Will anybody feed the kitty?

We are reasonably sure our little Squeaker has developed a megaesophagus, which means if she eats too much to quickly it all comes back up before it ever reaches her stomach. She was already small to begin with, and she has lost weight. Our first cat developed a megaesophagus and we ended up having to put her to sleep because she was starving to death and we couldn’t stand it.

Actually, we don’t know for sure whether Squeaker has a megaesophagus because that involves a barium study, and we are not in the mood right now to spend the money on the cat (hint: our co-pay for 4 months for the osteoporosis drug I have been prescribed was $2500.)

So in the meantime, we remembered what the vet told us to do to try to keep our first cat alive and so first we made her a platform to eat off of...

but that was too much of a temptation for the dog, so we have rigged up a “feeding platform” for the Squeaker...

and we have bought canned cat food which she doesn’t have to chew--she tends not to chew the dry cat food which makes the vomiting even more frequent. With this system we have rigged up she seems to be getting enough down and is holding her own, at least for now.

The canned cat food has a powerful odor and neither one of us neither one of us particularly likes smelling it, and neither of us leaps up with alacrity to feed the kitty.

So one of us will ask: “Will anybody feed the kitty?”

And the other one responds, “No, I won’t feed the kitty.”
 
But we do, of course, feed the kitty.

The tea tree

The blog goes strangely silent while I work through yet another health problem.

So much has gone wrong with me since January that I have reached and passed the point that I just do not want to write about it any more. I can see myself turning into this person that other people take one look at and run in the opposite direction so they don't have to hear the latest medical problem. I used to know a woman like that -- you said "Hi, how are you" and she told you exactly how she was and how her children were, and...once I did cross the street and go into a store when I saw her at the other end of the block heading toward me so I would not have to talk to her and hear the latest. 

So when a person really is "not OK", the standard greeting that people give each other…

Hi. How are you?

...becomes a loaded question.

Do they really want to know how I am? Well, if they are close friends or family then yes, probably they do, but not the stranger that I passed on my walk in the park the other day who said  “How are you?” and I said “I’m great,” or even the casual acquaintance that I see at the post office or in the check-out line at the store.

So, “I am fine” is good enough for now. And in a very real sense I am “fine.”

In the meantime, with a perfectly straight face, he says, “Did you know our tea tree is blooming?”

Tea tree?

If we have a tea tree it is news to me. “Come on, he says, “I’ll show you.”

So I trail after him as he heads toward the compost heap.

 “Look,” he says, “the tree is just about ready to harvest.”

And then he bursts into laughter.

We drink a lot of green tea, and the used bags go into the compost bucket, which in turn is thrown on the compost heap. And there is a bush right next to the spot, and the inevitable happens.


A tea tree indeed.