Things Overheard May Surprise You

I was puttering around earlier this evening, repotting Phil.

Squeak (13) and Boo (11) had volunteered to make dinner, and they were chatting rather excitedly as they worked.

After having more or less safely transplanted Phil, I entered the kitchen, intending to wash my hands, and overheard Boo proclaiming;

" ... and *that's* how you survive the Zombie Apocalypse!"

Strangely enough, I feel somewhat safer now ...

Although I must say, I think Phil has The Best Zombie Defense System Ever:

Phil (Boo's cactus) is here seen with his one true enemy, his Arch-Nemesis, Time-Share Kitty.

I try to avoid posting about this sort of thing, but today, I rant

Timeshare Kitty was injured. I discovered her injuries on Sunday. I'm not a vet, but all of her symptoms indicated the most likely problem was a dislocated jaw. (Poor kitty!)

It was obvious she was uncomfortable (not cleaning herself, able to drink, but not really able to eat, her teeth were misaligned and she unable to close her mouth, which led to constant drooling and her tongue sticking out. Not precisely the most intelligent of looks for her ...

But she wasn't miserable with pain, and so we opted to wait to take her to our clinic rather than stress her out at the emergency clinic.

I called our clinic first thing yesterday morning- they couldn't have been open for more than two minutes- and told them about her injury and what I suspected was going on.
Took her in around noon, where they recommended an X-ray, which meant sedation. I get that- need to be sure what's of going on before messing about with things; they were unwilling to rule out a fracture without the x-ray.

I also understood the need for sedation. While she was fine with letting *us* touch her and try and peek in her mouth, she wasn't so keen on the vet's gloved hands doing the same...

They wrote up an estimate of the costs involved (including ‘worst case scenario’), we discussed the likelihood of some of the procedures needing to be done (such as surgery!), and went ahead with the x-ray and sedation.

We waited, since we wanted to know what was going on with her as soon as possible.
After nearly an hour, they finally called us back into the exam room, where they put the films up on the light board and told me they could neither confirm nor deny either a fracture *OR* a dislocation.
They told me they wanted to send me to *another* clinic for dental-quality x-rays. They said if it proved to be just a dislocation, the vets there would set it back into place immediately. I am, as previously stated, not a vet. But I looked at the films, and could see immediately that her jaw was out of place. I pointed out where things lined up on the right side versus the left.

But they still weren’t willing to go ahead and set it- they wanted to send us to the other clinic. Only it’s on the other side of town!

It was at this point that the Vet who’d been working with her admitted that no one at the clinic (that day, at least) had ever re-set a dislocated jaw in a cat before ...

Now, this is the heart of my frustration: I called in, explained the situation, came to my appointment (meaning I am “on the hook” for the exam, of course), agreed to the X-ray and sedation, and it’s NOW that you’re telling me your machine can’t take adequate images for what you need, and that you aren’t really certain about how to help my cat?

Couldn’t you, honestly, have led with that? Honestly, it’s not about the money. Not for me, at least; Himself, however, was quite put out about the extra money). They didn’t charge me for the X-rays, since they felt they weren’t very helpful- and the cat seemed much happier after waking up from the sedation, so perhaps it eased some clenched muscles or some such ... But I paid out $133 to be told I’d have to take her to someone else to pay more money to have similar, if not the same, procedures performed on her there?

Because, you know, I have *so* much spare time kicking around that I can afford to rearrange my schedule to make a second appointment during the height of rush hour at a location that’s 30 minutes away withOUT traffic ...

Don’t get me wrong; we (Himself came with) DID take her to the other clinic.

They examined her and agreed that a fracture was highly unlikely and it really did look like a dislocation. “Since the other clinic sent you here for dental x-rays, we’ll do them.” (Her tone suggested that she didn’t see the necessity, but I guess professional courtesy dictates that they respect the other clinic’s recommendation)

They advised against waiting, asking instead for a phone number we could be reached at. By this time, it was just after 5PM, and they estimated she’d be ready to be picked up by 8PM.

We opted not to go home, given the gas and time involved. We went instead for dinner. By 6PM, they called us to say that yes, her jaw was dislocated. No fractures evident. In fact, they’d already re-set it by the time they’d called. She was doing well, and we could pick her up in 45 minutes.

No surgery, either. They gave her some antibiotics because she had a puncture wound in her mouth which was looking infected, and they gave us some anti-inflammatory meds to help her with any discomfort.

All’s well that ends well, and in the grand scheme of things, that’s what matters most, but I am still frustrated by how our vet’s clinic handled the matter.

Ah well, it’s only money, right? And I must confess, it was rather nice to have an impromptu date with Himself. Plus, we had an extra treat; we got to watch Boo's Karate class :-)

Well, that's *one* way to get to know the neighbours ...

We have two cats.  Psycho Kitty has never had any interest in going outside, thank-you-very-much. Her indoor domain is quite enough for her!

Our other cat is quite young; we've had her just over a year now, and she was a kitten when she decided to come live in our home. When we first saw her- just after sunset one evening in August- we looked out our livingroom window to see a kitten standing on the windowsill, looking in at us!

Voyeuristic tendencies aside, she seemed a sweet little kitten, so we took her in, in an attempt to find out to whom she belonged ... We called the local vet offices, as well as the Humane Society, to see if anyone was looking for her. Also took her to our vet, to see if she had a microchip, or a tattoo we overlooked.

(this story, BTW, is practically identical to how we came to have The Hound of the Baskervilles™- at least this time, we saw it coming ...)

 

We waited a few weeks, in case her owners were on holidays. No one, however, ever claimed her, and she has been happily living with us ever since.

Or so we thought! We tried to keep her indoors, especially at first (our daughter was worried she wouldn't come home again, since she'd been an outdoor cat when she deigned to accept us). But she really likes her outside time, so we eventually started letting her out periodically.

Recently, she has taken to going out for longer and longer periods of time, and just last week, she didn't come home at all.  Since she goes outside, we have a little harness for her (works a little better than a collar), which has her rabies and ID tag on it (her name, and our phone number, no address).  She's very good at slipping out of her harness, and when she was gone overnight, she wasn't wearing it. When she *did* come home, we made sure to put her harness back on her, and tightened it up, just a little.

Last night, we had a voicemail message- it seemed our little adventurous believes in Free Love, and had been spending quite a bit of time hanging out with the guys next door. Since she finally had her harness on yesterday, they were able to call us and let us know about the sweet little visitor they'd had for the past few weeks ...

So now she has earned herself a nickname: Timeshare Kitty.

"Life's but a walking shadow

"A poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more."
(William Shakespeare- "Macbeth")

Yesterday I was planning to blog about my neighbourhood.  My plans were derailed by the discovery of the passing of one of our cats. Himself and I had noticed we hadn't had our constant snuggler in a day or two. We've been sick this week, which probably explains why neither of us had noticed sooner. We spent an hour searching the house for him on Thursday evening, with no luck.

Thankfully, it was Himself, not one of the boys, who discovered him in the basement. the boys were devastated; we'd had him since before the youngest two were born, and our middle son (now nearly 15) was only 10 months old when we got him. He'd been a kitten.

We had a small informal burial service in the back yard; we placed him amongst the lilac trees. Those present took turns placing the dirt back on top of him.

Unfortunately, not everyone was home to participate (but, as embalming isn't an option, we couldn't exactly wait). Our eldest was at work, and our daughter is currently in Chicago with her school band.

I'm not looking forward to having to tell her ...

But I want to end on a positive note- and share with you a photograph of our sweet boy, snuggled up on the couch with our rather large dog.

In which another "simple" project escalates rapidly ...

If you read "l'histoire du sac" (there is an update to this post, btw), you understand by now that no project I decide to undertake *ever* truly remains "simple".

Witness, Exhibit "B";

Our house is, by local standards, rather old. In fact, she turns 100 this year. She came complete with crystal door knobs and brass "backplates" (a fancy technical term I learned while doing the, um, 'research' for this post). Two of the doors have rather ornate backplates, the rest are all very utilitarian.

Here is a photo of one of the decorative backplates, complete with probably 60 years' worth of paint:

A backplate got damaged about 3 months after we moved in. Naturally, it was one of the ornate ones (Murphy's Law ain't got nothing on my four boys).

Equally as commonplace, we did nothing about it for two years. I recently came across the damaged backplate (which had not been on the door since getting damaged- heck, it hadn't been on the door when it got damaged!), and, fueled by my successful (albeit roundabout) restoration of the WWII-era messenger bag, my determination to attend to it was renewed.

So, I first resolved to see if I could find a replacement plate at a local antiques shop where I had previously seen backplates available for purchase, The Old House Revival Company.

And, naturally, I neglected to bring the blinking plate with me (although I had, at least, had the presence of mind to observe that the detail work on it included a fleur de lis).

The staff there were very eager to help me figure out my options once I had exhausted their considerable collection of brass backplates. My son, aka "Sir Squeaksalot", was also very eager to make me part with my money by deciding he really, really liked an antique stereo on display there. Really liked it. Was brave enough to ask a salesperson to ask how much it was*, liked it

*darn it, that technique almost always works on his siblings!!! Once Mum puts the onus on them to ask for details about something they really want, they usually back down.

Turns out, they were planning on putting the stereo into a garage sale, and were only going to be asking $25 for it. His birthday is coming up in just over two weeks- I do believe I see an antique stereo in my future.

But I digress. As helpful as they were, Old House Revival didn't have the backplate I needed. They did remind me, however, that brass is fairly maleable, and I might be able to straighten out the kink without it breaking ...

Onwards.

A few days later, I went over to see the lovely ladies at Vintage Veruca. They were extremely busy, getting ready for their own garage sale, but they were no less helpful than the folks at OHR.

Funnily enough, once they had confirmed that they did not, in fact, have a backplate to match mine (I had since put the darned thing into my bag), one of the ladies told me she used to work at OHR, and they were likely the best place to check for backplates ...

She also affirmed what the folks at OHR had said about being able to straighten out the kink in my existing backplate. In addition, she told me I could strip the paint off the backplate by placing it in extremely hot (read: boiling!) water for ten to fifteen minutes and then peel or scrape it off.



You can probably see where this is going ...



Yup. I did. First of all, I managed to straighten out the kink in the backplate enough to make it once more functional.

Secondly ... well, how about I show you some photos?

Then, after removing all six thousand** layers of paint from the two backplates, just for kicks, I decided to polish them.

(** this may be a slight exaggeration)

 Note the presence of my "assistant" in this endeavour, quite literally placing her mark.

At this point, I might as well restore the other two plates, too- after all, it's a straightforward and simple project, right? ;-)

Differences, then and now

We used to live in "the hood".  I must first state that we had some really lovely neighbours, and we were very happy with the kids' school(s), too. Our primary reason for moving was that we had outgrown our little house.

Having said that, there is a definite difference between our new neighbourhood and our previous one. One could say it is decidedly more "genteel".

Case in point:

In our old neighbourhood, police cars and sirens were a frequent backdrop to our day-to-day life, to the point that people barely batted an eye unless there was something really exciting going on, such as the evening Himself and I came home from a late movie to see three police cars on our block and a police officer shining a flashlight into our basement window.  That, indeed, was a heart-stopping moment, as we immediately felt like the World's Worst Parents, having carelessly gone out for the evening ... we were somewhat relieved to notice the excitement was not, in fact, at our house, but the neighbour's. Only somewhat relieved, as it was the people next door ...

We saw our neighbour from across the street sitting on his front porch with his partner, and as we were always on very friendly terms, we went over to see if they knew what was going on.

As it turned out, they did. Evidently, the neighbours next door were having a rather loud party, and someone "fell" off of the front porch. The victim had been rushed off to hospital in very poor condition, and the police were trying to sort out what had happened.

Contrast this scene to one that recently occurred in our new neighbourhood:

One afternoon (around 2PM), just a few days ago, I looked out my front window to see several of my neighbours engrossed in conversation. Even from inside the house, I could tell there was something of great concern being discussed; several of them seemed quite worried.

Curious as to what was going on, and wanting to offer my support and/or help if needed, I went over and said "Hello" to those in the group whose names I already knew.

As I approached, I heard one neighbour say; "He's been here all day". Another asked "Where do you think he belongs?" "I'm not sure" said a third.

And the source of all this kerfuffle and consternation?







A cat.





Not a starving, bedraggled, or bothersome cat, either. Rather, he appeared a very healthy-looking (IE: well fed) long haired cat with nary a mat in his fur (IE: groomed). This cat was also very friendly (IE: well socialized), and was so obviously enjoying being the centre of attention ...

I think I'm going to love living here ...