A Hungry Lesson

I had to be tough with Sable yesterday.

At meal times - breakfast, dinner and snack - all the cats gather in their usual places: several of them in the sitting room, a couple in the kitchen, a few more in more remote spots. Sable’s habitual place is under the dining table. Yesterday at dinner-time, she remained downstairs. I called her several times; she knows the routine, she understands what bringing out the dishes means and she comprehends the word ‘dinner’. I even went to the library where she was lying on the couch to encourage her to come upstairs. She chose not to.

I am certain that she was not feeling poorly. She had been playing with a fuzzy mouse not long before, and later she was grooming herself calmly and normally. But she didn’t want to come up for dinner. Consequently, she missed it. She went without.

In the past, I would take food to her, wherever she was: in the library, under the bed. But Sabe has been eating in the kitchen for months now. She is past the point of belonging to the group enough to dine with the rest of us. To allow her to eat elsewhere now would, I think, be a danger of allowing her to slip out of her progress. To be honest, I think she was just being finicky. Nonetheless, if one of the others refused to appear for a meal, they too would go without; Valkyrie is mercurial enough to do that from time to time. Setting rules for Sable is part of her socialisation. And, except for certain times - at night and between dinner and snack - there is hard-food available that all are able to eat and most enjoy. No one starves.

At snack-time, Sable appeared as usual, waiting under the dining table for her bowl. She ate a little more than her normal amount. I don’t know if she learned a hungry lesson, but she’s smart, so I hope she got the idea. What she may think of me won’t be mentioned.

An Inviting Spot on a Cold Day

It’s time to buy another heating pads for the beasts. This is Millie sitting over the heating vent in the cat-room.

Don’t be misled. It is not cold in the cat-room, and Mills just as often lies quite comfortably on a cat-tree. But the season has now shifted from warm autumn to chilly autumn, and the cat-room, with its single heating vent - and the door closed to keep the other cats from coming in to agitate Millie - can become cool. Though she has her suitcase-house, which is enclosed and very snug, and I believe she enjoys the warmth of the hot air rather than needs it, I think I should buy her a heating pad and set it up on the couch. If she likes it, it will encourage her to lie next to me more frequently, when I am present. And you can’t have too many inviting spots on a cold day.

My Gratitude

Today is Thanksgiving Day. I try every day to be grateful for what I have and have had, but today is when we acknowledge our gratitude more explicitly.

I am grateful for many things: my life at the Cosy Cabin, the shelter and warmth it gives me; my employment, the funds it gives me to survive; my friends, who have helped me more than I have been able to help myself, I think.

I am grateful for my last minute capture of Sable, on the Thanksgiving weekend last year. Yes, Sabe has been with me a year now. I worried that I was doing the wrong thing by bringing her inside. But she has progressed faster and better than I had hoped, thanks in part to her friendship with Moxy. She still won’t let me touch her, but I can come closer than ever now, and she sleeps on the bed, not even jumping off when I move or get up in the night.

I am certain that she is hard of hearing. She can hear me speak at almost any distance, but my approach must be seen to be believed. At her age - at least twelve, probably thirteen - she may not have been able to stand many more winters outside, and she may not have had an assured source of food after I had moved.

So I am grateful for having caught Sable. She may have regrets, but I think she also enjoys, at least in part, being an insider cat. Warmth at night, comfort in cold weather, plenty of food, clean water, friendship and toys to play with do compensate somewhat, I think.

This year, this is the face of my gratitude.

A Lap for Movie-night

Last weekend, Millie lie beside me for a while during movie-night and we watched the film together. Yesterday, she took another step, and lie on my lap. This is the first time she has done that. It was funny: she first put her paw on my leg, and glanced at my face, as if to ask if it was acceptable. I encouraged her and she settled down for about twenty minutes. This is how she will progress when she at last has her own home, and her own person.

Good Numbers

Neville’s blood-glucose sensor lasted the whole two weeks that it was meant to do, and quit on Thursday. It did its job, providing me with a great many readings, which I recorded and passed on to the old grey lion’s veterinary. Both she and I are very happy with the results.

She had, it may be recalled, reduced Nev’s dosage of insulin to no more than two units: two if his reading was nine or more, one if it was between nine and three. Three is of course quite a low number at which to give insulin, but the doctor felt that it was necessary to accustom Neville’s body to receiving insulin twice a day, rather than missing some days, getting it others. And with the monitor, I could tell every fifteen minutes, if I desired, what level his blood-sugar was at. The prescription worked.

The highest reading Nev had over the past fortnight was 13.9. By late last week, most of his readings were in the single digits, not counting fractions. As may be seen by Wednesday’s record, though his numbers varied from reading to reading, they varied within a narrow range. A bit of food, a visit to the litter-box, a walk down the corridor; these would move the reading a bit up and down, but the greatest fluctuation was from 4.1 to 6.2 - excellent numbers. Even the 7.6 with which Nev started Thursday is within ‘normal’ range. The doctor believes Neville’s diabetes to be managed.

It’s been years since the Nevsky’s numbers have been so low and so good. Will they remain so? He has a lot to deal with, most prominently, the mass in his liver, which could affect his diabetes. But one unit of insulin twice a day has been determined to provide the best amount of medicine while maintaining good numbers. And, with the sensor no longer providing readings often, one unit is a safe amount, too; I will be taking blood from my oldster’s ears periodically, but doing so before every injection is too hard on the fellow.

I am grateful that Neville’s doctor understood the problem and was able to work with it. I think Nev is feeling better than he has in some time. He has other issues with which to battle, but, at least for now, uncontrolled diabetes isn’t one of them.

Watching and Wishing

It’s interesting that not all of the beasts in the Cosy Cabin are interested in watching birds. Neville, for instance, has never been curious about wildlife. But with some cats, no matter how different their personalities otherwise, they share a love of wishing they could kill and eat birds. Or at least kill them.

Here, sisters-in-murder Imogen and Valkyrie are silhouetted against the front window, watching their would-be prey.

Indigo Wins

Indigo and I went to the veterinary hospital again this afternoon to see if she had conquered the urinary infection. She had!

The sample used for the latest urinalysis was unusually obtained. I put Indie in the bathroom when dinner was served. It was rather too soon for her to be so collected, but if I didn’t do it when she came out to eat, I probably would have had quite an ordeal, as lately she has been going straight under the bed following her meals. This was to avoid the anti-biotics I have been giving her. (I didn’t miss a dose, though: I had been dosing her immediately before she ate. Despite this, she always showed up for a meal, so I was able to keep on schedule.)

Because she was in the bathroom too long, or because of stress, Indigo wet in the bathtub. I applaud her choice of improvised litter-box (she wasn’t given one as I wanted to encourage her to hold it until the hospital) but it nonetheless emptied the bladder that needed to be sampled. Fortunately, the urine pooled just in front of the drain; (it’s an old steel tub, and has a bit of a dip there) and I was able to siphon up a small syringe-worth. (I keep numerous syringes of different calibres on hand, for medicine, force-feeding, etc.) This I took with me to the veterinary hospital.

I wasn’t sure if they could use it, but they did. The sample was not contaminated by where it was found, and all signs of infection had disappeared. Indie was not poked or punctured; indeed, as it turned out, she need not have even come with me.

Now, we are back in the Cosy Cabin, Indigo looking forward no doubt to snack-time, as she wasn’t in the mood to eat much of her dinner. Though I don’t have a trout for her as a reward for doing so well, as the Tabbies suggested, she will receive some tuna-water from a tin I’ll be opening later…