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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • We have two that are getting up there in age. They’re both active, but the signs are there. One has irritable bowel syndrome and asthma is on medication for both. His black fur has faded in some spots, too - not much, but there are definitely spots that are a bit more brown in his legs.

    The other seems healthy, but his urine had some protein and there is a slightly elevated number in his bloodwork for his liver (I think). The vet isn’t sure what those mean yet, and they want him to get an ultrasound (they just told us yesterday, and we haven’t had the chance to schedule it yet).

    It’s possible he also has IBS, which would at least mean we’re used to dealing with it. He’s already eating the right food.

    Odds are good we have years with them yet, but it’s a sign they’re getting older, and a reminder that some day they’ll be gone. :(




  • Trump seems to think the trade deficit is some sort of debt that we’ll have to pay off in the future.

    The overall goal of bringing manufacturing back to the US isn’t necessarily a bad one, but this is probably the worst way to go about doing it. One article I read pointed out that it would take many years of consistent tariffs to generate that kind of interest and investment - but anyone with half a brain knows these tariffs could be gone tomorrow, so there’s little inclination to actually try to build factories in the US based on this move. No reasonable investor would want to bet their company on Trump acting consistently.



  • I’m not sure I have just one.

    First there was Snowball. Adopted him as an adult from a rescue, and apparently he’d been returned a few times. Food allergies, likely irritable bowel syndrome. Over the next 12 years I cleaned up a lot of cat vomit. Seriously - we have three cats now and it’s still far less than he produced. Eventually cancer got him.

    But he was my best bud for those years. When my girlfriend (now wife) moved in, she knew we came as a package. One time she said, “I don’t think your cat likes me.” And I was like, “Are you serious? He loves you!” She just didn’t get cat language.

    Late in Snowball’s life (we didn’t realize how ill he was at the time), we adopted a female tabby we named Minnie. She was so cuddly. She’d come up to me at night, and I would lift up the covers, and she’d curl up under the covers with me for a while. She was spicy, as one vet tech put it. But she was so fun too.

    She had multiple medical issues that tended to interfere with each other, and she spent quite a bit of time in the animal hospital in her later years. We put her to sleep when she was 7 because she just wasn’t getting better, and even if she had survived that incident, there was no guarantee she wouldn’t be back in a few months with the same problems. I miss her so much. At least Snowball got a long life, he was at least 13 but could have been as much as 18.

    These days two of the three are pretty cuddly with me. Stitch tends to curl up on my feet at night, though my wife has spotted him in my arms while we sleep too. Nibbler usually curls up on my lap and arm when I’m in the comfy chair in the living room. I’ll miss them both so much someday.

    And lately Stitch has been showing signs of old age, he has a few medical issues of his own, and his black tuxedo fur is fading some, so I fear he’s older than we thought. (We’ve had him since 2016, and they thought he was about a year old then, but they really can’t tell - he could be 5 or 6 years older than that.) I’m not ready…









  • We have three cats, all adopted separately.

    We started with one, then when he was older, we adopted a kitten. The two never really got along, but the older cat passed away a few months later - had we known how sick he was, we probably would have waited on the kitten. (He seemed fine, but we later realized that cancer had already started.)

    We adopted another cat pretty quickly after the older one passed, because we didn’t want the kitten to get used to being alone. A few years later we adopted a third cat, hoping the second two would get along and play with each other.

    The “kitten” passed away several years later and we adopted another kitten who is still with us.

    Our cats have never been best friends, they don’t cuddle together or anything like that. It’s more of a tolerate situation. They do get irritated with each other from time to time, but it seems pretty even as to who is instigating it.

    They’ve never drawn blood or even had a major fight. They just kind of wrestle or chase each other, and sometimes I wonder if they are just playing.

    I do think that a cat that is used to being alone is usually going to have a tougher time with a new cat.

    (We’ re taking one of the older cats to the vet today. I recently realized he’s lost almost 2 lbs since last summer, and he’s being very active for an 11+ year old cat, so we’re wondering about his thyroid. The other old cat needs an asthma inhaler and steroid every night for his conditions. Like the vet said, as they get older, they start collecting health issues.)