Pollen

The pollen is in the air. I’ve heard several people mention sore throats, and I’ve got a vague sense that I could be in the very early stage of some sort of allergy attack, but it really is barely noticeable except when I was swallowing some water first thing this morning.

Over the weekend Marcella and I were observing how the cars have a green-yellow sheen from the pollen settling on them, and when I was riding my bike on Sunday at one point I saw a cloud that I at first mistook for smoke. When I realized it was actually a cloud of pollen falling through the air I almost sneezed just looking at it!

Angus followup

Just a followup to the “Angus comes home” post from a few days ago. I won’t say we’ve mastered the technique of administering subcutaneous fluids, but we’ve certainly made much improvement, and we seem to be managing it pretty well.

For one thing, we put up a hook so that we could hang the fluid bag rather than having to hold it up. That means one more free hand for managing the cat, the needle, and the drip.

Secondly, there were a few tricks with when to start the drip and which clamps to release in which order so that the flow of the drip could be controlled a little easier.

In short, I think we are managing this okay. Angus doesn’t act as if he minds too much, and he does seem to be improving, and is certainly eating more now, which is a good-good sign.

Angus comes home

It was a little bit of a scary week on the kitty front. One of Marcella’s kitties, Angus, who hasn’t been eating well for several weeks, finally seemed like he might be in pretty bad shape.

Marcella took him to the vet on Wednesday. The short story is he’s in some stage of Kidney failure, and our efforts at home to fiddle with his diet were just insufficient. We left him overnight for two nights while they gave him subcutaneous fluid injections and monitored his progress before being allowed to bring him back home.

The rub is that we’ve got to continue to give him these subcutaneous fluid injections, and I think I can honestly say that we haven’t yet fully figured out the procedure. It seems really simple when you see it done, but I think there is a little bit of an art involved that can only be learned with experience, and experience only comes with sticking the poor kitty with a needle; so it is experience that only comes with poor Angus’ pain and discomfort.

Ah, we’ll learn eventually, but in the meantime there’s a daily stress-fest as we collect Angus and start preparing a needle.