It's been a dark couple of weeks, with Vicki's sore throat and all. Plus, a couple of nights ago, I noticed we didn't see Bart all evening. Yesterday morning I found him laying in an odd place for a cat, in an odd orientation to the room. You get to know things about what's normal for a cat to do after a few years. We've had ours for almost 10 years.
He wasn't moving, and wasn't real responsive. Last night Vicki said he was acting real listless and even staggered a bit when he tried to hop up on the couch -- kinda like low blood sugar.... or diabetes (might as well be low blood sugar because they can't use any of it).
But, he hasn't lost weight, he's not camping out by the water, his litter box clumps are normal. All the same, he was still pretty listless this morning, so I decided to go ahead and spend the $42 to take him to the vet. I was going to test his blood sugar myself, but I couldn't find a vein easy to get to. He's got thick, dark hair, unlike Theo. Besides, I don't think I would've believed the measurement had I taken one-- it was 67 at the vet. 80 is about as low as they ought to go, normally. But he checked out ok in about every other way. A little dehydrated, they said. So, I figure he just caught a bug and isn't feeling very good, so he hasn't been eating or drinking a lot. We'll see how he is in a few days. He seems a little better today already. Fed him some high calorie food to see if he'd perk up. He did some. Still, he went and hid under the couch downstairs when I got him home -- a sign that he's still not feeling good.
Frankly, I'm tired of cats, but I don't have it in me to just do them in because I'm tired of them. After all, I did take them on. I like them ok. They seem to trust me. It doesn't seem right for me to betray that trust and intentionally put them down. If they were doing something destructive other than being a little messy, it'd be different. With Theo's diabetes, they are pretty expensive to keep. They probably cost us the price of a decent vacation every year. If Bart turned out to be diabetic, too, I think that would probably have been the end of both of them. Can't afford that.
Dr. Templar said that Vicki's throat should improve dramatically over the next few days, and shouldn't be hurting by Monday. She says it is getting better. Dr. Misra said she looked at my knee MRI and doesn't see anything major, but she's going to discuss it with her musculo-skeletal expert today and give me a call on a plan of action. It's been almost 8 weeks now since the injury, and it's still not healed.
Sent the Crystal Optics Teleconverter (2x) back to Digital Foto Club... it had the same problem as the one I'd ordered a year ago. Just incompatible, basically. Can't put the whole frame in focus. I ordered an Olympus TCON-17 (1.7x) that I'd tried out. It definitely exaggerates the chromatic aberration and blooming in my digital camera, but as long as I don't take challenging shots with it (high contrast with a lot of bright white light) it should be ok. I talked to a guy on the bird forum and he's very happy with his C740 and the TCON-17. Mine's a C720... not quite as much zoom as his.
Dr. Misra just called. Basically, the musculo-skeletal expert said don't jump or run or do any high impact activities on it for the next 6 weeks. She gave him my history and everything. Bicycling and walking are fine. So.... that's that. Like I said, it IS getting better, finally. Slowly, but it's improving.
We got some literature from the B&B in Jackson .... we'll be there in 1 month. Another mountain fix for me. It's like a revival. I was talking to Ryan about that. I think I want to bag at least one peak a year for a while. I have the vacation time to do it. He said he might just save up vacation and go with me next year. He wants to bag one where we have to hike and camp out one night to make it to the top. Sounds fun. That could be Long's Peak. We'll see.
Going to Anutt tomorrow for Mike's birthday and to help Lois purge.
