SassyBlonde

Teehee-- the puss is using me as a lounge chair right now... LOL

Simon here. It seems the human has finally figured out that she needs to be overseen while typing on this noisy thingy.

She finally got me a nice window perch so I can look over and keep tabs on the situation. After all, none of this would be possible without my help, right?

Poor fishies. We hired a pet sitter last week while we were gone and the poor fish got massively overfed. By the time we came back the water looked like the Mississippi after a heavy rain. Positively goopy. So, lots of changed water later, still battling the goop. Went in to feed/check the tank and one of the Black Moors was just floating-- too pooped to pop.

Feh.

A water change and Ph test later, fishies are now paddling around happily and the poor tired one looks positively relieved. And, on a happy note, Ph, nitrate, and nitrite levels were perfect! (Grins with pride at being a good fish mom.)

Next time I think it will be a weekly auto-feeder pyramid. Not very sexy, but at least not goopy either. Icky.

Need a clean screen?? Check it out:

Screen Clean

Have you ever noticed how cats seems to decide to be cute or "help" right when you're pressed for time or walking out the door? OY. Off the homework, guys. I have a deadline.

I love this dog.

The dog people* in my neighborhood are such assholes. I came driving up today and this guy was letting his dog take a huge steaming shit in my herb patch. ON MY OREGANO. As I got out of the car and walked toward him, he just smiled and said "Hello!" brightly, and continued letting the dog do its thing. I just stood there and stared at him, open-mouthed.

He took out a bag and picked up the pile, and as he did, I said, "You know, we actually were hoping to eat that plant at some point, but now..." with a look of disgust.

He looked surprised and said, "What? I picked it up."

Exasperated I said, "Just keep him out of there from now on please."

As I know from experience, the dog people around here tend to be vindictive bastards on the whole, and I could completely see this guy leading the dog over to do his business on purpose tomorrow. However, tomorrow there will be one small difference.

There will be capsacin and stinging nettle powder on the ground (Commonly used in rodent and dog repellents, these substances cause a burning sensation when applied to the skin, or say, pawpads). Poor pup better use his schnoz or he won't be walking comfortably for a couple of hours. (Not to mention that asshole squirrel will quit digging up my basil.)

Bastards.

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*Dog people: (n)(pl)
1.)Persons with an affinity for pets of the canine persuasion, many of whom value said canine above the company/comfort/civil rights of human friends, neighbors, and acquaintances.

(That being said, not ALL dog people are assholes, just most of the ones walking theirs in my neighborhood.)

So this guy really had a bad day-- yep, the dog and the owner.

Elvis's teddy bear leaves building the hard way
Guard dog rips head off Presley's $75,000 toy in stuffed-animal rampage

LONDON - A guard dog has ripped apart a collection of rare teddy bears, including one once owned by Elvis Presley, during a rampage at a children's museum.

"He just went berserk," said Daniel Medley, general manager of the Wookey Hole Caves near Wells, England, where hundreds of bears were chewed up Tuesday night by the 6-year-old Doberman pinscher named Barney.

(On MSNBC.com)

One wonders, since the dog was able to destroy "hundreds of toys", exactly how long was that guy's coffee break, anyway?

Shout out!! Fresh Disapproving Rabbits up over at Birdchick's blog. I seriously considered the options for getting a beautiful bunny when I caught an eyeful of Birdchick's beautiful Cinnamon. Gorgeous, and so cute!!

Why is it always on the hottest days that things skew over and head directly for the proverbial shitpile? I'm just saying.

All I'm going to say is that it's possible to ask a friend who's already doing you a favor for one thing too much, especially on a day when it's already triple digits outside and she's cranky and damp just from walking to the car.

And I still have to teach this afternoon.

Dammit. I just want to strip off my clothes and stand in front of the A/C in my skivvies until it cools down some in here.

Today, folks, has been a busy day at Chez Sassy. D was off today (yay private school) and we spent the day cleaning and cleaning and cleaning. Of course, this was after I got up and took The Spaz to the vet for his yearly checkup. (Don't worry, he's right as rain.)

D and I practically had to do rock-paper-scissors for the honors. The bad thing about taking this cat out for his checkup is that from the moment you get him in the carrier (which is no picnic in the first place) he starts to yowl and yammer and carry on like you've hung him up by his ears. You'd think that would be livable, except it takes 25 minutes to get to the vet's and a loud cat in a small car is a truly remarkable thing. Therefore, what normally ends up happening is that it's a conversation all the way there. He yowls and I talk and at some point along the way my utterances go from normal conversation to baby-talk to wordless cat-speak approximations until he either settles down or we get there.

Well, today was no exception. Same old song and dance, only his protests were about 25 percent louder and more insistent and my patience was about 200 percent shorter. The baby-talk ensued before we had even left the driveway and he had worked himself into a real lather by the time we turned out onto Georgia Avenue, so I kept one hand on the wheel and stuck my right index finger through the carrier door cage to scratch his ears while we chatted. This, of course, made absolutely no difference in his howling, but then I felt him start to paw my finger, so I wiggled it a bit to capture his attention, thinking maybe he'd get distracted and chill out a little.

All of a sudden I felt his little paw wrap itself around my finger, latching onto my fingertip with half-extended claws. Not wanting to have my fingertip shredded, I kept it still as I drove and sort of held my breath waiting for him it really let the claws out, but he didn't. Instead, he kept gripping my finger but was strangely quiet, so at the next stoplight I peered over to see him looking back up at me, still clutching my finger. I wiggled it a little and he readjusted his grip with a little mewph but kept holding on and looking up at me. And was quiet the whole rest of the way to the vet's as he gripped my finger. It just goes to show, I guess, that everybody needs a friend to hold their hand sometimes, even spastic cats.

Have you ever noticed that deaths seem to come in threes? First Tim, then George, and now Bruce.

Bruce?

Yes, the last scion of the fishy dynasty of Chez Sassy has passed into the great hereafter. We all raise a glass of Maker's to his fishy familiarity and toast him on his way to the Great Fishbowl In The Sky. (By way of the toilet? That's so wrong.)

Bruce had a great four-year run here, and now that he's gone I can get on with my decorating plans for the living room. And I don't have to clean the fishtank. (I feel so wrong saying that.) At any rate, where we were five, now we were four. Goodbye, Bruce.

I'm not saying you have to, but that's certainly what I'll be doing from now on.

When a student brings you flowers, of course the proper response is to thank them politely and put them in water. At least, that is, unless you have a cat.

Well, yesterday a student of mine brought me a beautiful bouquet of Asiatic lilies-- one of my favorite smells in the world and an exquisite gift. Until I moved them down onto the table today for a minute to clean the counter and our lovely little spazball cat decided they'd make a really, really great dinner.

I came into the living room to the sounds of retching and the sight of the tattered remains of the flower leaves strewn on the table. The poor cat was turning himself inside out on the carpet, but quickly finished up and seemed none the worse for wear. However, having read about the effects of lilies before, I called the vet's office and they told me to take him to the emergency vet ASAP, so I bundled his still frolicking furball self into the cat carrier and made off with him to the nearest reputable emergency vet clinic, which was still 45 minutes away. (I ask you-- what the hell happens when your cat gets attacked by some random dog down here? You have to schlepp it that far? That's just so wrong.)

Well, I checked him into the clinic and waited, and waited. The vet came in and explained that they'd be inducing more vomiting and checking his kidney levels and keeping him on an IV drip for fluids to help try and stave off possible renal failure, and said that she'd be back in a minute with a quote. And when she came back I thought I was going to have a coronary.

His encounter with a five dollar bunch of flowers will now be costing me more money than you can possibly imagine, not that I care as I'd just really like to have him back in one functioning piece.

Not that I balked longer than it took me to total up exactly how I would make this happen (to which I had no answer) since I love the little spaz and I couldn't very well leave him to expire of renal failure (it's a very, very bad way to go.) And I still don't know what the outcome is going to be-- even though I caught it early, all of the intelligence I've been able to find suggests that he MAY PROBABLY survive... not WILL. Poor little squirt.

I think it's drinky-drink time for Sassy, because I don't want to think about what the possible outcomes of this might be. I'm hereby sworn off from the internet until I hear how my little blondie's doing, because here's a whole lotta scary shit out there about this subject, and the internets is giving me the crying jags. I'll post Twitter updates as I hear more.

So, ladies and gentlemen, it has been an eventful and stressful week here at Chez Sassy, but I am happy to report that everyone here is doing fine and at least making an attempt at being frisky and healthy, including the hungry spaz-cat.

Though he basically terrified the hell out of us, he seems none the worse for wear and has been taking his treatment for the Lily Debacle of 2008 pretty well. He spent four days in the vet hospital being cleaned out, shot up, and generally traumatized, and I have to say it's probably the best money I've ever spent. Thank goodness we have good credit, so I managed to get him out without bankrupting us for rent and bills, and I have to say I'm not sorry for one dime of it.

Why? Because, my friends, for the enormous four-figure cash drop that we've put in, he received finer care than *I've* ever received when in the hospital. Seriously, I'm not kidding. For the four days he was there, I can confidently tell you that he was monitored 24 hours a day by no less than three vets, coddled and scratched and tested by vet techs, and basically ensconced in a setup cleaner than anywhere I've ever been, besides perhaps my mother-in-law's house. I know this because I went during visiting hours (I shit you not. This place has visiting hours.) and coddled and scratched him myself, and met every single one of his caregivers, including the incredibly attentive vet who called me three times a day with updates and came in personally to talk to me whenever I stopped by to visit him.

Let me pause for a little rant here for a second: after the time I've spent in hospital myself and with friends, I am floored that my cat receives more attentive care than we ever have. It makes me want to storm Washington and forcibly tie every Congressman to a hospital bed and make them experience the kind of ineptitude and insanity that I've been forced to endure, so they will somehow be motivated to FIX. THE. PROBLEM. (Ahh... much better. This rant has been brought to you by the number 6 and the letter D.)

At any rate, he's now home and back to maniacally chasing shoelaces and fuzzy mice and sleeping like a rock on his perch above my computer, and all seems right in our little corner of the world. (Financial crisis? What financial crisis? Oh. Right. More on that later.)

I want to thank you all for the kind Tweets and messages and comments and phone calls-- it really helped shore me up in a couple of scary moments, and I love you all for it. And so does Gizmo.

When love comes along, real honest-to-God love, it's always a surprise.

I say this, sitting in my chair with a purring fuzzball of a spaz-cat curled on my arm and watching the cursor surreptitiously to make sure it doesn't make good its escape from the screen. Sitting and purring with his sense of appropriate grace and consort, knowing that this, now, is the place where he is needed most. I find myself scratching his ears and cooing, running tired fingers across the silken profile of his furry head, watching as his large green eyes slit into wells of condensed bliss and wondering that from that came this.

When we acquired the spaz cat, he was little more than an elegantly contrived wind-up toy, small enough to fit in a pocket or a palm and just as erratic and kinetic in nature. He whirred and whizzed and skittered and boinged, careening constantly and with utter abandon until his little body simply wound down and he flopped, careless and bohemian and easy on whatever surface he had landed upon-- floors, windowsills, toilet seats, laps, plants. He was utterly contained unto himself and completely self-absorbed-- unlike our serene, self possessed older cat who merely watched with zen-like peace and passivity, waiting for the perfect lap to present itself or the perfect wedging-space to appear between a leg and a sofa pillow. For the longest time he simply existed, like a pampered prodigy, as if his whims were what the world turned upon-- yowling and scheming and batting and sulking. And yet, among all of those things, there were small moments of connection which I never really recognized until he was gone for those four days a few weeks ago.

The house was quiet.

The older cat never made bones about it as such-- he just walked and searched, turning a cool liquid eye on me as if to say Somehow you have to fix this... this is not good, not balanced, not all right. And surprisingly, I agreed. For all of his self-absorbed mannerisms, there was a piece missing. And I started to realize that, even though he's feline, not human, there were certain kindnesses, certain relations with which he defined my existence.

When I wake in the early morning hours, surfacing from sleep into the heart-clenching, mind-warping throes of a panic attack, it is his furry paw which settles on my tear stained cheek and his wide liquid green eyes that search mine as he wedges into my shoulder, purring in my ear to say I am here... there are no words, but I *see* you, and I am here. It is he that comes and pats my arm in the wee hours of the morning to tell me I am being foolish, that sleep in necessary, and that someone notices my vigil through the long nighttime silence. It is he that distracts me from my ruminations, turning back flips and cartwheels and shadowboxing imaginary foes and real milk rings until I laugh and laugh, whereupon he feigns offense for only as long as I continue, performing a court jester's bow-stretch and curling over to show his belly in comic solidarity when I stop. It is he that eventually gives up, coming to rest wherever is the nearest touching place, so that I am not alone in my waking holding pattern. And it is he that keeps watch on the foot of my bed as I sleep fitfully into the daytime, facing away as if to circle the wagons and stay alert so that I may rest.

So you see, to me he is more than the kinetic furball everyone sees when they pass in and out of my door. He is constant, he is comic, he is companion.

From time to time I get a remark from someone I know that expresses incredulity that "people can feel that way about an animal." Lest you think that I'm evolving into a batty cat lady, I should clarify: I have only two, and they are quite sufficient. And that's really the point, isn't it? They are sufficient. They provide, as a good friend confided to me once, something missing in a newly forged home-- slapstick and attendance, mostly without judgment or comment.

And so it is that I write here of love. For all too long a time I didn't realize it, but I do love him as much as I do his older avatar and near-opposite, albeit in a different way. Ours is a relationship of active silences, passing affections, and dismissive respect: always overtly distracting, a game of smoke and mirrors, but always constant.


*And lest you should worry, nothing has happened to him, tests are still all mainly normal following the Lily Debacle, just doing a couple more this week to check up on things.