Gah... I had my MSN name yesterday as Aphrodite: <-- Should not be allowed to own pets. Why? 'Cause I am a loser when it comes to my pets.

I was awoken Wednesday night to both cats, but especially Thena, sounding as if they were trying to bring up a hairball -- for nearly an hour. I spoke with my vet's office in the morning, and after some debate, I decided to bring them both in to be checked out. Thena sounded fairly crackly and congested when she was breathing, and it was tough to determine if she was purring or just really congested (to my naked ear), and although Venus seemed on the mend, the fact that she was coughing and gagging too concerned me. I figured it was better to have them both checked out at the same time, just in case I was missing something I didn't know to look for.

As it turns out, I didn't know to check to make sure her eyes weren't irritated -- it's something you have to gently pull her lids down to check. They're a bit red, but should be okay.

Anyhow, I left work early yesterday to make sure I had plenty of time to get them ready to go. I stripped down to a tank top and shorts (since it started raining on my way home and I got soggy), and sat on the couch holding Thena. Her ears felt a bit cold, and she was uncharacteristically docile. Every now and then, she'd start shivering, too, and she had no reaction whatsoever to the little kitten climbing all over me, tugging at my earrings and trying to get my attention. Again; uncharacteristically docile.

It was here that I turned into a total loser -- it's while I was holding Thena and picking up all of this that I just started crying, scared for my little baby. Now, I've been through (potentially) worse with other cats, and held up fine; it's a different thing entirely when I have other people who are also responsible for the care of the cats, and there's just something reassuring about having people like my parents around to share some of the concern. Thena and Venus are my babies; they rely entirely on me and only me for everything, and while the responsibility of that doesn't scare me -- it's humbling sometimes -- it still hits me sometimes when something like this happens. I don't know, for some reason I almost feel as if bad things wouldn't happen if I had someone else around to lean on and share the responsibility. I know it would certainly make them easier to bear.

Anyhow, I pulled myself together and got ready to take them off to the vet. During this time work stuff exploded and totally didn't help my mood out, but that's behind me. The vet checked out Venus first, since I figured she'd be a bit easier to handle and would go a bit faster. She had a slight temperature (0.2 degrees), and slightly red eyes, but otherwise was fine. She's still sneezing and coughing sometimes, but seems to be getting better.

Thena, on the other hand -- the poor thing. She has a fairly significant fever (some 2-3 degrees), is relatively lethargic/docile, and was fairly congested. She wound up getting some subcutaneous fluids (under the skin) and I was sent home with some antibiotics for her. The crazy thing is, the day before, she seemed fine -- went out on her harness for awhile, beat up Venus somewhat, and so on.

Gah. She ate a bunch of food yesterday, threw up some last night (probably my fault, for giving her so much wet food), and seemed to stay quiet overnight. I woke up to find her on the body pillow next to me, and she was again fairly quiet this morning, except for a few moments where she sat on top of the toilet and batted half-heartedly at the roll of toilet paper. I held her for several minutes after I got out of the shower, and she again ignored Venus crawling all over us. When I went to put her down, she got crabby and bit at me, and I think it might've been from where she'd had the fluids yesterday -- probably some soreness. She stayed crabby and nippy for a bit as I tried to pat her a bit more and then slowly slide her off my lap, but seemed to get a bit better later.

I gave her some baby food that I had leftover from her brief stint with diarrhea as a kitten (in a sealed jar, don't worry), and she was eating that as I left this morning. Her appetite seemed good, too; she ate the wet food I put out, some of her dry food, and most of Venus' dry food. I waited until after my shower to give her one of the antibiotics, and she took it without any problem -- I just put it in her mouth and she swallowed it, then went back to the food. Digger's easy to pill like that, too -- at least for the first while. :) With any luck, when I go home tonight, there will have been no throwing up, and her spirits will have perked up somewhat.

Mom and I are supposed to do some shopping tomorrow, and then I have a birthday thing that afternoon/evening, but I'm prepared to cancel everything if I have to to stay home and keep an eye on Thena. My vet closes tonight at 6 and is only open from 9-12 tomorrow, so if anything goes really bad, then I have to get her in to the emergency clinic. I don't think that that will be the case, but I can worry nonetheless, and at least prepare for the worst -- prepare for the worst, hope for the best. Spend lots of money in the meantime.

But what the hell? It's only money, and she's my little baby. So for all of this, and the fact that I just earned myself a 17-paragraph update about Buffy in relation to my cat's health problem -- and only one day of them, for all of that -- I am a total loser.

But I'm okay with that, 'cause everyone that's met my cats thinks they're awesome, regardless of evil and so on. So there. Hey, there are more than twenty reasons why this site's called The Litterbox, no? :) Plus, it makes me feel better to document it all and maybe have some other people sharing in my worry and expressing sympathy and so on.

And now that I've finished defending my reasons for posting what I want to my own site... :)

We had a barbecue here at work today, to celebrate the launch of the Government of Canada Workplace Charitable Campaign. This means that people will now start circulating to ask for money for the United Way, and I will experience vague pangs of guilt for not contributing. I prefer to give money directly to causes that I personally support, like the Humane Society -- and I do that not only through financial contributions, when I can afford them, but through obtaining animals from them, a la Shadow and now Venus.

Sorry if that seemed ranty, it's not meant to be. What can I say? I like animals more than people, sometimes. Sometimes.

What else? Yeah, not too much.

Here, some links:

New mouse. My favourite is the tongue-in-cheek line of the first bit: "There is apparently some good news today for all those readers who enjoy surfing web porn but would prefer to use their right hand for something other than operating a mouse - a Canadian visionary from Ottawa's Institute of Information Technology has developed a nose-operated mouse which looks set to redefine the human-computer interface paradigm."

I am very bored and wishing that the magazines I ordered ages ago would hurry up and arrive. That would make me happy, and not feel that my money was spent in vain.