Eureka.

It’s been a tough week at work. We ran into a problem that I was asked to troubleshoot. Not that I mind troubleshooting; it makes a nice change from pencil shoving and postmortems. In order to observe the problem, however, I had to be at work no later than quarter to six in the morning. We’re working late days now through the end of the year, so I haven’t been getting home much before 7:00 at night.

One particular group of animals was specifically over-reacting to a routine test we run. The difference between animals from this source and the rest of our animals was night and day. I spent three days this week utterly perplexed by what I was observing. In a fit of frustration, I sat myself down at the computer last night and started to Google. I Googled every damned catch-word I could think of to describe what I was seeing. And damned if I didn’t stumble over an abstract that described exactly what I was seeing. The test animal in the abstract was a totally unrelated species, but I figured it had to be the same thing. I checked six of the worst reactors post-mortem today, and I found exactly what the article was describing. I’ve been busy dong a little victory dance all day now over the find.

Not only have I solved one of the more perplexing problems I’ve encountered in this job, but I get to hand the problem over to someone else. Some combination of nutrition/genetics is to blame, and the people responsible for purchasing my animals are going to have to talk to the people who raise them and get it figured out. It isn’t often I get to identify a problem and then hand it over to someone else to fix. In fact, I think I’ll get up and do another round of victory jigging.

Clueless is actually doing much better. He’s eaten both breakfast and lunch today, and I have high hopes that the eagerness with which he licked his empty bowl after his last meal indicates that when dinnertime comes he’ll make it three-for-three. A more convincing sign of improving health – he actually attempted to engage the Warrior Princess in some play tonight. WP doesn’t do “play” very well, but Clueless could have cared less. He batted at her several times to capture her attention, and then when she had enough he ran off and jumped to the first level of the cat tree. WP batted at him, but refused to jump up after him (she doesn’t do “play” nor does she do “cat tree”). When she started to wander off, CW pounced from his perch to just behind her tail, batted her ass, and then jumped back up onto the cat tree. This exchange happened for three times until WP tired of being made sport of and lay down at the bottom of the cat tree, refusing to take her eyes off of Clueless. He realized that it would be kamikaze of him to pounce on her if she were watching, and so jumped from the tree to the sofa, safely out of range of Her Catitudeness. It’s good to see him play again.

Dr. Nineteen Cats was in my neck of the woods yesterday, attending a continuing education credit course in a nearby town. She called me at work, and we met for dinner. The plan was to meet at Outback Steakhouse, but we couldn’t even find parking there to find out what the wait would be. Wednesday night, 8:00, and we couldn’t get near the place? People around here really need to get lives.

We ended up eating across the street at Applebee’s (plenty of parking, no wait). I listened to her talk about her week at the emergency veterinary clinic she works at, and was struck by how different our jobs are. I regret at times not having gone into private practice, but when I hear about some of the owners Dr. Nineteen Cats has to deal with, I’m just as glad I’m stuck solidly in Corporate America.

I’m getting ready to sell the Hummels I inherited from my mother. I’ll probably do the e-Bay route, though I’m not sure if that’s necessarily the best way to go yet. I suppose I should feel worse about letting go of these – a good many of these were originally my grandmother’s, and have been in the family since the fifties or even earlier. I never did develop an affection for these things though, and the money should help pay off the rest of CW’s veterinary bills (now at $1330 and climbing). I’ve got quite a few end-of-year bills coming up as well, such as membership to various professional organizations, insurance and (heaven help me) Christmas. A certain Socialist has a birthday coming up next week as well, though I’ve already figured out how to fund that one. He already guessed what his present was – he saw the box from Amazon on the doorstep and somehow knew immediately what was inside. I swear at times he’s positively clairvoyant.