I wanted to apologize in advance for how little stuff is likely to go up this week, in terms of reviews and such. This weekend Selene reacted to one of the meds the vets gave her for her dental work, and she developed lesions all up and down her furry little abdomen. We spent Sunday evening at the emergency vet’s, and I didn’t sleep much that night as I tried to keep her from grooming her belly.

Last night we took her to our vet. Now she has a collar to keep her from grooming, but it completely freaks her out, so she pretty much just hides under the couch while she has it on. When she does move around she tries to scrape it off on everything, and she’s taken a couple of spills when trying to get up onto or down off of places, so I’m mostly trying to keep an eye on her and keep her from hurting herself.

Technorati Tags: cat health, cats

We’re taking our friend to the airport today, so I won’t be posting much. At any rate, two new designs. One for writers, one for cat lovers:

“Write with strength” and “I’m almost as stubborn as my cat.” As you can tell, I’m having fun figuring GIMP out.

The cats seem to be doing pretty well. It’s much easier to get Selene’s pain meds into her than it is to get the antibiotics into either cat–probably because there’s a hell of a lot more volume of antibiotics. She’s quite something after having her–as the vet tech put it–lala juice. VERY purry.

Technorati Tags: cats, writers, writing

I just posted the review of Mary Crownover’s Cheesecake Extraordinaire, despite the drooling cat asleep with her head on my arm.

Speaking of which, the cats are doing surprisingly well. We managed to get all of Selene’s pain meds into her this morning, which shocked us even more than her, I think. I feel guilty for saying this, but I think it’s easier to squirt meds into her mouth now that she has fewer teeth. It’s harder for her to clamp her jaw shut. In happy news, she’s eating like a horse, and oddly I think despite the surgery it looks like she’s more comfortable eating now than she was before, which goes to show how bad her teeth must have been. I wish we’d had any idea, but she’s so good at keeping people out of her mouth that even the vets had a hard time looking at her teeth each year. And until they got the tartar off they couldn’t know how bad things were.

Anyway, today I made what I think is our most gorgeous writing-related cafepress design yet. I call it, “write with grace”:

We didn’t get much sleep last night. For the first half of the night we kept the cats in our room so we wouldn’t have to worry about them trying to jump down off of something while doped and hurting themselves. Cahlash spent the entire time racing around the room, occasionally jumping up near his curled-up sister and getting hissed at. Not much sleep there.

Next we let the cats out and I stayed up for a while watching them to make sure they were handling themselves okay and wouldn’t injure themselves if left alone.

Finally we went to sleep, with some success despite high adrenaline and stress levels.

This morning we get to try to dose Selene up with her pain meds, which ought to be, uh, fun. (Last night’s antibiotics only partially ended up inside of her.) I’ve been pointing out to her that the more she lets us get into her the less she’ll hurt today, but I somehow doubt she’s listening, eh?

At least now Cahlash is capable of sitting still. And both cats are very hungry, which is a good sign. They had about half their dinner last night (the better to not have them puke) after not having had breakfast or lunch, so they’re convinced they’re dying of hunger.

So, yeah. Our tiny little cat has basically her canines left, or something like that. Not much else. After they popped the tartar off they found what was underneath really didn’t resemble teeth all that much any more, and that she’d basically been chewing her food with tartar, not teeth, for some time. Which HAD to hurt. So hopefully she’ll be in a lot less pain once the surgery pain wears off.

I started working on today’s book review (of “Cheesecake Extraordinaire”) about ten minutes ago. Then I got the phone call from the vet’s office, and I think now I’m going to put it off until tomorrow.

You see, it was finally time for our cats to get their teeth cleaned. For cats, this means putting them under anaesthesia–it isn’t a small undertaking, and it’s expensive. However, if you don’t do it they can develop a nasty bacteria buildup which can get into their bloodstream and make them sick–even eventually kill them–so it’s extremely important to have it done now and then.

When cats get enough tartar built up on their teeth the vets don’t really know ahead of time what they’ll find under there. They put a range into the estimate to cover any teeth they may have to pull, but of course you hope they won’t have to pull any.

I know I’ve mentioned we have two cats, Selene and Cahlash, sister and brother from the same litter. Cahlash had to have to small teeth pulled; that isn’t too bad.

Selene had to have NINE teeth pulled.

We’re talking about a very small cat here, about 7 pounds in total. The vet said that left her with pretty much her front teeth and her incisors. She’s going to be on pain meds and antibiotics for a couple of weeks–and of course medicating her is going to be quite an undertaking (even the vets have trouble medicating her–for such a tiny ball of fluff she’s incredibly strong-willed, and when she doesn’t want something done she does NOT want something done).

We can pick her up in a few hours; the vet wants to give her another pain injection before she comes home. All I can think of is how miserable she’s going to be.

So yeah, if you care about your cats at all, get their teeth cleaned the moment your vets say it’s an issue. I hate to think what it would have been like if she’d had to have even more teeth pulled.

It’s about time we had something like AvidID–a microchip your vet can implant in your pet that carries a unique ID number on it. For a one-time registration fee (with a small fee for changing your info when you move) you register your pet’s ID number. If your pet ever gets loose and picked up by a shelter or brought to a vet, they scan the microchip, pull up your contact information, and get your pets back to you.

How awesome is that?

Our cats are indoor cats. The odds that they’ll ever need this are slim. But I don’t want to take that chance–how do I know they won’t slip outside sometime and get lost? To me it’s worth it to do this for them. Sure, there’s still plenty of stuff that can go wrong if they get out, but at least I know that if someone takes them to a shelter or vet they’ll find their way home. One of our cats is already chipped, and the other will be chipped when she gets her teeth cleaned at the end of next month.

Technorati Tags: animals, cat health, cats

Okay, don’t expect anything useful from me today. I just love it when I wake up with mysterious allergic reactions. (That was sarcasm, in case you missed it.) Benadryl makes me very sleeeeepy, so I expect to be doing a lot of, well, sleeping. My upper lip is rather puffy and I have a hive or two on the back of my right hand. And since I have no idea what’s causing it, I can probably expect it to get worse before it gets better.

Tomorrow we take Selene in for her distemper booster shot and a microchip. She has vaccine allergies, so she gets a Benadryl shot before her vaccines. Last time she got this done she kicked during the shot and ended up lame in one leg for months and taking steroid pills. Hopefully that won’t happen again…

Later I’ll post about the wonders of the current microchipping program for pets. It’s awesome.

Traditional edit: AAAARGH! I was really hoping to nurse my ailing computer through another year, but I’m seriously starting to wonder about it. I’m now going to stop doing just about anything on it for the rest of the day until I can back it up tonight. Yes, it’s acting that flaky. As much as I’d truly love to run out and replace it, well, the furnace, A/C, and breaker panel were more important.

Mistletoe Value T-shirt

You Are an Espresso

At your best, you are: straight shooting, ambitious, and energetic At your worst, you are: anxious and high strung You drink coffee when: anytime you’re not sleeping Your caffeine addiction level: high

Hmm. I guess that’s partially true. I would probably drink coffee any time I wasn’t sleeping if I weren’t so sensitive to caffeine/acid and didn’t mind the idea of being addicted to caffeine. As it is I have a strict limit of one cup in the morning and one in the afternoon. Which I only occasionally break for a third in the evening…

Also, Marcus vs. HP DeskJet, Cat 1/Printer 0:

Oh, and, although Cafepress seemed to be having some glitches yesterday that kept me from adding my newest design for a while, I did eventually put it up:

Who’s going to play the cleric?
Clothing, mugs, more!

Technorati Tags: cats, coffee, humor, memes, quizzes, videos

I find psychology fascinating. It can help us to find clever and unusual ways of solving intractable problems. Take the story of Sheriff Low, for example. The reoffense rate in his little town has significantly dropped since he put the inmates all in embarrassing pink jumpsuits, sheets, and so on. People want to make sure they stay out of jail because they can’t stand the thought of wearing pink. Now that’s clever! (Link found on FARK.)

One of my favorite ways to use psychology is to apply it to two of my favorite subjects–roleplaying and writing. Many of my articles on those two subjects incorporate elements of psychology to address various issues. On the roleplaying side, there are articles like tension without character death and “Expectations, Conditioning, and Your Game” parts 1 and 2, examples and rules of thumb. On the writing side there are articles such as criticism and learning to write and surviving the rewrite process. All of these apply basic psychology to help shape the roleplaying or writing experience into something more enjoyable, and to help you get what you want out of it.

Another application of psychology that not as many people think of is: cats. I really picked this one up from Phil Maggitti’s Guide to a Well-Behaved Cat. Now, I’m about to go on a bit of a long-winded jaunt here, so grab your cup of coffee.

Technorati Tags: cat health, cats, fark, kittens, psychology, roleplaying, writing

(more…)

Apparently a Biotech firm has used selective breeding to produce largely hypoallergenic cats–for $4k each. On the one hand this is awesome; I know what it’s like to love cats and yet have really nasty reactions to them. I’m lucky that I found a breed I don’t react to very much (Cornish Rex); otherwise I wouldn’t be able to have cats. On the other hand, I can’t imagine paying that much for a cat, and of course any time selective breeding is involved you have to wonder what else is being bred in or out. However, there’s an argument to be made that perhaps selective breeding overseen by a biotech company is less likely to produce genetic abnormalities and flaws than some random cat breeder’s efforts (depending on the company), so this could be a step up. And since undoubtedly there’s no way the company is going to allow anyone to breed these cats other than them, which means every cat they sell will be spayed or neutered, it could mean fewer unwanted kittens. Except, of course, that the kind of people who are willing to spend $4k on a cat are probably at least marginally more likely to spay and neuter their cats in the first place.

At any rate, hopefully our five-year-old Cornish Rexes will live a long and happy life, and it’ll be a very long time before I have to consider whether or not I want to look into something like this. And by then, they’ll be a heck of a lot cheaper, I hope.

Link found on FARK.

Traditional edit: Darn it, I’ve now read that the guy who runs this company has a reputation as an inveterate con artist. Phooey.

Technorati Tags: allergies, animals, cats, fark, health