Monica

Last night's D&D game was very good. We had good role-playing, we learned something more about the world that's important, and the encounters were well-balanced. The cliff-hanger we ended on, though, prompted the "ack! how can we deal with that?!" reaction, which probably means the GM has done a good job. We'll find out next time. :-)

Tomorrow is an SCA event, the Academy (a day of classes). There are some interesting classes on the schedule. We have crashers coming tonight, people we haven't seen in a while. Should be fun.

CompUSA hasn't called about my computer yet, so today I called them. They're working on it. Can they say anything more specific? No, but they'll have the tech call this afternoon. That was at 10am; I think "afternoon" has safely come and gone by now, and still no call. I hope it's ready for pickup on Sunday.

It must be rough to be a thirsty cat (or dog, probably). In watching Eric drink water earlier, I realized that cats don't have "slurp", only "lap". And the tongue just isn't that big, y'know? As someone who drinks around a gallon of water a day, often more, I cringe in sympathy.

Baldur: 18.0 lb (a slight drop from last year)
Embla: 10.1 lb
Erik: 8.125 lb (lost a pound)

I think this is the first time in his life that Baldur has lost weight from one checkup to the next. This is cause for celebration, though the drop was only about three-quarters of a pound. I'll take what I can get. The vet was unwilling to estimate what his weight should be, however.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time Erik has lost weight; last year he lost most of a pound from the previous year, and this year he lost a pound from last year. He's not a large cat to begin with. I had actually thought he was gaining a little weight this past year, but I was wrong. (I actually asked that they weigh a 10-pound bag of food, to make sure the scale wasn't off. It wasn't.)

The vet took a blood sample from Erik and they're going to run the standard suite of tests. I should hear back in several days (maybe by the end of the week). His only other blood test was two years ago, when he showed elevated levels of calcium -- enough to call for a dietary change, but not enough to worry about cancer, they said at the time. (Tonight's vet concurred with that.) So we'll see what the level is this time. The physical exam was just fine -- nothing suspicious there, the vet said. (Apparently the other thing that sometimes causes high calcium is a thyroid problem, but she said his thyroid felt normal.)

He's only ten years old; he's not supposed to be wasting away yet. I hope the test results suggest a useful course of action.

The vet was a little puzzled by the choice of special diet; it's something for renal failure, rather than a low-calcium food. She's not the one who prescribed it, and when I asked her if she recommended changing it she thought about it for a minute and said no. One effect of high calcium would be kidney problems, and even if he's not showing those problems now, the food could help hold them off. And she didn't have any better suggestions for what to feed him.

Once again I have had an ambiguous experience with VCA. I was prepared to ask for a copy of our medical records on the way out, so I could take them to a different vet in the future. I might still do that before next year. This particular vet was very good -- it was the most thorough exam I can remember them having, and she seemed perfectly willing to take all the time we needed to do everything right. She handled them gently but firmly, and she showed genuine concern. She carefully read each cat's medical history before doing the exam and asked me relevant questions. That's the first time that's happened. And, like my own doctor, she didn't talk down to me but assumed I had a brain. (This was probably aided by some of the questions I asked her.)

However, she's been there for four weeks; VCA will probably beat it all out of her in time. And judging by past experience, she'll probably be there next year and not the year after. My big complaint against VCA is the revolving-door vets; I want a regular vet. They have some good people, but they don't keep them for long.

Maybe the thing to do is for me to tell her that, rather than talking to VCA. If she's going to leave VCA for some other place in the city, for example, I'd have no problems with following her. (She might have a contractual problem with that, but I don't know if I don't ask.)

I called VCA to schedule the annual checkups and shots and things, and found that, yet again, the vet I've seen for the last couple visits is no longer there. This seems to be routine with them -- vets stay for a year or two and move on.

For several years I had a regular vet with this practice (pre-VCA). Then VCA bought them out and the continuity of care declined. I haven't had bad experiences with VCA; I've just failed to have good ones. I much prefer to build a relationship with a specific service provider, one who will remember (when I forget) that Baldur is sensitive to this drug or that Erik should be monitored for kidney problems or whatever, and it appears that I can't build that kind of relationship with anyone at VCA. Yeah, this stuff gets written down, but checking the records doesn't seem to happen as often as I'd like. I should request my own set of copies.

I'm wondering if I can do better. If you're in Pittsburgh and like your vet, please let me know. Proximity to Squirrel Hill (or house calls -- I can dream, can't I? :-) ) and evening/Sunday hours are important. Price is not, especially; quality of care is much more important. No rush; I made appointments for this year. I'm just scoping out the options for later.

Someone is, apparently in all seriousness, developing a TV show for cats -- not cat lovers, but cats. I think they have missed a critical point about their revenue stream; most cats don't have access to the phone and charge cards, or the car to go to the store. :-)

The laundry goes from the washer to the dryer to the basket to the dresser drawers, without interruptions. Once a shirt comes out of the dresser, it doesn't get back in except through this chain. The cats have never succeeded in opening the dresser drawers.

Given all that, how is it that I can remove a shirt from the dresser, put it on, and see cat hair on it almost immediately? Yeah, the stuff is undoubtedly in the air, waiting to attack, like pollen, but this isn't quite how I expected that to work somehow....

Maybe the dryer isn't doing its secondary job (lint removal) as well as it should. I'll have to pay more attention.

Tonight is the annual trip to the vet for checkups, vaccines, etc. Wish me luck; I am thoroughly unskilled when it comes to feline containment. I think I'll try to grab Embla first; she's the fastest, so maybe I can grab her before she sees the others getting stuffed into carriers.

I also think that, given that I'm not particularly enamored of my vet anyway, I should check around against the (unlikely) possibility that there's someone out there who makes house calls. It would be worth a reasonable extra fee to not have the cats all be psycho for the evening.