The Ends Get Moved Further Apart

Boycat has been struggling with feline idiopathic cystitis since early May. We've already done two rounds of antibiotics, pain-killers each time he flared up, and a full six weeks of buspirone.

He finished the last of his meds on Tuesday. All seemed like it was going well. On Friday morning, he started peeing only tiny amounts and licking himself again. Soon he was peeing outside his box.

We had a refill available for the buspirone and started him on that again Friday evening. He was in such obvious pain this morning and wouldn't/couldn't pee, so we made a flying visit to the emergency vet hospital to get him checked out.

Three hours and $182 later, he is home for the weekend with painkillers, anti-spasmodics and Cosequin. He doesn't have a blockage, and they gave him some subcutaneous fluids that helped him have a couple excellent big peeings. He's doing better now thanks to the fluids and his meds, but we have to go back to our regular vet early next week for a more complete work-up: x-rays, possible urine culture, etc. which means $$$$.

Sigh.

There is never a good time for these things to happen, but weekends are of course the worst (though I feel lucky and grateful that we have emergency vet services available). And for this to happen while I'm employed only part-time with not a lot of spare dough is of course not ideal, either. I just got a small "summer vacation" bonus from the website I write for, and I know now it's not going to be spent on something fun like a summer vacation.

But ... Boycat is family. I wouldn't consider NOT seeking treatment for him, even if I couldn't pay for it. I am grateful to have services available and to have money to pay for them, even if it means I'll be pretty broke in July. At least we got to come home with our cat and with medicines that will help make him more comfortable while we figure out if there is something behind all this. (As frustrating as it is, I do hope it is truly "idiopathic" and not something scarier like a tumor.)

There were several other folks there that were much worse off: a young couple whose dog had been attacked by a pit bull; a young woman whose cat has something similar to Boycat but who had to be admitted to the hospital for treatment and monitoring; an older couple who left the exam room crying, and without their pet. I'll take my big vet bill vs. not being able to bring my pet home, for whatever reason.

Update 7/7/2013: Boycat went for x-rays and a more complete work-up a couple days ago and they found nothing. It is truly feline idiopathic cystitis at this point. We're finishing up the meds from the most recent incident, and we're going to keep him on buspirone for a few months. We were advised to add additional water to his wet food, and were told to consider a type of wet food made specifically for cats with urinary tract problems if he has another flare up. Right now, we're relieved to find it's nothing serious, and we'll continue meds and watchful waiting, hoping for the best. 

Cat Pee and Other Cat Concerns

Some of you know that we had a pet emergency this week. Boycat started peeing blood on Thursday and the vet (whom we had never needed to see here in Philly, at least not yet) was kind enough to rush us right in.

The official diagnosis was Feline Idiopathic Cystitis, but lab tests showed multiple bacteria present as well, so he's on an antibiotic, a painkiller and because the problem appears to have been exacerbated by the noises of the ongoing construction (building-wide window replacement) taking place, an anti-anxiety pill for humans (and cats) called Buspar (buspirone).

I filled his Buspar prescription at Walgreen's. His bottle has his first and
last name, plus "The Cat." Cute.  :-) 

The painkillers are some tasty flavored chewable pills and he begs for those when I open the package.

He ate his antibiotic wrapped in turkey the first day, but apparently he's wise to us now. I got a Buspar down him using tuna and tuna water to disguise it, but we could not get him to take his antibiotic in food yesterday and had to resort to cat-pilling. Ugh. Such unpleasant (but very necessary) business. And since he's now attuned to the possible presence of pills in tuna, turkey, etc., it looks like we'll be doing it three times a day for a couple weeks. One of several videos I found helpful is below.

I just hope he starts feeling better soon. He was still peeing a bit of blood yesterday, and peeing only tiny amounts in spite of all the wet food, tuna water and bottled water he's been consuming. I never saw him lick his whizzer even once when he was healthy, but he's doing it all the time now, apparently 'cause it's in such pain. He's also leaving little pee spritzes in assorted non-appropriate locations around the house. (He never pee'd outside his box before, which would have been a sure sign of something wrong even without the bloody pee.)

Human friends, have you ever had cystitis/bladder infection/UTI? I remember being pretty miserable with it. You want to jump out of your skin, which is probably what Boycat has been feeling the last couple of days.

That being said, we have a list of household goods and clothing casualties that continues to grow. He pee'd on two pairs of my suede boots, both of which are probably not salvageable. Even if the bloody pee stains come out, the aroma probably will not. I do not want to be the person who causes everyone to ask, "Do you smell cat pee?" when I walk by in a pair of these boots. He also pee'd on (and in) my rainboots, so they're goners, as well as a pair of Mr. 42's flip-flops. A couple shirts and an afghan also got hit and will be taking a turn through the washer in the near future. I have newspapers down at the particular spot on the carpet that he's taken to spritzing. The smell of cat pee in our small apartment is pretty unpleasant and we're probably not done with the sprayings yet.  Nature's Miracle is on its way from Amazon.com as we speak.

To avoid future recurrences, the vet recommend we transition him to an all wet-food diet, so we're going to transition both cats at the same time. They already get periodic wet food as a treat and they like it, but both are very attached to their fancy-pants grain-free dry cat food. (Which I had just bought a big bag of, too. Damn the luck.)

On a brighter note, our new window installation was completed yesterday (hooray!) so Boycat's immediate perceived threats from strange noises and strange people are greatly diminished. He and Girlcat LOVE sitting in the new windows. We love the windows, too, since the old ones were almost completely rotten and we had to put plastic up in the winter due to the drafts. Plus they open all the way up, which is helping with the cat pee smell.

Bonus shot of Girlcat, just 'cause she's so pretty and hardly ever sits still for pictures:

Random Updates. Really Random.

The Stuff We Lost In the Move

One of our missing moving boxes from the move has been found, or some of it, anyway. It DOESN'T appear to be the box with the photos, but we're waiting for a little more info. If it's the clothes and shoes, we have already replaced 'em and don't have room to store much extra, so we probably won't worry about getting it back. From what we know so far, it's a partially-full box only, which means someone probably picked through it and took whatever they wanted already.

The Job Hunt

Still hunting for a job and trying not to panic. Still have a little time, too, before I have to panic, but not much. I didn't start job hunting until the end of October, due to the move trauma and needing some time to get settled, so I've only been at it four months, but still. Ugh. My daily routine nowadays consists of going through all the job boards and LinkedIn each day to see if anything good has been posted, then going through the career sites of my "target" companies and seeing if they have anything new, or if I can find any new target companies to add to the list. I usually find two or three worth bookmarking or applying for every day, but not always. I keep hearing about how you're supposed to network, all these ridiculous bullshit guerilla job search tactics you can try (sending a package with a coffee mug AND your resume to the recruiter, etc.) and I just cringe. That is so not me. I also think how annoyed I would be as a recruiter or HR professional if people did that. Granted, HR pro's usually have a different personality and goals than I do. Maybe they truly are not annoyed by those tactics somehow. Or maybe those tactics work if you're in some creative field like Advertising, or you're in an industry that thrives on entrepreneurs, like a tech start-up. The financial services and insurance industries are notoriously conservative in many regards and I suspect they are in this one, too. I'm adding Philly contacts to LinkedIn as I can find them, but without working, I honestly haven't met that many folks here yet. My handful of karaoke friends are it, pretty much, BUT ...

Friends

... Two friends I have known for awhile just moved to Philadelphia this week. Yes!  :-)  One is an old friend from Lincoln, and the other is this person's sweetheart, whom I met for the first time in 2011. And you know the old shampoo commercial from the 1970s:  "They told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on ...?"  Umm, no details I can share yet but something like that is possibly in the works.  If nothing else, it is nice to have a few more friends here.

Coding and Networking

And in other professional developments: I have thoroughly ramped up on my HTML skills and am taking a class this weekend to learn JavaScript. I hope to make some new contacts there and meet a few other cool folks here in Philly. The coding knowledge couldn't hurt, either. I'm sure I won't know enough after that to get hired as a website developer (though I already know enough to be able to maintain some corporation's blog or update their website), but what I'm hoping is I'll learn enough to decide if I am interested in a change in career direction, and have an aptitude for it, which could prompt future educational choices, too.  I live very close to an ITT tech school if I want to get a certificate in something technical, plus there are all the other great colleges here (Drexel, Temple, Penn, etc.) if I want to pursue a Master's in something.

Complacency and You

Which brings me to another important point for everyone, but especially my friends and readers who still work where I used to work: don't get complacent.

Part of why it's taking so long for me to find a job out here is due to the high unemployment rate.  Philly, at 10.1%, is higher than the national average of 7.8%, and much higher than Nebraska's 3.7%.

Part of it, too, I have to accept responsibility for because I let myself get comfy in a job that I thought I'd probably work at for the rest of my life, and that was the wrong thing to do. We've all seen the firings and layoffs as jobs move overseas and lines of business get dropped.  There is no guarantee you'll have a job there in the future, and you don't want to wait until you get laid off to start preparing for your next job.

I didn't put much emphasis on my own development the last few years there, and I know many of you also are not doing this. I am thankful I already have a college degree, and I can't emphasize this enough: if you didn't finish your degree yet, make plans to get back in school as soon as you can, especially since the company offers tuition reimbursement. If you find yourself without a job, you'll be competing against many other people who are also looking for a job but who also have at least a Bachelor's Degree, and guess who won't make the cut? These days, employers want a Bachelor's even for non-skilled positions like being a receptionist at a dentist's office, for pete's sake! Check out a few job postings if you don't believe me.

For those of you with a degree already: step it up in other ways. Get that resume dusted off and ready to go. Build your network on LinkedIn if you haven't already. Get trained as a Six Sigma Green Belt or Black Belt. Start sitting in on technical meetings and learning project management. Learn Access and Brio and SAP Business Objects and any other technology you can get your hands on. Learn another branch of the business (Life, Annuities, Variable, etc.). Take any opportunity  you can get to learn something new at the company's expense, or even your own if you can afford it. (Wanna learn some programming skills? I do recommend Code Academy to start and it's absolutely free. Learn some basic HTML and you can start adding web parts to that lovely SharePoint site we used!)

Cute Cat Photos

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox. Umm ... how about some animal cuteness to lighten the mood here? Girlcat and Boycat say hello!

Omaha Bucket List: Henry Doorly Zoo

We visited Henry Doorly Zoo for what is probably the last time yesterday.

Mr. 42 grew up in Omaha and visited more than me, but I had relatives here and visited several times throughout childhood. We also came together as adults, and with our niece and nephew. A visit to the zoo was also a highlight of the Nebraska stay of my former co-workers from India.

Voted the #1 Zoo on TripAdvisor.com, it is a delight any time of the year. Yesterday's cool temps made for a comfortable visit, though we could have done without the rain that kept us trapped in some indoor exhibits longer than we would have liked.  We also opted to skip some of the exhibits we had seen before (rainforest, butterfly pavillion, aquarium) in favor of seeing some other animals we liked more (apes and cats).

So . . . #4:  Visit the Henry Doorly Zoo.   Check!  Pics below.

Two more items to cross off the list, hopefully after today:  #5: Scatter the ashes of Mr. 42's parents and #6: Eat a Godfather's taco pizza.  These two things are related, though not in a gross way or any way that you might think.  If all goes well, I'll be back to explain tomorrow.

Preparing to Purge

We had a moving company provide an estimate for our move last week.  Less than we budgeted for (hooray!) but still more than I was thinking it would be, based on my parents' recent move (we have much less stuff than them and we are moving it a shorter distance).  But it's a good estimate and we'll probably go with it.

Before they came, we went through each room of our small apartment and tagged the things we knew we would not be taking:  dining room table and chairs (we never really liked these and want a different set); wine rack; four pleather storage cubes that have been thoroughly "cattened" (i.e. marked and/or destroyed by cats who crawl, leap, scratch and bite objects and/or people with complete disregard for the object's value or the victim's well-being); a fold-down sofa and fold-down chair that made a great guest bed, also cattened (and while we're on the subject, Boy Cat and Girl Cat thoroughly cattened the carpet here, too.  We'll be shelling out big bucks to have it replaced when we leave.  Sigh.).

For example, the fold-down sofa (and this is a leather [albeit, cheap bonded leather] sofa we purchased new in 2011):

Culprit #2 confesses but is defiant and says he'd do it all again

Culprit #1 denies all involvement

Not tagged but also not being moved: assorted books; clothing; shoes; small appliances; dishes; cookware; non-perishable foodstuffs; cleaning supplies; possibly some jewelry, handbags and perfume; possibly the opened contents of the liquor cabinet unless we manage to drink it up before we move. (And we're workin' on it, trust me!)

We've promised some things to our niece and her husband already, and anything that's really trashed or not useful is going to be thrown away, of course.  (I will not be donating any 50-lb. broken TV's to the local homeless shelter or Goodwill.   Ask Bobbi or Chad how they feel about those.)

I plan to start putting up the other items for my friends' consideration on Facebook or this blog.  Let me know if you see something you want--first come, first served.    :-)

And don't feel obligated to take anything.  Mr. 42 and I have worked hard over the years to de-clutter our lives and I certainly don't want to create more clutter for anyone else.