thank goodness someone's brain is working

I've been staying  up way too late and drinking too much coffee to compensate. Then I have trouble sleeping. It's a bit of a vicious circle.

As a result, I seem to be having problems jump-starting my brain.

The items in this post have no real connection, except that I found them on the internet and they were all drawn to my attention by local bloggers.

Zoom wrote about this lost cat. Is she yours? If her owners aren't found, do you have room in your home for this sweet girl? She's been taken in (and cared for) by the Crazy Cat Lady but she needs a forever home.

Nat got my blood boiling with this righteous rant (on why she won't "shut the fuck up") and made me laugh with this piece on Ottawa's ant plague (I feel so much better knowing thaat I'm not alone) and cry with her link to this amazing story about how a city helped a boy with cancer become a superhero for a day.

I don't know what I'd do without my virtual friends.

questions

Have you ever blogged about the search for a bathing suit?

Are charcoal barbecues worse for our health and the environment than gas barbecues?

How do you organize your time and set priorities so that the most important things get done?

Did you watch Glee last night? Did you think that it wasn't as good as you remember?

How much do you need to spend on a bicycle if you plan to use it to boot around town, a few days a week from spring to late fall and you want it to last a really long time?

How do you take care of coloured hair when you swim regularly?

Also, I dreamed that my cat came back from the dead. Do you remember your dreams? What do you think this one meant?

just like dr. doolittle

Overheard:

Son (to Father) - "Do you ever talk to our animals? Really talk to them? Mama has entire conversations with the dogs."

Father - "Do they talk back?"

In my own defense, I come by my craziness when it comes to love of animals honestly. My sister is every bit as bad as I am with her cat, Iggie, and my mother can talk to and play with just about any animal for hours.

My mom came from a family of thirteen kids. When we were growing up, my sister and I loved hearing the stories of the animals that lived in and passed through her family home. We still beg to be told these stories and have begun to share them with my kids.

There was George, the budgie, who used to perch on my Grandfather's head (and who died when he came in for a landing, missed and ended up on a hot element).

There were many, many cats, including Fiona (the beautiful), Fluffy (who lost the tip of his tail) and Kelly (the favourite). There was Nicky, the dog that loved to ride on the my uncle's motorcycle. And there were the various animals my mother's oldest brother brought home (often rumoured to have been gambling winnings) - the rabbit (it arrived on Easter and my mother collected hundreds of little "raisins" that the rabbit kept "laying." Fortunately, she didn't try and eat any.), the monkey (banished after he started swinging from the curtains) and the chicken (that my Grandmother found tied to the table leg in her kitchen).

Really, compared to the way my mother grew up, my house with its dogs and cat is really very quiet.

And yes, I do talk to my animals. They are very sympathetic listeners.

writing

This was actually taken on chemo day but it kind of sums up what I feel like doing. Note the bed, the book and the laptop. The only thing missing is a great big chocolate bar.

And yes, that is the world's meanest cat, all cuddled up with me. Don't be fooled by appearances. One false move and he'd slit my throat.

I've actually been doing some non-blog writing today, so not much left over for this space. Please bear with me. There will be a more substantial post one these days, I promise.

my little leap of faith

Meet Lucy (she's the furrier one, on the right).

She's a Tibetan Terrier and she has just joined my family.

TTs can live for as long as seventeen years.

How ambitious am I?

We really wanted to get a dog from a shelter or a rescue organization (J-Dog is a rescue and possibly the best dog in the history of dog-dom). But we needed a dog that is healthy, good with kids, other dogs and cats (we almost adopted a wheaten terrier from a rescue group during winter but when the dog met a cat, he tried to eat it. Literally).

And hypoallergenic (D. is mildly allergic to both dogs and cats and we couldn't in good conscious bring another dog into the house who would irritate his allergies).

We also needed a dog who would happily come on long walks or runs with me when I am well and take it easier on the weeks I have treatment. After a year of cruising the internet and working the phones (I reached out to rescue groups across Canada and into the US), I reluctantly admitted defeat.

So we chose a dog from a very responsible breeder and a relatively rare breed with few genetic health problems.

And she's really sweet and cute, too.

I am almost as exhausted as right after my kids were born.

And very nearly as blissed out.

And, for the record, if something does happen and I am unable to take care of this sweet puppy (who we are all working very hard to train), T. and the boys will take good care of her. And of J-Dog. And even of our belligerent cat.

Because when this family adopts an animal, it's for life.

fond in spite of it all (and he is pretty spiteful)

Remember Eli?

Eli has taken to chasing his tail (and catching it) again, an activity that apparently became an obsession when I was in London (he doesn't have to like me, apparently to miss my presence in the house during the day). Upon my return, it became routine for us to wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of a hissing, spitting cat fight taking place at the foot of the bed (and we only have the one cat).

Last Monday morning, I was sitting in the living room when I heard ear-splitting yowling coming from the kitchen. I ran into a scene straight out of a horror movie, as blood gushed from a three-inch gash at the end of Eli's tail. I simultaneously applied pressure and called the vet.

It turns out that he also had severely impacted anal glands (sorry if this grosses you out, I did warn you, though the blog is "Not Just About Cancer") and is hyperthyroid (this will mean medication for the rest of his life.

Every morning, I now find myself administering antibiotics and thyroid meds, then feeding wet food that has been sprinkled with metamucil to the cat, even before I have had coffee or breakfast.

And we haven't even begun to deal with the crazy (because although the anal glands and the thyroid problem may have made things worse, they aren't really the root of the problem).

OK, so maybe I feel a little sorry for him.


After fourteen years, it's hard not to be a little attached.

And he's always had a certain sociopathic charm.

I've got to go hold him down now, so that my spouse can change his bandages.

10 lb terrorist

This is Eli.

He is asleep on the dog bed that J-Dog got for Christmas.

J-Dog really likes his bed but Eli really, really likes it, too.

Eli weighs 10 lbs.

J-Dog weighs more than 50 lbs.

But J-Dog always defers to Eli, who I recently decided is related to the Fishing Cat.

contemplating a return to the two-dog (and a crotchety cat) life

Tonight, I am stoned from the Demerol that I am given to mitigate the side-effects of the Herceptin.

Boy, typing is hard when I'm stoned.

I am reading, A Three Dog Life, a memoir by Abigail Thomas.

She starts her book with the following quote from Wikipedia;

Australian Aborigines slept with their dogs for warmth on cold nights, the coldest being a 'three-dog night.'

I am loving this book. I am seriously too stoned to be coherent as to why, so here is the blurb from Abigail's web site:

When Abigail Thomas’s husband, Rich, was hit by a car, his brain shattered. Subject to rages, terrors, and hallucinations, he must live the rest of his life in an institution. He has no memory of what he did the hour, the day, the year before. This tragedy is the ground on which Abigail had to build a new life. How she built that life is a story of great courage and great change, of moving to a small country town, of a new family composed of three dogs, knitting, and friendship, of facing down guilt and discovering gratitude. It is also about her relationship with Rich, a man who lives in the eternal present, and the eerie poetry of his often uncanny perceptions. This wise, plainspoken, beautiful book enacts the truth Abigail discovered in the five years since the accident: You might not find meaning in disaster, but you might, with effort, make something useful of it.

This memoir is really resonating with me (and not just because she has three dogs and knits).

I especially love the last line of that quote.

Amen to that.

lap cat distracts from CAT scan worries (dog snoring does a pretty good job too)

I am home. And exhausted.

I have to get up early tomorrow, to go to for abdominal and thoracic CT scans (also known as CAT scans) .

Once someone has had cancer, every headache, stitch, lump, bump or bout of dizziness becomes suspect. And every test, no matter how routine is fraught with anxiety.

I have been the best kind of busy these last few days. The conference and the time I spent with friends and family (as well as the chance to change my environment for a while) provided both a distraction and more reassurance than a fist full of tranquilizers.

But I do feel a little queasy and a little a lot scared when I think about what the results of this test could mean. The worst doesn't bear thinking about, actually; so I'm trying not to do so.

And right now, with my youngest asleep, my oldest in the bath, my sweetie in the room with me, the dog snoring with his head in my lap and the cat doing his best imitation of a nice kitty, it's not so hard to feel optimistic. I just wish the test was over, the results were in and I could share the good news with all of you.

how the mighty have fallen (or more than you probably want to know about my cat)

This is Eli.

He is thirteen years old and is the smartest cat I have ever met. He is also thoroughly neurotic.

Most likely the product of too much inbreeding, Eli can go from happy purring to a psychotic episode in a millisecond. As a younger cat he would sometimes attack pretty viciously from out of nowhere (and he once had to be quarantined after biting a neighbour. He responded to his confinement by pissing all over our apartment). This, thankfully, has stopped. He is much mellower now (although we discourage the kids from petting him and we watch for the signs that he is getting too excited).

We often remark that he could almost fool us into thinking he's a nice cat.

We like to say that Eli learned to turn his anger inward. He frequently licks himself raw in various places on his body. And recently, he has started to chase his own tail.

He gets really mad when he catches it. At first this was really funny. He would chase his tail, catch it and then, invariably fall off the bed or the couch. He would even hiss and spit as though he'd been attacked (when I asked my vet about this, he used the very scientific term, "insane" to describe the cat's clinical condition).

It's not funny anymore.

When we came back from our week at the cottage, we found blood all over the kitchen floor and Eli had an ugly gash in his tail. I think the poor thing was just desperately lonely while we were gone (he has become very social in this, his eighth of nine lives). We had someone coming in to look after him most days but I don't think this was enough for our crazy cat.

Our vet (who is thorough, compassionate and very cute and with whom I am half in love - I don't understand why all my single straight girlfriends don't acquire pets just so they can have him over to their house) had warned that this might happen and suggested that we keep rescue remedy on hand. I was worried about giving it to him but he seems to love it (it smells very boozy; I suspect we are making him drunk) and jumps up on the garbage can to drink it from the dropper.

It seems to be working. The vet did warn us that sometimes in these kinds of cases, the tail needs to be amputated because the cat just can't leave it alone.

He has relaxed a lot since we stopped letting him go outside (more than ten years ago) and he loved living with another cat. But when our younger cat died of (genetic) kidney failure, we agreed that we could not get another, as D., my youngest son, is allergic.

Eli has been a source of much entertainment for us over the years (and almost more than equal amounts of stress) and we find that we are oddly attached to him despite the trauma he has inflicted on us (could it be Stockholm syndrome?).

How many cats can claim that they once removed a screen from a window, left it propped up against the wall and went out for the evening?

We used to say that the only thing keeping this cat from true independence was his lack of opposable thumbs. Now, it seems that in his dotage, he needs us.

quiet

It is so quiet here.

After the chaos of the week end (not to mention of this morning's rush to leave the house), I am gloriously alone (aside from the cat and the dog, snoozing on the couch beside me).

Bliss.

I don't even mind that I have a big mess to clean up, along with a mountain of laundry.

I like my own company.