Thank you, Grampa.
Love, Poppy
Monthly Archives: May 2010
quick note
There will be a video montage of Ripley’s weekend progress tomorrow, although it will really be just me goobering over her accomplishments performed off camera. Her noted progress is that she can now jump from floor to bathroom sink, and also from floor to kitchen counter then counter to fridge. She can also get down from the fridge to the floor (via the counter) all by herself. She still has trouble turning in a circle. She still gets confused and/or stumbles when there is too much visual or aural stimulus around her. But she is now doing her morning war cry and rubs up against objects for affection purr-time. Also, she’ll do uppies with me then go from me to Dawg then back to me again with no trouble. She tries to get on our backs, which isn’t quite normal for her. She’s returned to hissing at the other girls instead of curiously sniffing them. She is ravenous, presumably from the prednisone. Still taking her pills like a grumpy champ via the pillgun.
Today Dawg and I are going to the vollies parade and then we’ll see what the day brings. 
I’ve been up since 3:45am, for some reason I’m just very excited about the parade, so hopefully I’ll get naptime at Dawg’s parents’ place later if we go there, or naptime with Dawg and kitties if we come home instead.
Happy Sunday.
Ripley’s progress for Friday, May 28
You’re gonna wanna watch this one.
Guest starring Dawg! But that’s not specifically why you wanna watch.
Ripley’s progress for May 27 (yesterday)
Join the retirement party
Today is my mom’s last day of work. For, like, ever if she wants. She has spent the last bit of time at her job frantically training a new person to be as awesome as she is. No matter how well my mom does at training this new person there is no replacing her. That office, like many offices before it, has considered my mom and her work to be stellar, relied on her to be their right-hand (wo!)man, and looked to her as a very valuable resource. Because she is.
She is my hero. My inspiration. My role model. And she just has that effortless ability of being other people’s hero, inspiration, and role model too.
And I cannot wait for her to get to sleep in until noon Monday while the office melts down without her. And I cannot wait for her to get to spend as much time as she wants visiting her children and grandchildren across the country. And I cannot wait for her to do whatever she feels in her heart is her next chapter of her greatness.
We love you, Mom. Happy last day!
(And I promise to update you on Ripley a little later today. <3
j/k
Tomorrow’s post won’t be (all) about furry kids.
This is now a furry kid blog… deal with it.
Here’s a video I compiled today of Ripley from yesterday at 5:30pm and 11:30pm:
Progress! I will post video from today around tomorrow morning, maybe early afternoon.
I can tell you that today she has made biscuits on me (that means she kneaded my belly like dough with BOTH paws) and purred at the same time. She got up on me and laid down on my belly. She jumped up on the coffee table with no problem. Once up there she took a stumble, but stayed on the table then sat down. When she got bored of the table she jumped to the couch with just a tiny stumble. She slept next to me with her head in my lap for the first time since she came home and was still drugged. She was able to get up on the arm of the couch all by herself AND TURN AROUND with just a little wobble here and there. She kissed Twitterbean when they had their noses together (no hissing, which is totally out of character). She has been less scared of sounds and noises, and when she does get surprised by them it doesn’t knock her off balance. She responded to my singing and whistling today, which she hasn’t the last few days. Grand finale: She took the pill gun like a champ! … and then I found her prednisone on the coffee table 10 minutes later. So I had to find her and pillgun her again for her second pill, which she took like a champ. That’s my girl. <3
I have no idea what she’ll be like without the meds, but I am VERY happy with her progress on them. She’s my baby girl again. And she just jumped on my lap and gave me kisses. YAAAAY!!!!!!
How to use a pill gun with your pet
A lot of people have said they don’t understand the pill gun, so I made a video.
Thank you to everyone for your love and support. We really appreciate it.
Ripley isn’t any better so far today balancewise, but she’s completely there in her head mentally, and that makes me a very happy mama.
Only time will tell
A lot of you know who Ripley is. She is one of Dawg‘s and my four furry daughters. She is my avatar pretty much everywhere. She is the princess of the family. She is the one in charge when we leave the house. She is our favorite, not that we have a favorite. She is the love of our life.
This is what she used to be like:
Playful, with perfect balance, with the ability to sit on her back legs.
Friday she came home from the vet’s a different kitty.
She was just there to catch up on her shots and be groomed, but the vet who saw her considered her a cat who needs to be restrained (she did not like him AT ALL) so he required that she be anesthetized before being groomed. In order to make sure she would come out of the anesthesia ok, her blood was drawn so it could be tested. The vet had trouble with her fighting him during the blood draw so he put her in a trap (I don’t know what is meant by that, I keep imagining a trap for a raccoon or other animal captured somewhere it shouldn’t be), he sedated her in order to get the rest of the blood, then presumably (verbally this was the agreed upon action) he waited for the test to come back clear then he gave her the anesthesia so she could be groomed.
The groomer called to say her grooming went fine and that she was waking up. Several hours went by without a follow-up phone call to tell me I could pick her up, so I called back at an hour before closing to see if she was ready, and was told I could pick her up.
When she got home she was acting “drunk”. At first we thought it was just that she was still waking up from the anesthesia they forced her to have in order to groom her. And then the next day we thought maybe because she was sore from where they drew blood and put in the needle for the sedation. And then we thought maybe she just had sore muscles from fighting them so hard to not be poked and prodded.
But a mother knows when her baby isn’t right, and my baby isn’t right.
That video is from 5:27am this morning, 3.5 days after she came home. She can’t jump. She can’t play. She can’t stand up and turn direction without falling. She’s still herself, … but not. It’s terrifying. I am sad and stunned and scared that she is going to stay this way.
I brought her back to the same vet office this morning, but a different vet saw her and has her on a course of anti-inflammatory prednisone as well as motion sickness medication. If that doesn’t work she needs to go to the neurologist for an MRI. The vet hopes the medicine will clear up her condition, but she was very concerned when she saw her… and this vet is pretty good at hiding her emotions, so it was tough to see her equally as concerned about my cat.
I know other people’s problems are bigger to them, but right now I could use a lot of crossed fingers and happy thoughts.
And if she stays this way then she is still our baby girl.
We love you so very much, Mama.
An update to @twtrbean’s “condition”
Because Britt thought I meant twitter.com rather than my cat, I’m making it clear: This post is about a cat. Not a social media network.
I brought Twitter to the vet’s today. The vet said outside the door loud enough for me to hear “I’ve never heard of a shelter letting a cat go without being spayed” so when she walked in the room I acknowledged her comment by saying the shelter had scheduled her appointment for June 2 and that I’d never had a cat from a shelter go into heat in my home, they were always spayed before that happened. They said they could do nothing about being in heat. She received all of her shots and the vet tech gave her a dose of Advantage. Except, she coated Twitter’s back with it so the first thing Tweet Pea did when she got home was to try to wash the stuff off her back and then she started foaming at the mouth. I called the vet, who was shocked that Twitter could reach it, to which I replied “she’s very talented” in addition to mentioning what a great coating job the vet tech did, and then during the phone call Twitter stopped foaming at the mouth so we negotiated me not walking back to the vet’s in the rain to get a cone on her head.
I called the shelter about the fact that my cat is in heat and my spay appointment isn’t until June 2, they assured me Twitter will not go into heat again before the appointment and to keep that appointment.
I hope I start enjoying the sound of my cat yowling all night long. And I hope she’s a 3-day heater, not a 14-day heater. Cuz, GAH, I can’t.
I am not sure why I feel differently about my control of situations in NYC vs. VT, but in VT I would never have let one of my girls go so long without a spay. And now I feel empowered to NEVER let this happen again.