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Posted Tuesday 7 February 2012 at 8:51 pm
Filed in: Cats, Personal
Debbi came down with a bad cold last night, and was home from work today. She was pretty well zonked this morning when I left for the gym, and says she spent much of the day sleeping. She seems a little better tonight, but she still doesn’t sound very good, and I bet she’ll be home again tomorrow.
Hopefully this won’t lead to me being home sick in a couple of days, especially if it’d lay me out for most of a day. Not even being able to stay awake to read a book, what kind of sick day is that? And hopefully Debbi will be better by the end of tomorrow.
In other news, Blackjack suddenly entered a down period last week, walking around with wobbly legs and occasionally stumbling. He still seems pretty happy, just somewhat frustrated at his wobbliness. He’s not as bad as he was over Thanksgiving, and he’s still able to jump places. It really kills Debbi to see him like this. But I think he’s going to alternate stronger and weaker periods for the duration of his illness. Hopefully this cycle will pass and he’ll be stronger later this month.
His wobbliness seems to coincide with him throwing up more. We’re not sure what to do about that. He seems to not throw up when we give him wet cat food, so we’ll give him more of that for now. At least he doesn’t throw up all of his dry food.
He seems to be a little better today. Debbi tells me he kept stealing her blanket when she fell asleep on the couch!
Lastly, I’ve been working to pull together my tax information over the last few days. Boy, I’ll be glad to get that behind me. Buying and selling houses makes it so much more complicated.
Posted Tuesday 10 January 2012 at 4:21 pm
Filed in: Cats
Tags: NewtonI’ve written about Blackjack and his cancer so much over the last year that you might have forgotten we have 2 other cats.
Newton is our elderly orange kitty. He’ll be 18 in April, and we’ve been together for over 17 years. He’s lived in 2 states, in 4 different homes, he’s seen Blackjack and Roulette join our household, and seen his brother Jefferson pass away. He’s been on meds for the last 3+ years because he has hyperthyroidism. Yet he keeps plugging away.
After his vet appointment in November the vet upped his meds by 50%. And then over the holiday break he came down with a kitty-cold, for which I took him in last week and got him some antibiotics. The vet said that in older cats sometimes sniffling and sneezing is just a respiratory infection, but sometimes it’s an indication of something worse, like a tumor. Fortunately, the antibiotics seem to have taken care of his symptoms (with 2 days of meds left to go).
Newton’s always been a small cat – I think he topped out at a little under 10 pounds at his heaviest – and he’s gotten smaller in his old age. He’s now at about 6-3/4 pounds, and he is definitely boney. I’ve actually been worried the last week that he hasn’t been eating enough, although he loves wet cat food when we give it to them, but I have seen him eating his dry food in the last couple of days, which is a relief. But he’s so small that I’ve been worrying about him. Fortunately, he hasn’t shown any indication of being unable to do things he normally does, like jump up on the counter, or have trouble going up the stairs.
What he has done is slowed down. He was a manic cat when he was younger, and now he’s sedate. He plays a little, but not very much. He used to run all over the townhouse, but he hardly runs at all anymore. He does sometimes get that old spring in his step when he’s trotting around, though. But he spends a lot of time sleeping, and he especially likes to sleep in the hallway from our bedroom to the master bathroom, which we think it because it’s warm – we have a thermometer in the closet there, and it’s consistently 2-3 degrees warmer there than any of the other places in the house where we have thermometers. I don’t know that Newton has arthritis, but maybe the warmer temperature is more comfortable to him. He’s never been big on purring, but it’s been a while since he’s purred, that I can recall.
It seems like he’s slowed down a lot in the last few months, so when I take him in to get his blood work retested later this month, I’ll ask the vet whether the increased thyroid meds may be slowing him down. The vet who checked him out for his cold said his heart rate seems to be under control due to the meds. I just hope it’s not too under control. He’s also been getting picky about taking his thyroid meds, enjoying pill pockets less than he used to. (He eats them more enthusiastically when they’re fresh. But since they come in packs of 45, they get less fresh long before they run out. I’m trying to figure out how to store some of them so they stay fresher.)
If all this sounds like I’m preparing for the worst, well, I guess I am. He’s an old kitty, most cats don’t make it to his age. And he’s slowing down. And I know he’s not going to be here forever. And after Jefferson’s quick departure, and with Newton showing signs of his age, I guess I’m steeling myself to not be quite so blindsided when the time does come. It doesn’t help that Blackjack’s condition makes me more aware of Newton’s age.
I’m trying not to think about it too much, though. But I am trying to give him more attention and affection, especially when I realize he’s been snoozing up in the hallway most of the day and hasn’t come down to hang out with us. I’m grateful that he’s still healthy and comfortable. I miss the little troublemaking cat he used to be, but I’m glad the old snuggly guy he’s become is still with us.
And I’m really glad that he seems to have given up on meowing his head off in the middle of the night!
Posted Monday 2 January 2012 at 11:03 am
Filed in: Cats, Home, Personal, Vacation
Tags: Blackjack2011 was a mixed bag for us, with some big highs and big lows.
The main high was buying our new house (as well as selling the townhouse, no small accomplishment in this economy). It took us about 3 months of looking, and no small amount of frustration (bidding on and not getting a house we liked, and seeing many other houses we didn’t like) before we found this one at their open house. Debbi is a believer in things that are “meant to be”, and I’m not, but this house is a strong circumstantial argument for such a thing: It’s really perfect for us in location and layout, it’s just what we wanted. And the move went smoothly, even though it took weeks after the move to get the last few items moved from the townhouse
The other high was Debbi’s sabbatical and our trip to Hawaii, where we went to Maui and the big island. This was a great trip which we’ll remember for a long time.
The low, of course, was learning that Blackjack has cancer (lymphoma). He spent 5 weeks getting radiation therapy, followed by 6 months of chemotherapy. He was a good boy through all of it, even though he hated going to the vet. He seemed to be doing pretty well, until we got back from Hawaii when we learned that he’s gone deaf, and he was very wobbly on his feet. That seems to have been the low point for him, and he’s improved since then, almost back to his old self. But we still worry.
Those were the big points of the year. We finished out 2011 with a week off from work (both our companies closed down for the holidays). We spent most of it quietly at home enjoying the house.
We’ve just about got the last room in the house, the dining room, set up. For a while it was just the room with the big tables and all the boxes we hadn’t yet unpacked. Actually it still has 2/3 of the boxes we haven’t unpacked (by which I mean “2 boxes”, the third one is upstairs in the study), but now it has a buffet tables filled with our board games, and we bought a rug for it on Saturday, so it’s looking pretty nice. The cats are enjoying the rug, since it gives them somewhere comfortable to lie where they can look into both the living room and the kitchen.
Blackjack has been doing better this week. We’ve both seen him moving around more swiftly and even starting trouble with Roulette. He’s getting more comfortable jumping, and this weekend he got a little more affection towards Debbi, which she loved since he’s her special cat. But he also likes to go into the smaller spaces in the house (the bathrooms and closets) and meow his head off. He’s always had a really pathetic meow, so when he started doing this we’d go find him to make sure he’s okay, but it seems he just likes to do it. I don’t know if he can hear himself meow, or if he has a bit of tinnitis or similar phenomenon which makes him want to meow, or if he’s just frustrated at his condition and does it to let out some frustration.
Newton, meanwhile, has a cold, and I need to get some meds for him.
Thursday we drove over to Half Moon Bay for breakfast and then went up to San Francisco for ice cream sundaes at Ghirardelli Square. We also went to Borderlands Books, but the cats were not in residence, since they’ve connected the bookstore and cafe and the cats can’t be there until they have a door between the two. Oh well!
We stayed up ’til Midnight on New Year’s, mostly watching the NCIS marathon on the USA network, including many episodes from last season I hadn’t seen. We got visits from two sets of neighbors from our dinner party wishing us a good one and saying how they were happy we’d moved to the neighborhood. We’re glad to be here, it’s nice to have friendly faces around to chat with when we step out the door.
I have a bonus day off today (Debbi’s back at work), and I plan to just take care of a few things around the house and figure out what to make for dinner. And then it’s back to work tomorrow, trying to put back together all the code I tore apart and rewrote during December. (Ahh, nice big code-rewriting projects, always fun and satisfying. But this one has been larger than any of us had anticipated.)
While I can’t say I’m looking forward to figuring out my income taxes this year after everything that went on last year (but hey, that’s why I have a CPA), I’m hoping that 2012 will be less momentous than 2011 was. On balance things are good right now, but I hope we can go a few more years without that sort of disruption again!
Well okay, another trip to Hawaii would be acceptable.
Posted Sunday 27 November 2011 at 8:59 pm
Filed in: Cats, Personal
Tags: BlackjackApple closed down its corporate offices for Thanksgiving week – which it does from time to time, but not every year – so I had the week off. Here’s what I’ve been up to:
Last Sunday, Debbi hosted a cookie exchange with some friends. So we had six guests over to exchange cookies. I tried baking peanut butter cookies on Saturday, and they came out good. Next time I want to figure out how to make them chewier, since I like them that way rather than flaky, which this recipe yielded. We had a good time having people over, and Blackjack enjoyed visiting with everyone, too. He surprised us by being able to jump up onto the counter by way of a bar stool, which was more than we thought he was capable of, in his current state.
Unfortunately, over the next couple of days Blackjack’s condition went downhill. Coincidentally, we had a scheduled check-up on Tuesday with the vet that’s been treating his cancer. By Tuesday morning he was very wobbly, having a lot of trouble staying balanced and getting up and down from things. He would jump down from the dining table and lose his footing and splat on the floor. Fortunately he didn’t hurt himself, but we were pretty worried.
The vet is pretty baffled, too. It could be that his cancer has spread to his hindquarters and is affecting his nerves. Or he could have an inner ear problem. Or he could have a problem with his brain. She noticed he had some unusual eye movements, which suggests one of the last two. But we can’t really know for sure without some expensive – and possibly invasive – tests, and even then we might not be sure, and even if we were we might not be able to treat it. So I’m not sure we’re going to do a lot more for him at this point, but try to keep him comfortable. He’s lost some more weight, so the vet put him back on the steroids he was on during his treatment to stimulate his appetite. Of course he loves being pilled.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though: Over the next few days his strength and stability came back, and this weekend he’s seemed almost back to his old self. Not jumping like he used to, but only a little wobbly, and there’s something in his eyes that seems to say that he’s feeling more his he ought to. We may be in for cycles of good days and bad days, but at least he’s having some good days, when he wants to get into trouble and isn’t spending all his time sleeping.
Monday and Tuesday I did some shopping, and hung out at home. I did a couple of Innistrad drafts on Magic Online. My draft Monday was a disaster and I got eliminated in the first round. My Tuesday draft was much better, with a pretty potent vampire deck, but I got eliminated in the second round by someone who had drafted a gimmicky milling deck. I came somewhat close to pulling it off even so, but it was frustrating, as my deck really had no way to deal with his tricks other than to kill him quickly.
Debbi took Wednesday off, so we’ve had a 5-day weekend together. We had a quiet Thanksgiving at home, cooking a 12-pound turkey with the usual trimmings for dinner. Cooking a turkey is a good way to find out how well-calibrated an oven is, I find – I have a long history of overcooking turkeys. Our oven has a built-in probe thermometer which we used, and it works well! The turkey came out just about perfect, and it and all the other food was yummy. We got some pies from Marie Callender’s too.
This weekend we’ve been doing some work on the house. Well, maintenance. We have some accent lights around the yard which had stopped working, but it turned out that they were all just burned-out bulbs and easily replaced. I suspect one of the light units themselves will need replacing sometime soon, as I was having trouble getting the bulb’s leads to connect to it, but fortunately not quite yet. We also replaced one of the bulbs in the recessed lighting in our family room. We have a lot of light fixtures in this house, so I expect we’ll be replacing random bulbs with some frequency. (Though hopefully the fluorescent lights, at least, will last several years each.)
We also bought a Dyson DC25 vacuum cleaner since they’re on sale this weekend and we’ve been wanting to replace our existing vacuum. I tried it out today and it works quite well! We also ordered a new rug for the living room. Now we just need to find the right rug for the dining room…
We’d hoped to get together with our friends Joar and Karin for a meal this weekend, but they we feeling a bit under the weather, as I’ve been since Friday, so we decided to postpone it ’til sometime later. Actually, my under-the-weatherness has been pretty annoying this weekend: Congestion, general lack of energy, like I’m fighting something off. I wish I’d either get sick, or get better. This in-between stuff sucks.
Still and all, it’s been a pretty good vacation, especially because Blackjack’s feeling better.
Posted Saturday 19 November 2011 at 3:37 pm
Filed in: Cats
Tags: Blackjack, Newton, RouletteTime for a few pictures of our cats as they enjoy our new home.
First, can you spot the two cats in the photo below?
Roulette & Newton have been enjoying the morning sun in the guest room, and Roulette has also turned into something of an “under-furry”.
Blackjack sometimes lies in the sun, but lately he’s discovered that the heating vent under our kitchen island blows a nice stream of hot air to warm his paws and shaved belly:
And one morning he decided he really needed the warmth:
Roulette has been getting more used to the downstairs, and the other morning she was enticing me to pet her on top of the kitchen island:
Blackjack and Roulette each like sleeping in the papasan, which now lives in the library upstairs (which holds my comic books, humor books, and mass-market paperback fiction). Sometimes, when there’s no sun elsewhere, they’ll sleep together:
But more likely we’ll find Newton and Roulette sleeping together, which is how I found them a few minutes ago when I came up to post this entry:
Posted Wednesday 5 October 2011 at 2:21 pm
Filed in: Cats
Tags: BlackjackSo the Thursday before we went off to Hawaii Blackjack had his last chemo treatment for his cancer. So seven months of weekly or bi-weekly vet visits for treatment came to an end for him. The last treatment was one of the rough ones, and he got 4 days of strong anti-nausea meds, and then off we went on vacation. We had four friends lined up as cat-sitters to give him (and Newton) their pills, in addition to the usual cat-sitting events.
Wednesday he had a check-up with the vet, who said he looks great (including his blood work), and he’ll have another re-check in six weeks. We’re also winding down the cortical steroid pills he’s been taking, which makes us all happy.
That all sounds good, but not all is good with our black guy.
We noticed over the first two days that he’d stopped jumping up on things. Specifically on the kitchen counters, where he could often be found before we left. He still jumped up on couches, but he had trouble jumping up on our bed, which is higher than the couches. He learned that if he jumped up and couldn’t make it, then he could come around to my side of the bed and meow and I’d pick him up.
He’s also been sleeping a lot, and sleeping hard. Now, Debbi’s still home on her sabbatical, so she sees him sleeping most of the day, but then, she sees Newton and Roulette sleeping most of the day, too. So, is this normal?
He also seems a little wobbly on his feet, which might be related to him not jumping.
Debbi asked the vet about it at his check-up, and they said he might have hit his head, or missed making a jump and is a little gun-shy about jumping now, or maybe he has a cold which is throwing off his balance. We don’t know.
So we’ve been keeping an eye on him, and trying to make his life easier while we decide whether he needs further examination. For instance, I brought one of the ottomans up and put it at the foot of the bed, and he’s learned to use it to get up to sleep with us. (He’s also decided that when he does get in bed with us he needs to announce his presence with a couple of loud meows. Thanks, guy.)
We also noticed that not a lot of food is being eaten – by anyone. We wondered if the food in their container is stale, so I tossed out the stuff in the bowls, cleaned out the bowls, and opened a new bag of food for them. And they seem to be eating more today, so maybe that’s part of it. I also gave them all some wet cat food yesterday morning, and Blackjack chowed that down. So maybe he’s been hungry? (Then again, I think the cats always eat a little less as winter approaches.)
Last night we had a rain storm, with some pretty strong wind. It’s the first significant storm we’ve had in the new house, and all three cats were pretty wound up about it. Blackjack decided he would complain by sitting in the hallway and yowling. But I’m pretty sure it was the storm, since Newton and Roulette were also trotting around trying to figure out where they felt safe.
In other ways he’s been fairly normal. He’s played a few times, he pounced on his sister this morning because he wanted to lie where she was, he’s been eating bits of cheese that we give him after giving him his pill, and he still loves eating human food. Last night he was chowing down on bits of rice from stuffed peppers Debbi baked, and I had to keep him from pulling more off my plate with his paw.
But he’s not quite right. We’re hoping he’ll get better, and we’re making sure he doesn’t get worse. But if he keeps on like this, I’m not sure what we’ll do. Give it another week or two and then take him in for another exam, I guess.
We’ve always known there are no guarantees about Blackjack since he was diagnosed with lymphoma. My hope has been that we’d have another 2 or 3 good years with him. I’m hoping that this is just lingering reaction to six months of chemo, and that he’ll bounce back and be a little more energetic soon. But I worry that he won’t.
Posted Saturday 20 August 2011 at 11:01 pm
Filed in: Cats, Personal
Tags: BlackjackI’m back from dropping Debbi off at the airport. She’s flying back east to visit her sisters for a week and a half. Her company, you see, has a sabbatical program, so after 6 years working there she gets 6 weeks off. Lucky duck! But it does mean I’m on my own for 10 days.
Well, me and the cats, anyway.
I could use a vacation, too, given how busy it’s been lately. Work has been pretty nutty, filled with the unreproducible bugs, and the impossible-to-diagnose bugs. Especially the last of these, late this past week. I am going to take a couple of days off next week to catch up on some stuff that Debbi wouldn’t be interested in, though; should be nice.
On other fronts, Blackjack is hanging in there. Actually, the vet says he’s doing very well, but he’s been low-energy lately. She thinks he might just be tired of going in to the vet every other week. Certainly it’s getting to be a drag to bring him in – last week was the first time I actually had to chase him to put him in his carrier. But, it seems he has only two more chemo treatments and then he’ll be done! Yay!
I’m not really that worried about keeping myself busy while Debbi’s gone, but I am going to miss her. Especially when I go to bed. I’m not completely comfortable in our new house, I think, and being here by myself is going to make it feel a little weirder. I think the cats are going to miss her, too, and will be confused when I’m the only one home at night.
But we’ll make it through, and she’ll have a good trip.
Now I just have to keep myself from staying up too late at night. 
Posted Sunday 31 July 2011 at 9:04 pm
Filed in: Cats
Tags: Newton, RouletteRoulette seems to have finally won over Newton as a sleeping buddy in our new house:
Posted Thursday 23 June 2011 at 4:55 pm
Filed in: Cats
Nicknames we use for our cats:
Newton: Orange guy, Newton-fellow, Newtonian.
Blackjack: Blackity-Jack, Jackalope, Mister Guy, Black fellow.
Roulette: Rou, Rou-Girl, Miss Girl.
Just in case you were wondering.
Posted Tuesday 5 April 2011 at 4:55 pm
Filed in: Cats, Personal
Tags: BlackjackAnother big gap between updates. Things have been real busy around here lately, so let’s try to catch up over the next few days.
Last Monday I went to see my doctor about my recent health concerns, and also to get a physical exam. Since I’d gotten blood work done on my trip to urgent care a week earlier, that meant fewer tests to do. I’m in slightly better shape than I was at my last exam 2 years ago, and have lost a little bit of weight, too. I also seem to be about an inch shorter than I thought I was, which is bizarre: I’ve always been an even six feet tall, and now I’m a little over five-foot-eleven. I’m not sure if I’ve shrunk a little (aren’t I a little young for that?) or if their measuring stick is a little off.
I talked about my health concerns with him, and he said that stress could certainly be a contributing factor, but that it could also be a case of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). He said that reflux can result in a phenomenon which feels like chest pain, as well as stomach pain, and the phlegmy feeling I’d developed in my throat the weekend before the appointment. He suggested I buy a 14-day round of omeprazole (brand name: Prilotec OTC) and see if that helps.
And, I’m pleased to say, a week into the treatment I’m actually feeling much better, with all of my symptoms being just about gone. I’m trying to cut down on coffee and caffeine a bit, which should also help. But hopefully I’ll be all better at the end of the treatment.
So that’s all a big relief.
That same Monday was Blackjack’s first chemotherapy treatment for his cancer, and yesterday was his second treatment. The vet said both times that he’s doing very well (though I’m not entirely sure what this means; are they X-raying him to examine his tumor, or just seeing how he physically is reacting to the treatments?), and the staff at the vet all seem to like having him, too. I guess he’s pretty easy to deal with. He is still low on energy compared to how he was before starting radiation treatment, but he’s been pretty friendly, has been up and around (and very happy to have had the back door open during our recent warm weather), and has been playing some.
I do miss the overexuberant Blackjack running all over the house, though. I hope he bounces back to that once we’re done with all the therapy.
But he’s enjoying all the attention, canned food, and extra treats, that’s for sure.
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