Fan Girl Wannabe

Yesterday, our Cosmo had to go the vet to get stapled back together.  Apparently he injured himself while running through the woods with his boy on Tuesday afternoon. Cosmo does not whine or complain about anything.  If his bowl is empty, he just stands by it.  If he wants out the door, he stands there too.  If he has to stand too long for his patience, he huffs out a little sigh.  If he really really needs to go outside, he might do the quietest whine you ever heard, but mostly he'll stick with the sighing.  So when he's injured or sick, it is freaking hard to know something is wrong with him until it's been going on for awhile.

DH took him to the vet immediately after discovering the wound, because even though it was clean and not bleeding, it's not going to heal by itself.  Boy and I picked him up.  The assistant kept coming in the room and saying, he's still waking up, it will just be a few minutes.  I think we were there a total of 30 min, so it wasn't overly long, but it feels longer when you're worried.  Cosmo had a torn flap of skin under his right foreleg (kind of in the armpit area) and needed 5 staples.  He still hasn't eaten anything or gone out to do his business yet, but he also seems to have slept okay.  We need to keep him on the main level of the house (he normally sleeps upstairs with the boy) for the next 10 days, until the staples are removed.

But the point of this entry is that the vet who came to discuss aftercare with us was new to me, and she was obviously the love child of sasha_feather  and were_duck !  She was sooo obviously in love with her job, and doing a professional but also warm job of filling us in, but I was completely freaking distracted by the cute!  She has were_duck 's enthusiasm and energy (and her super cute haircut) and sasha_feather 's face, including glasses and coloring (but not quite her height), and seriousness.  It was weird but comforting.

Anyone who has lived with cats doesn't have to be told about their cooler-than-thou attitude, or their total air of entitlement.  Our Ditto is no different.

Last Nov, he had his shots updated, and we received a little tag to put on his collar.  Well, Ditto has never been much for wearing collars (read:  ditches them within 24 hrs), so he didn't actually have one.  He did however, still have on a flea collar that he'd worn (uncharacteristically) without complaint all summer long.  This made me think he would be willing to wear a regular collar if I procured one.  Being holiday season and all, DH and I decided that both the pets should get new collars as presents.  We went so far as to get them matching collars.  Both the kids like purple alot, and the pets are nominally "theirs" so they both had to be purple.  We got the thinnest, lightest cat collar we could find.

A day or so after xmas, we put the new collars on the pets.  Cosmo indicated that he'd rather still be wearing his blue jingle bell collar, thank you anyway, so he wore both for about a week.  Yesterday, Ditto's collar was missing.  Now, we already know not to buy him the break-away kind, because he will just go outside and dispose of it post-haste.  So this was a buckle-on style.  The mechanism didn't seem flimsy, and yet, the "I don't need no stinking collar" cat was able to reassert himself.  Mavis found the collar in her bed, and it looks frayed, so he obviously had to work at getting it off.  She put it back on him before going to bed.

This morning, at about 7:15, I found the slightly more frayed collar on the living room rug.  I set it on a side table and forgot about it.  A little while later, I was getting ready for work and heard some gagging or choking noises emanating from the living room.  I thought it was the dog.  I was wrong.  It seems that DH spotted the collar and decided to put it back on the cat.  Ditto was now making a tortured pass across the room, pausing every few steps to dramatically hack or gag or paw at his collar.  I kid you not, that cat has spent too much time in the company of his mama, Little Miss Drama.  Sheesh! I haven't even attached the little silver charm to it yet, and I'm guessing I better not or it will disappear.  So, for whatever reason, a ratty old flea collar is tolerable, but a shiny purple collar is not, and a bare neck is preferable to anything else.

I guess he has a point ;)

Yep, this is back-dated.

Woke up at 5:30 am to get the kids out of bed for the first day of school.  Did a new yoga routine that was really tough and challenging and invigorating while they were getting ready.  At 6:30 they were out the door (DH was already at work before we got up).
Did some work on polycon stuff for a few hours and a little LJ reading (hoping texasbek  is having a good first week of teaching ~wave & smooches~).

At 12:30, realized the breeze blowing the leaves outside the window and the birds singing were just way too inviting for me to stay chained to the laptop.  Invited Cosmo to go for a walk.  We had an absolutely lovely 2.5 mi walk wherein the sky was blue, the sun was warm, the breeze was perfectly refreshing, and we saw not another human being the entire time.  No kids running around and yelling, no cars, no other walkers.  It was him and me, and it was glorious.  I LOVE the first day of school!

DH came home and I bragged about my day.  There's more - I think I made a really nice dinner and all that, but I forget after 2 weeks.  The whole time I was walking, I was thinking about how to describe the experience and the day in LJ, and you know, I kind of think that's a problem.  If my mind is composing, then I'm not being mindful or present in the experience.  And that is why I didn't just rush home to write about it.  I did try to pull back into mindfulness, but I wasn't terribly successful.  And then the 2nd came and I only had a week left till the con, so I had to put all posting on hold.