Nilknarf News

Sam is dead.

He wasn't my favorite cat by a long shot, but he knew me and I knew him and we got along when we had to.

I called Karen about 10:00 this morning, she and Lacee just got back from the vets. They gave Sam some subdermal fluids and drew some blood to check for kidney failure. Karen said that he seemed to pep up somewhat after that.

But then I got a call from Lacee on the cell phone about 14:00 or so... they were about to the Oklahoma border on I-35... the vet had called and said that Sam's kidneys were shot.

Well, not much of a cure for that. That was something that I worried about when I drug his little body out of the dryer... when you heat up some things, they die. Kidneys and brains, mostly.

So... the choice was to either let him die naturally and painfully or just put him to sleep, and I chose the latter, of course. He might have been comfortable for another day or two, but it was awfully hard to tell if he was in pain or not right now. Why take the chance of him suffering, when the outcome was inevitable?

So I took him out to the vets when I got home about 16:00. I chickened out, though, I just handed him over to the girl and told her to send a bill. I really didn't want to bust out crying right there, I made it back to the truck. I don't know why that was important to me, but it was. I guess that I want people to think that I'm a tough sonovabitch. And mostly, I am. Well, mostly I want people to think that I am, it's a lot easier than dealing with other people when I'm grieving.

So anyhoo... there is a lesson to be learned here, all you cat-lovers. Check the dryer before you start it up. Keep the door closed all of the time. If your cat jumps into the dryer, make sure that it knows that it's not appropriate behavior by banging on the side or on the top of the dryer. But don't get complacent... check it every time anyway.

The other bad news... the back isn't really very healed, dammit. I was running the room today, so I was on my feet all day. The back didn't start hurting until around 10:30, so that was not really that bad.

I might not have mentioned that Karen and Lacee went to OK City today... they'll be there until Friday, I think. So I'm batchin' it this week. That usually doesn't bother me much, but I really wish that I had Karen with me tonight.

Today was pretty busy at work and, although I'm glad to be back, I'm also glad that I'm home now. I'm on call tonight but the CT person is on the night shift so I'm pretty safe.

I have fallen off of the diabetes wagon, however... my BS was at 136 this morning. I will be doing better this week once I get back into the swing of things.

Weather: beautiful today,chance of t-storms all week long, with some violence expected maybe tonight. It looks like there is a lot of weather headed this direction, but it's still a long ways away, hopefully it won't peter out before it gets here. Actually, there's a good chance of thunderstorms all week long...