It's About Me

For the umpteenth time this year, I made my way to the vets office to get a cat looked at. Punkin, the neighbor’s cat that I adopted after they died, has a one inch circular whole in his side that looked like was getting gangrene. I had started giving him antibiotics about 3 days ago, and it just looked worse to me. As it turns out, it is getting better, but that skin is going to slough off even more before we’re done. I got another week’s worth of antibiotics to pull him through.

Taz and Tig are doing better with their heart and thyroid meds. Daily doses every morning are wearing me out. Tigger is loud and demanding and gets all the others meowing for food — all before I get my morning coffee. Sometimes it’s just too much and I feel like drop kicking him into the other room. He knows when I open my eyes and I lay there pretending to be asleep. He knows. He starts right in before I even make a move. Meow. Then he starts digging at the covers. MEOW. As if perhaps I didn’t hear him the first time. Then he runs across me and the bed about three or four times. MEOOOOOOOW. By this time, of course, I’m yelling…”TIGGER!”. He just jumps off the bed and waits for me by the bedroom door. If I take a little too long putting on shoes, he comes and bumps my legs two or three times to ‘help me out’.

Even though the medicine giving is a test in patience, I don’t ever stop. Taz dang near died, and I’m not ready to let them go just yet. Both of them are only 15, and since we put Boots down back a few months ago, I’m not letting the others get in that bad of shape. Of course she had diabetes and was terribly obese…not the same thing…but still. She was their sister, and she just died too young.

Tut is on antibiotics too. Slashed his toe on something, not sure what, and it’s infected. I knew he’d been acting funny, but couldn’t tell the source of the problem. Momma’s cut on her belly healed up nicely as did Taz’s hind leg. Tig has faired the best of all it seems from all the fighting outside. I don’t know what it is that’s attacking, but I’m going to find it one of these days and end this mess. Of all the cats though Momma and Amber have been the most trouble free.

Pistol the young horse is lame again. Foundered on summer grass? I don’t think so. The boy has got to have an underactive thyroid. There’s just no other reasonable cause for him to keep foundering. I asked the vet this morning if it was likely and he said yes. We need to get him in, but I guess I need to save up my money. The durn cats have cost me well near $500 over the past few months. And I just don’t have it to spare! That’s just patching them up too. The whole crew needs shots, exams, coggins, heartworm, etc, etc.

Devon changed meds this month too. For the last 6 months he’s been on Depakote to control his seisures and then wham, five in one month. So now he’s on Vesper, Kappar, Keppra? Something like that. It’s supposed to also help control that tic. The doctor did say that tic has a name and it’s called Myoclonus. Myoclonus with action. Apparently there are several kinds. Devon’s has action. We also got the neuro-pysch results back. He’s mostly normal. He has ADD. No hyperactivity – thank God! – but we don’t want to put him on meds just yet. I’d rather try to control it with training than doping him up. His IQ came in … low? Not sure what’s normal but he scored an 81. The results did state that this is not an accurate assessment of his overall abilities. One particular subtest pulled the average way down and mainly because it relied on motor functions as well as memory. As a stroke victim, Devon is still recovering his fine motor skills. So, overall he scored lowest in cognitive function (read him a paragraph, he got bored, didn’t remember the details, and so couldn’t answer the questions) but scored above average in math, problem solving, and non-verbal reasoning. Take the language part out, and he does fine. They said to build up his esteem by pushing him towards the math and sciences.

And golf. Devon is IN to golf. This boy…he couldn’t be more different than BJ and I. He’s nothing like his Dad either. He’s sooo much like Felicia. But luckily, he’s got quite a bit of his Dad’s good looks. Not as big of a charmer or flirt (his Dad was a ladies man at birth) but that’s okay. Them women always got his daddy in trouble.

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