Aha! I am faster than lightning! Faster than even the shutter can blink as I GRAB for the camera’s wrist strap!

I thought it was fitting to let Angst rule my blog for a week.

I miss him. It’s been really hard, especially at bedtime. Every night when I’d get into bed, he used to hop up on the bed and sit on Doc’s side, waiting for me to scratch his head. He could never get enough. I’d scratch and scratch and rub his ears and pat his butt, and sometimes he’d be so happy he’d just flop over on his side and let me scratch his tummy too. This was kind of a ritual for him and me. Doc and he had lots of rituals and special things, but this was really the only thing that he came to me for.

So now when I walk into the bedroom, I still half expect to see him on top of the cat tower or sleeping on the chair. Sometimes I see one of the dark throw pillows sitting on the chair and my heart gives a little jump. Last night I dreamed that a cat that looked just like him was in our house, and part of me knew that it couldn’t really be him, but I didn’t want to think that or say it because what if thinking it or saying it made it true? I kind of knew it was true but I didn’t want it to be, so I decided to live in the illusion that he’d come back or that he’d not died in the first place.

That phone call Monday morning was horrible. They’d called at 7:30 and left a message on my cell phone asking me to call back as soon as possible. I knew it wasn’t good news, because if it was just a status report they would have left more information on the message. I started shaking, walked into the bedroom, woke up Doc, told him the vet had called and that I was going to call them back.

Dr. Sue said “I have some bad news. Angst didn’t make it through the night.” I can’t remember what I said, probably something like “Oh no… no, no… really?” The rest of the conversation is kind of a blur, mostly because I was crying and not thinking straight. She asked what we wanted them to do with Angst, and I said we’d have to call her back.

I hung up and Doc and I cried for a couple of hours straight (I hope he’s not mad that I am telling the world that he was crying). As much as I’d tried to prepare myself that he might not make it, it still came as a shock. He’d seemed better when we visited him on Saturday, and even though I knew he was going downhill on Sunday I tried to make myself believe that he seemed even better. He didn’t. I didn’t see how in the world we were going to be able to bring him home on Monday, but I was hoping against hope.

Hope didn’t work this time. He knew it was his time, and he was right. I feel absolutely horrible that we didn’t take him in to the vet sooner. Maybe he could have recovered if we did. I was just thinking he’d get better on his own, because he’s always gone through periods where his sneezing and asthma is worse, but in hindsight I have no idea what I was thinking; why I didn’t notice how thin he’d gotten and how sad and final he looked; why I didn’t immediately interpret his hiding behaviour as bad news. The guilt is crushing. I could have saved him if I’d paid more attention.

Doc said that it didn’t feel right to let a stranger be the final caretaker of his body. Neither of us are against cremation but for Angst, it just didn’t feel like the right thing to do. And Doc needed to do one last thing for his buddy, to pay him the respect he deserved by taking care of him to the very end.

When a pet dies, you are not supposed to “dispose of the body” yourself (god, I hate that phrase… it sounds so… real). Something about the health department putting up a fuss; you’re supposed to have him cremated or I suppose put in a pet cemetery. Burying pets in the backyard is technically illegal. But our vet’s unofficial policy seems to be, if we don’t tell them what we’re going to do, they don’t ask. They get it.

Doc brought him home and then labored for over an hour digging a hole in our backyard. Our soil isn’t really soil; it’s thick gumbo clay and white chalk rock so this was incredibly difficult, but he worked and worked until it was ready. Each of us privately said our final goodbyes to him, and then Doc buried him. He covered the grave in some rocks that I’d gone and collected from the creek. Later, I picked all the purple irises out of the front flowerbed that Angst used to be able to see from the window, and laid them on top. Doc said that Angst didn’t care about the flowers (I was kind of hoping he’d think that it was a nice thing to do, but oh well).

I think that Doc needed this ceremony to be his… to be between him and his best friend. But I’m glad that I got to be a part of it with the rock collecting, and that I got to say my own goodbye to him.

I love our other three cats dearly in their own ways, but there will probably always be an Angst-shaped hole in me.

In other cat news, there’s a little gecko on the outside of my windowscreen. Neko and Loki are reeeeeeeally interested. They can’t figure out why they can’t smack it.

We’ll miss you, buddy.

Angst stopped eating and drinking about a week ago, near as we can tell. Last Tuesday, we could audibly hear him taking each breath through a clogged nose. He’s always been a little sneezy and wheezy so we weren’t sure if we should be worried.

He stopped using the litterbox, and he stayed in the corner in the back of Doc’s closet, hiding.

Thursday night we took him to the emergency hospital because we were afraid he wasn’t going to make it. His breathing sounded rattly and sporadic, and he looked so thin.

He weighed 7.8 pounds, which is about 2 pounds less than he weighed a couple of months ago.

They gave him fluids and antibiotics, and said if he didn’t perk up by Saturday, to take him to our vet.

He only seemed to get worse. We went to the store and bought one of each different kind of cat food we could find, cans and pouches and treats and little dried fish and something called, creepily enough, “catmilk.” He wouldn’t touch any of it. Twice we force-fed him spongy canned kitten food with a pastry tube, and he tried to spit as much of it out as he could.

This morning we took him to our veterinarian. He was diagnosed with pneumonia, severe asthma (and having attacks), and the early stages of liver failure. They planned to give him fluids, steroids, antibiotics, and put him in a nebulizing chamber to get medication directly to his lungs. He needs to be hospitalized until at least Monday.

We just got back from visiting him, and he looked a bit more alert. Doc was able to get him to voluntarily eat some canned food. It’s touch and go, very much so; he could have an asthma attack that could prove fatal. But seeing him eat on his own really brightened our spirits.

Doc says (and I agree) that he really has just been trying to do the equivalent of crawling off into the woods to die. He realized that it was his time, so he quit eating and drinking. But we humans are funny creatures, and we meddle with the natural life cycles of our furry companions. Neither of us have any wish to prolong his life past the point where he’s comfortable, past the point where his quality of life is suffering; past the point where it stops seeming right.

I don’t think he’s gone quite that far yet. The next few days will tell us a lot. I am, however, trying to prepare myself for the eventuality of having to let him go. This morning, I thought that it was going to be today. Now I have hope that he will be able to get healthy again, that he’ll be able to be ANGST again for a while.

I think that if we hadn’t taken him to the hospital, he wouldn’t have survived the weekend.

In case you were curious as to what my cats do all day, you can find out here.

I don’t always have the camera on, but you might catch a glimpse of a cat or two or three, and sometimes even me.

Working from home is working out pretty well, all told.

It’s funny though; I’ve actually been up to campus almost every day anyway, for meetings, or packing up the stuff from our offices, or gathering files and equipment.

I went in last Friday and collected my office chair and an orange crate that contains most of my job files, because as it turns out, we’re probably not going to get our new carpet until April 7. Or possibly later than that. And after the carpet is laid, they have to put our furniture back (it will be really amusing to take stock of where everything ends up, I think). So I’m planning on being at home for another 2-1/2 to 3 weeks. Which is why I went and got my chair (much more comfortable) and my files (guess I’ll need them here after all).

My torn/not torn/whatever rotator cuff injury has been pretty inconsistent lately. Today it’s felt fine, I barely notice the pain. Friday, however, I was in such constant pain that it made me Severely Grumpy all afternoon and I finally had to “quit” “work” at 4:00 and go lie down on the heating pad.

I’ve made several empirical observations over the past week or so:

• Doc is really quiet when he works
• Loki sleeps in the bedroom all day
• Neko snuffles me a lot
• I can concentrate a lot better here at home than I can at work
• I miss the comraderie of socializing with my officemates (most of them, anyway!)
• Being without my office phone hasn’t bothered me one bit
• Even though there’s a TV on the table next to my desk, I haven’t turned it on at all
• The line between when “work” stops and “off work” begins is kind of fuzzy when “work” and “off work” take place at the same location. I’ve found myself working until well after 6 without even realizing it.

I’ve also been able to witness several insanely cute cat interactions, best represented by the following photo:

cats are kinda like perpetual motion machines, or self-cleaning ovens. they also can help me lose weight.

i drew these conclusions tonight after witnessing one of my cats throw up, then clean up after himself by eating his own vomit.

i now have no appetite for dinner. thanks, cat!

at least they don’t eat their own poo.

had some freaky dreams last night. first one involved angst getting loose into the backyard, bolting, and hopping the fence. he’s a tough old cat but, sadly, doesn’t have front claws, and he’s really skittish, so i freaked out and thought we’d never see him again. i ran inside, told doc, who didn’t seem too concerned about it (this was DEFINITELY a dream), and dug around for the key to the back gate. i ran outside, opened the gate, and realized it was dark and i’d never be able to find him without a flashlight. i went back in and got the big LED flashlight, but it wasn’t shining very far and i couldn’t see much with it. so i made doc get the other flashlight and come outside with me, and we started searching through the underbrush by the creek, calling his name and shining the lights around. i knew that it was hopeless, that he was gone or hiding and wouldn’t come out. i went back inside after a while, and there he was sitting in the upstairs window with the other cats, watching us search for him. when i woke up the first thing i did was go find angst and make sure he was OK. of course he was just fine, sleeping on the sofa in my studio.

in the next one, i was walking with a couple of people for very important reasons that i cannot remember. we were traipsing through a forest and came out onto a 2-lane road. on the other side was an incredibly steep dropoff — probably 80 degrees or so. it was covered in low to medium brush and snow, and looked completely insane, but the people i was with just went merrily tramping down this hill. i think they were dwarves, and they had blue name labels floating above their heads. apparently i’ve been playing too much world of warcraft. anyway, i didn’t want to try to get down that hill so i thought i’d wait at the top for them to come back after they were done doing whatever it was they had to do. i sat down on the side of the road, but then realized that this was washington state and in this state they simply didn’t have “sides of the road” — there was only about 3 inches from the white stripe marking the edge of the lane, to where the dropoff began. i sat down but realized that i was actually in the road, and there was traffic coming. i tried to scoot as far as i could to the edge but there was no way i could fit on a 3″ ledge. i think at this point i went ahead and went down the hill.

i’m not sure about the plot points of the rest of this dream, but we were staying in various houses on our journey, and it was kind of like people were letting us stay in their houses while they were gone, but it was just for a quick sleep for one night and we weren’t supposed to disturb anything, and then we needed to leave in the morning. one house had a bed in another room that had two old-style wooden school desks attached to it, one where a nightstand would go and the other on that same side but at the foot of the bed. there were two more school desks in the middle of the room. i think it was at this house that i stole a diet pepsi from their fridge. then at the end of this trip or whatever it was, we were looking at some photos that we’d gotten developed from the trip, and kim was in one of them holding a giant fish, and i said “you know, this trip was really going badly until kim caught that huge fish. then things started to turn around!” and then i woke up.

one of my cats, who shall remain nameless because i don’t have eyewitness proof of this yet (although i suspect a particular little boy who is being very cute and sleek and is sitting complacently at my feet right now as if he’s never committed a kittycrime in his life) has taken a great liking to my maxipads, the kind that come all nicely individually packaged in little yellow plastic wrappers.

i regularly find them on the floor at different locations in the house. once it was on the other side of the bathroom. another time it was in the middle of the hallway. once it was in my office. they always have little kitty-tooth-sized puncture marks in the plastic, and various small rips and tears. not enough to be unusable, necessarily (’cause those things are not a dime a dozen) but definitely enough to indicate that a cat has been chewing on the wrapper.

during such times as i am in regular need of them, i keep them in a tall box on a shelf by the side of the toilet. they sit at the bottom so that there is a good eight inches of empty space between them and the top of the box.

as near as i can figure, somebody, and i’m not saying who, is resourceful enough to reach in, hook a claw into one, and pull it out without tipping the box over. i have to give him credit for oustanding eye-claw coordination.

and then i guess he tosses it around like a dying mouse and pokes a bunch of holes in the wrapper. and when he realizes it’s not going to fight back, carries it off somewhere and leaves it.

i suppose that i ought to get a box that has a lid on it. i don’t want to have to resort to keeping them in the cabinet overhead (i like having them convenient). and i have to try to remember to shut the toilet lid after i’m done using it lest a whole box of maxipads or tampons end up in the pot.

irritating, yes. tragic, no. a good story? you tell me.

i got myself my christmas present today. for a long time i’ve been wanting a digital snappy-happy camera. i love doc’s prosumer model sony f828 but it is rather bulky and not so convenient for just carrying around day-to-day. so i decided that once we got paid for the brochure project from hell that i helped doc with in august and september, i would take a little of that money and get myself a camera as a christmas present.

so i did, just a bit early.

i got a canon powershot sd400. my decision was based on a number of factors, the most important being size and image quality. i wanted one that was sub-$500 (sub-$400 if i could) and at least 5 megapixels. it may be a snappyhappy, but i wanted decent resolution. my research pointed at this particular canon model. it is quite tiny (about 3.5″x2″x1″) but has a large LCD screen and will fit nicely into my purse. plus, i love the way it looks — it feels solid and heavy and has a somewhat retro/james bond-ish look to the body. the camera plus a 1GB memory card only came to $400, so it was definitely in my price range.

the other one i was particularly interested in was the new sony t7. it’s only about 1/2″ thick, and about 4″x3″. amazingly thin, beautifully designed. i was initially leaning towards the sony because i’m familiar with the interface and controls on sony models, but this was $450 (although for that price you get 7 megapixels) and it takes memory stick pro duo (not memory stick pro, so i couldn’t use our existing memory cards in it) — and the duo memory is prohibitively expensive.

so i went with the canon. so far, i’ve only found 2 things that annoy me, and these are common to all small-footprint digital cameras, so i really can’t complain much: the fact that you have to remove the battery and put it in a charger to charge it up; and the SD memory card doesn’t just mount on the desktop (or maybe i’m just doing something wrong). i had to install the software that came with it on the CD (gag). i hate using proprietary software that comes with electronics. it always sucks. i just want to directly drag the photos to my computer and use photoshop to do any editing.

or maybe if i stick the SD card into a card reader, i can avoid having to use that vile software. hmm. i’ll have to try that.

anyway, here is one of the first photos i’ve taken: my atrocious looking fingernail on my right hand (from when i smashed it and went unconscious several weeks ago).

my god, my hands look old. i’m only 33! i need some lotion or something.

and here is a picture of the snuffler. she looks awfully cute here.

angst seems to be getting better. we were really freaked out because when he was having accidents we found blood too. i was really scared that maybe this was it.

the vet said that because he wasn’t throwing up the blood, there was probably not that much to be concerned about. now he’s on only one medication, a banana colored thick liquid antibiotic. it’s a 2-person job. if any gets on his tongue he starts seriously frothing at the mouth. through trial and error we’ve learned to a) wipe the excess off his lips, and b) hold his mouth closed for at least 10 seconds so he’ll swallow as much of it as possible.

i’d rather be giving him pills, it was easier. and less foamy.

the good news is, he’s keeping his food down and depositing his kitty discards where he’s supposed to.

doc has more freelance work than he knows what to do with, which is both good and bad.

i’m going to be helping him on several projects, so i had to buy quark xpress. YUCK!! these projects are due in a ridiculously short amount of time, so here’s hoping i didn’t get myself in over my head. for the next 2 weeks i probably will be doing nothing but going to work, coming home, working some more, eating dinner, working, going to bed. if it proves to be too much i will hire brittney to help out with some of it.

but it is a good thing, it’s building doc’s business.

not that there’s ever a good time for this, but angst is pretty sick also. he was getting lighter and lighter, it seemed, and sneezing a lot, so we took him to the vet to see if they could give him something to help his allergies and appetite. they put him on prescription food and three medications. he’s done nothing but throw up and worse since. he finally stopped throwing up after we took him off all the medicine and gave him his regular food, but he’s been having accidents all over the place. we had to take him in again this morning and they are trying a different kind of antibiotic.

also, our art show is tomorrow night. i have to go hang the art after work today.

art stress, cat stress, job stress.

luckily when i get stressed and busy, i don’t eat. maybe i’ll lose a few freakin’ pounds over this.