Remember Hank, the young Lab in Georgia who needs a home? His owner is moving in with his nephew on Friday, and unfortunately the nephew’s not allowed to have pets at his apartment. Hank still needs a home, and soon! Pass the word!!!
We had a quiet weekend, and it flew by pretty quickly. We ended up leaving the house several times on Saturday (I know! O the humanity!) for various errands. Otherwise, we hung around the house, I did – I’m not even exaggerating – at least 20 loads of laundry, mostly poopy cat beds and blankets, and Fred got a lot of reading in.
On Saturday, I watched Sex and the City 2, and those of you who have seen it will feel deep sympathy for me when I say that I WATCHED THE ENTIRE GODDAMN THING.
“Is it almost over?” Fred asked about an hour in, coming into the living room an hour after I started the movie.
“NO,” I said. “It’s still got a goddamn hour and a half to go!”
Fred expressed horror.
“But I can’t turn it off. I want to see what happens, even though I’m DYING OF BOREDOM.”
Y’all, I truly do not recommend this movie, and I say that knowing that those of you who are die hard SATC watchers like me will watch it anyway, but you can’t say I didn’t warn you. I’m going to go ahead and just refer to it as Sex and the City 2: Assholes in Abu Dhabi.
I don’t want to be a stickler for details, here*, but I’m pretty sure that Samantha went through menopause after she had chemotherapy in the last season of the show. Whyyyyy is she going through menopause a second time, I mean other than providing a super HIGHLAAAAAAAAAAARIOUS** plot point?
We’ve hit the point where all the women are caricatures of themselves*** – especially Samantha – and I’m not sure you could pay me enough**** to watch Sex and the City 3, wherein Samantha gets laid, Miranda frets, Charlotte judges, and Carrie couldn’t find happiness if she had a map and a six-week course in doing so. And you KNOW there’ll be a SATC 3, 4, 5, infinity, because I’m pretty sure Michael Patrick King has something really juicy on some bigwig in Hollywood and has ensured that he’ll be pounding out SATC movies until they bury him.
*That’s a lie. I love to be a stickler for details. I THRIVE in the stickler-detailed environment. My tagline should be “Detail-sticklering since 1968.”
**Not.
***Okay, shaddup, I know that happened sometime during the last season of the show.
****Lie. You know I’m going to go watch it because I’m a loser, baby.
Also, we watched the Nightmare on Elm Street remake with Jackie Earle Haley as Freddie Krueger and Mrs. Coach as the main character’s mother. It wasn’t bad – if you like a horror movie that makes you jump a bunch of times during the movie, then this is the movie for you.
On Sunday, Fred came upstairs to the kitten room where I was cleaning up poop (more on that in the kitten section) and said “I just let Rhyme in the side door.”
In other words, Rhyme jumped the fence and managed to end up on the side porch (thank god, because who knows how long it would have taken for us to realize he was missing?). This means that of the four Bookworms, everyone but Corbie is now collared up. I’ve convinced Fred that we should at least get a fence company out here and find out how much it would cost to have a professional fence (with cat barrier at the top) put up. None of the barrier methods (heh heh) we’ve tried will keep cats who aren’t wearing collars in the yard if they’re of a mind to escape. I’d feel a lot better if I knew they couldn’t get over the fence and run away. And if the cats simply couldn’t get over the fence, they wouldn’t have to wear those damn collars, which uglify up the pictures I take of them during the day.
We’ll see what we find out, anyway. Chances are pretty good that it’ll cost too much and we’ll have to figure out some other way to keep them in (like a cat fence), or just buy more damn collars (did I mention that they RUIN my damn cat pictures?).
On Saturday, we took Jan and Bobby to a vet in Decatur because the diarrhea was NOT STOPPING. It’s not even just diarrhea, these poor babies are just dripping poop everywhere they go – it’s like they don’t even realize they’re doing it, and it’s getting all over their back legs and feet. I would LOVE to go back to last week when my only problem was that they were having diarrhea in the litter box, then stepping in it and tracking it all over the place. After I walked into the room Saturday morning and found poop everywhere, I decided to put them in a cage to contain it (which really I should have done sooner – it sometimes takes me a little while to realize the obvious).
They’d both lost weight since Tuesday, and I didn’t think they should wait ’til Monday to see a vet. Luckily, Fred found a vet that’s open on Saturday and was willing to fit us in. The vet did a fecal and found that in addition to the coccidia (which was apparently not knocked out by the medication we’d given them), they had tapeworms and roundworms. We brought them home and gave them dewormer, and it was a few hours later that the tapeworm poopin’ began.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that Jan passed at least 12 inches worth of tapeworm. It was horrifying and yet so fascinating I couldn’t look away.
Unfortunately Jan and Bobby are still dripping, so they’re still in the cage. I’m keeping them as clean as I can, giving them full-on baths in the morning and again in the evening – I’m not sure whether it would be best to bathe them every couple of hours just to keep them as clean as possible, or if that’s bad for their back ends. Their behinds are horribly swollen and painful and nothing I’ve tried – hemorrhoid cream, Desitin – seems to help (I am absolutely open for suggestions, you guys. It’s painful for me to LOOK at their poor back ends, I can only imagine how painful it is for them).
They’re all on a bland diet, which none of them are particularly crazy about (except, surprisingly, for the wisp-thin Peter Brady, who thinks that rice and chicken is THE BOMB), and I’ve given both Jan and Bobby doses of Nutri-Cal. I hate how thin they look, and I hate how they just sit there and look miserable. I’m keeping them warm (the room has a heater set at 72, and they have a heating pad in their cage.)
I feel like if the damn diarrhea dripping would just STOP, their back ends could heal. I’m a worrier by nature anyway, and you can just imagine how much sleep I’ve lost in the last several days, worrying about these guys. If you could spare a good thought in the direction of two sweet little kittens in Alabama, it would certainly be appreciated.
(On an amusing note, of course they pooped up the carrier on the way to the vet, and the vet tech took them off to bathe them. I said to Fred “Oh, good! They’ll be nice and clean when she brings them back!” because, well, they’re professionals and they know what they’re doing, amiright? I’ve been giving them baths, but I’m no professional – all I do is get them as clean as I can, which is not so easy even though they hardly weigh over a pound, because a kitten who doesn’t want a bath could give Schwarzeneggar a run for his money. I like to use the “hot tub” method, which is where I soak them in one little bucket of warm water for a minute or so, clean their feet and tails with gentle baby wash, rinse them in the same bucket, and then rinse them a second time in a second bucket, wrap them up in clean towels, and put them on a heating pad on low (or if Fred’s giving me a hand, he’ll hold them on his lap in front of the heater). ANYway, the vet tech came back with them, and it looked like all she’d done was spray the worst of it off them, and dried ’em with a towel. HA.)
I haven’t taken any pictures of the kittens in the last few days, because I hate how pitiful they look, but luckily I took a ton of them early last week when they were feeling okay, so those are what you’ll see.
Bobby Brady, shoulder monkey. (He hasn’t climbed up on my shoulder since the middle of last week. Though, considering how much he’s dribbling, I suppose I should be grateful. Or invest in a pair of overalls made out of some sort of easy-wipe material!)
I am truly not quite sure what Greg Brady’s doing here, but it kinda looks like he’s about to take a big ol’ bite out of his own leg.
Cindy Brady. She’s such a sweet little laid-back monkey.
Marcia haz herself a complaint or twelve.
Jan. “I can walk! I CAN WALK!”
Cindy in the front, Jan in the back.
Jan, playing with a toy mouse.
Wild Jan.
Did I mention she’s wild?
“How YOU doin’?”
Previously
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: Why can’t I just buy bubble clothing that only touches me at the neck and knees? WHY?
2006: On my way to somewhere important, I’m sure.
2005: Perhaps I’ll make it my New Year’s Resolution to not fill my house with crap in 2006.
2004: Ever had one of those days when you just can’t remember the name of anything?
2003: No entry.
2002: I keep wanting to use the phrase “Sweet crappin’ Jesus!”, and just haven’t determined the right moment to do so. Maybe in the middle of sex?
2001: Her name is Brady James.
2000: If I knew whodunnit, I’d beat that $300 right out of his ass, the little bastard.
1999: They all tend to sound alike, you see, and hearing basically the same sound over and over ain’t the thrill at 31 that it is at 11.