So long, Bob.

Friday, September 30

Well, sadly, we had to put our one male cat, Bob, to sleep this morning. 

He was also the oldest of our three cats. We knew he was terminally ill. He had a tumor under his tongue, first discovered during the late spring. Over the last few months, his tongue has been swelling, getting disfigured (and starting to visibly peek out of the side of his mouth), but also its been, basically, starting to deteriorate and necrotize.
But, Bob still had frequent moments of liveliness and animation, especially when we fed him. But the damage that was happening to his tongue affected his ability to feed himself. About a month ago, he began go up to his food bowl and just stare at it. So we started blending his food and that seemed to do the trick. We'd mix some canned food from the vet that was higher in nutrients, and also add either chicken breast or tuna, add a packet of some FancyFeast Broth (a "cat gourmet complement"), some chicken gravy and a bit of water and blend it all up. The last couple weeks we've been feeding him like a baby with a plastic syringe because his tongue simple wasn't cooperating. We'd go back and forth about his quality of life, but he always seemed animated around feeding time, so we thought it wasn't time yet. But he definitely had been losing weight. He was our biggest cat and he used to be around 9 lbs, but the last couple times we went to the vet, he was under 6 lbs. 

Wednesday night he had a particularly bad bleeding episode (he'd occasionally bite his tongue and there would be some temporary bleeding in the past) and after taking him to the vet yesterday, the vet discovered that Bob's tongue had developed gangrene.
We knew this day was coming.
We brought him home for one more night. He used to habitually find me sleeping on the couch and immediately jump up on me and sleep on my chest. Last night when I went to bed, I brought him over from the kitchen and he spent some time on me again for a couple hours.
During the summer we'd occasionally go up to Canada on the weekends and we got into the habit of bringing him up with us not only to watch over him, but because he started perking up being the sole cat. Trips to Canada soon became trips to the "Cat Spa."
(In case you're wondering what our other cats, Velvet and Pixie, were doing back home, we'd leave them a debit card, take-out menus and numbers for local eateries (like Meowlinaro's*), and a stack of DVDs... although judging from my computer history, I think they just liked to surf the net and leave snarky comments on TMZ...).

Bob used to always be the alpha male, comparatively speaking. The dynamic changed so much when he got ill. He sometimes used to be an occasional bully to Pixie. But when he got ill, I think he started feeling vulnerable, and the change in dynamics made an impact on him emotionally. Over the course of this summer we wondered if he was actually suffering from some sort of depression when he came back to our house after being the solitary cat for two or three days. This past weekend (Sept 23-25) he really sacked out on me while I slept. At one point, I was sleeping on my stomach and I woke up with this dead purring weight on my neck, and I realized he was draped across it like a yoke.
Bob's trademark was his stoicism. He tolerated more-or-less whatever you did to him (giving him medicine, cutting his nails, giving him a bath which we had to do numerous times in the recent weeks because his attempts at cleaning himself actually made his fur messier because his drool was more copious and ever-present and let's leave it at that...). He'd look at you sort of wide-eyed and with his heart rate going up a bit but he'd take it quietly, along with trips to the vet and their examinations. UNLIKE our chubby, neckless calico, Pixie, who acts like you're trying to skin her when you simply want to trim her nails.

He was purring as they gave him the injections this morning, and he went very quickly after that, settling down as if to sleep and then he was gone. Bon voyage, Bob. You'll be missed, you little nazi ghost cat (it was a stupid joke of mine: he was white (like a ghost) with some black spots and he had a bit of a black mustache, like Hitler).

Anyway, I hope his full spirit has been restored.
It's nice to think that Bob's hooking up with Kody. Our cat Kodiak, a grey tiger cat, passed away two summers ago, and he and Bob hit it off. Bob sometimes would even groom him.

And wouldn't it be nice if my mom happens to be around, too...

*Lockport residents will understand this hysterical cat pun of a local Italian restaurant!

A Long Story About Nothing Unusual for Living in WNY in the Winter...

February 18


SHEESH. 

Went back to my old workplace to pick up some papers to deliver for a friend. Half hour before I left, I noticed some flakes blowing around in the driveway. Not big flakes, just a bunch of little flakes. But nothing crazy.
Half hour later, I walk outside and both cars are in the process of being buried.
WTH???
I immediately change my mind about running additional errands-- I'm just gonna do what I need to do.
I'm furiously brushing off snow as it keeps falling and covering up the windows.
I finally leave and am caught behind various people driving slowly and very slowly. Also, lots of hazard lights being used. Okay, I get it, we're warning everybody we're going extra slow. But, at a certain point, you have to notice you're not the exception to the rule. We're ALL going extra slow. Now we just wanna know if you're gonna turn or not.
I'm grabbing at my driver's side wiper and "plucking" it mid-wipe while I'm driving, trying to clear the ice forming on the wiper, hoping it'll clear the icy rainbow streak starting to form at eye-level on the glass. Occasional success. I'm hoping I don't break the wiper while I keep doing this, or accidentally bend the metal arm-- it is my wife's car after all. I was going to switch cars in the driveway and use mine, except the snow was coming down fast enough that that seemed mostly impractical and more mostly (uh, yeah, that's grammatically correct) a pain-in-the-ass. Part of me wants to stop somewhere and clear the wiper(s) properly, part of me says screw it.
At one point, visibility was really becoming an issue, not only with the icy streak, but just partial white-out issues. I still hadn't made Millersport (this is coming from the City of Lockport) and I'm following a truck as closely as I can because I'm not quite sure what my side of the road is. Suddenly, the truck disappears into the white. Like, he's gone. We haven't hit an intersection yet. Am I going that slow? How could he just vanish? I accelerate a bit, occasionally plucking that wiper, looking for a dark mass ahead of me indicating "truck" and I finally catch up. At a stop sign, I check behind me and see no one, so I jump out (after taking off my glasses and putting them on the dashboard so they don't get wet) and try cleaning the wiper better except I forgot to stop them. Well, it's working much better than my previous method. I get back in the car.
When I finally cross MIllersport at the Millersport-New Rd traffic light, the weather starts to ease up. By the time I get to Casey via Dodge, it's just snowing a little bit, more like what I was originally expecting the weather to be like, and I can see the road.
Holy cow. Much better driving conditions to my old job.
I thought I was going to be parked on a severe incline at the loading dock with my hatchback open trying to load papers in a blizzard. Totally relieved.

Back on the road, headed towards the Colvin exit going west on the 290, I see the weather getting crappy again up ahead. We slow down, but it's more active snow condition versus the whiteout nightmare from earlier. But, I have to be on my toes. Listening to Carl Russo on 97 Rock talking about an insane line of traffic on the I-190 backed up waiting to go across the Grand Island bridge. Later, it seems the problem isn't the south bridge but the north bridge, but everyone's backed up across the island? Oy. Glad I'm not going there.
Significantly snowing as I head into NT. Finally, I'm on Vandervoort and I park and start unloading papers onto a snowy porch.
These are going to be some damp papers.
I finally get that all done, try to clear as much snow as possible that got in the back while I was unloading, clean the car, slap the wipers clean, brush off my snow encased carcass, get in the car, clean my glasses, take a deep breath and head out.
After getting onto Schenck and going past the Ghostlight Theater, I eventually turn north on 425 and then go right on Erie continuing on the 425. Traffic slows down a lot.
And as I crawl my way towards Niagara Falls Blvd., it totally clears up. The setting sun is behind me, and there's no snow whatsoever.
As I eventually head north I see a wall of clouds ahead and wonder if Lockport's being pounded still. But no. It's clear. Just really dark and grey now.
I get home and there's 5 inches of snow in the driveway, but my neighbor's a sweetheart and cleared our sidewalk along with theirs. There's some snow to clear but I'm shoveling tomorrow cuz, dammit, now I gotta pee. And if I'm taking off my boots going in the house, I ain't putting them back on and coming back out. Not tonight.

I "survived," hahaha!
JEEZ.

Time for leftover spaghetti and cheesecake, baby.

This was originally posted on my Facebook account.