Big Saturday

Thor had an appointment at the vet today. I'd been careful not to mention it around him, and have kept the cat carrier in a spot where the cats have turned it into a sort of clubhouse. But he knew. Instead of coming to greet me in the morning, he hid. He didn't come out when I called him to breakfast. I found him, eventually, and managed to corral him in a room while I took a shower.

Thor has been eating like mad since his last visit, but has barely put on any weight. That's troubling. He isn't vomiting everything up, so it's possible a lot of this food is not getting absorbed as it passes through his digestive system. We will continue to monitor, and I will take him back in two weeks. In the meantime I was sent home with a hydration kit - an intravenous drip of Ringer's Lactate (an item I became familiar with from watching Emergency! as a child), which I will administer once a week, as well as a different dose of an anti-nausea drug.

Thor seemed very traumatized after his last visit to the vet, which was just a rehydration appointment. He hid the rest of that day and the next. Today, after I brought him back home from the vet, gave him his pill, and released him from the carrier, he seemed totally unfazed, and went back to his usual daily routine of asking to be fed his special mix of foods.

I did a lot of laundry today, which I had to haul to the laundromat to dry. I also set up the antique ceramic Christmas Tree, with a low-wattage, high brightness, safe-for-enclosed-fixtures LED bulb taking the place of the antique I'll-burn-your-house-down tube bulb that was originally used with it fifty years ago - and is still packed in the box with the tree.

I ran my mom out on an errand just before sunset. I was hoping to see some municipal holiday decorations in Plymouth and Edwardsville during our trip, but there were none - at least, none lit up. I'll have to come back by way of this particular area some night next week to see what's actually there.

(My commute in to work takes fifteen minutes, door-to-door. But the return commute has consistently taken a half hour regardless of the route I've tried. Some routes this is because of bottlenecks, choke points, and rush hour traffic. Others it's because of traffic lights. I can sidestep this issue by stopping in one of the many stores on my way home - my commute takes me right through the retail heart of Wilkes-Barre - but that could get expensive over time. Eventually I'll be working on a different schedule which should make the return trip faster, but may lengthen the inbound.)

I realized I haven't sat with Joey for nearly a week. I took his still-warm blanket out of the clothesbasket when I came home from the laundromat, wrapped him in it, and sat down so he could take a nap. We both wound up napping for well over an hour. I think we both needed it.

Tomorrow is the first Sunday of Lent. Then the countdown to Christmas really begins.