Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Um, did I remember to mention here that Perrine has been sick? Vomiting, losing weight and muscle strength. Down to six pounds. Anyhow, here's an update (crossposted from FB):

Perrine had a week of anti-nausea pills (supposed to be eight days, but the first dose did not wind up inside the cat), and those worked. She was okay for another day after the last dose, but has started throwing up again. :-( I called Dr. T.'s office and they said he'd ring me back in the morning.

On the drug, she ate very enthusiastically ... but not very much. Now she's eating even less. On a positive note, she's gone back to eating Fancy Feast instead of tuna (she's even turned down tuna in favour of proper cat food), and seems more energetic than she was a week and a half ago. She'll eat kibble, but only a few pieces at a time and only from my hand. Slow way to get calories in.

Last time I talked to the vet he suggested a wait-and-see approach after treating the nausea, but did offer a plan-B: take her to the emergency room in Catonsville where they can do an ultrasound to look for tumours and a 24-hour observation ... for probably $500-$1000. Ouch. (He also said that in theory the best way to look for cancer would be a PET scan, but at $20,000 that winds up not being used on cats.) He seemed to think that, at the time at least, wait-and-see made more sense. Not sure what he'll tell me tomorrow. Basically, blood tests ruled out everything easy, what's left is harder to diagnose and may be harder to treat, and cancer is still a possibility.

She's thrown up in the litter box four times now. That seems unlikely to be a coincidence -- not sure whether it's more likely that her nausea is at its worst while she's pooping, or that she figured out that was easier for me to clean up than the floor or the bed. (She's no genius -- about average for a cat AFAICT -- but she's watched me deal with her mess.) But today she threw up on the stairs, then stepped in it and left one icky pawprint on each step down the rest of the flight. Bleah.

She's still scarily underweight and missing half her fur. (She looks okay from a distance -- she started with a LOT of fur -- but up close I can see bits of skin where it goes over a sharp curve and the fur parts. Basically it looks like she's missing her undercoat.)

So ... no worse than before, maybe a little bit better, still a mystery, and I'm still scared enough about her health to get really babbly once I get started.

Before I forget to mention this: Mom's dog, Pepper, died about a week ago. :-( Not a well-behaved dog, but a cute dog and devoted to Mom.

"America likes to brand itself as 'the land of opportunity,' but from elsewhere in the world, the cost of that opportunity is shockingly high. It looks more and more like the land of oligarchy, where those with privilege move higher and higher up more and more easily, and those below have to scramble with all their might, sacrificing everything and never making a bad decision to even have a shot at being upper middle class. And if you don't get there? Well you shouldn't have made that bad decision that one time, it's your fault. Christ, even your poster boys for innovation and striking it rich -- Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates -- went to freaking Harvard. Land of opportunity, huh? Yeah, when the next Facebook is founded by a guy working out of a college dorm at Indiana State, you might be able to say that without irony."-- Pete Ross, 2016-04-26