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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • We have two that are getting up there in age. They’re both active, but the signs are there. One has irritable bowel syndrome and asthma is on medication for both. His black fur has faded in some spots, too - not much, but there are definitely spots that are a bit more brown in his legs.

    The other seems healthy, but his urine had some protein and there is a slightly elevated number in his bloodwork for his liver (I think). The vet isn’t sure what those mean yet, and they want him to get an ultrasound (they just told us yesterday, and we haven’t had the chance to schedule it yet).

    It’s possible he also has IBS, which would at least mean we’re used to dealing with it. He’s already eating the right food.

    Odds are good we have years with them yet, but it’s a sign they’re getting older, and a reminder that some day they’ll be gone. :(





  • Witnessed a car crash a few years ago right in front of me because of this. I was the second car in line heading south at a traffic light. When our light turned green, a car heading west in the late afternoon ran the red light and smashed into the car in front of me.

    I saw them coming and said, “Watch out!” but of course that did no good. The driver of the westbound car said she lost the traffic light in the sun and didn’t realize it was red. I have no idea why you’d continue on at 40 mph if you weren’t sure you had a green light, but here we are.

    I had chosen that route home intentionally to avoid driving into the sun. Had I been the first car in that line, I might have been involved in the crash despite my caution.





  • I’m not sure I have just one.

    First there was Snowball. Adopted him as an adult from a rescue, and apparently he’d been returned a few times. Food allergies, likely irritable bowel syndrome. Over the next 12 years I cleaned up a lot of cat vomit. Seriously - we have three cats now and it’s still far less than he produced. Eventually cancer got him.

    But he was my best bud for those years. When my girlfriend (now wife) moved in, she knew we came as a package. One time she said, “I don’t think your cat likes me.” And I was like, “Are you serious? He loves you!” She just didn’t get cat language.

    Late in Snowball’s life (we didn’t realize how ill he was at the time), we adopted a female tabby we named Minnie. She was so cuddly. She’d come up to me at night, and I would lift up the covers, and she’d curl up under the covers with me for a while. She was spicy, as one vet tech put it. But she was so fun too.

    She had multiple medical issues that tended to interfere with each other, and she spent quite a bit of time in the animal hospital in her later years. We put her to sleep when she was 7 because she just wasn’t getting better, and even if she had survived that incident, there was no guarantee she wouldn’t be back in a few months with the same problems. I miss her so much. At least Snowball got a long life, he was at least 13 but could have been as much as 18.

    These days two of the three are pretty cuddly with me. Stitch tends to curl up on my feet at night, though my wife has spotted him in my arms while we sleep too. Nibbler usually curls up on my lap and arm when I’m in the comfy chair in the living room. I’ll miss them both so much someday.

    And lately Stitch has been showing signs of old age, he has a few medical issues of his own, and his black tuxedo fur is fading some, so I fear he’s older than we thought. (We’ve had him since 2016, and they thought he was about a year old then, but they really can’t tell - he could be 5 or 6 years older than that.) I’m not ready…