cimorene

Snookums seems to be doing well! The vet ordered a longer list of bloodwork just to be sure, as he is getting older, but she said so far she sees no reason to change our routine, except that he needs to lose a little weight. Uh-oh.

Because low blood sugar is such a danger for a diabetic cat, the first concern is usually to make sure they have food if they're hungry at all... and I didn't really notice him putting the weight on. They eat wet food, so it isn't exactly free feeding, but we have been giving them generous portions that they don't finish in one sitting to make sure they don't run low often. Hopefully just giving smaller portions and only when asked will be enough. I wouldn't want to start weighing the portions every time, or feeding Tristana separately.

We ran out of the cats' freeze-dried meat treats yesterday, and are making do until the new ones arrive (I have to just give one or two at a time, even though they're pretty small, to avoid this... it's so easy to go overboard). So I bought a little packet of duck jerky at the vet yesterday. (Different preparation method, but for a diabetic cat the important thing is that they're 100% meat.) Snookums is completely fine with them - I guess they're not tough enough to hurt his teeth and gums (he has a tooth that needs extracted unfortunately). Tristana is still not convinced that they are food, after 24 hours. She still appears every time they are being given a treat (which was about eight times, because Snookums notifies us every time he goes to the litterbox and gets his butt wiped and then gets a treat, remember), and she checks hers and then looks up at me like ??, and then she checks his which he's already happily eating and discovers it's jerky too, and then she checks hers again. A few times she has bit or licked it, but she always drops it and then just stares at it until he finishes his and comes and eats it too. It's both hilarious and kind of sad. I was starting to feel really guilty by bedtime. She doesn't seem to be mad, so I guess she is just hoping this isn't the way we live now.

Speaking of Tristana's hilarious food habits, she's a salad fiend! The bunnies' diet is mostly hay, but they each get a little bowl of salad every night - fresh herbs and a little bit of lettuce. Tristana is always interested in anything being done involving food prep, and she's especially interested in the bunny salads. For one thing, she absolutely loves wood dock, bloody dock, or red-veined dock, a salad herb/green that the bunnies get a lot of. All potted herbs have to be kept up on a shelf so that she can't reach them, but they have to be taken down so I can put leaves in the salads, and her dilemma is whether to dive for the bowls of salad, the herb pots, or try to crawl in the bag with the lettuce. Sometimes it's necessary to grab her and put her in my shirt and make the salads one-handed. She frequently has managed to steal an herb leaf or nibble the ends of a lettuce leaf. I tried giving her a piece of lettuce leaf, thinking once she had it she'd realize it wasn't that great... but she just ate it. She ate two in fact.

I wasn't able to send a message to the employment bureau Friday or yesterday because, as mentioned in the post about my new phone problem, I can't sign in. If the codes haven't come in the mail today I guess I will have to just try calling them. The list of stuff I was meant to tell them was a little complex for a phone message, but I can always make a bullet outline and then reiterate it in a written message once the codes get here.

I need to pick up the proof of work document from the store this week! I was planning to go today, and I was kind of planning to walk... and it's not snowing exactly, like it was supposed to yesterday... but it's also not sunny like I was hoping. It's still the icy AND the slushy times (sunbeams producing intermittent melty spots that turn to slush, sheets of ice about six inches thick on all the roads that are chipped and bubbly in spots, and smooth as glass in others). It's supposed to be a couple of degrees above freezing today, so more of the same. It might be worth it to get the walk in the sun, but if the sun won't shine... maybe I'll just try to do a series of little 20-minute cleaning sessions instead.