“There is too much; let me sum up.”

The last couple of weeks have been rather crazy. Some upsetting things, some wonderful things, and everything in between. Chronologically, earliest to most recent, this is what’s been going on:

1. We still don’t know what killed Phoebe. Rather, we know she died of internal bleeding, but do not know its cause. The Shanks has had many blood tests and will continue to take Vitamin K until his blood coagulation rate is back within the normal range.
2. In happier news, Miss Kitty and 007 got married! We’re so happy for yous! Yay! I was a bridesmaid and had a fantastic time. JeT was the DJ and rocked the house. My favorite dance was the polka with the best man. Our “secret meeting” dance was a hit. We performed our version of OK Go’s C-c-c-cinnamon Lips, and kicked quite a lot of arse, if I may say so. Interested parties can find photographs of the event here, and here. (The latter has amusing commentary.)
3. We went to Maryland to visit my family. It was great! Some of my Canadian family came to visit my parents at the same time, so that was a treat as well. My little cousins aren’t so little anymore. My nephews are growing up, too. You know, when these kids aren’t being terrors, they’re quite funny.

   We played a Newfie game called 120. I’ll have to show you all some time. I learned it when I was 15, and am finally getting the hang of it. Really, it’s not so hard, but I only play every few years or so. I actually won a couple of games this time! Much fun was also had playing darts in the garage and bocce in the lawn.

   I also brought home a ton of books from my parents’ house. ‘Cause, you know, I’m really short on books. Mostly they’re the Harvard Classics, which my mum read while they were stationed in Spain. And some of my old books from when I was a kid, which were given me by my Great Aunt Eunice, to whom I bear a great resemblance. Speaking of my aunt, I also brought back this mechanical bird/music box thingie she left me. It’s rad. It’s really old and still in fantastic shape. If ever we should encounter an “Antiques Roadshow” event, I’m taking that.

   MO was kind enough to watch the Shanks while we were gone. He was happy to see us when we returned, and I’m not ashamed to say the feeling was indeed mutual. Poor little (ok, not little, but still) guy was left on his own without The Phoebes for a whole week. We almost didn’t go on our vacation, but since he didn’t look to be in imminent danger, we decided to go. I’m glad we did.

4. There was a fantastic party at BlogSEA manor last weekend. Muchos foodies and drinks, though despite my best efforts, sober I remained. Gathered ’round the firepit (which was, of course, used for cooking, why do you ask, officer?) ’til the wee hours of the morn.

   We received a late night visitor. Stranger’s name was Andy, i think. Looking for someone called Mitch, was it? I don’t know. I couldn’t understand a word he said. I don’t do well with mumblers. He chilled for a bit, and then left. Then in the middle of the night, there was a bit of a hullabaloo in the parking lot across the way. Many officers, a bit of yelling, someone kicked our car in frustration (no damage done), a car being thoroughly searched (not ours). Bunch of savages in this town. An eventful evening, though.

   The next day was spent riverside, enjoying the sandy beach and swimming. I need to live near clean, moving water. NEED! It was wonderful and relaxing.

   On the way home, the alternator broke, and we were stranded on the side of the Mass. Pike. Apparently, our Kia Roadside Assistance doesn’t serve that particular highway, so we had to pay $80 bucks to be towed 5 miles, so that we could then phone the Kia people again to tow us the rest of the 30 miles home, which cost $13. I must mention that this song began to play just as we were being picked up by the first tow truck guy. Hilarious. The second tow truck guy was wicked funny, and laughed heartily at JeT sitting on my lap for the ride home. I told him that I was not laboring under the misapprehension that I am a small person. We finally got home more than six hours after we had left.

   I should also mention that our vet was kind enough to pop by the house and give ‘Shanks his meds and a bit of food. He’s a friend of the family, and is very good to us and our kitty.

The rest of this week has been uneventful, thank goodness. Just enjoying the not-so-hot days and eating popsicles. Tonight we resume our secret meetings for some wrap-up filming and whatnot.

Tomorrow is HP day in Harvard Square!

and suddenly, she’s gone

Phoebe Cat

We woke up yesterday morning to find that Phoebe had not. She died sometime during the night. She seemed well enough the day before, but something happened while we were doing other things, looking the other way, and now she’s gone. We went to bed without saying goodnight to her.

A string of “what ifs” and a million different versions of “it’s our fault” have been running through our heads. Even if we couldn’t have saved her, at least she wouldn’t have died alone. I hope she wasn’t scared. I hope she didn’t suffer. The vet said she had intestinal hemorrhaging, but did not know the cause. Best guess is that she ingested some sort of poison, or caught a poisoned mouse or something. But we know nothing for certain.

All we know is that she was our friend, and we will miss her dearly.

We will miss the way she played with the plastic pull string things from the frozen orange juice containers. We will miss that really long winded meow that never seemed to have an end when she was ready for dinner. We will miss the way she would sleep only on things that were on top of things. Acres of couch to sleep on? She’d sleep only on the notebook you left on the couch.

We’ll miss how she often wanted attention, but didn’t want you to pick her up or pet her. We’ll miss how we used to just pick her up anyway, and how she’d give in and purr. We’ll miss how she used to glare at us when we’d try to nibble her ears. We’ll miss how she’d run away from us when we played our music too loudly. We’ll miss how she hated the accordion, but if I took a break from practicing, I’d come back to find her sleeping in the open case.

We’ll miss how she would always take a really long time to try to jump off of things, and never succeeded in performing anything but a graceless flop onto the floor. And then walking away with her head in the air, daring us to make fun of her. Which we did. We’ll miss how she stood up on her back legs for treats, and would only drink her water from the far side of the bowl. We’ll miss her exceptionally loud purr.

We’ll miss how we didn’t have to refer to her in the past tense. We didn’t know her for the first three years of her life, but we hope she enjoyed the last four living with us.

Goodbye, Phoebe. We miss you. We love you.

Buggin’

The cats have fleas. It’s disgusting. Poor Crookshanks has them worse than Phoebe, and he isn’t the one who brought them into the house! We’re making them both indoor cats so that they don’t keep eating weird things outside and getting sick, and bringing in bugs and whatnot in on their fur. Part of me feels bad for making them stay inside, when we live in a really nice place for outdoor cats (provided you bring them in at night to avoid making them into coyote snacks). But we’re just tired of all this hullaballoo.

On another cat-related note, ‘Shanks has pooped fairly normal yesterday and today. He’s out of his medecine, so we increased the amount of canned pumpkin, and it works better than that other stuff ever did. They told us to stop feeding him the canned pumpkin when we started him on the lactulose syrup. We had no success with the syrup whatsoever. And we were giving him doses of that stuff that would send a grown man running for the bathroom just in time. It had no effect on him. I’m just going to go back to what we were doing before, and keeping up with the belly massages. That really helps him go. Not that any of you really needed to know those kind of details about our cat’s intestinal business, but there you go.

We’ve spent yesterday and today cleaning up the house, trying to debug it. We threw out that nasty ol’ green carpet (even though it really did tie the room together), and the brown patterned rug upstairs has to be severely dealt with. Someone decided it would be awesome to piss all over it while we were gone. (And I don’t think it was Woo, this time. Damn carpet pissers). Ugh. I feel so dirty and disgusting. I’m pretty sure the bedroom was closed up while we were gone. At least, I know I shut the door before we left, but JeT thinks the door to the bedroom was open, and he was the first upstairs when we got home. Either way, we didn’t think to check the cats for bugs when we opened the room and let them sleep on our bed with us! Argh.

We’ve washed every exposed textile in the house, just to be safe. We’ve got some carpet treatment stuff to put on tonight, and the cats will get shampooed. We slapped some flea collars on them this afternoon, so that should help us out to start with. Dirty, dirty, dirty.

I need five showers.