This afternoon he’s been a napping fool. A happy napping fool. Clearly the elizabethan collar wasn’t letting him nap properly. And we all know how important naps are to our cats!
For the second time in a row the vet’s bandage held the entire time between appointments. I think gluing it to Tenny’s fur helped a lot. The paw is almost completely healed and looks really good. The vet keeps reassuring me that we won’t even notice the missing toe once the fur grows back. I’m not worried about that as long as Tenny doesn’t notice that it’s gone. It’s not pretty right now, but it has healed almost completely and is pretty clean. When we put him back in the carrier to come home from the vet, he immediately started head-butting the door to get back out. His first stop after getting home? The food dish.
Monster Cat is walking with a slight limp this afternoon but that will probably stop in a day or two once he reacclimates to not wearing a bandage and all. I do still have the elizabethan collar just in case he becomes obsessed with licking his paw. I’m already concerned he’s going to eat my soul while I sleep… can you imagine if I put the collar back on him?
So I live with a happy Monster Cat again. Thank goodness.
Desks, desktops and pretty flowers
I briefly succeeded in finding space on my desk for my hypothetical new scanner. Since then my pile of magazines has encroached upon the space - easy to clear again at least. Someday I’ll have a neat and uncluttered desk. Really! I think I need to break down and get a file cabinet, honestly, but I don’t want one. They’re a pain to move (either within the house or to a new house) and just make me feel old. But… yeah, I need one. Maybe a dainty one. Maybe I’ll paint it or cover it with stickers. My next goal on my desk is to condense 2 cubbies of clutter into one. Babysteps, right?
Speaking of desktops, this columbine photo is currently my desktop picture. (If you want a copy, click here for the gargantuan version.) I am indeed a sucker for flowers.
Easy Fountain Pen Adventures My eternal obsession with pens has been quite fruitful of late. I made a small order (really, it was small! 2 pens!) from Colorado Pen Direct and got a free purple Pilot Varisity fountain pen. They’re offered individually, in boxes of 12 and in a rainbow pack of 5. If you have been looking for an inexpensive way to play with a fountain pen,
$4.25 will get you an individual Pilot Varisity and $18 will get you a set of 5 in fun colors. The pen has a Medium nib and writes fairly smoothly. It feels like a ‘normal’ pen in your hand though it’s a little fatter than a typical ballpoint it seems to be a little smaller than a Sharpie. It’s also a very light pen which is nice. It’s a disposable pen so the ink is completely contained in the barrel - no refill options but also a limited risk for mess. In short, there’s not really much intimidating about this fountain pen if you’ve never used one before and want to try one out with very little commitment.
Work Saunters On
Work is going well. My boss is on vacation next week and somehow I’m point person for a couple of things while she’s gone. I’m not worried, per se, but I am hoping nothing goes wrong. It’s easier that way. My perpetually stalled project is still stalled but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. If it’s not a light, it’s a train and I’m going to pretend it’s the end of the tunnel anyway so I can die with optimisim in my heart.
The elizabethan collar really … enhances Tenny’s personality. “Enhances” in the sense that it makes him look sillier than usual. With a little help from the Fop, we have provided Episode 3 of Monster Cat, because that collar is going to come off Real Soon Now and we’ll lose really good silly material.
Yes, there’s a special PETA Hell just for me. Probably with lots of cats taking pictures of me and giggling.
If we’re lucky, Tenny has less than 48 hours left as a bandaged conehead. I’m tempted to take my camera to the vet’s office (along with copies of Monster Cat, of course) to capture his first moments of freedom. (The bottom panel was almost captioned. “FREEDOOOOOOM!!!!”)
Tenny ran into the wall at the top of the stairs this morning and just stood there like, “I meant to do that.” I couldn’t break it to him that I just didn’t buy it anymore. Besides, I was trying not to giggle too hard on the stairs because there was someone actually sleeping in the guest room. He’s also limpy in a way that really lends itself to the nickname “Hopalong”… which he clearly dislikes. I’m not over-anthropomorphizing this time. If you saw the look he gives us when we call him “Hopalong” you’d understand.
The rest of the world is still moving right along too. I continue to enjoy my job and I think my boss is the awesomest. Work on the guest room and bathroom should start in a week, more or less. Exciting times!
Well, the vet appointment on Thursday did not go quite as well as planned. Tenny’s paw has almost healed but not quite. I suspect the bandage has been slowing down progress. Since he’s so clever that he figured out how to reach his paw around the collar to lick his wound, he’s been stuck in the bandage longer than he might have been otherwise. But the vet says the wound is 90-95% healed. Really. Uh huh. So we have another appointment for this Thursday when all should be really healed and done and Tenny should come home without bandage or elizabethan collar. We hope.
In the meantime, Monster Cat has started to regain some of his spirits. He tries to play… until he can’t bring the toy to his mouth when he catches it with his un-bandaged paw. He also tries to strut about with feline grace until he runs into a wall. But his appetite is healthy again and he’s drinking plenty of water. At least I assume he’s drinking since I see water drops on his elizabethan collar from time to time. The collar has worn away quite a large ring of fur around his neck, but that will probably serve to keep him cooler in the heat. All in all, he’s fairly close to a full recovery. Really.
So, only a few more days with the cone, a few more bandaged nights and then Monster Cat will be freed from his tortures to once again rule the world with an iron paw, with one less toe than before.
So last week we went on vacation to Hilton Head, SC. We had no real plans for the week which made the vacation all the more relaxing. We stayed in the house that the Fop’s company owns and had a grand time doing very little. The view out the back of the house was lovely and peaceful, especially after the thunderstorm that swept over the island one afternoon. The house itself was also beautiful but not enough for me to have thought to take pictures of it apparently. It made for a very easy and comfortable vacation. I needed a break and it all worked out very well.
So, I’ve never really spent any time farther south than where I live now (outside Philadelphia). The differences in flora and fauna are fascinating.
The first morning a fluttering leaf on the railing on the back deck kept tickling my peripheral vision. When I finally looked up from my book, there was a little green lizard strutting his stuff! (Hurray for zoom lenses, by the way!) When the Fop got up, he identified the creature I’d photographed as an anole. We saw a couple more anoles as well as some skinks skittering about over the course of the week. I also got photos of a black striped lizard we couldn’t identify.
There were lots of birds as well - ravens, cranes, egrets (I think), pelicans! And they all seemed to enjoy hanging out in the backyard of the house. Living in Suburban Hell[tm] has given me a significantly higher appreciation for random wildlife.
These pink flowers were everywhere. I’m still not sure what they are but I’ll look them up eventually. I’m not usually a fan of pink, but they were gorgeous against the dark green leaves. I’d never really spent quality time hanging out with Spanish Moss either. It’s fascinating stuff. I was actually able to see tiny green leaves at the tips of some of the strands of moss. I was fascinated at least. The bizarre mix of trees was fun too. I was of course familiar and accustomed to some of the pine trees but the evergreens from the palm family side by side with the pines struck me as odd. Of course, I’m from the North so palm trees are rather novel anyway. I’m easily amused by new landscapes or even just slightly different ones!
The weather was lovely most of the week. There were some scattered showers here and there but over all it was pretty lovely. The first day and last day were humid and a bit icky, but the middle days were drier and pleasant and not too terribly hot for my snow-girl self.
Oh! We also went golfing… mini-golfing! PIRATE mini-golfing! It was a great deal of silly fun on the last full day when the weather wasn’t really all that great. (It was the day the air was all muggy and smelled like wood smoke…) The pirate mini-golf place also had koi. There’s nothing cooler than pirates with koi ponds!
I did get some small but interesting sunburns. I got the classic sunburn on the tops of my feet on day 2 but not so badly that I worried about it. My arms cooked. The backs of my calves got pretty red. Little pieces of skin where my swimsuit rubbed off my sun block also got red. I came back with many more freckles than I went down there with.
So that was a very rambling way of saying we had a lovely, mellow time.
I’m excited for the fourth Die Hard movie coming June 27th: Live Free or Die Hard. I wonder what New Hampshire thinks of that title. Could the writers not convince the MPAA to let them call the movie “Live Free or Die Hard: Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!”? I’m sure if they made an offer to shorten it to “Live Free or Die Hard, Motherfucker” it wouldn’t go over well either. (New Hampshire’s license plates tout their motto “Live free or die”. My theory is that “Live free or die, fuck you” was too long for the license plate.)
I have a special soft spot in my heart for action movies with big explosions. Die Hard is right up there with Lethal Weapon for me. I love movies where the good guys are crazy and win anyway I guess.
The original Die Hard movie was released in 1988. Bruce Willis is 57 now so we’ll see if he prooves he’s not too old for awesome action flicks. In the Live Free or Die Hard trailer, there are a couple of moments when Willis definitely looks like he’s feeling his pain. I hope for his sake that it’s in-character pain rather than real pain but I suspect it’s both. He’s certainly not too old to look the part of John McClane. Some of the movie stills on IMDB do make him look like he’s escaping from a prison in an Eastern Block country though. But overall, I think Willis will pull off this fourth transformation from clean, dapper and attractive at the beginning of the movie to dirty, bruised, broken and “are those really the same clothes he had on 2 hours ago” by the end of the movie.
So in anticipation of next month’s new Die Hard movie, here’s a retrospective, including clips from the preview for the 4th movie, set to music by Guyz Nite. I’d never heard of them either, but the song is totally fun (and not entirely work safe due to a fabulous chorus of “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!”… then again if you’re watching music videos at work, that chorus probably won’t matter).
Apparently it’s Monster Cat week here. Tenny was impressively pathetic and emo today. Moping, sighing, whining, the works. And thus, we have these introspective photographs appropriately captioned with inner monologue. If this keeps up his nickname is going to have to change to “emo cat.” He’s already worn socks on his arm. He’ll be applying bad eyeliner and whisker-mascara next! Thankfully he can’t actually reach his face to do that so there’s some hope.
There’s a special PETA Hell for me. First I torment my cat with a serious bandage and elizabethan collar then I make light of his malady with photos and silly captions. I’m going to die only to find myself wearing a similar collar, my hands in big red mittens and unable to fit into the shower to bathe due to the width of the collar. Yep, I’m a horrible person but I’m just doing my duty to ensure that the Internet is properly populated with captioned cats! But it’s really quite like having Marvin the Paranoid Android wandering about the house the way he mopes. Of course, he is incredibly appreciative of any attention, petting and scritches and he gets plenty of all three. He is quite insistant about attention, especially whilst he knocks things off my desk.
Hopefully he’ll get his collar and bandage off on Thursday before he starts painting his claws black and listening to trance music.
As of today, I have taken more photos already this year than I did all of last year. Hurray for the new camera!
The number doesn’t really mean much (1811 so far this year versus 1614 total last year) since I have been known to take several nearly identical shots of a given subject… but still… wow.
Yep, another week, another bandage. The fabulous mshireman posted some photos of the Monster Cat mid-week while the Fop and I were gone. Mark is fabulousness incarnate for taking care of the Monster Cat for a whole week. (Oh, he took care of Evil Cat too but she didn’t leave the back of the Fop’s couch much.) The super-duper stirrup bandage Tennyson got last Monday did last until Friday afternoon. In the first picture here you can see that in a pinch a sock works well enough as a temporary bandage replacement. Today I took Tenny into the vet again in hopes of de-coning his head and getting away bandage-free. Alas, it was not to be. He is still be-coned and bandaged… this time with a jaunty red bandage! I think the vet and his staff secretly covet my cat and want me to keep bringing him back for as long as possible. We have another appointment for Thursday for a progress check.
Many things impress me about this vet’s office. (Of course, by “impress” I mean “put me at ease about their competence and dedication”.) The staff is all pretty amazing. The vet himself, Dr. Silverberg, is kind, informative, circumspect, smart and clever. The fact that they all think my cat is fabulous helps too. When I brought Tenny in for the surgery, the vet tech receiving him talked things over with me, did some preliminary checks on him with me present and explained everything that would be happening and what precautions they’d be taking to ensure a smooth surgery. And all these appointments to re-check his bandage and re-bandage his paw? No charge - all included in the surgery cost. The surgery wasn’t cheap but it wasn’t expensive either. They have stuck to their original quote and I appreciate that a great deal both financially and because they clearly care. They are happy to have me take up another appointment slot so they can do a re-check rather than save that slot for a paying customer. From the level of activity in the office, I suspect they have plenty of clients to keep them going regardless… but they still take the extra steps to ensure animals are happy and that the animal owners are comfortable and reassured.
He gets to go back to the vet Thursday morning. There’s some pepto-pink goo under the bandage to soften up the scab. It smells like pepperoni. I hope that the smell doesn’t encourage Tenny to work even harder to get the bandage off. Maybe he’ll get to come home without the collar then. I asked if we could change the gauze holding it on today as it was starting to rub his fur off. The new gauze may or may not help.
So that’s the Monster Cat update. He’s very happy we’re home. More later on the trip to South Carolina and pictures and such.
Monster Cat (aka Tennyson) continues to be a very unhappy camper. We went to the vet this morning for his follow-up. The good news is the bandage is off. The bad news is that he’s stuck in the cone head for another week. It sucks to be the cat. A lot. He whined less painfully in the car today though! Probably because he’s so hoarse from whining so much in general this week. The biopsy came back on the growth - still sarcoma cells, this time a little more aggressive than the cells removed in December. The edges are clean though, so it shouldn’t come back. His foot looks a little funny since he’s now missing a toe, but the vet says it’ll be barely noticeable when the fur grows back. So it’s good he got surgery this week even though the Fop and I are leaving tomorrow. The ever wonderful Mark will be taking care of Tenny for his 2nd week of cone-headedness. I’m optiistic that, now that the bandage is off, Tenny will be a little more active and pay closer attention to his food and water. Evil Cat has been observing all of this with aloof amusement.
The week has been pretty productive. Work has been good. I finally did my expense reports. I started clearing out the bathroom for the rennovation that should start by the end of the month. Laundry is almost done. I had excellent retail karma this week and acquired a summer wardrobe. I went to the post office three times to send things out to various people. I went back to the eye doctor and ended up getting yet another prescription for allergies.
So apparently I have allergies. Over the winter my base congestion got bad enough I went to my doctor for it. My primary doctor put me on Caritin and Flonase. It has helped a lot. In revisiting my eye doctor, she said part of the problem I’m having with contacts right now might be that my eyes have some serious allergy action going on. Now I have Patanol drops too. Likely I’ll be able to stop using them when the worst of the pollen is gone. I may end up going back to dailies for allergy season… not that I know when allergy season is. I’ve never really paid attention other than to note when my coworkers with allergies would get red and puffy eyes. That’s harder to do working from home! Maybe I could just have one of my friends with horrible allergies give me updates. I’m terrible. ;)
Here begins Carla’s Complaining about the Weather
Over the last couple weeks I’ve had to remind myself that it’s still Spring. It feels like the middle of summer. I know I’m from “up North” but 90 degrees seems a little warm for May. It’s only in the 70s today, but still. May should be a pleasant, breezy, sunny month. What is up with this hot, humid ickiness??? Monster Cat is not impressed nor is his person! (As an aside, it’s highly entertaining to watch a cat with a cone on his head try to negotiate a position lying in front of the fan.)
Monster Cat Update: Tenny is too clever for his own good. He realized he could hook the pad on his longest toe around the edge of the elizabethan collar and lick clean his wounded foot. My new favorite vet assistant/tech said he’d need a new bandage. Poor Monster Cat. So back to the vet we went. And he’ll get to go again on Monday for a bandage change with Mark. Thank you, Mark! You are the best!!!
Beware: Monster Cat is free once more!!! 
My eternal obsession with pens has been quite fruitful of late. I made a small order (really, it was small! 2 pens!) from 
