Vet's office opened at 8:00am. I was there at 8:05am. I did not get to see a vet until 9:50am. -_-;; It turns out that Sushi has an abcess around one of his claws, so he got the paw shaved and his nails trimmed and a shot of antibiotics, along with twice-daily doses at home. At least it's in goo form rather than pill; I can make him take the goo. Pills are much more problematic.

Also, on hoshikage's recommendation, I cracked open my first book of the year today. And could not put it down.

Title: Captain Vorpatril's Alliance
Author: Lois McMaster Bujold
Length: 422 pages

( review )

Idiot cat showed up at the side door as soon as I opened it this morning, seemingly none the worse for wear for his night outside.

Unrelated item: dinner last night was Japanese curry and, for the first time, miso soup. You'd think someone who likes Japanese food as much as I do would have learned to make miso soup long before now, but no. Very simple (counting water, five ingredients!) and very fast. Shall likely be added to menu rotation a lot more from now on.

The cats HATE having their anti-flea treatment applied. Hate it as in, sometimes I've had to have Wonderful Husband help me corral and hold them down for it.

Yesterday, though, I cheated a little. They want attention and will follow me into the bathroom demanding attention? Let's make use of this....

Easiest time I've had dealing with a pair of reluctant cats. I will have to remember this methodology.

Hopefully they will not.

Last weekend Sushi caught a lizard sans tail. (Still alive. I released it.)

This weekend he caught a tail sans lizard. (Still twitching.)

And knocked over rakes, shovels, and broom in the process.

I'm not sure he's improving at this sport....

Sliced my index finger on the lid of a can of cat food. Soaked through the first bandaid, am now onto the second. Fortunately the bleeding seems to've slowed mightily at this point. This had the unintended but macabre side effect of Sushi ending up with a red fingerprint on himself when I picked him up to shut him in the bathroom. (Fingerprint has since been mostly washed off of him.)

Wonderful Husband and I are getting minorly consternated by Sushi's changed behavior. I'm currently going on the theory that he does not in fact have FIP, as since changing his diet to wet food he's gained the lost weight back and is not only occasionally hyperactive again, he's also demonstrating alpha behavior. Which means eating first and pushing Paris away from the second food bowl as well. I much preferred it when Paris was the alpha cat, as she's much more relaxed. So to try and minimize this behavior, I think Sushi is going to be fed in the bathroom while Paris eats her fill; also, he's probably losing workroom lap privileges.

So I had been rereading Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, which I hadn't read in... well over a decade, I suspect, as a beginning to an Arthurian kick. (And I have a LOT of Arthurian novels I want to reread my way through.) But the book is, to put it lightly, not light and fluffy reading. And after yesterday's news about Sushi, I really couldn't handle more fiction that depressed me and made me wonder in a not-always-pleasant way about the universe and my place in it. So I switched over to Terry Pratchett's "Making Money," which, being Discworld and more specifically being one of the books about Moist, was guaranteed to go down quickly and easily. Which it did.

I've been having to force-feed Sushi the past few days, which involves tinned food combined with water, squirted into his mouth via a large-ish plastic syringe. He doesn't particularly enjoy it but we both seem to be getting used to the system by now. It really says something about my state of mind that it made me really really happy this evening when he sniffed at the bowl I thinned the paste in, and then ate his dinner all by himself from the bowl. (This does not mean, however, that he is let off of having the nasty beefish smelling vitamin goo smeared on his nose so that he'll lick it off.) Today was better for me than yesterday... I've basically reached the acceptance at the moment that he's likely going to die much much sooner than I ever wanted him to, and that all I can do during his remaining time is take care of him and make him as happy as I can. Thus he's getting to do things that he wasn't allowed to before, such as being on my lap in the computer room. (Where he is as I type, in fact.)

Sushi is apparently one of those beings who goes through life experiencing it by putting every single thing they come across in their mouths. In this way, I reflect, he may well be preparing me to someday be a mother.

However, thus far this week this has included gnawing through a plastic bag to get at the homemade bread inside, gnawing again through a plastic bag to get at the thawing chicken inside, and jumping on the table and eating some more of the homemade bread.

I'm beginning to give thought to investing in a breadbox, and now EVERYTHING frozen is getting thawed inside something kitten teeth cannot possibly pierce. Which is why the gallon bag of tomatoes (number one of three, so far) is currently thawing inside the crockpot it's to be cooked in tomorrow to make marinara sauce....

Have gotten the call from the vet. Sushi has been successfully "broken"; I'll be picking him back up after work. Feeling kind of guilty that kitties, unlike people, don't get ice cream to make them feel better after surgeries, especially since he'll be wearing The Cone Of Much Indignity.... But I don't feel any bit guilty about getting him neutered, regardless of his opinion on the matter, particularly since I (unlike one of my husband's coworkers) am under no delusion that there is a "kitten shortage" going on out there.

Need to discuss vaccinations with the vets, though. Since they NEVER told me that the shots he got were part one of two and that I needed to bring him back in within a month for the second part, now he needs to get them all over again and I need to pay for them all over again. GRRR. I'm able to afford it, but I'm not happy about not being told pertinent information like this, and plan to make it clear to them that they need to fix this particular oversight in office policy.