Equine Escape Artist

Guided by the light of the full moon, Dixie and Susie had quite a night for themselves last night.  At least if the hoof prints and 'skid marks' in the lawn are any clue as to their activities!

The 'naughty one' has learned to open the latch on one of the gates.  In fact she escaped several days ago as Puss Puss and I were sitting out back reading.  THIS story goes, that Puss Puss wanted to go out with me and as was her habit of the last couple of weeks, she liked to wander far away from the house.  As weak as she was, off she would go.  It has been suggested to me that she was looking for a 'special place' for her last days {or day}, but I won't get into that right now.  She had made it about half way down the path to the barn, but there was some interesting noises coming from the barn, so she stopped and lay down.  Chuck, for some reason had left the front door to the barn {that leads down the hall to Dixie's stall, and also to the back door} open.  There is a dual gate that serves as the door to Dixie's stall, but when opened up the other way, it blocks the way out the back door of the barn.  Without this story getting too complicated, I will simply say that Dixie managed to injure an ankle bad enough a couple days previous, so that Chuck had to apply liniment and wrap her leg and she was walking pretty stiff legged.  When I heard all the noise and rattling around coming from the barn, I was afraid that she had lain down and couldn't get up.  By the time I went into the house and got my 'barn sneakers', I came out to find her outside, behind the barn eating grass!  {and Puss Puss was no where in sight}.  Since poor Dixie is still on her diet of Hay and Water, she didn't move from the grass she was eating, as I approached, and I was able to lead her back through the barn to the barn yard.  That was when I had discovered that she had "picked the lock", so to speak and unlatched the gate. 

Chuck didn't seem to think it would be an issue, since he seldom leaves the front barn door open anyway, so he didn't change the latch.  Sooooo, last night when he let them out after their evening meal, he decided to leave them both in the barn yard, rather than turning Susie out to the outer pasture, as we were having a big old thunder storm.  He also left the front barn doors open  so that they could get into their stalls out of the weather if they wanted. 

Well, at some point during the night, Dixie unlatched the gate and she and her Mama escaped and spent the night munching the fresh green grass of the lawn.  When Chuck and Gus went out the back door this AM to give them their carrots on their way to get the morning paper, they sorta met him at the back door!  LOL I think it is just hysterical that they were roaming the neighborhood in the middle of the night.  Now we just have to hope that Dixie doesn't get sick from eating grass all night.  Not a good thing, after having only hay to eat for several weeks.  She's a bit subdued, but so far seems fine.  Little sneak!

As for the whereabouts of Puss Puss the other day, when she disappeared while I captured Dixie.....for the second time in a few days, she had gone over to the neighbors place and was hiding out in his work shop.  These darling critters are always up to something....especially the 'naughty one'.  Hee hee.

Moving On

Yesterday, the vet's office called to tell me that my dear kitty's cremains were back and ready for me to pick up.  It made for a sad start to my day, as I headed to their office, but it was also rewarding in some way.  I took the special little cedar chest with me that contains Max's cremains, so that I could place hers in it with him.  They were such good buddies, it seemed like the natural thing to do.
I miss her terribly, but I also do not have to worry about what she is feeling.  She is free from all that and for that I am grateful.

We have been having some beautiful fall weather and the roses in my new flower bed are regular blooming idiots! 

 There is an orange and yellow one that is about to bloom and a lavender one and the yellow one has a ton of buds.  Soon they will be gone, along with the perfect weather :(.  One person is telling me that I need to cut them back before the first frost and someone else is telling me not to cut them back until spring.  An article I read online, re: roses in Arkansas, said to prune them in February.....WTH???  I think I'll wait til spring, as that advice comes from Victoria and she has been growing beautiful roses in Arkansas for several years.

Farewell My Little Friend

Today was the day. My sweet little Princess Esmeralda and I said our farewells and she passed over, in my arms, with a little help from my favorite vet.

The past few days were rough....for all of us. She was deteriorating rapidly and I could see that she had become very uncomfortable. I needed to help her along before she began to really suffer. My heart really isn't into writing any more tonight, but I'm sure I'll have a lot to tell you about my girl in the days to come.

Tough Little Girl

I need to update on my sweet little Puss Puss. She is still failing by the day.

I last weighed her On Wednesday AM and she is down to 4.2 lbs. It is beginning to show in her teeny little flat Persian face. I can see what little flesh was on her face is gone and she is showing signs of what I believe to be dehydration. She makes many trips to the water fountain that she and Gus share, but just bobs her little head, sniffing and does not drink. I tend to follow her around to where ever she is currently curled up and napping, to place tiny bowls of water near her so she will have a fresh drink, if and when she wants it. Occasionally, she drinks a bit, but not enough.

She still hadn't eaten anything, or taken in any more of the Nutr-Cal since my last post. But when I got home Wednesday, after getting my hair done, Chuck had already arrived home and while waiting for me he decided to try force feeding her. He used one of the syringes that the vet had given me and managed to get some chicken baby food into her wee little mouth and she actually swallowed it. I think he said he got about 4 mouthfuls down her, and then put some of the Nutri-Cal in the syringe, but THAT she did spit out.

As much as Chuck loves our little Puss Girl, his manner of being "gentle" is pretty rough on such a fragile little thing and the ordeal seemed to really take it's toll on her. She did come to me to cuddle, after dinner, which is her habit these past weeks, but she looked terrible and seemed so tired out that she didn't stay long and very soon, she ambled upstairs to her spot on our bedroom and stayed there for the rest of the night.

She was a bit perkier yesterday AM and I took the opportunity to wash her little face with a warm wash cloth. She hasn't been grooming herself at all and Dear Old Dad made a bit of a mess with the baby food. Plus, Persian cats have runny eyes and I usually wipe them with a tissue, but the wash cloth worked much better on all of it. That was when I got a really good close look at her poor little face and could see the changes. Yesterday she would drink no water or milk all day, but when Chuck got home, we did the baby food thing again and she ate 3 mouthfuls before she had clearly had enough. It went much better with me holding her with her head over my shoulder, but when she had had enough, and spewed the 4th mouthful out onto my shirt, she got down and went into hiding again, until after dinner.

We can see her weakness when she walks and she no longer even attempts to jump up to my chair or the kitchen stool, instead 'asking' to be picked up and placed there. And I began to realize yesterday, that it is beginning to uncomfortable for her to have me pet her very much. As I said, she has been wanting a lot of cuddle time lately, which is usually me holding her over my shoulder. She burrows her head into my hair as I stroke her, often for an hour or two at a time, but yesterday she would stop purring and start moving around a bit as I was petting her, so I stopped and she snuggled back in and went back to purring. This is her 1st sign of any discomfort since all this began and it's tearing me up. I'm afraid of what will be next and pray that she not suffer at all before the end comes. I'm pretty sure that if she doesn't go quietly in her sleep by Monday or so, I will have to decide the best way to help her.

Grasshopper Delight

As I reported yesterday, Puss Puss was having a 'good' day. She wanted to be outside a lot and that's a good thing.

At one point yesterday afternoon, shortly after Chuck got home from riding Susie, he decided to let Dixie out into the pasture with Susie and let her have some play time with Mom.

Yes~Dixie is still in solitary confinement in the barn yard.
Yes~Dixie is still on her crash diet.
Yes~It is working and we estimate that she has lost about 300 lbs :).
Yes~Her laminitous is improving and she ran and played with her Mama yesterday in an almost "normal" manner!

The even better part of that scenario was when I had come back in the house and plopped at my computer for a bit, only to look out the window and see Puss Puss making a mad dash for the horse pasture. Here she was, crouched down low to the ground, moving as fast as her little paws would carry her, in hot pursuit of some unseen object. My first thought was that she was about to be trampled by a thundering hoof, but I barely had time to complete that thought when I saw her fly up into the air and twirl around swiping at a still unseen object, both paws just a flailing!! She hit the ground and took off in hot pursuit again, only to stop short and dart off in another direction and leap into the air again! She looked like a ballerina kitty!

I surely wish someone had been shooting video, because it was a rather chaotic few moments. The horses were tearing up the turf, Gus was running along side of the horses barking his fool head off, the cat was doing pirouettes in the midst of it all and Chuck & I were both running to save the cat!! As we got closer, we realized that the pasture was FULL of grasshoppers and the horses had certainly stirred them up and Puss Puss was trying to catch every one of them!

She was having a ball! I felt like I was watching my poor sick, dying kitty having her last 'hurrah' or something! Where in God's name she found that little burst of energy is beyond me, but it was quite delightful to see! I think we all forgot, for a few moments at least, that she was so ill and so fragile. There was no sign of that for a little while, anyway.

Last night and so far today, she is not so inspired. Not by her Valium or a bowl of milk or the Nutri-Cal. She wants only cuddles and lots of sleep. And so I wait.....

Think Positive

Allll righty then........this AM I shall write a more positive post, because I really can't expect you to come here and read negative stuff, time after time after time.........How dreary of me of to only post about the bad shit.  I must dig deeper and pull some more upbeat shit out of my ass hat!

My rose garden is going {growing} great!  They survived the transplant and are thriving and blooming.  All 9 plants have lots of new growth and they all are in bloom and/or loaded with buds!  I'm pretty sure I owe it all to Martha Stewart and her Epsom Salts tip.  Plus I've been watering, spraying and fertilizing right on schedule, like a good little rose gardener.

Here's a yellow one that Chuck picked for me this AM



Isn't my vase cute?? I collect Wymsiclay Cats for my mantle and have a couple of vases that are like the kitties. Too cute!

Chuck is getting ready to go riding with a friend. ARG!! I wanna go SOOOOO bad. It's a beautiful sunny 61 degrees. Perfect for most anything, but particularly for riding my Sweet Susie. Fall riding is the best and I am so tempted to try, but that would be a huge mistake. I might not be real smart, but I am smarter than that. It's already been over 2 years. I guess another 6 months won't kill me.

In Puss Puss news, she finally took some more Nutri-Cal this AM {actually, Chuck forced a finger full into her wee little mouth} and shortly there-after she drank some milk. Awhile later, I found her IN the kitchen sink drinking water out of a rinsed out bowl I had set in there. Very strange, but all good. I weighed her yesterday and she is down to 4.8 lbs, from 5.4 eight days ago. She has been a steady 8 lbs all of her adult life, so you can imagine what a little skeleton kitty she is under all that hair. And this is a lousy picture, but it is her in her 'new favorite spot'.

She used to like to lay on my printer tray, which is beside me and between me and a window. That way she could keep tabs on everything. LOL I just gotta keep lovin' her while I can and keep her purring and comfortable.

Brave Little Kitty

Well, things are not going so well for my kitty.  She still won't eat much at all and I have tried almost everything I can think of.  She ate some cat food Monday PM, but nothing at all Tuesday or Wednesday.  Thursday AM I went and spoke to the vet and she gave me a couple of more suggestions.  One was to give me a syringe to try force feeding her some baby food. She also told me to try doubling the Valium. The other idea was chicken broth, since she is a least drinking water.  The vet felt that if I didn't get her to eat by Friday afternoon, I would have to make a decision.

She has refused the chicken broth.  My friend Deb asked me Thursday PM if she liked milk.  I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of that!  I poured her a tiny bowl of milk and she went for it, big time!  Well....I say big time....she probably drank about 3 Tablespoons, but we were excited!  Deb also told me about a product called Nutri-Cal.  It's a gel like substance that is concentrated nutrition and often reported to help stimulate a pet's appetite.  I picked some of that up yesterday  and she loved it!  Gave her the allotted amount about noon, but sadly she wouldn't take any more last evening.  Not that, or milk or any form of cat food or people food.  Tonight Chuck and I will try the force feeding with some chicken baby food.

If this doesn't work, then we have to decide if we want to take her in to the vet and have her put on IVs.  For nourishment as well as her Kidney failure.  At this point, having gone this long without eating and without starting the meds she is quickly deteriorating.  I hate to talk money in regards to something like this, but I have had a wretched week over this and am, at this moment, fairly 'stable' enough to talk about it.  It will cost approximately $100 a day to put her on IVs, with only minimal hope that it will help her and no way of knowing how long she will have to be on them.....IF it helps.  The vet very honestly told me that she has seen many instances of people spending 2 or 3 thousand dollars and sometimes it works and it helps their cats and sometimes (most times) it really doesn't.  And even if it does, we are only 'buying' a few months.  This disease can not be stopped or corrected.  The damage is done and all we can do is to slow the progression.

Chuck is willing to indulge me if I choose to go the IV route.  He loves her as much as I do.  I have decided I will not put her, or us through that.  But I also can't sit by and let her starve to death.  So far, she is still happy, but then I'm sure the Valium twice a day helps with that.  She still wants to go outside and wander the yard and sit in the sun watching me water my flowers.  She still comes for cuddles and her purr box is going non stop.  But every time I pick her up, it breaks my heart to feel her little boniness under all that hair, as she wastes away.

I don't want to euthanize her.  I wish for her to curl up and fall asleep in one of her favorite spots and simply not wake up.

Sad Sick Kitties

My poor little kitty is not doing so well these days.  I hadn't wanted to post about it earlier, until I knew what her problem was.  I didn't want Riley to read it and have her and the other kids be upset about their fuzzy little buddy.  They kept her at the Vet Clinic for 3 days before they were finally able to determine that she is in the early stages of Kidney failure.  It wasn't showing up in the initial tests they did.....in fact, nothing showed up.  The Doctor was afraid that perhaps she had cancer of some sort.  I was pretty upset.

She still isn't eating, which was the initial problem.  She hadn't been quite herself for a few days before we left to go camping for a long weekend and we got home to find that she hadn't eaten a bite of food!  When I picked her up, I could feel every bone in her teeny body.  She'd really a petite little Persian and barely hit 8 lbs even with all that hair of hers.  I weighed her on Monday and she was 5.7.  By the time I could get her to the vet Wednesday AM at 7, she was 5.4.  She's been a little quieter and more subdued than usual, but other than that she seemed fine.  And she continued to be that way while at the vet clinic.  She was showing no other symptoms, other than the lack of appetite.  Her blood work all came back good, so then they had to wait for a urine sample to do more tests and when they finally got that, they then found the indication of kidney failure.  Apparently, at certain levels, it won't show up in the blood work.

Anyway, there is medicine she can take but she can't start on that until she starts eating again.  Then it will be daily meds and a special diet.  I have been giving her every sort of cat food under the sun, trying to get her to eat.  They gave me teeny tiny doses of Valium to give her twice a day, as that is supposed to be a super appetite stimulant for cats.  Mostly, she staggers around with dilated pupils, meowing and purring a lot.  She did finally take a couple bites of food this AM and just now she ate a bit more, but not enough.  Sigh....

They want to start this medicine as soon as possible, before her condition deteriorates.  I can't seem to make her understand that she MUST EAT!! She is functioning at about 70%.....if it drops any more, she's in trouble.  Years back that happened to the cat of some friends of ours and they went through a long and difficult year of IV's and all sorts of awful things.  I will not put the Princess through all that.  Not her.  Not us. 

She has been our little companion for almost 12 years.  She traveled with us on the dash of our motor home for many years, navigating our travels.  From Alaska to Key West to New York to Texas.  You name it.  And she raised several dogs while she was at it!  Max and Nugget, Lily and now Gus.  Gus wouldn't miss her much.  They don't interact a lot.  I think by the time he came along, she had had her fill of pups.  But her and Max were great buddies for years and one of these days her little remains will share Max's little cedar chest.

  I just hope it's not for a long while yet........

Doctors, Roses and Tahoes

Most things were going halfway decent this week.  Got home from an interesting weekend of camping to become besieged with outrageous allergies, mostly due to the entire countryside being covered with a plethora of yellow 'flowers', AKA, Ragweed.  The Ragweed and grass pollen counts are off the  charts here and I've got it bad.  Head and chest congestion, coughing up "pollen balls" (sounds better than phlegm) and much blowing.  Yuck.  It is very {unusually} dry and the lack of humidity and low dewpoint makes it worse.  I pray for a break in the weather SOON!

While we were camping, we had a call that our friends son was in a motor cycle accident so they hopped in their truck and headed for the hospital, but did come back later, as he was 'fine'.  Totaled the bike, but he escaped with only a broken collarbone and 3 staples in his head along with an abundance of 'road rash'.  They guy that got hurt was Roy, that used to work for Chuck.  He was riding the "Crotch Rocket" that belongs to the guy that currently works for Chuck.  No insurance on the bike.  Crazy people.

I had an appointment scheduled for my X-rays and visit with the Neurosurgeon on Wednesday.  It was to be my long awaited and anxiously anticipated 6 month check up.  The hospital lost my order for the X-Rays, causing a long enough of a delay that I couldn't see the surgeon afterward.  That got rescheduled for today.  MY surgeon was out of town, so I had to see another one.  I was NOT happy about that, especially since I couldn't get any straight answers or information out of him.  I did at least find out that my X-rays showed that all of my hardware is still in place and the bone grafts appear to be healing quite nicely.  That is very good news, and my main concern, but......I had many questions about a few issues I have been having and some limitations I am still experiencing.  Didn't get any satisfaction out of this guy!  In a nut shell, he told me that I should be happy that I am not in as much pain as I was prior to the surgery; that I need to remember that I am no longer 20 years old {WTF?}; that where I am at might be as good as it gets but I should continue to see improvement over the next 6 months.  Crap on a cracker.  That was so not how I wanted this appointment to turn out.

I did finally get my Tahoe back on Wednesday after being without it for almost 3 weeks while Chuck's van was awaiting the arrival of a new engine.  But then the water pump went out on the Tahoe, so I was without it for most of yesterday.  Good grief.  I think our vehicle situation should be back to 'normal' now and it sure feels good to have my 'Ho back!

The rose garden we put in last month seems to be a success!  The gal we bought the roses from had trimmed them all back...a LOT, and after the trauma of the transplant I wasn't sure they would fare well, but they all have a lot of new growth and we have had a bloom here and there, but now they are suddenly growing like crazy! Here's a shot I took of one bloom and some buds on Monday,


And here they are today!


yep! These are all those little buds, all opened up and quite fragrant! The other plants are getting lots of buds, as well. Very encouraging, indeed. Now if we can just get them to survive the winter :)