Intermission (aka “Let’s Go Out To The Lobby And Get Ourselves A Snack”)

Some of you may not know that I take my birthday/Labor Day Weekend/Armageddon/Saint Alvis’ Day seriously. This is a time to celebrate: a time to drink for days/nights on end; a time to fight that beast named “hangover” with a potent mix of alcohol and bad food; a time to forget about responsibilities. In that spirit, I took some much needed vacation time and am currently at home attempting to enjoy my “vacation” while I can.

The problem? Growing up and the responsibilities that come with it.

A little backstory: Our original cat, Denali, had taken to pissing on our formal living room carpet. We hadn’t discovered this until the deed had been done for quite some time (which shows you how much time we spend in the “formal dining room”). About a month or so later, we brought Ellie into our home.

Now, I’m not sure if Denali ever got over the stress of moving to new digs, and throwing a new cat into the mix completely fucked her up, but she continued to piss in the same general area of the formal dining room. After returning from Pottsville, we found some fresh cat piss areas.

I’m on vacation, but still at home, so understandably I’m the one to take the cats to the vet. Ellie has been sneezing a bit since we brought her home (even after a series of amoxycilin doses), and her head/ears were very warm to the touch, so we thought it was best to seek professional advice. I figured that killing two birds would be best. If we take both cats, simultaneously, we’ll surely save more money that two separate trips, right?

Nope.

$45 per “visitation” later, we kind of find out our cats are both sick.

Now, understand that the vet is a trained, licensed, medical professional. I’m no smarter than he. He managed to “empty Denali’s bladder” for testing, which sounded as close to someone fucking/annihilating a cat as I’ve ever imagined. He also looked, and I stress “looked” as in “used his eyeballs to give the cat a once over”, at Ellie and determined there was some kind of cat herpes.

SIDE NOTE: 95% of all cats have herpes. Some just don’t show signs. On a related and eerily similar note, 95% of all humans have herpes simplex 2 (aka cold sores). These numbers were both given to my by the vet. How a vet got to successfully moonlight as a statistician is beyond me.

The doctor recommended, and by “recommended” I mean “charged us $25 for”, an offshoot of amoxycilin for bladder infection. Denali had some problems in her pee similar to a urinary tract infection, which kind of explains the whole “pissing on a rug” situation. Cats often associate the litter box/the room it’s in with the pain that comes from a urinary tract infection. Hence, they will piss anywhere else when they contract this problem.

See, I’m fucking smart and shit.

So, the vet gave me this liquid medicine for Denali, and prescribed L-Lutine (a common amino acid vitamin in pill form) for Ellie’s “herpes” or whatever. I took the cats home (a trip in itself), and stopped at the local Kroger’s for the L-Lutine and wet cat food.

The vet said that Ellie would probably take more to the medicine if I crushed up half a pill and laid it on top of wet food. Now, we don’t feed our cats wet food. Still, him being a doctor and all, I bought a shit ton of Kroger’s wet cat food for Ellie.

After coming home, crushing up the pill, and disbursing it upon the wet cat food, Ellie seemed to like it. Denali was a pain and a half to give the dropper full of medicine to, however, but I finally got it done.

Back to my “vacation”, right? I’ve got a case of Yuengling quarts to drink!

Not so much.

Ellie proceeded to puke on the carpet a few hours later, after showing signs of lethargy not common in a kitten. Upon investigation of the house, we found a few more “puke piles” that hinted we may have a problem.

This morning, after a night of “vacationing” alone, HFB-D wakes me to say she can’t get Ellie to eat the wet food. The cat will smell her bowl, then proceed to walk over and eat Denali’s dry food.

I walk downstairs and am immediately greeted by three piles of cat puke. After searching the vicinity, I find another pile. I clean them up and decide that Ellie can’t handle either the medicine or the wet food. Her dry food is no problem, as she devours it like normal.

I start wondering whether Denali is puking as well, as she is so vehement against the dropper medicine. As we had seen Ellie puke, we attributed all of this to her. Lo and behold, as HFB-D was getting ready for work, Denali started puking.

So, now we’re in a quandary: are both medicines making our cats sick? Is it the Kroger-brand cat food? Is this vet even a vet, or some dude who’s dating a vet’s assistant and was jokingly wearing a doctor’s outfit? Also, when the fuck does my vacation start?

Long story short: I’ve got shit to deal with. Until it’s settled, and until I get some much-needed photos from Trent’s camera, I’ll be on hiatus. Again.