New Year, New Cats, New Blog

Well, 2007 sucked ass. Here's hoping 2008 will be better.

Boris: 1993-2007

Boris.JPG, originally uploaded by mnemosyne_la.

Boris died almost three weeks ago, and I can't put off this post any longer. I've been in denial for most of that time, but posting it makes it real, which is why I can barely see my computer screen through the tears.

At first, we thought he just had another cold that he caught from my brother's cat, who we were catsitting for. And he probably did. The problem was, because of his kidney problems, he had no immunity left and his body just shut down.

A few days before he died, I had a very bad feeling about the way he was acting. He was by himself a lot more (which at first we thought was because a strange cat kept hissing at him in his own house) and he wasn't grooming himself or letting Keaton groom him. When I called the vet on Wednesday, they said I couldn't have an appointment until Monday, until I started crying. Then they agreed to put me on a waiting list for a faster appointment. They called the next day with a Saturday slot, and I took it.

When we got there, the vet was shocked at how bad he was. Not only had he dropped a large amount of weight (at least 4 pounds, a big deal for a 10-pound cat), he had developed what we most feared: the mouth sores that indicated that his kidneys had completely shut down. He was a fill-in vet, so he didn't know how long we'd been keeping him going -- I think he though we'd been neglecting him, at least until he read the chart and talked to some of the employees who'd been helping us through this.

I knew -- I knew -- that we were going to have to put him to sleep. I knew it on Friday. I knew it that morning. I didn't want to face it, but it was cruel to try and keep him alive when he could barely walk and couldn't eat. G. didn't realize -- he was in denial, too. But he knew when we put him on the exam table and Boris just lay there, too exhausted to keep going.

They did all of the paperwork beforehand, including the cremation request. I wish they hadn't had to shave his leg -- he always hated loud noises like that. After the shot, it took less than a minute for his heart to stop.

I had Boris for 14 years. I adopted him from the LA County animal shelter when he was a four-month-oid kitten. He was my pal and my companion through a lot of tough times, including some of the worst days of my depression.

I loved him, and he loved me. I wish he could have been saved.

Friday Catblogging: Keaton and Baskets

IMG_1831.JPG, originally uploaded by Mnemosyne_LA.

Keaton loves laundry baskets. Loves loves loves loves them. He loves to be in, on, and under them. If you're carrying one near your waist, he'll try to jump into it whether it's empty or full.

We worry about him sometimes.

Public Service Announcement

It turns out that if you're giving your cat subcutaneous fluid, and said cat decides to make a break for it while the flow is still going, the fluid will shoot out at you like a tiny fire hose until your partner turns the flow off.

I'm Back

I got myself into a corner by insisting on doing photoblogging for every post, and then being too lazy to upload pictures. So I think I'll try some just-words blogging until I have a really good picture.

Boris is still inexplicably improving. He's anemic but his behavior continues to return to normal. We had a couple of tense weeks while he and Keaton figured out who gets to be the new alpha, but it seems to be resolved now and Boris is once again king of the castle, with Keaton as his devoted minion.

And have I mentioned lately that I have the best husband in the world? Because he reads my blog AND buys me the books I beg for on it. Now I'm paging through my brand spankin' new copy of "Fitted Knits" and trying to decide if I can declare myself "intermediate" yet so I can make the puff-sleeved cardigan. (Probably not.)

I'm not an addict.

DSCN0599, originally uploaded by Mnemosyne_LA.

It's just, like, a coincidence that both of my online orders arrived on the very same day that I tried a new yarn store close to work and found the exact yarn I need for my mom's Christmas gift.

I can stop any time I want to.

Friday Catblogging: Boris' Lifelong Ambition

IMG_1895.JPG, originally uploaded by Mnemosyne_LA.

I've always let Boris drink out of the bathroom sink's faucet -- it makes him happy, and it's funny to hear him sneezing as he sticks his face under too far and gets water up his nose. But though he loved to hang out in the bathtub, we would never let him drink out of the bathtub faucet.

Until we were told he was dying, so we decided to grant his last wish. Which seems to have given him the will to continue living, so he can continue drinking out of that faucet. So now we're stuck letting him drink out of the tub's faucet despite Keaton's not-so-charming habit of peeing in the empty tub.

Cats.

Friday Sweaterblogging

IMG_1902.JPG, originally uploaded by Mnemosyne_LA.

I'm very, very excited that I'm tackling my first sweater. I'm doing a relatively easy one -- Stefanie Japel's the Better Sweater that I originally saw on "Knitty Gritty." Apparently, it also appears in slightly different form in her book Fitted Knits, which is ON MY AMAZON.COM WISHLIST, BIRTHDAY PRESENT BUYERS!

Ahem.

Anyway, it seems to be going pretty well. I have a couple more repeats to do before I put the sleeve stitches onto scrap yarn and start working the body. I didn't really do a swatch because my swatches lie. I'm hoping I don't regret it.

Well, if I do, that's what I have an 8-year-old niece for, right?

Boris Has Decided To Stay

IMG_1791.JPG, originally uploaded by Mnemosyne_LA.

I took Boris in on Friday to get examined and have blood drawn to find out where we stand, because it's been six weeks since they told us to take him home to die.

The vet called today and said, "I'm calling about Boris, the cat with the amazing regenerating kidneys."

His levels are still about twice over normal ... but that means that they're at less than half of what they were a month ago. Apparently subcutaneous fluid does a lot more good than we were led to believe.

Now our main concern is that he's a little anemic, so we have to give him an extremely expensive drug for two weeks to increase his red blood cells. Well, extremely expensive if you're giving it to a 150-pound human. It's only kinda expensive for an 8-pound cat.

All we can think right now is that he decided that his life is too good to leave right now. He has two monkeys to pet and feed him, he gets to drink out of the bathtub, and he has his best buddy in the whole world, Keaton, to clean him and play with him.

My ball is bigger than yours

Big Ball.JPG, originally uploaded by Mnemosyne_LA.

What else would you expect from a yarn called "Magnum"?

The Connemara Scarf

You know how your mom always tells you that something worth doing is worth the effort, even if it's a pain? That's what this scarf was for me.

First off, it was only my second time trying to follow a pattern, and the first one where the majority of the pattern wasn't "Stockinette stitch for 4 inches." I actually had a repeating stitch pattern that I had to follow in eight-row repeats, and it was HARD for a beginner like me to get the hang of it.

The end was worked first; I frogged that three times. That's not counting me trying to figure out how much to add so I could pick up the 25 stitches I needed to so I could knit the scarf body. Then I had trouble figuring out the pattern repeat of the scarf body, so I ended up frogging that twice before I did the test swatch you see above and got the hang of it.

The cables were the easiest part of it by far. If you're intimidated by cables, don't be. All you do is move a few stitches to a different needle, knit their neighbors, and then knit the reserved stitches. It took me maybe five seconds to get the hang of it, though I did have to keep checking if I was supposed to be holding the cable needle to the front or to the back for that particular row. And the results are pretty spectacular for something so simple.

Then I discovered that the second end that I'd knitted -- and bound off -- was too long for the scarf body ... which I had already bound off. Which is where the magic of blocking comes in ....



It took the scarf three full days to dry after I wet-blocked it in cold water and a little Euculan, but I was able to get the end to fit to the body and sew it together with my absolutely awful hand-sewing. (Not one of my talents, to say the least.)

After all of this drama, G. knew he was required to love the scarf but, luckily for our marriage, he does seem to genuinely love it. I've come into our home office in the morning to find him sitting in his bathrobe with the scarf around his neck, and he's marveled several times at how warm and soft it is. Debbie Bliss Cashmerino claims another victim.

Friday Stashblogging

IMG_1853.JPG, originally uploaded by Mnemosyne_LA.

Since I've already blogged about my current and ongoing cat issues, I'm doing Stashblogging today instead (though with bonus cat included).

Compared to some of the yarn stashes I've seen online, mine seems a little ... puny. And yet it's plenty to keep me busy for the next year or so.

The outer bag is a Ziploc XXL, which reaches about to my armpit (I'm 5'3" if that gives you some perspective). Inside, I put each individual yarn in its own baggie, ranging from 1 gallon for small amounts to 2 gallons for sweater-size amounts.

And, yes, I've added to it since I took this picture. No, I'm not an addict -- why do you ask?

42 Days Later ...

IMG_1863.JPG, originally uploaded by Mnemosyne_LA.

You may have noticed that blogging suddenly ceased. Here's the timeline:

About six weeks ago, I noticed on a Sunday night that Boris (he's the gray one) was extremely lethargic and seemed very, very ill. I packed him up and took him to the emergency vet, worried that he was having another recurrence of Feline Urinary Syndrome (where his urethra gets blocked).

The vet had much worse news for us -- not only were his kidney values off the charts, but his heart was arrhythmic. Our two choices were to check him into the hospital for a week-long regime of intravenous fluids while being hooked up to a heart monitor, or to take him home and make him comfortable.

Boris is 14. I've had him since he was a four-month-old kitten. We couldn't, in good conscience, put him through that at his age. So we took him home.

We had him rechecked by our regular vet the next day, and they had the same kidney results, though the arrhythmia had cleared up with the subcutaneous fluids they gave him at the emergency vet. (In retrospect, the arrhythmia she heard was probably due to dehydration, but we were too panicky to realize that at the time.) They gave us a bag of subcutaneous fluids for us to administer ourselves, a cream to increase his appetite, and sent us home so we could wait for him to die.

We took him home and we waited.

And we waited.

We're still waiting.

Not only is he still alive six weeks after he went into acute kidney failure, he seems to be feeling a little better than he did six weeks ago. He finally started eating again on a semi-regular basis last week (no more force-feeding -- whoo-hoo!). A couple of days ago, he decided that my knitting needles were his personal play toys.

So now we don't know what the hell to think, and neither does our vet. His tests show that he has very little kidney function, but he seems to have decided that kidneys are for OTHER cats, not for him.

In other words: the crisis is over. I will be posting a memorial to him someday, but not quite yet. Soon, but not yet. And I can get back to blogging now that I don't have to worry every single day that he's going to die the very same day that I post a cheerful knitting picture.

Oh, crap, I just jinxed us, didn't I?

It's here! It's here!

IMG_1780.JPG, originally uploaded by Mnemosyne_LA.

I got the yarn that I'm going to use to make my husband the Connemara Scarf from Sknitty.

Actually, I've started making it -- I'll talk about my Adventures With Cables next time. I'm keeping a list of how many times I've already frogged it and/or started over.

Our Long National Nightmare Is Over

We know who fathered Anna Nicole's baby.

Because, really, how could we all have gone on living without having that little mystery answered?

MISSING: Feline Dim Sum

Keaton has this strange habit. He has a secret stash of toys that he keeps somewhere behind the couch. We found this out the first time the cleaning people came by and he immediately pulled toys out from there to make sure the cleaning people hadn't TOUCHED HIS STUFF!!! He had toys in there that we haven't seen in months.

I made him the Kitty Egg Roll from Knitty and he played with it for about ten minutes.



Then I went into the other room for a bit. When I went back, the eggroll was gone, never to be seen again.

I suspect it's in the secret stash, just waiting to be played with when we're not home and can't interfere with the dire plans he has for the catnip inside that eggroll.

Friday Catblogging: Bestest Buddies

IMG_1770.JPG, originally uploaded by Mnemosyne_LA.

We were worried at first about bringing in a new kitten after our cat Natasha died of cancer. After all, Boris (on the right) was already 13 years old -- how on earth was he going to adapt to having a bundle of energy around all the time?

As you can see, the answer was, "Pretty damn well."

Turns out ...

That getting a root canal sucks. Big time. Especially when it takes four hours.

Luckily, I have my Tylenol with Codeine, so at least I'll be able to sleep tonight. Ow ow ow.

Friday Catblogging: Keaton Loves Yarn

Keaton exploring my stash, originally uploaded by Mnemosyne_LA.

I know, who'd'a guessed it -- a cat is fascinated by yarn! But he really does drive me nuts sometimes, especially when he gets a running start and dives into my lap to attack whatever it is I'm working on.

He's gotten yelled at enough times that he doesn't do that very often anymore. Now he just sits at my feet staring at the lovely, lovely yarn as it snakes through my fingers and dreaming of the time when I will put it back in the box so he can open the lid and play.

I love my boss

I've been working a temp job since right before Thanksgiving and I have to say, I really like it. (There's talk about hiring me on permanently -- we'll see what happens.)

I told my boss that I've taken up knitting, so she brought me a few skeins of yarn that she found in a thrift store. Cat toy yarn! Whoo-hoo!