So we shaved the cat to help her with her knot situation and to get to these odd growths the vet keeps burning off and she keeps growing. And then I bathed her. And then Raven bit me.

I now know for sure the difference between Flora's play bites and a cat's real bite.

There's a toof-hole on the bottom of the middle joint of my thumb, and another one directly over it, on top. It was surprising because I actually heard when she bit, the sound skin makes when teeth pop through it.

I'd always complained that Flora bit too hard. My tune has suddenly changed.

I don't know how far she got, it didn't bleed much, I ran it under water immediately and then washed my hands. I cannot, however, touch the top of my thumb at all, not even brush it and I have to type carefully using my other thumb wholly for the space bar as I tend to use the bitten thumb for the space bar alone.

I think my cat might be a mutant with crazy poison. My entire hand aches too and a little bit up my arm.

I'm not upset at her at all though. She was scared, being man handled, and not happy. I probably would have bit a bitch too :D

p.s. our cat looks like it got raped by a set of clippers held by drunken sheep shearers.

The short of it: almost 700$ spent to have the final decision be that the diabetes is probably an underlying symptom of either Cushing's disease or some sort of growth disease.

For those of you curious, here's a good link about Cushing's Disease: http://www.cat-world.com.au/CushingsDisease.htm

The test for Cushing's can only be done in a certain state, which I have forgotten already due to all the other details running around in my head. The test is, also, apparently very very expensive as well as all the other tests they'd have to run to pinpoint what is specifically wrong with Raven.

And then of course, there's the high chance that after doing all those tests, all of them show up negative and we'd have to begin another round of expensive tests.

The medication to treat Cushing's would be roughly another 100$ a month on top of roughly that much for her insulin and needles. We could treat her for Cushing's, but what if it's not that? What if the meds don't work? Medications for cats with Cushings is vastly different than the medications which work for dogs with the same disease.

It all comes down to money, and I hate it, because we really cannot do anything more now than make her comfortable and wish for the best. That's not exactly what I'd hoped for.

Wednesday, Raven spent the night at the Vet Clinic for tests and her first Blood Curve.

She didn't respond well at all to the first insulin test: she was given 2 units of Humulin N, human insulin. There was little to no reaction satisfactory enough for the Doctor to feel comfortable with continuing treating her with Humulin N.

He said he would like to attempt Vetsulin, as a certain porcine type insulin would have been his recommendation but they stopped making it very recently. He worried that there may be underlying problems due to the fact fur isn't growing back, but said wasn't as important as the apparent diabetes. We brought her home Thursday night just to chillax and then brought her back in this morning.

The doctor spent today on the phone speaking to an internal medicine specialist which then referred him to an endocrinologist who then refereed him to another even more specific specialist than neither Shawn nor I pronounce or remember. The decision was to try Glargine on Monday, and let her rest and recoup this weekend.

So that's where we are with Raven. Clavamox for a UTI, Feline Diabetes for sure, yet they think she's resistant to some insulin , but no idea yet what dosage of insulin.

I'll be posting in a few pics of the new room--so forgive me for double posting and if you don't care, stay tuned for pics of the room and carpet!

Test results from Raven's last check up at the vet have returned. There's sugar in her urine--Raven's diabetic.

We'll be learning how to inject our cat with needles full of insulin very soon.

She also has a urinary tract infection we'll be needing to get antibiotics for.

( Emo Mel is emo. )

Raven has gone from 19 pounds of cat to 16 pounds of kitty.

She is missing even more fur now up to the back of her head. There are several burned holes/places in her skin that we have to clean and watch, but they didn't give her a lion cut, which I thought they might.

Since it never grew back originally, I suspect that our cat will forever be a shaved...cat. (Ahahahaha, you thought I was going to say the other, weren't you?)

Crappy cell phone pic of preparing for vet visit day before:



( Here are some crappy cell phone pics of today's Vet visit )

We take Raven to the vet again today.

Pretty much for the same reason we took her the last time. She has these odd bumps--they grow, and when they grow from just a bump they end up looking just like little brains. Tightly coiled bundles of spirals and hoops that are her skin, and they begin to loosen and break as they grow larger. If we aren't careful when we pet her, they break apart. We know they're skin because when they break on their own, they bleed and scab.

When we brought her to the vet the last time, they took a sample of a lump on her butt and a sample of one of the 'brains' as I like to call it. The vet seemed completely nonchalant, and when they called us a week later to tell us things were fine--they still were.

So (back then) we brought her in, they shaved nearly her entire back and burned off what they could. She seemed like a different cat after that. More energetic and happy.

We're bringing her back because all the little ones they couldn't get before, have regrown. All the hair they shaved off hasn't grown back. At all. Not a single bit. She's been on a strict diet to lose weight for a year, and I don't think she's losing it.

I don't know about you, but if I were covered in bumps and scabs I'd be a might uncomfortable, and that's what we're worried about. We'd like to see her bump-less, but these things keep cropping up. Again, the Vet seems pretty casual about it, but the comfort of our cat, especially at this age, is most important.

It's a good thing Raven doesn't care what she looks like. I'm pretty sure there's going to be more shaving involved in her future.

That is what my sleeping habits and patterns have become. It is not, however, due to insomnia which has generally been an off and on problem for most of my adult life.

It is due, in many great parts, to a large eighteen pound cat we put on a diet the end of last year.

It can start any time at night, some times it starts as early as midnight, some times we catch a break and it starts around 5am. Most nights, it starts around 1am to 3am, and is constant until one of us says some rather nasty crap and gets out of bed to feed the land beast we call Raven.

The ritual for the cat begins with her claws on the side of our bed which she uses to haul herself up. The edge of the bed she uses is now a mess of pit marks, claw swipes and the california King cotton sheets are plucked from her claws; making smooth look nubbed. Once she manages to haul herself onto the bed, she begins her rounds. These start at the feet.

Since Raven is some how physically unable to retract her seven foot long claws, having her walk over our feet every morning is a study in how well we can stand bleedingdeathpain. See figure A:

Figure A


She used to do this on our heads, but I grew wise to this, so as you can see with Figure A, I scoot down the bed every night I crawl into it. I sacrifice my feet for my head--I figure thinking is just as important as walking.

Once she is thoroughly finished leaving new holes within our ankles, she makes a 3/4 circut around the bed, trundling up the left side and across the head of the bed. The delightful part to remember while picturing this is that she is an old cat, and tends to bring gifts with her when she gets up on the bed: some times litter is clumped on the back of her legs, some times my hair. It's always an adventure in ew, great, now I have to wash the entire bed again. Thanks. While she is doing this, she will often sniff for any random pieces of food that may have mysteriously rained down from heaven and landed on our pillows. The approximate sound I can compare Raven's sniffing too is the sound of an elephants trunk shoved into your ear. See figure B:

Figure B


Now that I am good and wide awake, contemplating honorable suicide or becomming a nun, Raven will gracefully heave herself to the floor, wait anywhere from five to ten minutes and do it all again.

My sleep at night has turned into a series of unfortunate naps. I long the for the days of sleep that lasted two hours or more before some sort of interruption--Flora, get off the ceiling fan. No, Flora, the blinds are not a jungle gym. Flora! Stop knocking the computer on the floor!

For now I guess I'll just have to stock up on really good band aids and get used to curling into a fetal position in the middle of my bed while the demented snuffleupagus that is my cat shark-circles around us and I wonder what it's like to get a full night's sleep.

--you'd think that I was starving her TO DEATH.

Ah, the sounds of a fat cat an hour before feeding. She does this anywhere from 4-6 until we feed her at 6pm. Which has been her feeding time for nearly as long as Shawn has had her.

Some of you may remember my post a while back about Raven, our getting-elderly-pee machine.

The issue wasn't that Raven was going outside the litter box purposefully, the issue was it seemed to be such a struggle to get into the box, she'd hang half her ass off the side (because she'd only go as far as RIGHT at the front) and then pee. Without squatting. So of course, there she'd be IN the litter box, peeing...out of it.

We've mostly solved that issue with a random find at a local pet store. This experiement has been running since a few days after asking advice and I gotta say, it's been pretty kick ass.

This dog litter box.





Yes. Dog. I am so far behind the 'pet times,' I guess. I hadn't a clue that they were making dog litter boxes. The one we have as pictured above is roughly as deep on the back and sides as the largest cat litter box, but without the huge wall of plastic at the front for Raven to jump over.

In fact, I'm not sure if you can tell by the picture, but there's a little plastic piece that fits over the opening that can be removed too--forming a lip that's nearly flush with the floor. Maybe no higher than an inch or two. Essentially, any cat with joint problems or too old to jungle-gym all over the place just to go poop can waltz right in and go.

With the old litter box, I was cleaning up her pee on the mat (a little blue mat that picks up some of the litter from their paws) four or five times a day. Now, with the newer, lower doggy litter box I might catch her having an accident once a week. With the added bonus of the puppy training pads around the front, I have even less clean up than before.

This dog litter box was a large--apparently you can order much, much larger ones. This will set you back $30 dollars, but, for Shawn and I, that really wasn't much to ensure our ol' kitty comfort and ease. Flora took to it in seconds too. So that's one worry out of the way.

It's heavy duty plastic and really durable so far, even with all the scratching and clawing. It's surprisingly light and easy to pick up when empty and clean. I really, really, really recommend this instead of the usual cat litter boxes if you have room for it and don't mind the fact there's no cover for it.

In other pet news: Some of you may recall that I was trying to move Nugget from a mostly seed and some pellet diet, to an complete pellet diet. We figured out what was wrong with the first set of pellets: they came in three colors, two shapes. Red, green as little beads and yellow/beige as banana shaped as well as smelling like fruit. He would eat all the red and green and leave the banana. So when he ran out of the little round red and green pellets he'd behave as if he were starving to death, tweeting and chirping and chirping and tweeeeeeting--leaving the 'naner shaped ones. So we didn't get it at first, as his food bowl would still be pretty full.

Eventually, we caught on and changed him over to Zupreem pellets. These pellets are round only with pieces of real dried fruit mixed in. He eats all of them without issue and we haven't fed him any seeds at all for over a week and a half. I'm very relieved we figured things out, as we realized that seed diets were simply awful for birdies.

And that's it on the pet front!

For the tl;dr crowd: Cat's peeing less due to a doggy litter pan and the bird's now eating an all pellet & fruit diet. Mel's a crazy animal lady. Blahblahblah.

P.S RANDOMRANDOMRANDOM: MY CAMERA WASN'T DELIVERED FRIDAY SO IT MIGHT COME TODAY AND I'M STILL EXCITED OH LAWD.