Avast, ye mateys!

Pony's doing super.    He's doing a lot of sleeping (they sent him home with opioid painkillers, which came with unintentionally hilarious paperwork (Pony, if you think you have an addiction problem, here's the number you call, okay?)), but also eating and drinking and tormenting Sodapop, so things are looking up. 

Amazingly, they do not sell cat pirate eyepatches on Etsy, land of all strange hand-crafted things, so I've been left to my own devices.  (Decorative accessories are for photos ONLY; I do not expect him to actually WEAR one, haha)

And now it's time for a Pirate Pony theme song, I think. So far the best I've been able to come up with is this, sung to the tune of "Popeye the Sailor Man",

"I'm Pony the Pirate Cat,
and I know that I'm all that,
I thrill all the kitties
with my pirate ditties,
I'm Pony the Pirate Cat!"

Needs work, right?  Suggestions welcome!

Enucleation

Back in early April, I noticed that Ponyboy had an odd little bulge in the corner of his right eye.  (Ponyboy has always had eye problems.)  I took him to the vet, who thought it might be a reaction to some kind of irritation and gave me some steroidal eyedrops to try.  When the bulge continued to grow,  I took him back to the vet, who did a needle aspiration that didn't really reveal much of anything.  But the bulge kept growing bigger, until within the span of a couple of weeks, it was covering about half of his eye.

The vet suggested surgical removal of the mass and biopsy.  Diagnosis: Squamous cell carcinoma, a locally aggressive cancer of the third eyelid that can usually be completely cured if removed promptly.

Yesterday, Pony and I traveled to the Cornell Companion Animal Hospital (a place we are familiar with, haha) for a consultation.  And all I can say is, how lucky is it that we are within an hour's drive of animal ophthalmologists?

Suggestion?  Remove the eye as soon as possible.

This morning, I took Ponyboy back to Cornell.  First up: Radiology, which confirmed the cancer had not yet spread. (I will admit to crying when I got THAT good news.)   Next up:  Surgery, which was done early this afternoon. Ponyboy is now Ponyboy the Pirate Cat, as he is one-eyed, and he will remain at Cornell tonight and come back home tomorrow.

Good lord, I do love this sweet cat. 

Because Ginny is far, far better at online shopping than I can ever hope to be ...

THANK YOU!!  

Today's walk

Spring flowers are all over the woods this time of year.

According to James Fitter, this is a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak:

Kittens!

Little Rumor on Sunday afternoon:

Sunday night - kittens are happening!:

Monday morning - Meet the Rumorettes:

Kittens!:

Mama and kittens are all doing well. Yay!

Spring has sprung

Here is proof that Spring is here no matter what the weather:

I have an extremely pregnant foster cat:

The dolphin plant is blooming:

 

The car is parked in the driveway instead of the garage:

 

The bleeding hearts are up:

 

The flamingos have returned:

 

The skunk cabbage is up:

 

The eagles are nesting!

 Hey, heron, get outta the way, I'm TRYING to take a picture of the turtle:

The turtles are back!  A friend informed me last night that yesterday was Turtle Day, which I sadly missed, so I made sure to get out today to get my fill of turtles:

What's the surest sign of Spring in your neck of the woods?

Weekend To-Do List

Today:
Grocery shop
Dollar store
Take the multitudes of cans in the garage to the redemption center
Buy more live traps (thank you, Ginny!)
Ollies -garden crocs $3.99
Thrift store 50% off everything (yahoo!)
Post office - stamps
Final spot check of Foster Room and replace litterboxes

(Enjoy that Foster Room while you can, Soda, because company's coming tomorrow!)

Sunday:
Laptop, camera, traps and carrier in car
Oil change
Take trapping buddies out to brunch
Then put them to work - First to Mary M's to drop off traps for her to use as feeding stations
Then to Ed G's to review gamecam footage of HIS feeding stations
Stop at center to pick up new foster, who is preggers
Home

Whew.

Trappin' time!

It happens every Spring - I start getting calls about helping people trap for TNR.  And this year is no exception - there are currently three people who've called me for help and are in the process of setting up neuter appts. at the local clinics.  On Saturday, I took traps out to a place where we trapped last fall so that the property owner could use the non-activated traps as feeding stations so that the feral cat could become accustomed to eating in the traps ahead of the actual trapping dates.

There was just one problem - I need more traps!  I've got a couple of dozen at this point, but when you're trapping in several places, and sometimes leaving the traps for weeks at a time so the cats get used to them, you run out of traps in a hurry.

Which is why I was so happy to have this come in the mail today:

THANK YOU, Ginny, for the Tractor Supply gift card, and thank you for helping to control the feral cat population!  I appreciate it very much!

Patients

My new(ish) job is working in administrative support in a hospital-based outpatient physical therapy department, and it's really introduced me to a whole new set of people.

Our unit specializes in two types of patients: Pediatric and Neuro.  The pediatric patients are largely referred through a county-run program for early intervention services, mainly for help with developmental slowdowns and speech services, but we also see young patients who need help with walking after lower-extremity amputations, including one charming little girl who lost her foot after getting run over by a tractor, and a toddler who was born with leg deformities.

The Neuro patients are mostly adults, who have either suffered strokes or traumatic brain injuries.  The stroke patients tend to be elderly, although not always; one of our current patients is a middle-aged man who had a stroke while sitting in a tree stand during hunting season, causing him to fall out of the tree stand and break his neck.  Yeah. The elderly stroke patients tend to come in with an entire armada of shell-shocked family members for their initial evaluations; it's obvious that the entire family is struggling to deal with their new reality.  It's nice to see the patients progress over the weeks and months and watch the family members visibly relax as they see their parents learning that they can deal with their new situations; that life does go on, and improve, after a life-changing event.

Oh, and there's that subset of heroin-addict-stroke-patients:  The young men (and they are always men), who stroke out after OD-ing and are now trying to get back whatever they can of their former abilities.  Sadly, these guys tend to come for a few visits and then drop back off the map again., although sometimes they can turn out to be very dedicated. 

TBIs (traumatic brain injuries) aren't as common in our office, but we do see them occasionally,  most often when somebody's fallen backwards off a bar stool, and I'm not even kidding. Moral of the story:  If you're gonna get sloppy drunk, do it in a booth at the bar, and not at the bar itself.

We also see developmentally-disabled people whose new group homes are trying to figure out why they're wheelchair-bound even though medically they should be capable of walking, and other wheelchair patients who we are trying to help become ambulatory again.

Including one charming, wheelchair-bound, giant teddy bear of a man in his early thirties, who didn't show up for his appointment today.  It snowed pretty heavily here yesterday so his missing his appointment wasn't unusual; he relies on medivan transportation and also needs his landlord to clear the handicap ramp at his family's home in order to make it to his appointments, so sometimes when the weather is inclement he ends up cancelling. But he always DOES call and cancel; he doesn't just not show up.

A few hours after his scheduled appointment, I was about to call and make sure everything was okay and ask if he wanted to reschedule when one of the department heads came in and asked me not to make the call.

Because he committed suicide yesterday.

Rest in peace, good sir.  Rest in peace.

Disaster Pass

Anybody watching the Weather Channel this afternoon may have seen the reporter broadcasting from my town, which got a BUNCH of snow today. Nowhere near the record amount of snow we've received in one day in the past, but still, the weather was terrible.

And now that I work in a hospital, I am expected to report to work.  I actually carry a literal "Disaster Pass", issued by my employer in conjunction with the county, so that if I am pulled over and questioned as to why I am driving if roads are closed, I won't get ticketed. If I am unable to report to work due to weather conditions, the hospital will actually send someone to come pick me up and bring me into work, with the caveat that there may or may not be someone available to take me back home when my shift is over.   hmmm.  So I drove myself into work this morning, on ice- and snow-covered roads, in order to ensure myself a ride back home tonight.  

We normally see between 40 and 60 patients a day in the office where I work. Today, we had a full slate, but only 2 people actually kept their scheduled appointments - the rest either canceled or no-showed, because the weather was awful.   But it's all good - our providers were able to help out on some of the inpatient units who were short on staff, and I'd rather that patients stay home than risk their lives on awful roads  to try and make their appointments.   And by two this afternoon, the county had declared a state of emergency, and non-essential staff, including me, were told we could leave if we wanted.  Yay! 

So I headed home, on roads that were thankfully much, much better than they were on the ride in this morning, shoveled out my driveway, kicked back and got on Facebook.  Where I discovered that everyone was celebrating the fact that yay!  The restaurants and store

To Catch a Cat

There's a feral cat who's been appearing around my place for a few years now, off and on.   He'd show up on my gamecam, and occasionally I'd catch him sneaking in through the cat door in the morning to eat some of permacats' food.  He's really a pretty cat, black with green eyes.

But he fought with my cats and sprayed all over everything, and you KNOW he was busy making lots of little ferals with whichever females were available.  So whenever I'd trap for other people and I thought there might be an extra neuter appointment available, I'd set a trap for the feral, but he wouldn't go in.  I don't know if he'd been trapped before or had maybe seen another cat get trapped at some point, but he wasn't falling for it.

Things took on an added urgency last week, when one of my gamecam pics seemed to show that he could be wearing an embedded collar. The picture was taken at night, by my lesser-res gamecam, so it was hard to tell, but I decided that it was time to bring this boy IN.  The rescue I volunteer for helped me get a neuter appointment for yesterday, and I started leaving the trap in the garage every night, with the safety on so he would go in and eat withOUT being trapped.

At first he was all, oh HELL no lady I ain't that dumb:

So I moved the food to the open end of the trap, and every night I would move it back a little further into the trap.

Slowly he turned, inch by inch, step by step:

And then it was Monday night, with the neuter appointment for first thing Tuesday morning.  I baited the trap,  unlatched the safety, and waited.

The moment before:

And SUCCESS!:

I was sitting in the living room and I HEARD that trap go off, and I felt liked I'd just hit a home run in the World Series.  I GOT HIM!

I hurried out, took a couple of victory photos because I'm only human:

then quickly covered the trap and put it in a dark corner of the garage until I could take him to the neuter appointment Tuesday morning.  He came through surgery just fine, and while he was out I had his ear notched so that if anyone ever traps him again, they will know he's been neutered.  Turns out he wasn't wearing a collar after all, and was apparently healthy. I had him vaccinated, and they even trimmed his nails while he was under. 

Last night he came back from the vet's, and within a couple of hours of being released, he was back for some chow.

This cat is feral, and will likely always BE a feral, but when I dropped him off at the vet's for surgery they needed a name for their records, and so he is now Good Boy.  Because I believe in naming something what you hope it will be, not what it is. :)

Mama Minkie finds a home

Minkie, my current foster, took a long and circuitous route to get here.  She was obviously somebody's pet at some point, because she was socialized.   She found herself somehow living in a barn out in the country until the barn burned down and she took refuge under a neighbor's porch.  They worked hard to gain her trust, and she came into their house to have her kittens (!), but they had an aggressive-to-cats dog and she couldn't stay. So she ended up at the rescue, and as I had a vacant room at the time, she and her litter came to stay with me last October.

The kittens grew, as kittens do, and got adopted, in pairs. Which left sweet Minkie, who was so afraid of new situations that I hesitated to take her to the adoption center to stay. So I started taking her in on Saturdays, getting her used to the new environment.

There were several people interested in her, but they didn't pass the application process.  Lots of people loved her beautiful blue eyes, but no one seemed to be the right person for her.

Until today, when a woman who had adopted from the center before and had experience in dealing with cats who need special care decided that maybe she could give the right home to Minkie.  She came in to see her today, and the rest is history.  Minkie has a home!

Congratulations, Minkie!  I'll always remember what a sweet girl you are.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Ah, the late Seventies.   Gotta love the outfits! But still a great song.

Dining Out

Everybody's got a few great stories.  Tales about something outrageous that happened to them, or someone famous they met, or that time in elementary school when they made the national news.

A friend of mine calls them "dining out" stories - Anecdotes so entertaining that people will take you out to dinner in order to hear them.

For me, it's growing up in a (possibly) (probably) haunted house.  See also:  The times I've mowed over yellowjacket nests.  Oh, and the racoon-in-the-bedroom story is always good for a few laughs.

How about you?  Any good dining-out stories?

How did I become such a nerd?

So, I got home from work with a massive headache tonight, so I figured I'd eat some dinner and then switch on the opening ceremonies at the Olympics while I zoned out for the evening, and then Katie Couric mentioned that what I was watching on my TV was "augmented reality", i.e., what I was seeing was not what was being seen by people actually in the stadium. So then I wondered what the difference was between "augmented reality" and "alternative facts", and down the research rabbit hole I went.

Mama Minkie gets a gift.

Mama Minkie, my current foster, had her debut public appearance yesterday.  

  Being a famous celebrity is so TIRING!

And when we got home, there was a gift waiting for Minkie!

"Oh look!  One of my many fans sent me a present!"

"Well, open it up, lady, will you?"

The gift-opening was then delayed for several hours while Minkie took a nap in the box:

"Okay, lady, let's go - open it up!"

Look - it's a gift from James Fitter, aka Ginny!

"We are gonna have a blast with this thing!  Thank you, Ginny!

Now excuse me while I explore my new digs."

 

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

So!  Last night, when I got home from work, I had a voicemail on my home phone from my old boss at my old job.

He wanted to know if I'd done the W2s for the company yet.

The company that I no longer work for.  The company that I haven't worked for in several months.  The company that unceremoniously downsized me after 30 years with no severance and no pension and a grand total of two weeks' notice.

To tell the truth, I was somewhere between amused and flabbergasted when I listened to that voicemail.  What did he think?  That I had come back to the office at some point (and I don't even know if the office is even in the same location anymore - at the time I left, he was supposedly preparing for a move), let myself in (with a key I no longer have) accessed the spreadsheets on my old computer (that I no longer remember the passwords for), and magically prepared the W2s for 2017, out of the goodness of my heart?

Oh, my.

I didn't trust myself to return the call without totally telling him where to get off, so I emailed him that no, as I was no longer a company employee, I had not prepared the W2s. I explained how to access the pertinent spreadsheets and advised him as to how to contact the IRS re e-filing.  I also told him where the paper files had been at the time of my departure if he wanted to access those for reference.  (Keep in mind that he hadn't bothered to do anything regarding the W2s until January 31, the day he was required by law to have them released by.)

There.  I'd gone above and beyond, considering I was no longer an employee and hadn't been  one for several months.

But wait!  It gets better!

When I got home from work tonight, I had an email from a former co-worker.   Demanding to know why I'd screwed him (and his entire family!) over by not preparing the W2s ONCE I KNEW I'D BEEN CANNED LAST SPRING.

That's right.  According to this former co-worker, once I'd gotten the old pink slip last spring, I should have sat right down and prepared everybody's W2s for the year right there, on the spot.  To spare him any inconvenience lo these many months in the future when he was ready to prepare his taxes.

I replied, explaining that W2s cannot be prepared until the end of each calendar year, because employees often come and go during the course of a year and I had no way of knowing what may have happened with payroll in between the time I got canned last spring  and the end of  the year.  I reminded him that I had not been employed by that company for SEVERAL MONTHS, and that it was the responsibility of the company, not myself personally, to make sure that W2s were released in a timely manner.

I called him a "dumb fuck", and I ended with email with, "In conclusion, fuck you".

My only regret is that I forgot to add  "... and the horse you rode in on."

It sure has been an interesting week, I'll give it that.