Apropos of Nothing v.5

Oh, your sweaters are classic! I showed Rick-I don't think I would've gotten him into it. He looked and asked where you'd even find such a thing.

One year for xmas my mom bought me a decorated xmas sweater, bright red, with a giant tree with ornaments (beads, naturally) all over the front of it. Not quite as bad as these, but enough. I think it even had shoulder pads. My mother is very sensitive about gifts (she will even deliberately NOT include gift receipts) so I had to suck it up and wear the blasted thing (at least while I was around my mom) for a couple of years until (oh, so sad...) I "lost" it when I moved.....

Here's something that was in the Columbian (local paper) today:

Firefighters rescue boy whose tongue stuck to pole

Wednesday, December 9 | 10:55 a.m.

BY MARISSA HARSHMAN
COLUMBIAN STAFF WRITER

Firefighters were called to a Vancouver middle school this morning to rescue a boy whose tongue was stuck to a flag pole.

Clark County Fire District 6 firefighters responded to Alki Middle School, 1800 N.W. Bliss Road, at about 9 a.m.

A firefighter/paramedic used warm water to free the boy's tongue. The boy was treated with hot chocolate and cookies. He did not need further medical attention.

Fire District 6 said it "strongly advises people to not put their tongue on a metal pole during extremely low temperatures -- even if someone triple-dog dares you to -- because it will get stuck."

LOL! That's a bad idea that will never stop happening. What is it about sticking tongues to frozen metal that seems appealing? Silly kids. I'm surprised that nobody knew to use warm water- way to waste the Fire Department's time!

Oh, and our sweaters came from Goodwill and Value Village. I wasn't about to go out and buy something new. (though I did see some that would have fit right in at Ross the other day... hehe.)

Reminds me of the scene in Bridget Jones's Diary where Colin Firth (Mr. Darcy) is at a cocktail party wearing a "jumper" his mother bought for him.

It's the whole triple-dog-dare thing.

Pony the sweaters are priceless. Too funny!

Those sweaters are truly ugly! Nice job with the ugliness!

Obviously that child who got his tongue stuck as never seen 'A Christmas Story'. He'd know better if he had.

apropos of nothing, and on a sad note, keep a good though for my kitty Crookshanks. We just found him outside (rather than in his warm area) huddled in a corner by the house, crying. He could barely move, although we see not obvious wounds. He has a bit of a scrape above one eye, but I cannot see a puncture, although I think it looks swollen. We have no idea how long he had been there, or even why he was there. I am worried that he is not going to make it through the night so we can get him to his vet. He is having trouble using his front legs and cannot seem to walk. He is calm when I hold him and does not seem to be in pain when we move him around and pick him up, but he was very, very cold and we have no idea how long he had been out there. He has a heated area that he can come and go from at will. I've had some bad 'feelings' about him lately, but nothing specific. In the back of my mind I've wondered if he was going to get cancer for some reason. Here he is on a better day. He is 9 years old.

Oh no - there must be a pet emergency room in your area somewhere? Poor kitty.

Cats get pretty septic pretty fast and it sounds like he's hypothermic. If you can get him to the ER, they can rule out trauma and give him antibiotics with fluids to support him so you can figure it out. That would be a pretty quick onset of symptoms for cancer, imo.

And if he's in pain, then I wouldn't wait overnight. They can give him meds for that at the ER.

I don't know how close this is to you. If you call your vet, I'm sure their message give the number and location of an ER.

Poor baby!!

http://www.theaec.com/

I second that an abscess can build silently & then just knock them out. Is there ANY swollen area on him?

Hang, on Crookshanks, hang on! Use one of your 9 lives.

Another thing to look for -- the most beloved cat of my life, Habiba, was only 12 when she went into seizures & died after being resuscitated. I had begun to think that something was not right, as you were, but couldn't put my finger on it -- but turns out she had a heart problem that was causing blood clots & finally a large one lodged in her leg arteries & her lungs filled with fluid. In her case, too, she couldn't walk after the clots hit.

I'm hoping that they're in the ER and that they can make him comfortable. I have this vision of him outside in this weather and not being able to call for help. Poor baby . . .

He does not appear to be in pain at all, but I am sure he is hypothermic. He is asleep on a warm , not hot, heating pad with covers and appears to be resting. We will take him to the vet first thing in the morning if he is still with us. He does not appear to be suffering and stopped crying the minute we got him inside and I was holding him. We cannot afford to go to extraordinary lengths to get treatment for him, unfortunately. It's not easy to think about that, but if he is extremely ill, he will have to be put down. I think there must be something wrong besides the hypothermia because we can't figure out why he would have been out there in the first place.
I'm going to check in on him and then go to bed. I'll let you know what happens.

Katie, there is no way we can take him to the ER. It would cost us a fortune. Sometimes people have to make heartbreaking choices. This is one of those times.

This message was edited Dec 9, 2009 10:42 PM

Please, morning, come in time for Crookshanks.
Pixy, if you take him to the ER, I will pay the bill, I can't take this sort of thing.

The base charge at the emergency vet near me is $80.

The Tacoma one Kathy listed charges the same......


This message was edited Dec 9, 2009 11:11 PM

That's not so much! Nine years old is just a baby. I lost one at that age from kidney failure, but if we had caught it early enough, he would have lived.

C'mon Crookshanks, c'mon ... breathe ... live ..

:-(

I agree, not too much, and way too young! C'mon Crookshanks!

He's not on death's door, folks. I'm trying not to over react here so please help me out. He is resting comfortably and just willingly drank some warm water. When we found him he was alert enough to be crying loudly or we would not have found him until morning. There is no obvious sign of trauma - no bleeding, no broken bones, etc. He is not in pain. I have palpated him all over his body and he does not resist it. He is sleeping but he looks at us when we pet him. I think he is conserving his energy. He looks better now than he did when we first brought him in and his body feels warmer. I think he got seriously cold, which causes all kinds of symptoms like what we were seeing, including weakness. If he were not improving, I would bite the bullet and take him to the emergency vet.
Regardless of the outcome tonight, he will be at the vet's first thing tomorrow. I don't know why I keep thinking he has cancer but it has been on my mind for awhile. He has been seen by the vet recently for shots and was given a clean bill of health, but cancer many times cannot be found until it is too late, especially in cats.
Again, I can't explain it, but it will not surprise me if he has cancer, in which case, our regular vet is the appropriate choice.
Now I really have to go to bed. Just keep a good thought for him. No need to stay up worrying. We have plenty of that to go around.

Pixy, I just read this thread. Here's good thoughts coming your way. Try to get some sleep.

I hope he's okay, Melissa. I know what a hard thing this is. We'll just hang onto hope that he'll be fine. Let us know how it goes in the morning.

I have been here in Spirit, but have had little to say these past 5 weeks except ouch! I messed up my back on Nov 2 changing the battery in the smoke detector . (stretched a bit to much to reach the vaulted ceiling) . It was on the mend pretty quickly but really did a number on it a week later picking up my 4 lb Chihuahua when Feisty cat had her cornered. That was a nasty one. Spent the entire night in pain and with muscle spasms. It so reminded me of the wonderful 15 hours of back labor i had before my first daughter was born but this time it was with no epidural and no baby in the end.
Finally got some meds from my DR the following morning..but man I sure do not want to go through that again,especially alone. The drive to the pharmacy was the longest one mile drive I have ever taken. It took at least 20 minutes to get out of bed. Feeling better but not quite 100% yet. I sure hope soon as I have been going crazy not being able to do any garden work or taking any pictures.
On a happier note, my eldest daughter is back from her culinary internship on Jekyll Island GA and has already secured a Chef job in the next town over. They seem to be very impressed with her talent and she loves it. The only down side is that she is working 40 hours a week and does not have time to cook me something.! LOL!
My youngest will be home from college tomorrow and I am also excited about that.

Pixy..hope your kitty will be ok.

Bea!! So sorry about your back. I did a very similar thing by picking up a 90 lb dog and twisting just slightly to put her in the car. I had never had such pain - it almost made me pass out. I, too, had to get home and then get to the pharmacy to get the pain meds. But thank goodness for them. Did you pull a muscle, do you think?

I emailed with Shelly today. She's doing great. The only reason she's not on DG is that she doesn't have a new computer yet. But when she does get one, she expects to be back with us. And yes, she's been doing her landscaping work in this weather.

Brrr!!!

Pixy, Best wishes coming your way for your kitty.... be strong Crookshanks! And hugs to your worried Mommy....

Bea, What a rotten thing to have to suffer through. Glad you are feeling better...back pain is absolutely no fun. It is great that you have your daughter back close to you. I know you were happy for her when she left, but know that you missed her as well, so it is good that you have her close to home again.

Ouch, Bea... that sucks. Take it real easy even as you feel better. It's too easy to set yourself back when you're recovering from a nasty injury like that.

Well, Crookshanks is gone, playing with Abby and Drizzle, our other pets that passed on years ago. He was alive this morning but looked the same. We took him to the vet first thing and he was dying already when we got there. I just wanted to know why and had already come to terms with losing him to some extent. After examining him and giving him something to pass peacefully the doctor said he thought it was possible that it was a diaphragmatic hernia. I guess this can be caused by trauma but can also be caused by jumping off something the wrong way and landing hard. It may have taken some time for the damage to cause noticeable problems and by the time we found him last night, it would have been too late for a good outcome with surgery because it appeared that there was too much swelling and Crookshanks could not walk. I still don't know how he got outside. The doctor thinks that there was swelling on the brain and suggested that this would not bode well for a good outcome. Also, what I had attributed to being out in the cold, the fact that I could not get his body warm, he attributed to the dying process. I had wondered about that but still felt like I had to keep him warm
Had we been able to catch this early, like a few days ago even, he may have been saved, but we did not know until it was too late. In my own mind, I think this must have been why he was looking thin to me. I thought he was losing weight for some reason and kept checking to see that he was eating, which he appeared to be.

I talked to the vet about whether we should have taken him in last night, whether that would have made a difference because that was a huge struggle for us. He said that it was likely they would have offered to put him down then, or they would have offered to try surgery. But from the sound of it to him, by the time we found him, the outcome was grim because apparently the brain was affected by the swelling and this did not bode well. We could have put him through surgery, but his chances of survival were not good.

The thing about cats is they don't show symptoms until it's too late sometimes. And here's the other thing that's wierd. I've been thinking for about 2 months that we were going to lose him. I spent more time with him lately and petted him more because I had this feeling he wouldn't be with us long. Poor kitty. We will miss his sweetness.

Oh no... poor little guy. I'm so sorry, Melissa. Losing a pet always hurts so bad. And it's true, they're so good at hiding that they're sick until it's just too late. I dearly wish we could actually speak with them so we could know what's really happening. Hugs to you, my friend.

Sleep well, sweet Crookshanks. You were loved.

I am so sorry, Melissa. Just remember the 9 years of love that Crookshanks gave you.

My heart goes out to you Melissa. Loosing a beloved pet is difficult. You gave him a good life and he was very loved. Crookshanks will live on in your memory.

Pixy so sorry for your loss. What a sad thing to happen.

Still not sure if it was a pulled muscle, pinched nerve or just getting old (or combo of all three) ..but I sure do not want to go through this again. Still am stiff at times an walk like an old lady..but I can now tie my sneakers and pick up things I drop. Yippie!! Now when I can carry a shovel and dig I will be happy.

Pixy, so sorry. At least you were able to make his last hours comfortable and safe. I'm sure he felt very loved.

It's quite true about cats being able to go from fine to very ill really fast-scary fast. Years ago, my Brutus had a perfect exam in June and was diagnosed with mouth cancer in September...And, I know exactly what you mean about having a sense something's off. I'd been feeling that way about Sophie this summer and took her in. Turns out, she's developing kidney failure but we caught it before it was too far advanced so we're trying to keep her stable and retard the progression.

Bea, ow! Glad you're starting to be on the mend, hope it clears up the rest of the way quickly!

Oh, Pixy. Try not to second-guess yourself. Try to be thankful that you found him out there & that he didn't die like that.

Very sad, Melissa. I'm glad he's not hurting anymore and is, as you say, playing with Abby and Drizzle.

Pixie, so sorry to hear about your beloved kitty. He was very handsome. Hugs for you.

Thanks everyone. I think it's just hitting me tonight. He really was so very sweet and dear, always butting his head against my hand in the garden. Yes, summerkid, I am thankful we found him. He died surrounded by love and I held him for a long time last night. He became peaceful as soon as I had him in my lap.
sue,, I hope you can keep your kitty well for a long time.

I am so sorry to hear that your dear kitty Crookshanks is gone, but also glad you had that last evening with him to hold and comfort him in his passing. I know you did what was best for him. You gave him a loving home and a warm place to lay his head when it was close to his time. It was probably better that he had that last night in your home rather than rushing to the vet when all was said and done, because, as your vet suggested, it may have just been time to say goodbye yet sooner. It hurts so much when you lose a kindred spirit. He was a special one alright. My heart goes out to you and your family.

I am not convinced there is a heaven for humans, but I have no doubt that heaven exists for our animals. So Abby and Drizzle now have a new friend in cat heaven.

Oh, people deserve a heaven too. I might see my cat Habiba there, because how can it be heaven for her until I am there?

Pixy, so sorry to hear about your beautiful kitty. My heart goes out to you.

Thanks, everyone.

Way too cute:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErMWX--UJZ4&feature=player_embedded

If you haven't heard the original:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDftOxHLN98&feature=player_embedded

Bahaha! OMG a hummingbird just thought my bright red hair was a feeder. He zoomed up and hovered right by my head for a few seconds, then I swear he gave me a scornful look before he buzzed off to the feeder on the porch. I'm lucky he didn't stick his beak in my ear. LOL!

Hummingbird wings are very LOUD when they're right by your ear... hehehe.