot their house is on (and thereby resulting in 4 new houses going up), but that hasn’t happened and probably won’t (because of the market I guess). However the option is there for whomever might buy it, the land has officially been divvied by the county to make it possible. To be honest, I expected to be asked to “take down some of my decor” outside, but wasn’t. These are the people that planted a row of pine trees, sending our house into eternal shadows and cutting off our sunlight, simply because when they drove in and out of their driveway they didn’t want to look at our house. They had an open house today . . . . I don’t think anyone actually came by from what I could tell.

Anyway, I leave you with some photos of myself, John and Princess I made with some monster morphing app I got off iTunes. Hey, these days, I have to get my fun where I can find it

Moo Kitty came through the surgery fine, and assuming all is well in the morning, he’ll be coming home tomorrow.

Here is a quick video I made of the house It survived the first major storm last night!

So here the weather was nice, I thought I could finish decorating, and that I’d get a lot of work done school wise. Of course the universe had other plans.

Moo Kitty is in the pet hospital this weekend. Thursday night he was clearly not feeling too well. Friday morning he was not feeling well and clearly was not moving much. He didn’t eat, and it was obvious he was having some “back end” issues. We thought he had a UTI, so made an appointment for him.

Unfortunately it’s much worse. Moo Kitty was in hypothermic shock and full on kidney failure. It seems he has kidney stones and they got stuck. He’s been on fluids and a catheter. As of today his kidney’s seem to be almost back to normal, which is good, as if they weren’t then we were looking at kidney disease that had been progressing for awhile.

He needs to have surgery on Tuesday to remove the stones so this doesn’t happen again. Then he’ll be on a special diet as well. He’s a big cat, I’m sure he won’t like that. However I suspect his gross over eating is also what lead to this. I had the week before removed the never ending dry food bowl because he eats too much from it.

So most of this weekend I’ve spent with a headache from all this. I did finally get almost everything outside decorated. As for the inside, I think I’m not doing much inside this year unless the mood strikes me sometime this week.

Send Small Children! Must Have Brains!

I’m seriously beginning to think we have a ghost cat problem! Percy has become more and more of a bed hog and cuddler than ever before, and it all seems to have started when Lance died. Before Lance died, Percy would occasionally hop on the couch with me at night, or if I was sick and on the couch during the day come lay with me. That was about it. Lance was always the people cat. He was the one always on the couch. He was the one that would nudge you to pet him. He was the one who broke into the bedroom in the morning to come sleep with me.

Well since he died in April, Percy has seemingly taken over that role. He almost every morning breaks into the room to sleep with me after John gets up and leaves for the day. More recently he’s started coming in at night too! He’s also become more and more of an aggressive “pet me now!” kitty by doing the head bumping and face rubbing thing on your hands. Well last night when I refused to pet him cause it was time to go to bed . . . he began nibbling on my fingers!

Why is that important? Well first of all, he’s never done that before. Second, Lance used to have this toe fetish. If there were bare toes available, he’d nibble on them. He would often do it should he want petting and you weren’t accommodating him. I think I might have to take Percy to a pet psychic and possibly find a pet exorcist!

Post Note: Don’t get me wrong, I love that Percy has become possessed a people cat, as none of the other cats in the house are very people social. Plus Percy has always been “my” cat, he comes to me for food and attention. However, I still think he’s possessed!

Drove back to my Jersey home today. Just some random ramblings here

• The house shockingly isn’t a total disaster.
• The bunny had no water and almost no food left (John claims he had both last night).
• Percy had no wet food, so I had to go buy him some.
• I also had to get dry food and litter, which they were out of.
• Scrubbed cat puke out of the bedroom carpet.
• Picked up cat puke from the dungeon basement (this was old cat puke that John just ignores).
• Cleaned cat pans (so gross!).
• Washed silverware in the sink (I left it with no dirty dishes).
• Filled the feng shui fountain which was bone dry.
• Dumped the pet food water and refilled it (the cats knocked a food dish into it, it was gross).

Anyways, I am getting ready for the “Harper’s Island” finale now

So I figured I should do a follow-up post on how everyone is getting by. First up, Lance’s death wasn’t unexpected. He was getting worse since he was diagnosed with an enlarged heart back in February or so. I blogged about that incident back then, how we rushed him to the emergency room one night when he was having breathing issues.

He had been put on medicine and given an ecocardiogram. The news then wasn’t good, the doctor was shocked he had basically lasted as long as he had without treatment. They put him on more pills and we were to bring him in around now for a follow-up to see if they helped at all. However over the past week or so his symptoms were clearly getting worse and he was having breathing issues again, in spite of the meds. I knew it wouldn’t be long really. John woke up Sunday to find him basically unable to breath and spitting up blood

The other animals seem to have adjusted as far as I can tell (we have so many!). There are big age differences and personalities between them too. Lancelot and Galahad are/were the old men of the house. They were here before I was here! They had a third, Uther, who past several years ago. Lance and Galahad were basically brothers, so I think if this hits anyone it will hit Galahad the worst. He was howling last night as if he was calling out wondering where the hell Lance was. Of the five cats, Lance was the one Galahad probably hung out with the most.

Lance (grey) and Galahad (grey striped)

The middle cat is big ole Moo Kitty. Moo Kitty hangs by himself, because he only likes human attention. He doesn’t like the other cats that much and he definitely doesn’t like the dogs. He’s kinda of a shit actually and just enjoys attacking (or trying to attack) the others. He thinks he’s king of the castle, but he’s more of a tyrant.

Moo Kitty, taking over Princess’ crate

Percy and Grim are the youngest and are about a year 1/2 apart. They usually hang out with each other, playing with and chasing each other all around. Percy will sleep/cuddle with Grim, but that’s about it. Grim however will/would sleep/cuddle with Galahad and Lance on occasion.

Percy (orange) and Grim, Grim and Lance

Of course then there are the dogs, who have each other. The cats tolerate the dogs, but that’s about it. Grim usually just runs from them, while Percy likes to lay on his back to get them to play pounce him. I rarely see the cats sleeping with the dogs, except for Lance. Lance would always sleep with them

Princess licking Lance’s ears, her favorite thing to do to him

Last night I ended up sick as a dog, a combination of a lot of things, just got run down at the conference I guess.

I returned home today from the trip to hell to get a fitting end to what will go down as the worst trip ever probably. Our cat Lance had to be put down this morning.

I didn’t even get to say goodbye. Just fuckity fuck fucking great!

So I figured I best check in before another week goes by without a post. As Summer approaches I should have more to blog about, both more free time and more going on. For example I finally plan on getting this house into long overdue shape by cleaning out the basement and redoing the guestrooms downstairs finally.

I have to get back to watching what I eat and make time to get to the gym. I hit 160 today. Not as bad as the 180 I was, but I was 150 back in December when I basically stopped running due to a nasty rash, which turned out to be eczema.

I do admit, I have been hitting McDonalds FAR more than I should lately, and that has to stop. In trying to eat healthier I’ve actually done something shocking, I’ve started eating fish! Okay actually one kind of fish, tilapia, which I can take because it’s so mild in flavor. However I need some good recipes for it, so please share if you have any you love. So far my favorite way too cook it seems to be blackening it with a yummy Cajun-creole rub I got off the net. Spicy goodness!

Finally a bit of cute news. I submitted some photos of the pets to Cute With Chris, a website about pets with a weekly video blog show. He posted a photo I took of Nikko and Lance! You can see it here on Cute With Chris!

Post Note: Emily and mine’s night of fun this past weekend got canceled, neither of us were feeling 100%. We are aiming to do it this coming weekend! So the cams should be on

Just an FYI . . . Lance came home last night, he’s doing much better. The vet has him on some pills for the time being and we are waiting to hear when the other vet can see him for a cardiac consult to see what the long term prognosis will be.

Thanks for all your well wishes

Pictured above is Princess and Lancelot. We had to rush Lance to the vet tonight For a month or so now he’s been pulling his hair out. This happened last year at this time, but he got over it. Not sure if it’s a food he’s allergic to or perhaps the dry winter air (we just turned on our humidifiers this week). Along with the ripping out of hair, he’s been making the hairball wheeze sound. I just assumed the two were related.

Well tonight he made the sound then went down, his breathing became rapid, he was gurgling and eventually coughed up fluid. We got him to the vet, where they realized it was his heart. Sure enough, his heart is enlarged, he has fluid all around it and he even may have punctured his diaphragm wheezing tonight with this attack. They said he probably suffers from what a lot of large male cats suffer from, some enlarged heart syndrome.

They gave him a shot to help expel the fluid from his lungs and he is in an oxygen tank where he’ll stay overnight. By time we left he was actually looking and doing much better. She’s going to call us in the morning to let us know how he is. We need to have a kitty cardiologist look at him to determine the best course of treatment (if it can be something that can be managed or not, probably kitty pills for the rest of his life I’m sure). That will be on Monday, though she said if something happens in between (something worsens) we might need to take him elsewhere to bee seen before Monday.

I of course am feeling loads guilty. I kept wondering if I should have taken him in before now because of what I thought was the hairball cough. Had I, we might have caught this before now We have two other fairly big kitties I will be taking in ASAP to be tested and checked out. Basically the entire crew of animals has to go in at this point for yearly check-ups. Cha-Ching!

I am just hoping tomorrow morning brings good news. I will otherwise not be able to concentrate on what I need to be concentrating on. Though we won’t know the long term prognosis till Monday really. I’m at this moment praying this supposed big snowstorm heading our way in fact does hit hard on Tuesday so I have a work snow-day.