I woke up at 2:00 AM yesterday (er.. today?) surprised to find my mom still wide awake and making bracelets. I sat for a moment and talked to her, put on the bracelet she made me, gave her a kiss and went back to bed. She was looking for her kitty Cupcake as I curled back up next to The Monkey.
I'm not sure how long it was... but she came into our room crying and said "Melissa Cupcake is dead."
Today was a very rough day. She had to have been dead a couple of hours because she was already cold and stiff. I couldn't look. My sister came this morning and wrapped her up in a quilt and we took her to the vet to be cremated. She was sick but she tried so hard to get better. Michele said she was tired. And she stuck around long enough to make sure we were going to be okay. She was such a sweetheart and we miss her so much. I'm looking around at our other animals and I just have this wave of unending love and appreciation. Cupcake was only five. :'(
Showing posts with label furbabies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label furbabies. Show all posts
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
annnnd... we're back!
Maybe I was being paranoid by making my blog private. Maybe not. Probably though. But isn't the fact that I was being paranoid just another symptom of my mental illness? Just food for thought. [cue crickets]
So. My hearing went... well, good. It was pretty cut and dry. I happened to have a headache that day so the volume on the teleconferencing system was a bit piercing; also I was a nervous freaking wreck so that was fun. But, overall, it was a pretty easy process. Once the ALJ and my attorney were finished questioning me the ALJ questioned a vocational expert and their testimony was basically favorable for me. So, barring anything catastrophic, we hope to receive a decision letter in my favor in the next five weeks (one week already down). Two years of waiting are almost over.
In the meantime, things have sort of unravelled. My mom's finances are a bit of a trainwreck. We're helping out as much as possible which means even though I declared bankruptcy and we have almost no bills we are still virtually broke from paycheck to paycheck. (This also has a lot to do with keeping up with mental health appointments and the fact that I drove to the RE twice in the span of a couple of weeks.) Another really unexpected and really large expense was our (well, Mom's) cat, Cupcake. When The Monkey and I first moved in with our three cats Cupcake got pretty stressed out. But she seemed to be dealing okay by spending a good bit of her time outside on the [screened in] patio. But slowly she stopped "asking" to go out. And I had to drag her from underneath one of the sofas to see if she would eat. She lost weight and we assumed that it was okay because she was obese to begin with. (My dad used to overfeed my Mom's cats something awful!) Still, her personality (aside from being a little more antisocial than usual) seemed okay. Until it didn't. She went downhill pretty quickly. I had to hunt for her and find her. We gave her my mom's room as her own but by then it was too late. We rushed her to a local animal hospital where they did a blood panel and an exam and it turned out that she was severely jaundiced (bilirubin was off the charts high) and her platelets were low. The vet mentioned a few different problems the least serious of which was the liver fluke and the most serious of which was cancer. I researched everything (of course) and found out that liver flukes are transmitted by skinks which we find all the time on the patio! She started to improve on the four medications they gave her (one of which was a dewormer for the liver fluke) so we breathed a sigh of relief.
Until about two weeks later when she stopped eating again. (Not that she'd really started eating much to begin with.)
She wasn't as visibly yellow as she had been before but she had a "tint" to her that looked unhealthy. Plus her gums were pale and tacky and she just looked and acted really miserable. (We're talking about a very loveable cat. Even when she was on death's doorstep with the jaundice she was still purring and loving on us.) I did more research and found out Hepatic Lipodosis (Fatty Liver Disease) is one of THE most common causes of liver failure in cats. Risk factors -- cats that were obese and lose weight rapidly along with their appetite. Cupcake fit the bill perfectly. When we took her back to the same vet (despite my request to get a second opinion) they kept her overnight. They said she was just dehydrated. All of her blood panels came back improved (but she's still showing signs of liver damage). So they gave her IV fluids and IV meds and then sent us home with l/d prescription diet and told us if she wasn't eating on her own by Saturday that we'd need to get a referral to a vet that's FOUR HOURS away for an ultrasound.
'Scuse me?
So, I'm a bit irritated. Because they rattled off these diagnoses of extremely uncommon disorders (something autoimmune) before checking for something VERY common? Something that the patient was clearly at risk for seeing as how she literally lost HALF of her body weight in less than two months??
I am pissed. Right now our vet bill is up to $1,000. It's not the money that matters it's the caliber of treatment. Treating FLD is actually pretty simple when caught early. It consists of intense nutritional support. But because kitties with this condition don't have an appetite, it becomes necessary to either a) force feed them via syringe or b) have a feeding tube inserted. Option b) is usually preferred because, believe it or not, it is LESS STRESSFUL on the cat. The vet said she was eating the morning before we brought her home. I got her home and she refused food of any kind. She refused TUNA!! I got her to eat a tiny, tiny bit of pumpkin mash mixed with chicken broth but not enough to brag about. So I have been forced to force feed her with a syringe which really pisses her off. (At least she comes out of hiding and snuggles with my mom at bed time.)
Tomorrow my plan is to call several other vets in the area for second, third, fourth, fifth opinions. I'm pissed that our vet decided against a feeding tube because now we're going to have to fork out MORE money for that as I'm at least 80% sure that a feeding tube is going to be what gets our Cupcake back to her old self.
It would be super great to have my SSDI kick in sooner rather than later. When it does, all of the cats are getting check ups! And we might have to look into some sort of pet insurance, too.
So. My hearing went... well, good. It was pretty cut and dry. I happened to have a headache that day so the volume on the teleconferencing system was a bit piercing; also I was a nervous freaking wreck so that was fun. But, overall, it was a pretty easy process. Once the ALJ and my attorney were finished questioning me the ALJ questioned a vocational expert and their testimony was basically favorable for me. So, barring anything catastrophic, we hope to receive a decision letter in my favor in the next five weeks (one week already down). Two years of waiting are almost over.
In the meantime, things have sort of unravelled. My mom's finances are a bit of a trainwreck. We're helping out as much as possible which means even though I declared bankruptcy and we have almost no bills we are still virtually broke from paycheck to paycheck. (This also has a lot to do with keeping up with mental health appointments and the fact that I drove to the RE twice in the span of a couple of weeks.) Another really unexpected and really large expense was our (well, Mom's) cat, Cupcake. When The Monkey and I first moved in with our three cats Cupcake got pretty stressed out. But she seemed to be dealing okay by spending a good bit of her time outside on the [screened in] patio. But slowly she stopped "asking" to go out. And I had to drag her from underneath one of the sofas to see if she would eat. She lost weight and we assumed that it was okay because she was obese to begin with. (My dad used to overfeed my Mom's cats something awful!) Still, her personality (aside from being a little more antisocial than usual) seemed okay. Until it didn't. She went downhill pretty quickly. I had to hunt for her and find her. We gave her my mom's room as her own but by then it was too late. We rushed her to a local animal hospital where they did a blood panel and an exam and it turned out that she was severely jaundiced (bilirubin was off the charts high) and her platelets were low. The vet mentioned a few different problems the least serious of which was the liver fluke and the most serious of which was cancer. I researched everything (of course) and found out that liver flukes are transmitted by skinks which we find all the time on the patio! She started to improve on the four medications they gave her (one of which was a dewormer for the liver fluke) so we breathed a sigh of relief.
Until about two weeks later when she stopped eating again. (Not that she'd really started eating much to begin with.)
She wasn't as visibly yellow as she had been before but she had a "tint" to her that looked unhealthy. Plus her gums were pale and tacky and she just looked and acted really miserable. (We're talking about a very loveable cat. Even when she was on death's doorstep with the jaundice she was still purring and loving on us.) I did more research and found out Hepatic Lipodosis (Fatty Liver Disease) is one of THE most common causes of liver failure in cats. Risk factors -- cats that were obese and lose weight rapidly along with their appetite. Cupcake fit the bill perfectly. When we took her back to the same vet (despite my request to get a second opinion) they kept her overnight. They said she was just dehydrated. All of her blood panels came back improved (but she's still showing signs of liver damage). So they gave her IV fluids and IV meds and then sent us home with l/d prescription diet and told us if she wasn't eating on her own by Saturday that we'd need to get a referral to a vet that's FOUR HOURS away for an ultrasound.
'Scuse me?
So, I'm a bit irritated. Because they rattled off these diagnoses of extremely uncommon disorders (something autoimmune) before checking for something VERY common? Something that the patient was clearly at risk for seeing as how she literally lost HALF of her body weight in less than two months??
I am pissed. Right now our vet bill is up to $1,000. It's not the money that matters it's the caliber of treatment. Treating FLD is actually pretty simple when caught early. It consists of intense nutritional support. But because kitties with this condition don't have an appetite, it becomes necessary to either a) force feed them via syringe or b) have a feeding tube inserted. Option b) is usually preferred because, believe it or not, it is LESS STRESSFUL on the cat. The vet said she was eating the morning before we brought her home. I got her home and she refused food of any kind. She refused TUNA!! I got her to eat a tiny, tiny bit of pumpkin mash mixed with chicken broth but not enough to brag about. So I have been forced to force feed her with a syringe which really pisses her off. (At least she comes out of hiding and snuggles with my mom at bed time.)
Tomorrow my plan is to call several other vets in the area for second, third, fourth, fifth opinions. I'm pissed that our vet decided against a feeding tube because now we're going to have to fork out MORE money for that as I'm at least 80% sure that a feeding tube is going to be what gets our Cupcake back to her old self.
It would be super great to have my SSDI kick in sooner rather than later. When it does, all of the cats are getting check ups! And we might have to look into some sort of pet insurance, too.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Lissa and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
My day started off with my usual three mile walk. As per the norm, I clipped my [brand new] cell phone to the inside of my hoodie pocket. Somehow, someway, I managed to knock it out and it went clattering onto the asphalt. While the new faceplate did take the brunt of the fall, my poor [brand new] Voyager is already scratched.
Damnit.
I got over that fairly quickly only to have the dumb ass working the Arby's drive-thru hand me a bag that was too small for the food I ordered out the drive-thru window, ripping the bag in the process. I would have asked nicely for a new bag but I was already late picking up The Monkey for lunch so I said screw it. Long story short, all but a third of The Monkey's curly fries wound up on the floor board. Then, when I was attempting to clean up the mess my Diet Dr. Pepper sprung open covering my console and my entire right side in the thankfully un-sticky mess. Come to find out the lid that the dumb ass working the drive-thru gave me was cracked and popped loose when I leaned over to clean up the fries.
Mother f*ckers!
I was grouchy all through lunch. Poor Monkey. I managed to get my anger in check with a nice, long, scalding hot shower. Nothing like near-burning your skin to bring about a nice 'warm fuzziness'. (Now I remmeber why I always used to self injure the worst when I was angry -- there's just something about physical pain that dissolves all the emotional GUNK away.) So, in a slightly better mood, I started on my makeup. I was almost finished and went to sit on the bed to put my socks on when I noticed Jasmine lounging peacefully. I pet her on the head and she looked up at me lazily and started purring. Then she got up and stretched then plopped precariously onto her back revealing a nice hole in her tummy. It wasn't bleeding so I contemplated going to Walgreens and picking up some butterfly stitches to hold the skin together and wrapping her in an ACE bandage. In the mean time, I decided the best course of action would be to put her in the kennel and call the vet that did her surgery. Which I did and I tried futilely for a half hour. As it was already dangerously close to 5:00 PM I went ahead and called a local vet instead. They said to bring her in.
Half an hour later (after the poor kitty was poked and prodded and weighed and violated with the butt thermometer) they determined that she needed to be resutured and to do so they had to anesthize her again. I walked out with a semi-healthy cat, $160 poorer. Needless to say, I was not happy. This time around they put a lampshade collar on her to keep her from chewing out these sutures. She has to wear it for a week. I am so pissed that the vet didn't do this initially but the girl said it's really not a standard practice for cats. I didn't have this problem with Olivia or William when they got fixed and declawed so this was really unexpected. Thank heavens the vet accepts Care Credit although now we went from having $0 balances on all but one of our credit cards to only having a $0 balance on one. I'm waiting for something to happen to one of my or The Monkey's tires. Then we'll have a $0 balance on none.
She looks pretty pissed, huh?
Poor kitty!
I am very irritated with this whole situation and having to pay $160 that we really do not have. My sister has been talking about the electric and water bills a lot more lately and I feel like she's hinting around wanting us to chip in. I feel like shit that we really don't have the extra cash to chip in. I thought about giving her some money when we get our tax return but The Monkey STILL hasn't gotten his W2 yet. ARRRGH! Depending on how much we get back, I'd like to throw at least $300 my sister's way. I know it's really not much but there's not much else we can do. We're going to need that money to fall back on for other things. Like groceries. I do not like living like this. I do not want to live like this. I do not want to be sitting at my computer wearing gloves with a blanket draped over me just to keep from freezing. I do not like feeling USELESS and WORTHLESS and POINTLESS all. the. freaking. time. I am tired of the mood swings. I am already sick and tired of the meds and how the Lithium makes my stomach feel like it is in a perpetual knot and I hate that even the micro-dose of Zyprexa has me sleeping 12 hours against my will. (I won't even go in on the food cravings and how my weight is not BUDGING even though I am doing my best to eat less, drink more water, and exercise daily.)
On my to-do list this week:
On top of everything else, I caught my niece's cold. So now I'm stuffy, sneezy, achey, blah blah blah...
Now I am going to get off of this thing so The Monkey can play WarCrack for a little while and I'm going to attempt to give myself carpel tunnel from playing Guitar Hero on Hyperspeed.
Damnit.
I got over that fairly quickly only to have the dumb ass working the Arby's drive-thru hand me a bag that was too small for the food I ordered out the drive-thru window, ripping the bag in the process. I would have asked nicely for a new bag but I was already late picking up The Monkey for lunch so I said screw it. Long story short, all but a third of The Monkey's curly fries wound up on the floor board. Then, when I was attempting to clean up the mess my Diet Dr. Pepper sprung open covering my console and my entire right side in the thankfully un-sticky mess. Come to find out the lid that the dumb ass working the drive-thru gave me was cracked and popped loose when I leaned over to clean up the fries.
Mother f*ckers!
I was grouchy all through lunch. Poor Monkey. I managed to get my anger in check with a nice, long, scalding hot shower. Nothing like near-burning your skin to bring about a nice 'warm fuzziness'. (Now I remmeber why I always used to self injure the worst when I was angry -- there's just something about physical pain that dissolves all the emotional GUNK away.) So, in a slightly better mood, I started on my makeup. I was almost finished and went to sit on the bed to put my socks on when I noticed Jasmine lounging peacefully. I pet her on the head and she looked up at me lazily and started purring. Then she got up and stretched then plopped precariously onto her back revealing a nice hole in her tummy. It wasn't bleeding so I contemplated going to Walgreens and picking up some butterfly stitches to hold the skin together and wrapping her in an ACE bandage. In the mean time, I decided the best course of action would be to put her in the kennel and call the vet that did her surgery. Which I did and I tried futilely for a half hour. As it was already dangerously close to 5:00 PM I went ahead and called a local vet instead. They said to bring her in.
Half an hour later (after the poor kitty was poked and prodded and weighed and violated with the butt thermometer) they determined that she needed to be resutured and to do so they had to anesthize her again. I walked out with a semi-healthy cat, $160 poorer. Needless to say, I was not happy. This time around they put a lampshade collar on her to keep her from chewing out these sutures. She has to wear it for a week. I am so pissed that the vet didn't do this initially but the girl said it's really not a standard practice for cats. I didn't have this problem with Olivia or William when they got fixed and declawed so this was really unexpected. Thank heavens the vet accepts Care Credit although now we went from having $0 balances on all but one of our credit cards to only having a $0 balance on one. I'm waiting for something to happen to one of my or The Monkey's tires. Then we'll have a $0 balance on none.
She looks pretty pissed, huh?
Poor kitty!
I am very irritated with this whole situation and having to pay $160 that we really do not have. My sister has been talking about the electric and water bills a lot more lately and I feel like she's hinting around wanting us to chip in. I feel like shit that we really don't have the extra cash to chip in. I thought about giving her some money when we get our tax return but The Monkey STILL hasn't gotten his W2 yet. ARRRGH! Depending on how much we get back, I'd like to throw at least $300 my sister's way. I know it's really not much but there's not much else we can do. We're going to need that money to fall back on for other things. Like groceries. I do not like living like this. I do not want to live like this. I do not want to be sitting at my computer wearing gloves with a blanket draped over me just to keep from freezing. I do not like feeling USELESS and WORTHLESS and POINTLESS all. the. freaking. time. I am tired of the mood swings. I am already sick and tired of the meds and how the Lithium makes my stomach feel like it is in a perpetual knot and I hate that even the micro-dose of Zyprexa has me sleeping 12 hours against my will. (I won't even go in on the food cravings and how my weight is not BUDGING even though I am doing my best to eat less, drink more water, and exercise daily.)
On my to-do list this week:
- Start looking into getting paid to blog. Since I do it almost daily anyway, why not try to make some extra cash?? Even an extra $100 a month would be a huge help at this point.
- Find out whether or not we qualify for any other assistance while we're waiting for my SSD appeal.
- Call my school and see about getting them to credit back the finance charges they tacked onto my bill. (I owe them around $200, they charged me finance charges for for the $6,000+ that was on my account for two months because my student loans too almost the entire semester to post to my account. I am NOT paying interest on $6,000+ dollars!!)
- See what I can do about registering for next semester -- hopefully my FINAL semester.
- Try to think of good reasons to keep on living.
On top of everything else, I caught my niece's cold. So now I'm stuffy, sneezy, achey, blah blah blah...
Now I am going to get off of this thing so The Monkey can play WarCrack for a little while and I'm going to attempt to give myself carpel tunnel from playing Guitar Hero on Hyperspeed.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
potential new family member...
Yesterday my nephew came running into the house hollering. "Auntie Lissa! Are both of your cats in here??" He seemed really panicked which made me panic and start hunting for my cats. I found Olivia but William was nowhere in sight. The Monkey and I ran outside to find a cat up in one of the trees in the back yard. Thankfully, on the way to see said kitty, we saw our Fat Boy lounging in the window so both of our cats were, indeed, accounted for. Still, we went to rescue the kitty in the tree. She attempted to climb down to The Monkey but only made it part of the way before climbing back up. The Monkey climbed the tree (hehe...monkeys...tree climbing... [giggle]) and instantly became the kitty's savior. She was friendly enough, just a little wigged out about being held. (I held the scruff of her neck to keep her calm while I was holding her and I began feeling extremely thankful that both of my cats are declawed in the front.) She smelled really good and was very clean and I assumed she wasn't an outdoor cat. She looked to be somewhere between eight months and a year old at the most. We tried to find owners but none of the neighbors claimed her. I made The Monkey bring out some cat food and we left her to her own devices since it wasn't up to us whether or not we could adopt another cat. (We live with my sister, after all.)
Later that night, The Monkey started feeling guilty about leaving her outside because it started to get really cold. We went out to grab some dinner and while we were waiting on Drive-Thru Captain D's my niece called and said my sister let the cat in the house. :-o Imagine my shock! At any rate, she spent the night in the garage with us. She helped herself to some food and has already used the litter box a few times. She's very loveable. She slept with The Monkey all night. However, she's been very bitchy to our two cats so far. Poor William can't even walk by her without getting hissed at. :-( Right now we're sort of up in the air on whether or not we're going to keep her. For one thing, she's a little on the chunky side for her size and my sister and I are both wondering if she's a soon-to-be Momma cat. I looked online for signs of cat pregnancy and the only thing I could find was protruding nipples. I compared hers to Olivia's and hers are definitely more noticeable. I don't think I can handle a pregnant cat. I had Olivia fixed LONG before she was even able to get pregnant so I've never had to worry about kittens. I think we'll hold onto her for a few days and maybe see if we can get her to a vet to find out for sure whether or not she's expecting. If she is... well, I'm not sure what we're going to do just yet. If we take her to a shelter it would definitely have to be a no kill shelter. I can't bear to leave her out on the streets, though. Especially considering how friendly and loveable she is!
So I'm really hoping she's just fat/well fed. I'm also hoping that she'll lose the 'tude quickly and stop being a bitch to my other two cats. If we do decide to keep her she'll definitely have to be fixed and declawed. No unfair fights for my other two babies! :-P For now, we're calling her Jasmine. (The name just came to me the way the names for all of my other cats have in the past.)
She is a cutie! And her eyes are a really lovely shade of green.
Later that night, The Monkey started feeling guilty about leaving her outside because it started to get really cold. We went out to grab some dinner and while we were waiting on Drive-Thru Captain D's my niece called and said my sister let the cat in the house. :-o Imagine my shock! At any rate, she spent the night in the garage with us. She helped herself to some food and has already used the litter box a few times. She's very loveable. She slept with The Monkey all night. However, she's been very bitchy to our two cats so far. Poor William can't even walk by her without getting hissed at. :-( Right now we're sort of up in the air on whether or not we're going to keep her. For one thing, she's a little on the chunky side for her size and my sister and I are both wondering if she's a soon-to-be Momma cat. I looked online for signs of cat pregnancy and the only thing I could find was protruding nipples. I compared hers to Olivia's and hers are definitely more noticeable. I don't think I can handle a pregnant cat. I had Olivia fixed LONG before she was even able to get pregnant so I've never had to worry about kittens. I think we'll hold onto her for a few days and maybe see if we can get her to a vet to find out for sure whether or not she's expecting. If she is... well, I'm not sure what we're going to do just yet. If we take her to a shelter it would definitely have to be a no kill shelter. I can't bear to leave her out on the streets, though. Especially considering how friendly and loveable she is!
So I'm really hoping she's just fat/well fed. I'm also hoping that she'll lose the 'tude quickly and stop being a bitch to my other two cats. If we do decide to keep her she'll definitely have to be fixed and declawed. No unfair fights for my other two babies! :-P For now, we're calling her Jasmine. (The name just came to me the way the names for all of my other cats have in the past.)
She is a cutie! And her eyes are a really lovely shade of green.
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