I’m still working on catching up from my blogging break, so here are a few more recent happenings.
Let’s get the not-so-good news out of the way first. Frankie is having some health problems. At 14, he’s an older kitty, so it’s
concerning. He had an abdominal
ultrasound in January due to some unexplained vomiting. It showed some minor thickening of his
intestinal lining, which could be indicative of lymphoma. After talking with Dr. D, we chose not to
pursue exploratory surgery and biopsies; the outlook for treating cats with
lymphoma isn’t great, and we’d rather give Frankie a good quality of life. Dr. D put him on some different medication,
and the vomiting stopped.
Last month, the excessive vomiting started again, so we
took Frankie back to the vet. Dr. D did
some x-rays and a lot of bloodwork and determined that Frankie is in the early
stages of kidney disease, lymphoma is still a real possibility, and he also has
thyroid disease. Out of all of those,
thyroid disease is the easiest/least invasive to treat, so Frankie is now on
thyroid medication. Dr. D also adjusted
his dose of some other medications, and the vomiting has stopped. Frankie goes back on the 27th to
have his thyroid levels checked again.
He has lost some weight, but he’s eating and seems to be
happy. Frankie still plays and likes to
get into things, so as long as he’s happy and has a good quality of life, we’re
happy. We’ll continue to treat his
thyroid issues and go from there when he has his appointment later this
month. With any luck, he still has quite
a few good years ahead of him.
In other news, it has been cold and insanely windy
here. Everyone at work has been running
space heaters, and this morning, there were lots of trashcans blown over when I
was leaving for work.
One of the local animal shelters has been asking for extra
blankets since it has been so cold. It
has been nice to see people step up and drop off and/or ship blankets. It just shows how much people working
together can do.
Our local sheriff’s office did a women’s self-defense class
last week. It was a great class! They did it at a community center, and
several female deputies taught it. It
was a good mix of teaching situational awareness and teaching and practicing
specific self-defense techniques. I
definitely learned some things.
One of my coworkers is retiring this month, and we had his
going away party last week. We did a
potluck and ended up with tons of food.
I brought macaroni and cheese.
We’ve also managed to squeeze in some Christmas fun. One of the churches does a fundraiser event
that’s a journey to Bethlehem. They have
people in costume, live animals, and tons of props to recreate walking through
Bethlehem. Nick’s family used to go
every year. I went for the first time
last year. This year, our neighbors went
with us. It was a lot more crowded this
year, but we got to listen to Christmas music (which I love) while we waited
for our turn. It was fun going through with
a bigger group this time. We also drove
around and looked at Christmas lights.
There’s a subdivision where almost everyone goes all out on the lights
and decorations, and it’s so fun to drive through it. This is a Pixabay picture since I don’t think
I’d be able to get good pictures from the car.
Finally, I’ll leave you with this funny picture of
Charlie. He seems to have no concept of
his size, and yesterday, he spent quite a while trying to stuff himself into
this box. I don’t think he ever figured
out why he couldn’t get in the box. He
definitely looked cute trying!
