Endings

I put Pyramus to sleep on Friday, October 30th and today I picked up his ashes. Which seems terribly final. I was there when he died and they wrapped him up in a towel and carried him away and you would think that would be final enough. But I've been walking in the door every night half expecting him to be waiting for me. The cremation company puts the ashes in a little tin then wraps them up like a gift and sticks a brochure in the bag detailing all the fancy urns you can buy. But lest you think that's rather capitalist of them, the brochure also informs you that there's a private funeral room and an on-site grief counselor. Which all seems over-the-top to me because I don't tend to think of animals as little people. But then again I'm the atheist who needed her cat's ashes so she can bury him in her mother's garden so I don't exactly have a monopoly on logic here.

I'll spare you the stories about what a spectacular cat he was--though they would be true, of course--but I do want to write a little about his death. He was small and sick and mine and I spent so much time in the last year focused on his health that to suddenly find myself free of that concern is disconcerting. It's a lonely thing to suddenly have no beloved obligations waiting at home. When I get up in the morning and realize that there are no pills to be cut into fourths, no supplements to be measured out, no food to be portioned, I'm not quite sure what to do with myself.

I came home that night to all the things that needed to be cleaned up: opened cans of cat food with which I was trying to tempt him, chicken breasts in the freezer that I won't eat, open cans of tuna that I drained in order to give him the tuna-flavored water, clothes on the bathroom floor that I didn't pick up because he'd taken to sleeping on them, litter, his bottles of medicine . . . And then there were the things that I needed to just store away: litter boxes, the scratching post, the cat carrier, the water fountain. It was all a little overwhelming.

All that is taken care of now though. The things that needed to be tossed have been tossed. The things that can be saved for a new cat somewhere down the line are stored in closets and cabinets. So it's nice to have the tin with his ashes in it, tucked away next to the plants because he always liked them and that seems like as good a place as any to keep them for the time being. It's still sad, but it was the right thing to do and the right time to do it, and now at least everything seems neatly wrapped up.

Lazy Sunday

Not so much for me (I've been cleaning the apartment) but certainly for him.

Pyramus' Latest Obsession

Awhile back, Pyramus decided he no longer liked drinking from his nice, clean water bowl. Instead, what he truly, desperately wanted to do, was drink from the toilet. At first Wendy and I were moderately OK with this, being the sort of people who clean the toilet bowl regularly. But then we decided that the plumbing in our building is not particularly sanitary and cut him off. He hasn't taken kindly to this, and comes running whenever he hears me in the bathroom, in the hopes that he can get himself some toilet water. Failing that though, he has decided that anything must be preferable to the water in his bowl, even warm bath water. 

After nearly taking a swim shortly after this picture was taken, he embarked upon a period of experimentation, eventually deciding that he was more stable if he adopted a wide stance and kept one or both front paws on the ledge of the tub. 

Nevertheless, he had some pretty wet paws by the time he was satisfied.

One last cat update.

So last time I mentioned my pathetic, darling cat Pyramus was back in August when I said that he was really fucking bald. After that date his hair loss actually accelerated rapidly.If you enlarge that picture you'll actually be able to see that it was coming off in clumps, with the skin still attached. In only a couple of days he looked like this (what you can't see is how his bald spots went all the way down his back and were on his sides, legs, and chest as well):
After his fur started coming off with skin attached I made a slightly panicked phone call to our lovely veterinarian and then talked to my roommate who is off at vet school. We decided that the best course would be to put him on low level systemic steroids and see if that helped. Thankfully, the hair loss stopped almost immediately and he gradually developed first peach fuzz and then actual fur. And a couple months later, he now looks like this.
Fortunately he's a great pill taker and steroids are cheap because check out all that fur. While we still don't really know what's causing the hair loss problem, he's back to his normal, handsome self and no doubt much more comfortable. Unfortunately he also seems to have embarked on a bit of a love affair with my camera, so most of my pictures of him come out looking like this.

Totally Stressed

This is from yesterday evening and there's even less fur today. I know, I know, if my biggest concern in life is my cat losing all his hair then my life isn't so bad. I do realize that. But still, just look at my previously totally handsome darling. If I just knew what was wrong with him it would be better. I'm talking to the vet tomorrow about this latest bald patch.

Cat Update

My cat is so fucking bald, you guys. My roommate and I were away from the weekend (more on that later) and when we got back he had tons of new bald spots. Then, yesterday, the ringworm culture finally came back and it's negative. So the cleaning, the bleaching, the baths, the endless laundry, all for nothing. We carted him off to the vet yesterday and they scraped for mites and tested his thyroid. Which turns out to be OK. So we're treating him for mites anyway--they can avoid the scalpel--and if the mite treatment doesn’t work the next possibility is an auto-immune disease. Which would be painfully ironic given the fact that he’s supposed to be immuno-suppressed. Anyway, we're definitely hoping it's mites at this point but he's neither itchy nor inflamed, just well on his way to looking like a Sphinx cat, so who knows.

Either way, on the bright side, I can stop bathing the cat and doing my laundry/bleaching my room every other day.

Love Letter to the Purrfect Post People

Awhile back, looking to replace our ultra-ghetto scratching post (seriously, it was an old rug scratching post with a pair of jeans stapled onto it since the rug was worn out), Wendy and I followed a recommendation from a friend and bought the cats a PurrFect Post. The cats adore it and we were a little concerned about how we were going to properly clean it during the Great De-Sporing. So Wendy called the people of PurrFect Post and explained the situation, asking if we could bleach the post. She had assumed they would have heard the question before, but they hadn't. So they promised to speak to the doctor and get back to her. Which they did. Promptly. Only to say that they didn't know if the post would survive or not but if it didn't they'd be happy to give us a discount on a new one. And also to please email and let them know how it went. 

And all that is well and good, but they went further by also sending us a toy to help "our little guy get through his tough time" or something to that effect. Just to be nice. Now that's customer service. 

The post, incidentally? Just fine post-bleaching.

Bath II

I'm sorry, I know this ringworm stuff is probably pretty boring for everyone by now, but my life is kind of revolving around it at the moment. Today we did the lime sulfur bath the right way, by which I mean we didn't rinse it off. The smell is so strong that it's actually a bit tough to breathe in my room. Also his little paws are yellow.

The e-collar--which Wendy told me today stands for Elizabethan collar, which I think is really neat--is totally necessary because in between refusing to look at us and getting stuck while trying to slink he's desperately attempting to groom. As it is, he keeps grooming his e-collar instead of his fur.


Fortunately one nice thing about having a roommate employed by an animal hospital is that she has a generous supply of scrubs. Some of which are clearly massive on her because they fit me.

This week has been better in one respect. I made cocktails.
That's right. This experience is driving even my teetotaling roommate to drink. Lightly, anyway.

And I was hoping things would get a bit calmer...

Wendy and I spent most of Friday and Saturday cleaning and bleaching the hell out of our apartment. The kitchen, living room, and halls are about as clean as they've every been. Clothing? Washed. Sheets? Washed. Towels? Washed. And so on and so forth. One of the other big projects was clearing out a lot of my room. Because that's the place where we need to isolate Pyramus, it needs a daily bleaching. We figured the only way that would really be doable was if we got all the surfaces super clear. So I took all the books off the bookshelf, and the table behind my bed, and the dresser. We moved the bookshelf out to the living room and, after bleaching the shelf and vacuuming all the books, returned them to their places, stacking all the extras on top. Then everything else found a temporary home, either in my now stuffed drawers or in the rest of the apartment.

Today was then dedicated to vacuuming and rolling my carpet and then doing the same bleach job we'd done everywhere else in my room. It's now looking rather bare, sad, and colorless. Well, the walls are still colorful, of course, but my multi-hued quilt is packed away and my bright yellow chair all covered so it's far more dull and cheerless than it normally is.

So as you can see the last few days have just been a blast. Also exhausting. We have taken time to do some fun stuff though.

On Friday Wendy and I met up with a friend and her family and, after buying a picnic dinner at whole foods, went to the Prospect Park Bandshell to see the Metropolis Ensemble and Deerhoof. I enjoyed the ensemble's remix of Rite of Spring--although not as much as the regular orchestral version--but didn't like the other piece they did. Deerhoof was kind of hit or miss for me. What was really nice though was just sitting outside in the park on a blanket with people I enjoy. I'd never been to the Bandshell before and was a little worried that it would be like Central Park SummerStage, but it was much nicer.

Then yesterday, there was a birthday party on Long Island. I was so exhausted from cleaning that I wasn't really looking forward to the trip out there but unsurprisingly it turned out to be a nice break and the party was fun. Among other things I got to spend time with a friend who is moving back to Buffalo shortly. And we got gift bags with various fun stuff like this, which I think is too funny:

And since the last picture of Pyramus was so utterly pathetic, here's one from today of him sitting in my lap and looking far less miserable.
His next bath is going to be on Tuesday and this time we'll be better prepared. By which I mean I'm going to have alcohol on hand.

One Miserable Cat

So Pyramus has ringworm--where he got it we don't know--and is developing bald patches like it's going out of style. Wendy took him to the vet this morning and was given all sorts of instructions. Then she came home and proceeded to wash every washable piece of cloth in the entire apartment. Including my sheets, blankets, dirty clothes, and everything in the open drawers he likes to sleep in. Then she cleaned and vacuumed my room and the entire rest of the apartment. Then she went to PetCo and bought all the things we'll need while he is isolated in my bedroom for the next six weeks. All while I was at work and then doing the spending time with the parents thing. So basically I have the most awesome roommate in the world.

The primary aspect of his treatment is a weekly lime sulfur bath. It's every single bit as nasty as it sounds. Hours and about 10 hand washings after giving him the bath my hands still smell like sulfur. First we put on clothes that can be stained, take off anything metal, and empty the bathroom. Next we put a liter of water in a litter box and then add an ounce of the lime sulfur solution. Then we soak him in it while he freaks out. Then we rinse him off, put on the e-collar so he can't groom himself while drying, and sit with him while he shivers and sulks. He's actually incredibly good about it all, which somehow just makes it sadder.

Pyramus

Despite being named after the protagonist of a famous love story, Pyramus couldn't be called a classy cat. But lately he's taking it to positively dog-like levels:

He's actually not the first cat I've had who enjoyed drinking from the toilet either.

Up Close and Personal with the Paper Boats Balcony

Having nothing better to write about on this not-terribly-nice day, I thought I'd provide a little tour of my now thoroughly be-planted balcony. We went with a purple and yellow theme this year, with a touch of white. To start with we have this purple plant with little flowers (most of which aren't blooming at present. Next up are two planters full of marigolds which live on a bench.On the far side of the bench we have a big pot of pansies. And then next to them a table with some snapdragons (which aren't really in focus--sorry!).

Then comes the storage container with its smaller pot of pansies.
And between our balcony and the neighbors we have this little planter full of white flowers. I love these (and various other small wildflowery plants) but they call for full sun so we can only put them in the one place. Then we have another bench standing on the storage container. The aloe goes on the right side of the bench but it's inside at the moment and on the left side of the bench we have a geranium.
Here is Pyramus hanging out. He used to be a street cat and still loves to chill outside whenever he gets a chance. He demanded I take a break from photographing flowers and provide him with a lap to sit on though. And then we have the jasmine, which has been trying to die for over a year now. It's the only plant other than the aloe that we bother to bring inside for the winter and the cats love nothing better than to eat it and then throw up translucent green liquid and partially masticated leaves. Wendy keeps watering the poor thing but I doubt it'll ever be healthy again.
And that was a kind of depressing note to end on. Oh well.

This and That (again)

So I've really been pretty busy, but not with things that make very interesting posting. So, you know, feel free to skip over this.

I've been doing quite a bit of cooking of late in an attempt to eat both healthier and cheaper food. I need to save some money. In the last couple weeks I've made:

• Carrot and Potato Stew with Quinoa: Tasty but too spicy. I think next time I'll cut the spices in half. The quinoa was excellent though.
  
• Potato Bread: Yummy! Very fluffy and light.
  
• Cranberry Sorbet: Didn't quite freeze right and kind of tastes like canned cranberry sauce in sorbet form.
• Mashed Potatoes: Kind of tough to mess up.
• Finnish Rye Bread: Has a nice taste to it but a little denser then I'd like.
  

Shooting all that money-saving in the foot this week was the escapades in cat ownership. Wendy and I found out that clay kitty litter is strip mined and have been experimenting for the last month and a half with more environmentally-friendly options. We started out with a corn-based litter which was highly disgusting. Then we tried Yesterday's News which was too difficult to clean. I think think we've settled on a yellow pine litter that smells a bit gerbil-y but controls the cat odors well. In between the newspaper and the pine though, I bought this crazy expensive litter (I misread the price) that promised to turn pink if your cat had a urinary tract infection, among other things. So of course it turns pink and we drag both miserable cats to the vet for urine samples. While we were there the vet weighed them and noted that Pyramus had lost a pound. Since he hasn't seemed to be feeling great we got him the full check-up and blood test workup our vet does on FELV+ cats. $550-odd later they're both totally fine and Pyramus has seemed much perkier the last couple days. So much for saving money this month.

I watched The Rocket over the weekend. I thought it was well filmed and well acted--although Roy Dupuis is way too old to play a 21-year-old rookie--but not nearly as captivating as it could have been. I felt like the filmmakers were more worried about stuffing as much as possible about his career than about creating a really solid dramatic structure or a full picture of his life. It's creates a bit of an unbalanced feeling film to me. As a side note, I watched the movie using the subtitles but I did see a bit of the dubbed version and oh my lord is it horrible.

I think that's about all I have to say. This has not been my best post ever here.

Decorations Everywhere

So while my Christmas shopping has rather stalled--I like giving people gifts but hate the actually shopping which I'm no good at--but I have been wandering about trying. Today, after leaving work, I walked up 5th Avenue wandering among the tourists. Now I realize that tourists are supposed to drive New Yorkers up the wall at this time of year, and I admit that I avoid Times Square like the plague--although I pretty much do that the rest of the year as well--but I totally get where the tourists are coming from in December. New York City is pretty much the best place in the world at Christmas time. Yes, it's super-commercialized, but it's also beautiful and there's music and dancing and magic everywhere. It was like a wonderland when I was a kid.

So anyway, I walked up past Saks, and while I wasn't interested in waiting in line to see their fabulous windows, I did get few photos.

And one of my favorite decorations, the star hanging over the center of 5th Avenue.

Needless to say, the decorations in my house are a little less flashy. Several of the ornaments on the tree were gifts from my mother, and I love them because they remind me of my family's tree. Also, my roommate and I have somewhat different taste in ornaments--hers being flashier than mine--so I'm glad to have a few homier ornaments.

Made with volcanic ash from Mt. St. Helen's--gift from my sister

One of a couple yarn cat ornaments--they have to go up high because Bonnie thinks they're toys.
Snowmen are a big Christmas theme in my parents' house.

And just to end with something totally unrelated, here is Pyramus happily hanging out in a rather too small shoe box that happened to be close to the radiator.

Cuteness Break

I was having a lazy day at home today, and if there's one thing the cats love it's when my roommate or I spend a lazy with them.

Considering sleep.

Deciding it's actually quite a good idea.

Shopping etc.

What could be more mundane then my writing about my shopping Saturday shopping. Next thing you know, I'll be taking pictures in the grocery store just so I can truly document all the boring, quotidian details of my life with you. Anyway, I was walking around the neighborhood last night, because when I get antsy at night I tend to kind of bounce around in circles in my apartment which is problematic for two reasons: a) it's really obnoxious b) it has led to me spraining my ankle on not one, but two, occasions. So anyway, out walking. And I saw a dress outside a store on 2nd Avenue and thought, I must have that dress. But I then decided I didn't need the dress and didn't go into the store.

Then--and could this story get any more inane?--this morning I decided that I really did want the dress. And also that it was high time that I went shopping for new jeans since the only pair I have has a saggy butt and is just generally too big. Calvin Klein has a serious vanity sizing problem and it needs to stop. Because I'm not a size 2. There's just no reason I should have to replace size 4 jeans because they're literally falling off. It's absurd. Also, I was in a good mood this morning, which is a shopping necessity for me. I'm not a retail therapy kind of girl. I find the whole process stressful.

Anyway, the ladies who run this store are delightful and keep making suggestions and bringing you new things to try and saying things like, "oh, this one looks really cute on." Then they poke their heads into the dressing room (it's just a curtained off space) and give you their opinion on the dress. I loved them. The dress I wanted was only available in medium and large and the medium was quite a bit too big, so I tried on other stuff instead, and found this really cute black dress (and I took pictures of these to show my mother, so I might as well post them here as well). It's very simple and made of that material that you can just kind of ball up and stick somewhere without having to worry about it getting wrinkled. And the detailing is really quite nice. It goes all the way around to the back.

Anyway, it's a nice floaty summer dress even if it's not in a summery color. And, I can pair it with a cute cardigan and get away with wearing it to work. Because it's long enough that I can consider it business casual. With the top covered, anyway. And yes, I used all these things to justify buying a dress I wasn't planning on getting.

I really needed the justification, too, because it turned out that the dress I'd seen outside was a small, and they went and stripped the mannequin for me. The black dress is at least, although a casual fabric, pretty simple and multifunctional. The mannequin dress? Not so much. And I have nothing in particular to wear it to. But I think that, paired with the right shoes and bag, I can just wear it casually when out and about. And it does have a summery look to it. Incidentally, my dad is totally going to see these pictures and call me up all, "so when are you going to start exercising your arms? Because you really should." Oh the joys of having an exercise fanatic for a father and flabby arms.

Anyway, having bought my dresses and moved on to looking for jeans, which was a disaster and shall have to be attempted again tomorrow. Then I decided that I needed black sandals to go with my new black dress, so off I went to Sacco because I figured as long as I was spending money I might as well add shoes to the list. Unfortunately they had no black sandals that I liked. Even more unfortunately, they did have brown sandals that I loved. So you can add that to the list of impulse purchases today. Again, justifiable though, as I needed a pair of brown sandals I could get away with wearing with a dress as well as jeans. My only other brown ones are rather chunky and super-casual. I did wind up buying a cheap pair of plain black flip-floppy sandals at Aldo, so I got what I needed as well in that regard.

It was nice to spend so much of the day walking around too, since it was beautiful today. I got one of those mangos on a stick (the ones where they slice it so it looks kind of like a giant, edible flower) and a lemonade-y flavored smoothie at Jamba Juice. And when I got home I went out and read on the balcony with the cats. Pyramus has to wear a little halter and we attach him to a chair with a leash, because he once tried to climb over the edge of balcony and we live on the fourth floor so it wouldn't be pretty. Provided he survivde it, the vet bills might kill Wendy and me. Bonnie, meanwhile, got kicked inside after a little while because she keeps trying to climb over to our next door neighbors. As soon as we get around to buying another, she too will be forced to wear a halter. Despite that brief drama--she was not a happy cat--it was really lovely.

I promise not to regale you with tales of jean shopping tomorrow.

New pets? Really?

I think it's one of those things--you live with someone who plans to be a vet, you occasionally come home to find new animals in residence. About a year-and-a-half ago it was a cat, whom I adore, so that's totally fine. He's the grey tabby--Pyramus--I've posted pictures of before. Up there being his cute self (that's Wendy, not me he's lying on). Bonnie, is the tortoiseshell calico a bit further down. She's just about as prim and proper as he is ridiculous, and spends and inordinate amount of time grooming him. Then he gets tired of it and bites her head. You'll have to take my word for it, but it's pretty adorable.

So today I get home from work and Wendy comes out of her room, doing this whole thing that she does where she's like, "If you're not ok with this just let me know, and it's totally ok if you have a problem with it, but I bought something. But we can take it back if it's not ok!" To which I said, "You didn't bring home a cat did you?" She immediately said she didn't bring home a cat so I was thinking lizards or something of the sort. Because I like lizards just fine but I really don't want one as a pet and she knows I wouldn't be thrilled by that. So I was actually a bit relieved to see that she'd bought a couple of budgies. She went to the store with her mother for fish (which we'd talked about getting) and came back with birds instead. And honestly, I like birds better than fish so I'm totally fine with the tradeoff. My only concern would be the cats, but Wendy seems to have a very thorough bird protection plan in place.

They're very cute though. They're about six weeks old, so full grown but still immature. The male is a uniform pale blue and very bold. He sat on my finger and preened all over. And when he's in the cage he pesters the female constantly. She's a darker blue with grey wings and seems totally freaked out by us and of a generally much more reserved disposition. Which is apparently typical of females. I'll try to get pictures in the near future.