Weekend Blogger

Odd. Coulda sworn I’d made another entry since Christmas. Time flies when your having a life.

Cats

Seems I always start off with a cats update. If I had the time, I’d ponder what this said about me. As it is, I’ll just write it off as sad, unworthy of further speculation, and move on.

It’s been an expensive month here in Lake Woebegone. All four cats have had multiple vet visits in February, and the month ain’t over yet. DD, The Professor’s second cat, just went in for a regular annual visit. Turns out they hadn’t ordered the rabies vaccine I prefer (there is a clear association between adjuvanted rabies vaccines and sarcomas in cats so I make my vet order Purevax special for the kids, which is the only non-adjuvanted rabies vaccine on the market so far). I had to schedule a second appointment to take DD in to get the vaccine, but that turned out to be no bit deal, since she had a rotting back carnassial tooth and needed to come back for a dental/extraction anyhow. One dental, three extractions and a rabies shot later and I was $2000 or so in the hole.

LBC has been doing this weird hack-hack-hack-swallow-hack-hack-swallow thing for over a year now. It could be a sign of kitty asthma, but it could have been just a sign of hair ball-itis as well, so we were just keeping an eye on it. It wasn’t going away, and it was getting to be a daily event, so I had her sheduled to go in for a tracheal wash to determine if we had asthma or something else going on. One trach wash, multiple tests and two weeks later we still don’t know what’s going on. I think that one cost me a little over $1000.

The evening before DD went in for her dental work The Professor took a look at LGS lounging in my lap, looked up and me and said those fateful words: “Did her eyes always look like that?” Turns out the pupils were quite uneven, and I knew I had pictures of her just two days earlier that showed normal eyes, so the answer was: “No, they did not always look like that, and this could be an emergency.” So one emergency visit to my vet’s, a one-day stay in the wards, and several x-rays, blood tests and CNS tests later and I was a couple of thousand dollars lighter yet again. We know she has Horner’s Syndrome, which is only a symptom and not a disease. We do not know why she has Horner’s Syndrome, which about 50% of the time is idiosyncratic in cats with never a known cause. Many times it resolves as spontaneously as it arrived; other times the cat lives out it’s days looking like some version of Bill the Cat. Right now it looks like LGS is going to be a permanent member of the Bill the Cat club.

And then there is LBS, The Professor’s dearest love (I wouldn’t want a contest to see if he liked me or the cat better, because I’m fairly certain I’d lose. I’m only slightly less certain that I’d lose big.) She seemed to be the Goddess of health compared to her three miscreant house mates, but last week she came down with what is probably the biggest bout of inflammatory bowel she’s had to date. The Prof got her into the vet’s on Friday, and other than increasing her steroid dose we haven’t done much else for her. She’s lost a pound over the last week though (not good) so I suspect we’ll be taking her back at some point early in the week for further evaluation.

The Job

I work for the Feds now. It makes it difficult to say much about the workplace. I love the job, I love the work, I like most of my co-workers. For thirteen days straight I hate the long hours, and then on the fourteenth day I get my paycheck and decide that maybe it isn’t so bad after all. I then return to hating the long hours for thirteen days.

I have, however, now experienced not one, not two, but three co-workers from Hell. One got promoted out of our duty station (which is not an unusual way for my department to deal with problem children). One got arrested for some extra-curricular activities (use your imagination, and then imagine worse, and then imagine worse than that, but stop short of the Manson Murders and you might get close to what this dude is in prison awaiting trial for). The current Man-of-War jellyfish in the sunblock has filed workplace violence and discrimination charges against half the federal workforce an is trying to cultivate me as a friend and ally while the Forces of Justice are closing ranks around her. I do not want to be associated with her, and I do not want to piss her off because I know what she’s capable of. I have orders to be present if she needs to speak to a couple of my co-workers so I can act as an impartial witness. I also am supposed to escort one co-worker to their car if the Fiend is still known to be on the premises. I’ve been asked (not ordered, mind you, but asked) to put in writing any interactions with this person that have made me uncomfortable, but was reluctant to do so in the interests of staying neutral and out of the fray. It was made clear to me eventually that neutrality was not going to be possible forever, so I reluctantly put a page’s worth of interactions into the hands of a superior. I then discovered that her lawyer (yes, it has gone that far) will have the right to see everything that my district office has accumulated on this situation, so what I’ve written will eventually fall into her hands. I’m still in questionably neutral territory so far as all this goes, but that’s only because the evidence has not been requested yet.