Cats, chrysalides and coffee

I mostly added the coffee part for alliterative purposes, but I’m sure I’ll find a way to work it in.

Indiana Cat continues to reside in the basement room. His last fecal tested negative for all parasites, so I’ve tried to allow him supervised run of the house on a handful of occasions. So far he’s been too afraid to do any exploring. I hardly expected this, since he seemed so bold in the foster room, but I suspect my hissy-fit trio of cats upstairs has convinced him that caution remains the better part of valor.

Indiana may suspect the felids of the house, but me he trusts completely. He’s become a major lap cat, although he’s roochy; once ensconced on my lap he never stays in the same position for more than a minute or two. If he was a pancake, he’d be self-flipping.

He’s also the most photogenic cat I’ve fostered. When I use the flash on him, his eyes don’t reflect back that evil-cat-from-hell glow that I get with other cats. I can’t tell if that’s because he’s never looking directly at the camera, or if it’s because there’s something weird with his tapetum (the part in the back of a cat’s eye that reflects back light). I’ll ask to have his eyes checked at his next physical, but I can’t believe there’s anything wrong with them.

Ziltoid, on the other hand, is still a chrysalis in his unphotogenic position at the top of his bowl. Bits of dark color are starting to show through the the transparent chrysalis skin, so I know he’s ripening on schedule. Today is day nine of the metamorphosis; the references say he should hatch out on day 10, which is when Waldo emerged from his chrysalis last year. I don’t think Ziltoid has as much color to him as Waldo did the day before he butterflied, but I’ll wait and see how he looks tonight. With luck, I’ll be around to witness more of the hatching than I got to see last year.

I only just found out that a plural form of “chrysalis” is “chrysalides”. That, in my opinion, is a way cooler word than “chrysalis”. I suspect I’ll be finding excuses to use it for a while.

Ziltoid, the chrysalis. Sorry about the out-of-focus, but my camera insists on focusing on the outside of the glass bowl, and not the contents. Still, you can see that the little gold spots are glowing as brightly as Waldo’s did last year. Brownish patches are especially apparent at the top of the chrysalis. It shouldn’t be much longer now.

OK, following is the share-too-much section of this entry. (Don’t worry; no photographs follow this part.)

Just before I started my job I had an appointment with my gastroenterologist. I brought up my concern that the new job wasn’t going to let me hit the bathroom whenever I needed to, and that I had to get better control over the whole irritable bowel issue. He gave me a new medication to control intestinal spasms and put me on a low fiber diet.

Since I’m also doing Weight Watchers, this has posed a bit of a problem. WW encourages eating fruit and veggies as healthy ways to prepare meals and snacks. WW also promotes the use of whole grain whenever possible, since it is more filling. I ended up compromising between the two. Since my biggest problems tend to happen about 10 to 16 hours after eating high fiber foods, I cut them out of my diet about 18 hours before I need to start a shift. I eat them if I know they are likely to pass through my system before I go to work.

My other problem is the diuretic my cardiologist has me on. Fortunately, it works in a much more predictable manner. I need to do some bladder emptying every hour for five to six hours after taking the Furosimide. It should be taken in the morning, so I don’t take it on days I have morning shifts, and take on evening shift days and days off.

I avoid coffee on the same schedule for both reasons; it’s a diuretic AND an enteric propulsive. For someone who never drank coffee until she was in her mid-forties, I find it ironic that I now miss as much as I do on on the days I can’t have it.

It isn’t ideal, but you do what you have to. So to speak.