So, Phin has a new routine I’m not thrilled about. He is my blind black cat who is a little badass and Brave Little Toaster. He likes to get on the back of my desk chair and sleep, but lately he’s been sleeping sleeping and subsequently falls off. If he’s lucky, he falls onto the back of my neck, sometimes digging his claws into my head or neck. If he is really asleep, he stays there for a while without waking. If he’s not lucky, the poor guy falls to the floor 😞. However, along with being a badass, he is extremely stubborn, so he just walks around the chair, feels for the arm of the chair, and jumps up and climbs back onto the chair back once more. Rinse and repeat. All day while I’m working.
Now, some might say, Why don’t you come up with something so he won’t fall off? And I say to them, We did. Well, we tried. First, I put my panda hoodie on my chair back, zipped it up, and put Mom’s Steelers pillow in the hood. When he fell, theoretically he would fall onto the pillow, and the hood would keep him from thumping to the floor. Theoretically.
So stubborn that he would lay the wrong direction, with his butt against my neck
That was not the case. He just fell onto the pillow, then trampolined to the floor. I went to the spare room/closet to brainstorm while looking at all the wood and disassembled furniture I kept for such things. I had an idea! I told Adam what I wanted, and he started building. I’m the idea-er, he’s the implementer. The finished product was awesome. Adam used some metal rods from a cart and some wood and his handyman know-how to make a platform that went over the back of the chair. It was an incredible eyesore, but I loved it. I put my hoodie on top, and it made a lovely little, sturdy bed with plenty of room.
I may have written about this before.
That little jerk refused to stay up there. He tried it out, said, Nope, and got down. I put him up there repeatedly whenever he would come to get on me, but he was having none of it.
So, this is where we are now. We feel bad for him every time he falls, but then remember how he snubbed a great thing and…feel bad for him anyway because that’s what it is like to have kids.
Well, the novelty of my desk drawer has worn off for the cats, so I now have a cushy empty drawer with potting soil sprinkled in it. Oh, why is potting soil in it? Well, Phin (my blind boy) loves greenery and will go to the ends of the earth to find it and eat it, and I just got an African violet yesterday at Lowe’s. He hadn’t bothered it while I was awake, so I thought the leaves didn’t appeal to him. I was wrong. He knocked it off while eating it while I was asleep and it landed in the drawer. When I got up, he went over and got on the shelf and was trying to find it but I had tossed it. Meanwhile, Miss Willow stays on my desk all the time unless I open the window.
Their food and water are on my desk because of the dogs, so they hang around me or Phin lies on his dad. Phin is a little badass. He has always been such a brave little toaster, especially for being blind, and that hasn’t changed with the pups. He cautiously makes his way off the desk and just saunters over to the dogs’ water fountain and drinks out of it. Sometimes he runs into Neville’s legs or feet when Nev is sleeping on the floor, but he just corrects his trajectory a little and keeps going. When the pups sniff him, he has no problem smacking the crap out of their noses. It scares Ollie, which is hilarious, but he keeps on sniffing Phin and jerking back with each smack. I think cats’ smacks are the equivalent of Rocky’s punches the way that the pups react.
For being rather stern dog parents, the boys are huge babies! Adam chooses yelling over training, so he yells at Neville all the time, but when something scares him or I give him medicine or correct him, he runs to Adam and gets on his lap. A 120+ pound Lab crawls on his dad’s lap like a baby.
With Ollie, he gets his feelings hurt very easily (common for the breed), so when he gets in trouble or thinks he is in trouble, he comes over to get a hug and kisses. I may have mentioned it before, but I’ve kissed him on the nose since bringing him home and he loves it. He gets in front of me and nudges me with his nose until I kiss him. If he wants multiple kisses, he keeps nudging my nose. Sometimes he kisses me at the same time, which I do not appreciate. He is just the sweetest little thing. He’s also very floppy and likes being held like a baby even though he’s ~130 pounds. Since he’s so tall, we can only hold his upper body in our arms. He likes to get in front of me on the bed, sit down, and just trust fall into my arms. They are sweet boys but haven’t let me get much sleep!
It is with a very heavy heart that I write this. Ever since keeping cats solely inside (since 1998), I have been afraid that one or more would die here and I would discover them. I always hoped Mom or Adam would be the one to discover them (terrible, I know) and would tell me about it after burying them. That was not the case yesterday morning. Gandalf the Grey (Gandi) was sleeping in Mom’s shower yesterday, and since the pups aren’t allowed in the bathroom, it made sense. Since he hadn’t been on my keyboard tray visiting with me after I got out of bed, I checked on him when I got up to use the bathroom and found that he wasn’t breathing and wasn’t warm.
I woke Adam up and told him that Gandi wasn’t breathing, so he got up and checked and confirmed that he was gone. Just like in the movies and shows, he walked back to me and sadly shook his head without speaking. I could only wail and ask “Why?!” repeatedly. We don’t know what happened. Before going into the bathroom, Gandi had briefly been on the bed with us by Adam, and after I fell asleep, Adam said he peed on the bed while lying there, then went to lay in the bathroom when Adam took the bedclothes off. I didn’t get a chance to make an appointment for him to see why that happened.
He and Theo have been staying out of Mom’s room since I got Ollie. Gandi stayed on the table most of the time near the cat food and water. Theo stays on the fridge. He had been to the vet two or three months prior for a urinary tract infection and received antibiotics.
For the past couple of days, Gandi had been in Mom’s room with me, sleeping on my keyboard tray and purring while I pet and loved on him. I figured he got lonely and said to hell with the dogs. He let me kiss his head and brush him and was being his old sweet self. Now, he’s gone and I don’t know why. He had just turned 10 in July. Both of my babies I got after Mom died are gone, and I’m so sad. I don’t know what I did wrong or how much he suffered or how I missed his cries for help. I just don’t know.
So, the cats and pups have completely ruined the living room floor, and I was stressing about replacing it but it looks like the subfloor will be the most expensive thing. Mom would have gotten rid of the cats a long time ago, but they’re my kids. The image above is a VR-generated image from The Home Depot of what the living room would look like with the flooring I chose. It’s kind of jarring because it’s a carpeted floor right now, but I like it. The dogs are not going to like sliding all over the place like Bambi on ice, however.
Piper hasn’t used the litter box since Merlin came here in 2015, Phin is blind and used to use the bathroom under the bed in the spare room (which I did not know he was doing) because the litter box was beside the bed and he could smell that he was in the vicinity, so I replaced that carpet with vinyl flooring. He now uses the living room floor since I had moved the litter box into the living room while doing the spare room floor, and he hasn’t stopped even though the litter box is in Adam’s room now.
Gandi hasn’t used the litter box since having a UTI even though he was treated. Piper has started peeing on her pillow she sleeps on. Only the babies use the box; 2 out of 5 😡😡. Because of Phin, I knew I’d be replacing the living room floor but the pups have peed in there and the floor feels like a boy’s face after hitting puberty. I have pee pads and clean the pee up, but the spots I missed are making big bumps. It’s gross. Luckily, vinyl flooring is around $260 for the entire living room, which is ~12′ x 28′, and half of the living room subfloor is fine, I think. I had Adam to look, and I guess the subfloor isn’t too expensive but he is going to need a different saw. I hate it, and Mom would kill me, but I know it’s my fault and I will be fixing it, so 🤷♀️.
To top it off, Ollie has started tearing up the living room carpet!! Who does that? He has so many bones and toys, and he goes and picks at the carpet like a methhead. There weren’t even holes or spots in the places he is digging/chewing up. Can I not have any normalcy here?
Well, it’s a good thing I set my book deadline for November. Just putting it together is so much work! I had it organized by theme, but so many of my chosen poems are from when I was a teen, so I wanted to highlight they are my early works and hopefully show some growth over the years.
I didn’t write for years because so much of it was too painful to think about, let alone write about (everybody dying). The other things — the good stuff like falling in love and finding some happiness — I was enjoying the moments and not writing about them. Admittedly, I am prone to writing during the darker times when I find the motivation to sift through it all.
So, instead of themes, I decided to do a Wonder Years part, poems I wrote when I was a teenager and going through some things, and The Reawakening part, when I started writing again in the last few years. There is some light stuff to go with the darker stuff, so I sub-parted (I don’t think that’s a word) the main parts into The Light and The Dark. Good? Bad? I don’t know. I doubt I will even have an audience. I want to realize my dream because it is my dream, but I am also doing it for Mom.
I am terrible at building an audience and socializing offline and online, so the word-of-mouth is going to be awful. I know Adam will appreciate it because he is super-supportive of whatever crazy ideas I pursue.
Speaking of, things are going better here. Adam subscribes to my blog, and he also knows I do not talk about him behind his back. If I can’t say something about him near him, how is that healthy? He feels the same, but his irritation comes out only when I am fussing at him about something 😒. I guess there’s a reason he fell so hard for a volleyball player 🤣🤣.
He’s been getting the dishes done and the laundry, both big chores because Ollie is not too keen on potty training and he is going through my towels like a public pool. I really dread replacing every single floor in this house, mainly because I have no idea what I’m doing and no one to help. I helped replace a bedroom floor once in a single-wide trailer, but I was on nail duty and just had to hammer the nails in. Having double vision and terrible aim, that was hard enough for me!
Open your eyes, Dad!
I do have some very upsetting news that I am not looking forward to. Piper Paws is going to be put down soon. She has not fared well since we brought Merlin in and her health has gone downhill from there. Somehow, she is 22+ pounds although we never see her eat. She really hurt her back leg a while back, which the vet completely ignored and blamed on her weight, but the day it happened, she was lying on the floor crying and would not walk at all. We just laid there crying at each other.
Pretty Girl
She also has a weird patch on her back that is from me treating a sore on her back and I had shaved a small patch so I could treat the sore. That patch has never been the same. The sore healed up, but the fur doesn’t grow in normally and she is sensitive to touch back there. For that, the (worthless) vet said it was fleas, but none of the cats have fleas and haven’t since living with us because they are all flea-treated indoor cats and this was way before Neville happened, let alone Ollie. We don’t always get a stupid vet but we did for her appointment.
Enjoying the outdoors.
Piper Paws is the cat Mom made Adam promise to get me before Mom died. She is also named after Mom as Mom’s initials are PAWS. I don’t know how I am going to handle losing her. It’s unbearable grief now and she is not gone yet. She has started using the bathroom exclusively on the kitchen table and she can’t walk well because of her (untreated thanks to the vet) leg and her weight. We watch their food, but I cannot put her on a diet food when her siblings are all healthy weights.
She turned 10 years old on my brother’s birthday. Even though she was for me, she is Adam’s cat. I think she is a one-cat-household cat, so I don’t think she has been happy for quite a while. I really failed her when I took Merlin in. Girl can hold a grudge, just like her mother. I am really going to miss her but the poor thing has had a rough life, dealing with cats she doesn’t like and then dogs. At least the pups don’t bother her physically. And now I’ve upset myself. Until next time!
Like with all of my hyperfixations, I dove into keto whole hog, and Adam’s complete willingness to try it with me has made the transition so much easier, although he got over the sugar cravings faster than I did, and lost 30 pounds in the first week. Getting rid of carbs is no small feat, and the price gouging is infuriating. I know this isn’t a new thing, but it is new to me, and extreme inflation and sole financial responsibility just exacerbate the fact. Here, all-purpose white flour is $2.24 for a 5-pound bag. Everyone knows how versatile flour is. Almond flour, which is recommended for a lot of recipes, is $9.84 for a 2-pound bag. It doesn’t taste very good since it tastes overwhelmingly like almonds, at least in keto bread, so I found Carbquik (like Bisquick. Get it?), which is $12.38 for a 2-pound bag. The price difference between “real” cane sugar and sugar substitutes is just as bad, if not worse. All pantry essentials go the same way. Then, everyone wonders why the US is so obese. When you can buy 1 or 2 pounds of pasta for $1 or a 14-ounce can of “fake” pasta made from hearts of palm for $9.84, which item are you going to choose? For the record, hearts of palm is edible but not the greatest, and I much prefer zoodles (spiralized zucchini). Right now, zucchini is over $1 each, and spaghetti squash is $7+.
I bought Recipe Keeper a while back to transfer Mom’s handwritten recipes, church and work cookbooks into, and I absolutely love it, even though I think there should be a pink option. It has the neatest features, including one where you copy an online recipe’s site address and paste it into the app’s address bar and it imports all the information automatically in the correct sections and includes the address so you can revisit the site. It can also scan pictures of recipes in cookbooks and is just an awesome app, aside from not being pink. I think I had a point with this but I can’t remember what it was. Stick with me and it may come back.
Oh, yeah…While searching for recipes online, I started thinking how everyday food influencers (yeah? no?) are getting just as bad as large companies and social media influencers in terms of aesthetics. You don’t get a list of ingredients and directions like recipes of old. Now, there are pictures with more color than Gone with the Wind, pristine backdrops, Mason jars with ribbons, and more stage presence than Elton John.
My food pictures include the time I made 10 quarts of loaded baked potato soup and tipped it all over my new stove, and the other time I made ranch dressing and turned the mixer on without holding onto the bowl, spirographing dressing over half of the kitchen. The ranch was cleanupable, but my poor souped stove never fully recovered 😒. I shall demonstrate below because I just made some beef jerky today and took a picture.
Above is my freshly made beef jerky in a Rubbermaid bowl that has seen better days and seems to have some rough edges around the top, probably from being put in the microwave for too long and too many times. It’s sitting on my desk, which is still part wood color and part black because I got tired of painting it and moved on to the bathroom an embarrassing amount of weeks ago. To top it off, I took the picture in terrible lighting and it’s all grainy. The jerky, however, looks good and tastes great.
Click on the picture for the recipe.
Then, there is this dude with the smooth-looking jerky, and they literally tied it all up in a neat little bow on a table that is one intended color. Extra points for knowing how to do that focus thing for the object closest to the lens while everything behind it is pleasantly blurred.
Of course, it’s not just food, but beverages, too! Most impressive are the smoothies with multiple pictures including fruit that never saw the inside of a Walmart. The gorgeous royal purple smoothie below is the expectation, with the reality (at least my reality) coming out more of a muddy eggplant, and a sink full of dirty measuring containers and mixing utensils.
Click on the picture for more pictures and the recipe.
To go one further, the madness extends past food and drink and into family member territory. Feast your eyes on the Angelina Jolie of cats below. Coby comes complete with permanent eyeliner (and noseliner!) and eyes so blue that one wouldn’t believe them to be real if they didn’t belong to a feline. His photos are exquisitely flawless with him always the focus, and deservedly so. Even the “candids” are shots you wouldn’t think twice about making into a calendar! I admit, I’m a little (lot) bit in love with Coby, but what cat lover wouldn’t be?
Click for Coby’s Instagram account.
And then we have my very own Theodore Corduroy. I mean, what more can I say?
I mainly jest, but, honestly, who has the patience, skill, time, and money to churn out commercial-worthy pictures and videos of food during/after spending the time actually making the food and ensuring it’s Getty-ready? More importantly, why do these sites, pictures, and videos make me feel so inadequate?
Like Greta Garbo, I’m quite content to be left alone. I’ve never been one to seek out attention, though sometimes I would be affectionate with Mom, and I will go to my husband for a hug occasionally, but I’m good being left to my own devices for the most part. Of course, “my own devices” include my phone and/or computer, and I would probably go crazy without some connection to the outside world or something to stimulate my brain.
I am a loner, but that wasn’t always an option growing up. I grew up in a very close family, and we would spend most weekends at my maternal grandparents’. At least 4 out of 5 of “the children” (my mom, aunts, and uncle) and their spouses would be there with their children (“the grandchildren,”) which included my brother, me, and our seven cousins.
I’m the second youngest, but when everyone was outside playing, I preferred to be inside with the adults. If the adults wanted to talk about grownup things or play card games I had no interest in, I would retreat to one of the bedrooms and read or write, or roller-skate in the basement. “She just likes being alone” was uttered often by Mom. Mom was asked a lot of questions regarding me. I wasn’t diagnosed AuDHD until after she passed, so was often described as being a loner and “backward.” Ah, the ’90s.
I need to learn how to shorten my backstories! All of the above brings me to today’s topic. My husband is outgoing and pretty clingy. Him taking care of Mom and staying in the hospital with her screwed up his lungs to the point of him not being able to work. He also has schizoaffective disorder. He’s here 24/7.
MIL came here in 2021 after having part of her foot removed and she is here 24/7 as well. She doesn’t have a vehicle. Mechanic broke Mom’s car, so we don’t have a car. We are all here, together, 24/7/365. I have no alone time.
Okay, now I’m done with the backstory. I’ve been cleaning out Mom’s walk-in closet, and I decided I want to make it a “me” space for…whatever. I’m working on Mom’s bathroom and making it a relaxing space for me, but that only lasts for however long I’m in the shower because, realistically, what else is there to do in the bathroom? I can’t stay in the shower or tub all the time because I’d get all pruny and run up the water bill, which has already gone up due to inflation and having 3 people in the home. I’ve actually been looking for a huge beanbag couch/chair to put in/over the garden tub so I could sit in there and read, but they are hard to find unless I spent $200 for one.
My first idea was to move my computer, desk, and TV/monitor into the closet and work in there, but my husband doesn’t think I would like that and would soon change my mind and move everything back out (which I probably would, in time), as I’m known to do that. Now, I’m thinking of doing a built-in bench seat with some pillows or cushions, and I would really love a beanbag chair since I’ve always wanted one and never got one. I haven’t decided if I’m going to try to add an outlet in the closet or just get another surge protector with multiple outlets and a longer cord to put in there. I kind of want to add an outlet to see if I can do it. Admittedly, that kind of thinking is how a lot of my big oopsies start out 😒.
Not to sound like a bad mom, but I’m looking forward to being able to shut the door when the cats are overwhelming me. You’d think small, cute animals wouldn’t get on my nerves, but just a few days ago, I was preparing to give Phin some shrimp, which he loves, and I had four cats on the dining room table walking around and smelling everything. It was extremely frustrating because only Phin and Piper will eat shrimp, yet four of five just had to know what I had and re-confirm that they didn’t like it. I was pretty cranky after that.
I used to have to hide in my room from my sweet, dearly departed tuxedo cat, Sprinkles Ricardo Blah-Blah, whenever Mom bought me beef jerky because he adored it and would eat it all up from me if I let him. That stuff’s expensive, and it is one of my favorite snacks. Sprinkles would come running whenever he heard the thick plastic bag rustle, even when Mom would sneak it to me!
Merlin’s death threw us for a loop, especially my husband, as he was his cat. Like when Sprinkles died, I started wanting a kitten, I guess to take my mind off Merlin. My sister-in-law told us that their outdoor cat was pregnant, so I eagerly awaited Labor Day (heh, heh, heh). When the time came, SIL sent me a picture of the kittens, and I chose a little cream-colored one, who was lighter than his siblings.
Theo Corduroy
As usual, we were told he was a girl and I named him Theodora Corduroy, Theo for short. Theodora is a witch, Corduroy was a nickname Mom called my brother. Weeks later at his appointment, we found out he was a male, so switched his name to Theodore Corduroy. He got much darker as he grew and is now a blond tabby with a dark back and light tummy.
To be perfectly honest, Theo is a butthole and very manipulative. He is a biter when we are petting him, which I think is possibly over-stimulation. He’s very curious, because he’s a cat, and he shows this curiosity by rubbing his head all over me and head-butting me. He does the same when he is jealous.
When he wants people food (which he never eats), he demands attention and falls over and rolls all over the place. He has fallen off surfaces before because I couldn’t catch him in time, which never seems to phase him. He rolls around a lot.
Theo is my cat and usually gets what he wants because he is so cute and acts so lovable. He is also a total chicken and will come to me and climb into my arms when he is scared or doesn’t feel well. For some reason, all the males have chosen me. Piper is hubby’s cat, and I think that is because he is the one who “rescued” her.
Willow Cordelia
I was done getting cats. I’ve never had four before, so this was new territory. Three weeks after getting Theo, hubby comes home with a minute tortoiseshell kitten in his hand and gives her to me. I walked around the house cuddling her, thinking over having a household of five cats while being broke. I said yes, because how could I not? If I said no, she would be an outdoor cat at my SIL’s, and SIL’s boyfriend said all of them die very young because they are/get sick. Frankly, I thought she was very ugly. I named her Willow Cordelia, witches from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and American Horror Story, respectfully.
Having two kittens only 3 weeks apart was a chore, especially since I’m the one who takes care of them completely in the beginning. Both babies wanted to be held pretty much constantly, so I fashioned a sling out of two of hubby’s tube socks and a COVID face mask. I would usually have one in the sling and the other in my arm. When I only had one, I could still do my work while holding them.
Theo in the sling
Willow grew to be so cute and squishy, with short legs. She is a Daddy’s Girl. She is so funny and has such a personality, just like Theo. They are half-siblings with the same father. She is on her back 95% of the time, which just cracks me up, and I think it is because she has hip issues and is bowlegged. She has a very weird walk, like she can’t bend her legs properly. Again, the vet didn’t seem concerned. Like Theo, she gets jealous, especially when I am interacting with my husband. That’s her man! She is very brave, unlike her brother.
Silly Willy
Although both cats are going to be two this year, we still call them The Babies when talking about them. They have certainly spiced up our home and continue to entertain us.
Merlin Haggard
Merlin was a unicorn who left us in late 2020. There was really no one like him. We miss him so much still. At the time, we had Piper and Gandalf, both a year old. We lost Mom’s cat, Ashes, quite acutely to a blood clot the year prior. I started paying attention to a black stray who liked to lie on the porch on his back and wiggle around like he had an itch. I pretended my husband had a say in me bringing him inside because everyone needs a win sometimes.
After my husband “allowed” me to bring Merlin in, we were smitten. He is, of course, named after the great wizard, Merlin, and I chose Haggard as his middle name because of Merle Haggard. He wanted out a lot in the beginning and would cry at the screen door, but eventually he got used to being inside. He did not know how to play or purr. He didn’t see the logic in attacking a toy if it wasn’t posing a threat or edible. Vet aged him around 6 months.
I was very concerned about him not purring because that is how cats show affection and self-soothe. As time progressed, he finally purred very quietly while hubby was petting him and then started to do it more. He also became the most playful cat in the world after a year or two in his home.
Merlin loved grocery day! After unbagging the groceries, I would sit on the floor and parachute a plastic bag above, then over his head and he would bat at it frantically and just smile by showing his fangs. We played like this around 30 minutes every week. He also absolutely loved when I got up to go to the bathroom or kitchen. He would hide from me and lunge at my feet when I walked by. He followed me into the bathroom and got pets while I was in there. Sometimes, we sat in the empty bathtub together.
Merlin hiding
Most of the time, I could see him hiding from me because he wasn’t very good at it. When I didn’t see him and he genuinely surprised me, I would squeak out of surprise, which he just thought was great fun, apparently. I started being startled each time and he got so excited and would rattlesnake his tail and bounce around the kitchen. He would smile by showing us his fangs and do so only when he was happy or excited.
Show me your teeth
Merlin was truly hubby’s cat, and whenever he was going to bed, he would say, “It’s bedtime,” and Merlin would run past him and hop up on the bed and start pawing at the blacklight poster while waiting for his dad. That is something hubby just can’t get over since losing him to urinary problems at just 5 years old. His death broke both of us and we still talk about him a lot.
Like a lot of multi-cat households, we never intended to have five cats at once. The most Mom and I had were three, and five is a different beast altogether. For one thing, the babies pee so much! We have two cats who do not use the litter box, and the remaining three keep the Litter Robot running all day and night. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not a cat person; I’m an animal person. Our current roundup is as follows:
Ms. Piper Paws (featured image) is a promise kept. I was finally ready for another cat after Sprinkles died, and I wanted another tuxedo. “Kitten season” starts around April, so we were looking around for tuxedo cats before Mom went back in the hospital. She was really excited to have a kitten in the house again. After she found out she wouldn’t be coming home, she told my husband to “get [me] that cat.”
The cat gods must have heard because within a week after losing Mom, we found three tuxedo kittens who were up for adoption through a rescue shelter at the pet store. I told my husband which one I wanted from a picture, and he got her while I was out with my cousin and aunt. I named her Piper Paws. Piper is a character from Charmed, and Paws is my mom’s initials.
When I opened my birthday gift and card and had my cleansing grief meltdown, my husband ran out of the room and came back holding teeny, tiny Piper. He shoved her against my chest and said to her, “Do your job,” which made me laugh. My husband can’t stand seeing me sad/crying and tries everything to make me feel better.
Gandalf the Grey
Piper needed a playmate. She had fun torturing Mom’s cat, Ashes, but he was 15 years old and just not as active as a kitten, so off to the shelter we go! There was a bundle of gray kittens in one cage, and I never had an all-gray cat, so I chose one. He got some medicine before we left, then diarrhea’d in his box on the way home, which was several miles away from the shelter.
Unfortunately for him, his first moments at home were getting a bath in the sink. Since my husband loves The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, and I was going with a witch and wizard theme, I named him Gandalf the Grey. We call him Gandi or Gander.
A couple of years or so ago, Gandi came out of the litter box and started flipping and flopping all over the floor. I freaked and yelled for my husband, who recognized it was a seizure because our nephew suffers from them. It was traumatizing for everyone. He had a seizure after every single bowel movement or attempt at a bowel movement, four to five times a day.
I felt so helpless. The vet had no answers and prescribed phenobarbital, which kind of seemed to help, but I could find zero correlation between seizures and constipation in cats or humans. I started giving him Dulcolax or olive oil. After months of exhausting seizures and no answers, he stopped having them. He also stopped being constipated, but I still have no answer as to the relation between that and the seizures unless he had some blockage that he finally unblocked.
Phineas Black
After taking in a black kitten who loved rolling around on our porch, I wanted another black cat because the porch kitty, Merlin Haggard, was the bestest cat I ever had. I went through Facebook Marketplace this time and found a roughly 6-week-old black kitten about an hour from us. He is such a sweet cat and loves cuddles. I named him Phineas Nibbeus Black, from Harry Potter.
A few weeks in, we noticed something was a bit off with Phin. He wouldn’t chase the laser light but would chase everyone who was chasing the laser light when they ran by him. He was very clumsy and would run or jump into his siblings frequently. I started suspecting that he couldn’t see, and I recalled the vet never checked his vision like they did with Merlin at his first appointment. (I don’t know why they didn’t.)
I did some at-home vision tests on him and was even more convinced, but I knew for sure when he knocked out four of his teeth one day. He liked to jump up on the bathroom sink for pets when someone was in the bathroom. He miscalculated and jumped up and hit his mouth on the lip of the counter when I was in there.
We checked him and saw he was missing four of his little middle teeth. He hasn’t jumped on the bathroom sink since and relies on us putting him up there or he gets up there by jumping onto the tub and walking across the toilet tank, which my husband taught him by tapping and knocking on the surfaces.
Because of his blindness, Phin is very spoiled and very much the baby. He sleeps up by my face and only on my green blanket. After Merlin died, he started wanting held during the day. When I’m working and Phin wants held, my husband will yell for him and he will go into the room with him and lie on his chest. He and Merlin were the best of friends and I think he still misses him, as we all do.
Cari R Esta 