Piper’s cat, Timmy, had a close call with death by UTI last weekend, and while he seems to have passed the tipping point of recovery, he is down to approximately half a life now. He had a mucus plug in his urethra and the catheter insertion failed, so they chose Route 2, which is to go in through the bladder and down the urethra that way. After a few nights at the vet’s (because I refused to pay the thousands an emergency animal hospital overnight would cost), we brought him home with lots of pills, a collar of shame, and a catheter sutured to a tube sutured to him that was warned not to pull out.
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Piper spent all afternoon cooped up in the tiny, stuffy tiled bathroom to care for our leaky patient, preventing him from pulling it out several times before he finally got it out. In retrospect, it was better he had done it then than later when we made her eat dinner or sleep in her own bed. She has been an amazing caretaker, and if he pulls through, it will be her consistent and sacrificial care that makes the difference. She’s coping GREAT with the emotional roller coaster, but well, it’s an emotional roller coaster. I lost a lot of sleep over this, mostly because I abhor spending that much money on a pet, and deciding whether or not to kill your daughter’s pet is not as easy as it seems. I resent dealing with vet because, not only am I at the mercy of my own ignorance, but there also seems to be an underlying assumption that money is no object in saving the life of a pet. By Day 2, I finally figured out a strategy. Whenever I heard, “Now we’ll have to …. and it will cost …”, I would reply, “We can’t pay that. How much will it cost to have him euthanized right now?”. Then a Plan B would be presented that was slightly more reasonable.I learned a few more lessons that I hadn’t been looking for over this last week. 1) I’m quite good at giving Timmy pills and making him swallow. 2) When a cat has a catheter, kitty litter needs to be avoided to keep the bits from going up, well, bits. I’ve shredded many newspapers these last few days. 3) Now that Timmy isn’t allowed to have dry food (UTI, um, yay), that’s what he wants to have, not the expensive canned food he’s supposed to have. 4) I don’t have to love a cat to lose sleep over him. And I certainly don’t have to like a cat to spend too much money on him. Use that half-life well, TimmyCat.
Then, Dwayne took Wes downtown to purchase armfuls of flowers, and the kids arranged them and surprised me with riots of colors.
I had settled into a short afternoon of outdoor puttering before my parents came over for an early dinner when Wes came out with my second breakfast:
The mystery of painting detritus left on the deck the night before was solved when Kyla gave me a watercolor of the calla lilies I had just planted days before (and therefore, were still looking as nice as they had in the garden section at McLendons). Isn’t it lovely?
Dwayne returned from one of my favorite restaurants, Sages, with dinner for four discerning adults, and a bag of Jack-N-the Box burgers for the kids. The weather was perfect, which is why we were able to set up an alfresco, socially distanced dining experience on the patio. We were able to talk my parents into a walk afterward, and I even got my Mothers Day’s pictures taken! I would love to continue bragging about how perfectly lovely Mothers Day was this year; however, there was absolutely payback. The Monday Hangover after good behavior came back full force.
Wes rode around the neighborhood on his hoverboard, stocking foot and carrying a piece of drainpipe he had spray painted earlier to make it resemble…something junkier? Notice I try not add “because” to any statement about Wes’s antics. Who wants to plumb those depths?
Piper ended up in a sundress, on the roof, holding Lion Rosie. Again, I don’t wish to add a “because” clause.
…everyone pilled up like ferrets watching Beast Masters. That’s good, hard discipline, Babe. 😏
We couldn’t find evidence that we started this tradition earlier than 2012 but Kyla and I are keen on keeping it up!
Kyla did 99% of the work, even if Wes gets pictorial credit, and made a simple bouquet of white lilacs and blue forget-me-nots for each neighbor before delivering them as anonymously as the Ring generation allows her to. She gets a high from it, and it was a perfect way to spent a “school at home” lunch break.
In another room, Piper and Timmy “do homework” together. (Piper has finally caught up with a month of homework. Timmy is going to fail middle school if he maintains these study habits.)
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