no good very bad day

and i got to sit by the window. okay, that joke only makes sense if you remember the kids book about someone's no good very bad day. there is a character named Becky who got to sit by the window on the way to school and this, along with many other terrible things, ruined the main character's day. i do that. i ruin days.

for instance! gertie's meds were pre-dosed. i had a weeks worth of syringes filled with the perfect dose of her morphine. i noticed yesterday that the remaining ones were looking less full. maybe it's some kind of denver desert no moisture air evaporation thing. so today, Gertie was awake. AWAKE all day. i went to pet her and she had some kind of reaction that i can only describe as very seizure looking-ish. what's worse is that it probably wasn't a seizure. it was more likey just a very acute pain reaction. ugh. poor kittykat. so tomorrow morning we go off for a check up and more feline morphine. her range of motion in her back end hasn't improved. but she *is* managing quite well. except for when i pet her and she goes into a fit of all-encompassing pain. um, sorry?

Moose seems to be living in some alternate universe where nothing can go wrong and doormats are dog toys. god love him.

a short video of the wobbles

here is a video documenting gertie's awesome wobbles. normally she has her e-collar on but i take it off when i am with her so that she may remember me as the torture device remover/food bringer instead of the torture device applier/medication forcer. note her position at the end of the video. this translates to "let me the eff out of here, warden lady".
and please excuse the state of the room. it was in mid-remodel until a barrage of beloved house guests and a kitty emergency happened. but anyways, in case you are wondering. yes, the walls will be orange because it will be my office and i like orange. and yes, the walls used to be red under the trim. it's a thin line with wall colors, but that red is too too much. srsly.

Let's go, Buffalo *clap. clap. clap clap clap*

Dudes. Hockey games are fun. Or maybe it is just that anything is fun when you get enough guys from Buffalo together. It's a strange phenomena that leaves my throat scratchy and my stomach sore from all of the laughing. and after the adventures of gertie, lord knows i could use some laughter.

it was also a very educational weekend. did you know that there are lizard people that enslave and/or eat humans in a 6 story bunker under Denver International Airport? it has something to do with the Mayan Calendar ending in 2012. Denver will become the new US capital and/or New World Capital. Also, the murals in DIA predict a very grim future, and it is all proved true by a part of the mural that depicts the twin towers burning. And this may or may not have something to do with the number 23 and/or the freemasons.

What i find most interesting about the above paragraph is that, with the exception of the lizard people thing and the predictive murals, i could pretty much buy the rest of it. and as much as i recognize the fact that upon reading this, one might decide i am a crazy person, i am not willing to rule out the possibilities of such planning and scheming and building. weirder things have happened. and if you don't believe me, please explain how W ended up being the American President for 2 full terms.

and while i am at it....i also believe in the possibility of bigfoot. if we overlooked 100,000 gorillas in africa for this long, then who is to say that there isn't some kind of North American gorilla that we haven't stumbled across yet? and seriously, if you were bigfoot, wouldn't you do your best to go undetected by humans? have you seen E.T.? Scientists bad!

i am just saying.

we went to an Obama rally but couldn't see a thing....well, except for the other 100,000 people there. To be in a sea of Obama supporters is a powerful thing. It felt good. i think it is that whole "hope" thing. it works for me.

here is something i am not feeling terribly hopeful about: Gertie, who is as high as a kite, wearing an e-collar, and essentially just broken, snuck out of her recovery room the other day. i am the presumabely smarter human who has nothing on her mind other than not letting gertie out and yet she still wins. she actually made it through 2 rooms before i caught her, too. she can hobble incredibly fast. i have no idea how we are going to be able to keep her inside. no idea.

maybe i need to hire some lizard people to work as gertie guards. i have not yet met a human slave who has escaped the DIA bunker. Those lizard people must be much better at this than i am. help.

it's sooo f-ing early in the morning. sun isn't up yet. but i am. i am just too excited to bring gertie home.

her surgery went well, in the sense that it is done. but the surgeon found a lot of hemorrhaging and a few puncture wounds in her diaphragm. also, it is not likely that her ACL was torn. it is more likely that it is just nerve damage. So between her fractured pelvis and the nerve damage, Gertie has a lot of healing to do all on her own. unfortunately, there is no guarantee that any of these things will just fix themselves right up...especially the nerve damage. the good thing is that even with all of her injuries untreated, gertie was still pretty able to get around, use the litterbox etc. granted, she was on kitty morphine....she probably could have done just about anything that crossed her little mind. oh well. we can only wait and see.


al is flying into town tonight. why? for a hockey game, obviously. the buffalo sabres are playing the denver avs tomorrow night and buffalo will be present and accounted for, with a little help from manhattan, raymond, and mill valley. i think there are 10 of us going. oh yikes. i wonder what i have gotten myself into. do hockey fans just punch random girls who don't really care about hocky anyways? let's hope not.

Gertie....part two

it had been 7 days AND it was in the 20's last night. i told neil this morning that i was going to go get her carrier (that she loves) from the neighbor who last saw her's house. he agreed. we both had given up hope. we only partially admitted that to each other but really...how could she make it a week with occasional freezing temperatures? well, she did. so there.

i had forgotten to pick up the can of stinky wet food i had left out for her. and thank god i am such a space case cos at about noon today, she showed up for a snack! i went outside and brought her in. she wasn't using her right rear leg and she was sooooo tired. she just limp/hopped to her favorite chair and gave me her best gravelly meow and she took a little nap like everything is so not a big deal.

she is such a faker.

so it was off to the vet for us. she had lost two of her ten pounds. oh AND she tore her ACL (just like Matilda! yay!). AND she fractured her pelvis. AND a bit of her bowels are squeezing through a hole in her abdominal wall. BUT, with some excessive surgery starting at the butt crack of dawn tomorrow morning, she should be just fine.

Gertie most likely battled it out with a moving vehicle of sorts and she f-ing kicked its a$$. or at least she survived and that most definitely makes her a winner in our book.

She's got the dreaded e-collar on and she has very little control over her back end but she actually seems to be in pretty good spirits. that must be some stellar pain medication she is on!

"don't you dare laugh"

gertie

i am a total a-hole.
gertie did not come home thursday night and she hasn't been home since.

gertie has been spending the entire three years of her life trying to get outside. if i were to estimate, i would say that she has "gotten out" at least 50 times. so we moved here to a very quiet street and i started letting the cats go out during the day. jules sleeps on the back deck. midge stays inside. gertie would explore...but come home when we called her or when we rattled her treats. not thursday, though.

gertie is the reason neil and i decided to move in together. also, she snuggles with moose. midge hates her. i love her.

we put up at least 50 signs and have gotten two calls. one was someone who saw gertie wednesday. oops! had to update the signs on that one. i got my hopes so high and then....boom, crushed. and one was a lady who has a different calico stalking her porch. we put an ad on craigslist and are checking the shelters.

gertie does this thing. when moose chases her, she just scrunches down and lets him lick her on the head when he gets to her. i am hoping she didn't have the same reaction to a fox encounter.

please think good thoughts of her return. we are trying to remain optimistic, but it's hard when she's just so obviously Not Here.