workingwifey

This past Saturday (two days ago) we took Cootie to the vet so that he could get a blood glucose curve to see if the 2 units 2x a day was enough insulin. He had to stay at the vet all day and they drew his blood once an hour, through his ear. We picked him up around 5pm and they said that we need to up his dose to 4 units 2x a day. I have to take him back in on Sept. 8th for the day so that they can do another curve. The vet said I can feed him either wet or dry food, as long as it’s the kind for diabetic cats (Low car, high protein), but today I asked my husband to go out and get some wet food because we’re almost out of dry. My main reason for this is that cootie has a “cavity” which hurts him, and he has a hard time chewing his food. The vet won’t fix his tooth though until the diabetes gets under control, which makes me a bit angry because I don’t want Cootie to be in pain! But whatever. Cootie also gained 6 ounces last week which is great, the vet said that’s a very good sign. He’s acting normal and seems to be happier now that we (I say “we”, but there is no “we” involved. It is just ME) have been giving him the insulin, so that makes me happy. He is still really good when I give the shots. The only thing he is starting to do now is when I am trying to find the skin and tent it, he tries to roll on his back LoL! It’s funny, but makes me kind of hard to tent. I just hope he can go into remission eventually, the insulin and glucose curves are expensive! Have already spent about $550 in a week and a half!

Recently my cat, Cootie, lost 5 pounds rather quickly. He’s 8 years old and has always been around 20 pounds, so when he went from 21lbs to 16lbs, I got anxious. I have taken him to the vet before to get checked for Diabetes but since he didn’t have it last time, I didn’t think much of how he was acting this time (lots of water drinking & peeing). So I took him in last Wednesday and they called me Friday to tell me yes, he does have diabetes We took him to the vet on Saturday and they taught us how to “tent” the skin and prepare the syringe and administer the insulin. Right now I have to give him 2 units of Insulin, twice a day (I do it at 6am and 6pm). The first couple times I did it, it was really hard for me to “tent” the skin correctly. I still have trouble with it but think I am getting the hang of it. At the vet, the assitant grabbed a ton of skin when she showed us where to tent the skin, but here at home the two time I’ve tented only a little bit of skin, I can feel the needle actually going into his skin and he doesn’t flinch at all. The other times, he flinches but doesn’t run away. The very first time I shot him, he flinched and yelled at me and turned to look at me with the madest/most painful/sadest look ever…it made me SO sad. He seems to be doing well today though, today is day 5. We take him back to the Vet on Saturday so that they can take another blood test and see if we are giving him too much insulin or not enough. I never thought I would have to be giving my baby Insulin shots! I would think about it every once in a while because I know that male cats over 7 years of age are more likely to get diabetes and 1 in 400 cats gets it, but could never picture myself poking him with a needle!! I’m glad we took him in and he’s getting help. The insulin is really expensive though, as well as the blood curve test thing (glucose curve?). More to come….

Tomorrow is Cindo de Mayo and also Cootie’s birthday. He’ll be eight years old! I can’t believe he’s my old man baby. We are having my dad and his girlfriend over to celebrate by eating Carne Asada (Cootie’s favorite food which he only gets on his birthday) and drinking margaritas.
So hard to believe another year has passed. I find myself saying this every year, well every month actually. Time goes by so quickly. As as kid, adults would tell me how when you get older, time will go by faster and faster and I never believed them, because I thought it already was going by fast enough. But it was the truth. Every year I look back and say, “Where in the heck did the last 12 months go?” It’s really unbelievable.
I started my core accounting classes today! : ) I’m excited. I also have a Research Writing class which at first I was dreading, but it’s basically just an expanded version of the Critical Thinking class I just took, which I aced (I had a 99.2% last time I checked. That’s without the final project being graded though) and was actually fairly easy for me. In this Research Writing class though I get to pick a topic, and write a paper about it. I think I’m going to pick to write about how it is possible to be a feminist and a Christian at the same time. Waiting for approval from the professor on that topic.
That’s it for now. My new job that I started two months ago is going really well! I love it. So glad I decided to take the opportunity while I had it.
I”m going to try to attach a picture of my baby Cootie that I just took, the day before his birthday. He was napping.

In February I signed my cat Cootie pet insurance thru PetCo, whichever one they have on the website. Everything was cool. Then all of a sudden last week I got a notice in the mail saying that my service is being canceled due to non payment.
That blew me away since the payments have been automatically taken from my credit card since February, and I have received NO phone calls and NO letters in the mail about anything regarding this at all. And of course the company is in New York so by the time I get home from work and can call them, they are closed (since I’m on pacific time). So I called them, left them an angry message and asked for a call back.
Last month I had signed up my cat Phyre for the same insurance, but unfortunately I went out of town and my husband forgot to take him to the vet for the check up, so that the vet could send all of the informatin to the pet insurance company to make the insurance valid, and our time expired so his insurance never fully went into effect.
So the following day after I left the message with the Pet Insurance company, I decided to email them to cancel BOTH of my policies and refund me for the month of July. I told them about their terrible lack of customer service and their insane letter saying that I was “past due” and had not paid, when the payments had ALWAYS been automatically deducted.
OH I left something out- what promted me to finally cancel the pet insurance was that I was reading an article in Readers Digest, and there were 7 ’scams’ to watch out for, or something like that. One of them was Pet Insurance. It said that most people pay around $5000 before they even need to use their insurance for even the smallest amount. They also said that most pet owners never, in the pets’ entire lifetime, ever need to spend over $1000 so they suggested instead of putting a monthly fee to an insurance company, just put the money into a savings account. Sure, it’s a big chunk of money at once but you will be prepared, and you will still be saving WAY more money than if you had gotten the pet insurance.
And it makes total sense.
So all of you out there with a needless expesnse like this, I hope you take mine and Readers Digest’s advise.

A friend of mine that I used to work with is taking care of a litter of puppies right now. The mommy dogs’ owner is out of town, so my friend is taking care of them all for now. There are six puppies and they are a lot of work! One of them got milk in his nose, and probably inhaled it, so he had to be taken to the vet, but is doing OK now. I told her I was jealous of her, that she gets to be around these babies, and she said it’s a ton of work and DON’T be jealous!
I am craving a puppy or kitten fix. I haven’t been around a kitten since my cat Phyre was a baby (2 years ago). Kittens and puppies are the best. They are so playful, and need so much attention and they are so tiny. I love that you can just pick them up, pet them, do whatever you want and they are so small they can’t get away They are definitely a lot of work- almost as much as a human baby!
To me, that is the best part though. If you aren’t ready for a human baby yet, an animal baby is totally the way to go!

I have 2 cats, both are boys, both are black and white. My older cat, Cootie, is 7 while my younger cat, Phyre (originally was short for Sapphire since he had blue eyes) is 2. Since Phyre is still a young cat, he always wants to play and loves attention, and MUST be wherever I am when I’m home. I’ve had both of them since they were little babies so they are truly like my children, and I am their mother. Cootie loves attention on his own terms. He’s turning into that “grump old man” type of cat. Often, when Cootie is wanting attention, he will come to wherever you are and then gets so disappointed when Phyre is there. Phyre will either chase him away and try to play or he just takes over whatever it is that Cootie is trying to do (eat, drink, get pettings, etc).
So the other night I was sleeping, and normally Cootie sleeps on my pillow with me, while Phyre starts out laying next to me and then goes down and lays across my feet. On this particular night, Phyre was laying next to me and Cootie also wanted to lay next to me (again, only on his terms of course). Cootie kept walking up and down the bed, trying to figure out where to lay, and was very frustrated. Finally he layed down on the other side of me, right on the edge of the bed about to fall off. It made me realize that 2 was definately a crowd for Cootie.
I often feel bad that I brought Phyre home as a playmate for Cootie. Cootie was 5, used to being an ‘only child’, and here comes this new kitten that is getting a TON of attention…and sometimes I feel like Cootie holds it against me-of course I like to assume that cats are able to have human emotions and thoughts. I always am telling both of my cats that I love them both and that they are both the cutest cats in the world, but I have definately learned my lesson on this subject