Ten on a Tuesday - Bad Cat Edition

1.  I typed this whole thing out and then accidently deleted it.  Gah!

2. I own a very bad cat as seen below.

 

3. He is really tempermental and moody and pretty much only likes me.  Even I don't really pick him up.  His name is Cody Pablo but my dad calls him Cody Diablo.  No one else likes him.  At all.

 

4. Last Wednesday at about 7:20 before work I am in my kitchen making lunches when the doorbell rings.  I peek out the window and there is a random chick I have never seen before.  I was tempted to just ignore her but I decided to see what she wanted.  I opened the door and she explained that she is my next door neighbor's sister (sidenote-- we wave to the next door neighbor when we come and go and occasionally make small talk with him, but don't know him that well).  She says that my orange cat is trapped upstairs in her brother's master bedroom closet.

 

5.  I followed her in disbelief over to the townhouse next door (that I had never previously set foot it).  She walks me up to the third floor, opens the bedroom closet and sure enough, there is my cat hissing and spitting.  I manage to piece together that the previous night when we were bringing groceries in, he must have slipped unnoticed out the front door.  Over night the weather became cold and rainy, so when my neighbor left for work at 5:30 in the morning, Cody bolted in his house.  They tried to catch him but couldn't, so they just chased him to the closet.   This left me crouched in a pile of my neighbor's dirty laundry trying to coax a furious and terrified cat towards me making "Pssssss psss" noises and saying "Hey Beebs" in a high pitched baby voice.  (Sidenote: It worksto get him to come at home, but it just made me look certifiably insane in this setting).  He  did finally approach me tenatively but wouldn't let me pick him up and I wasn't about to choke hold him and wrestle him down two flights of stairs in short sleeves in front of a stranger. The sister finally just left me alone to figure it out for myself.

 

6.  Thank God Ryan hadn't left for work yet.  He was in the shower when the doorbell rang and when he recieved my multiple near hysterical nervous phone calls from the master bedroom closet he got the carrier and brought it over.  Cody hates the carrier and it was full on war with claws out,  howling, hangers and clothes everywhere and poor Ryan rolling around on the floor in his suit and tie but he managed to stuff the cat in the cage and close the door.  Have I mentioned this guy is my hero?

 

 

 

7.  The cat fiasco ate up about 30 minutes of my morning I hadn't budgeted for.  I barely got Isaac to school on time, and I rolled up to my school a few minutes late.  I parked by the playground with my plan being to slink in through the back door undetected.  Except as I am getting out of the car with my lunch bag, purse, computer bag and two fly swatters (don't ask), a huge crowd of kids rushes at me saying "Thank goodness you are here!  We were waiting for you before we can start walking club!" So I rounded out the morning tromping through the neighborhood with a group of kids in my wedge heels.  Not how I would recommend starting off a Thursday.

 

8.  Isaac had a full on snow day yesterday (Monday).  Sadly, he had to spend it watching movies at the YMCA cause I had school as usual.  Not even a delay for me.  Booooooo.

 

9. So true....

 

 

10.  Is it spring break yet?!

Happy Tuesday!

 

...Summer is fleeting...

I'll do my my beach update soon. I have to mentally prepare myself for all of the time it takes to get all the pictures over here in blogger. It was a lovely week at the beach and so fun to have my sister and brother in law in town for as long as they were. It was so sad to say goodbye to them again. Anyways, here's one of our groups shots on the roof deck:

While we were down at the beach one of my cats had a bad health scare. Cody Pablo (the cat with 9 lives) had a urinary tract infection which is a very dangerous thing for a male cat. I lost a day at the beach to drive back and take him to the vet. Fortuneatly, he didn't have to be hospitalized and after I dropped about 100 bucks i don't have on prescription food and meds but he survived. My dad keeps telling he that Cody is more trouble than he's worth (which I know is true) but I like to keep him around.

Isaac and I have been watching some movies that I loved as a kid. It's funny how much he loves making microwave popcorn, and snuggling up together on the couch. Sometimes I get so obsessed with planning the big, grand things for him to do, but he really is satisfied with the simple things. We have seen Sandlot, Rookie of the Year, Robin Hood, Pete's Dragon, and The Muppets Take Manhatten.

So I had this wacky thing on my head that I thought was ringworm (I know-- SO gross). It wasn't going away with ringworm cream and so they referred me to a dermatologist. She thought it might be, like, an out of control mole and removed a little piece of it. Turns out, it is an "atypical nevus" that was "moderately" concerning. Last week I went and had a piece of my scalp the size of a nickel removed and a ton of stitches. Next week I go back in to have the stitches removed and a full body exam for any other troubling moles. They already identified another one on my scalp that I will be having removed in a few weeks. It was a little bit scary, because a girl I knew in college just recently died of melanoma. I'm glad, at least, that hearing about her gave me an increased awareness of the risks and a better push to get things checked out. I'm glad to be dealing with it since people with atypical nevus have a much higher risk of developing melanoma. It's scary. But anyways, enough about gross health issues.

I'm pretty excited for the weekend. Isaac's dad is meeting up with me at some place that sells super cheap tires and he is replacing a few of mine tomorrow. This is long overdue. It's been raining lately and I've been slipping and sliding all over the place in the puddles on my bald tires. It sounds a tad on the shady side, but at this point, I am so broke, I'll get tires from a shady place if I don't have to pay for them. After that Isaac is going with his dad for the weekend. I'm not sure what I will get into, but I will definitely be heading to my parents for a bit to help out around the house and to visit my friend Nicole, who will also be in town.

I still have another week of summer vacation left before I have to head back to school for inservices and stuff. I've popped in a few times this week to get the room together. It's going to be a really interesting year since we have lost so many services and things with the government cuts. Sometimes it's just hard to work in an impoverished area in a place with so few resources. My sister and I were commiserating about this on the phone tonight. Well, that's about it for right now. Things are going well more or less.

are you there blogger? It's me, Lisa.

Yesterday was a great day, despite the fact that it rained off and on all day. Isaac still had soccer and he played really well.

Then I met his dad at our exchange spot and Isaac was off to his Dad's without any drama. Five minutes later my friend Selena met me and we headed to Anthropologie. I tried on a really gorgeous and flattering sundress, but even with my paycheck freshly deposited in my bank account I couldn't justify the price. (And it was on clearance!!!! That store sucks). Then we parked our cars and headed into the city.

Our plan was to meet up with Becca and Jami and head to the Art Star Bazaar (which is pretty much like Etsy threw up all over Penn's Landing).. Almost as soon as we met up with Becca she got a call that the alarm at the house she just bought was going off, so we piled in her mini-cooper and headed over to Fishtown. Fortuneatly, it was a false alarm. seemingly tripped for no reason. We got to see the amazing home that she and Stephen have purchased and is in the middle of renovations. It was amazing. Becca showed us around a little. There had been men there earlier that morning putting in central air and all new ducts and the place is still kind of a mess but it is easy to imagine what the house will look like when it's all fixed up.

While we were there we heard a sad little meowing. It took us forever to pin point where it was coming from, but we discovered a little cat was trapped in under the floorboards and was crying right by the newly installed duct. We spent the next few hours trying to rescue her and we discovered that she was ridiculously friendly. We could see her and touch her but we couldn't make a space between the duct and the floorboards wide enough for her to crawl through. She was super friendly though and was purring and trying to play with us even though she was trapped. Here's a picture:

You can see the cat peeking out in the space we made from bending the duct back (and by bending, I mean hammered repeatedly and used a piece of random wood to push in on itself). Then Becca had the great idea to put a piece of carpet near the opening so that he could put his claws on it and hoist himself out which worked.

We decided to go out and get the cat some food and then call the SPCA. And wouldn't you know as soon as we walked out of the house we saw two signs on nearby telephones looking for a lost orange cat. We called the number and one of Becca's neighbor's came running around the corner almost in tears. Turns out the cat's name was fire and it has been missing since mother's day. The woman said she had gone to her aunt's funeral the day before and prayed to her that she would somehow help her find the missing cat. So, I think it was her aunt that tripped the alarm. Creepyish, but there is no other explanation really.

Anyways, we grabbed some lunch at the Rocket Cat Cafe and then decided there was still time to head over to Art Star. I ended up buying one of these scarves (the seeds and pebbles circle design on purple jersey-- so cute!). Then we headed back to Becca's for a while and then finally we to Grace's Tavern where we got some dinner before catching a train home. Sadly, got caught in a monsoon and so it took quite a bit of time to drive home. Overall, it was a lovely little Saturday.

How was your weekend?

Rocking out to the Black Eye Peas... Apple's got nothing on us...

Here's a few more for fun...

He totally struck this pouty pose with no prompting from me and even said that his "tie" made him feel "stylish"... (Someone's been watching too many Project Runway reruns with mommy on Saturday afternoons...) After this picture was taken he began to slather lotion on his face to make himself more "fabulous". =)

And of course the fur babies...

So..

I think I've figured out why my sweaters are always on the floor of my closet.

Seriously, this cat is insane.
Nothing like Saffron, the angel cat.
But at times he can be so loveable...

Showers are overrated

So is make up. And matching socks. Blah. Firstly, it was brought to my attention that I had somehow disabled comments. I think I fixed that. Sorry about that. Feel free to comment away. Today was one of those horrible days when you just want to throw in the towel and pull the covers over your head. Just one of those totally thankless days when all you do is for other people and you just want to scream "I'M RUNNING AWAY AND YOU CAN ALL DEAL WITH YOUR OWN PROBLEMS!" and you can't even get a shower without something horrible going awry. I woke up today to see another pile of puke and about six more of the mystery streaks that yesterday I assumed were urine streaks. Today I decided they were too brownish and streaky to be urine stains and I began to worry it was blood from Saffron's incision (she was just recently spayed). So I called the vet, loaded up Isaac, headed over to Banfield and found out... she is fine. Her incision looks great. I come home from the vet, do Chuck E Cheese with Isaac (which in case we've never met is my personal hell on earth. Especially on a Saturday). Then I come home and try to tackle the house I go down to the basement to move the laundry along and see another pile puke down there. I go to clean it up and I realize that this pile of puke has something weird in it and upon closer inspection and realize it is about five inches of skinny christmas ribbon. At this point I am concerned and I call the vet back. The vet is now closed for the weekend and they refered me to Metropolitian, a hospital. SO I call Metropolitian and they think it justifies coming in and they sound really concerned. So I load up Cody (who is miserable, howling and hissing) and Isaac (who was also rather miserable at the thought of sitting around a boring doctor's office for the second time in one day) and head out to Trooper. The doctor was very nice but they pretty much tell me that he probably has ribbon still inside him which is super dangerous and will probably cut his intestines all up. His abdomen is tender and swollen and he is dehydrated from all of the puking. There is no way to know for sure if he puked all the ribbon up without an x-ray (which even then the ribbon won't be visible but it will see if his gut is in the right shape) which runs around 745 bucks. Ideally they would like to open him up and make sure the ribbon is all the way out. This procedure runs about 2800 bucks. Yeah 2800 bucks. Obviously I had to decline. I have handraised Cody from the time he was a tiny baby on his way to the SPCA. I love him as much as anyone could ever love a cat. But that is an obscene amount of money and I absolutely cannot afford or justify it in any way. I opted for them to give him an IV of fluids to keep him hydrated and to take him home. If he keeps puking I will know the ribbon is still there. If he can keep from puking tomorrow I can offer him water and then eventually this super bland stomach friendly cat food they gave me. He did puke up some more stomach bile on the way home in the car. I'm terribly concerned. Oh and even this cost a pretty penny. I won't say how much, but let's just say it rhymes with rue-hundred dollars. Emergency pet medicine is not cheap my friends. In light of all of this, I felt like I should cancel my plans to go iceskating in the city with some girlfriends I haven't seen in forever, because I need to keep a close eye on Cody and monitor him for more puking, heavy breathing, etc. That was terribly disappointing, especially considering the way I have felt lately and the stars had actually aligned and I had a sitter and everything. So then I am upstairs scrubbing cat puke out of the carpet and Isaac decides he is too lazy to get up to go to the bathroom (the game was playing on the computer didn't have a pause option he later explained) and so he peed all over the kitchen floor. And didn't discover it until I stepped in it. And I flipped out. It was the absolute last straw of the day. And I spanked him which I rarely do. I felt terrible afterwards and we were both crying. Just no more bodily fluids please. Blah. I didn't even have a chance to get a shower today. Now I am sitting on the couch eating raw cookie dough (a gift from a student) and drinking diet coke (discovered an unopened can in my car when I was cleaning-- see, I'm sticking to the budget!) and savoring the History Channel because tomorrow the cable gets turned off. I cancelled my cable and landline. I love TV. I have never been one of those people that says snidely"Oh I don't even own a TV" or "I hate watching TV". I love it. Give me Bravo Reality shows. Give me medical oddities (I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant anyone?) Give me the History Channel. I love it all. But, even with my newly negotiated price it is still a total extra and still a want and not a need, and in my current financial state, I can't justify it any longer. It's part of being a grown up and being self reliant. This quote by Julie B Beck pretty much outlines my goals for the new year (and this past year too) Emphasis added: “‘Self-reliance means using all of our blessings from Heavenly Father to care for ourselves and our families and to find solutions for our own problems.’ Each of us has a responsibility to try to avoid problems before they happen and to learn to overcome challenges when they occur....How do we become self-reliant? We become self-reliant through obtaining sufficient knowledge, education, and literacy; by managing money and resources wisely, being spiritually strong, preparing for emergencies and eventualities, and by having physical health and social and emotional well-being.” (“The Welfare Responsibilities of the Relief Society President,” Basic Principles of Welfare and Self-Reliance [2009], 4-5). Self Reliance in 2010! Here I come! Without cable! Anyhow, onto THE LIST:

Figure out which library I am supposed to go to now since the closest library is in a different county. Check out books and movies for me and Isaac. Order camera cord from ebay Bring bags of donated clothes to Goodwill Finish putting away all Christmas decorations Make car appointment. Figure out how to pay for new tires/brakes. Organize downstairs coat closet. Tidy/organize garage.

Clean/vacuum car. <--- okay, so I still need to vacuum. I totally drove by the carwash and then decided it was just too bitterly cold. Maybe tomorrow...

Call student loan people. <--- not open on the weekend. Duh. Will call Monday

Get hair dye and go back to brunette. Once again, the highlights are going by the wayside in the name of cutting expenses.

Figure out how to clean the inside of the oven. <--- well I found out that I don't have a self cleaning button or anything. I guess I will have to buy some oven cleaner. Don't see this happenning before next weekend.

Go swimming at the Y with Isaac. <-- this got put on the back burner for today with all of the cat drama. Will try to go sometime this week. Maybe Tuesday.

Plan menu for the next few weeks.

Finish up Season 2 of Big Bang Theory and return. <--- finished this up. Will return next time I see my friend who loaned it to me.

Write out goals for the new year. <--- began this

Overall, it was a pretty productive week, although I didn't get to everything on my list. And there's still tomorrow for menu planning and goal writing.

What's new in your world?

One step closer to crazy cat lady status..

Cody Pablo is still alive and kickin' (and biting and scratching...)

Because he has been a bottle fed baby raised without a mom cat or littlermates his kitty manners.... leave a lot to be desired. I am like 90% certain that the vet techs draw straws on who has to take his temperature. He has been called everything from "naughty" to "obnoxious" to "mutant kitten". The thing is, he really is just playing and doesn't mean to be aggressive. But he is getting bigger and stronger and, well, the bad behavior is getting old...

So in an attempt to help him get out his playful energy and possibly be put in his place, we have a new member of the Stephenson household:

Saffron. This picture really does not do justice to her cuteness but she is terrifically wiggly and it was one of the only the pictures I could capture of her face. I had contemplated adding a second cat on Facebook and someone I knew from high school contacted me and said he had a litter of cats he was trying to find homes for. Slightly older than Cody and a little bit bigger. She was the only girl in the litter and was used to keeping her brothers in line. Sounds perfect. He had named her Saffron. We had intended to use Saffron as a middle name (since apparently all our cats must have two names) and choose a new first name. I wanted either a Shakespearan Heroine or a famous psychologist. Isaac wanted to keep our Backyardigans theme going and continually suggested "Tasha" or "Uniqua". Anyways, it took too long to decide and in the meantime she has just been Saffron, so we are keeping it.

We have been keeping them seperate for now and introducing them slowly.

She doesn't seem to care for Cody a whole lot (she will sniff him and will tolerate him batting at her face a few times before she starts hissing).

On the other hand... he is obsessed with her and spends many hours now like this...

Parked outside her door listening for her, sticking his paws underneath and talking to her. So we are trying to take our time with the introductions so that she isn't traumatized and hopefully they get along. Oh, and the vet told me she is old enough to get pregnant (What?!?), so that adds a whole new twist while we wait for them to both get fixed in the upcoming weeks..

Keep your fingers crossed that they soon become fast friends...