Olga's arrival

Early this morning I picked up Olga, who had flown all night to get here, from the airport. A diversion due to a traffic accident routed us through St. Paul, which we took as an omen (as we drove up to it and realised that we were both starving) that we were meant to eat breakfast in Mickey's Diner. So we did. Olga spent a lot of the time playing with the Nexus 1.

We drove home through fog and something that would have been an ice-storm if it had been two degrees colder, but was just drizzle. Eventually, we got here, and headed up to the attic. I was worried that Zoe would have died while we were away, or not really be there any longer, but no, she was awake and there. Still Zoe's weaker each day. She responds less, and while she's happy to be petted, tends, mid-pet, to get down from the bed, walk away until she's somewhere away from where she sleeps, then make a sort of yelping barking screechy noise like a small eagle in distress, and throw up a foamy liquid.

Eventually, Zoe stopped throwing up and relaxed.

At the point where they both seemed comfortable, I went off to take the Dog (who is unimpressed by the lack of attention he's been getting) for a walk in the sleety rain. Or the rainy sleet. It's harder to keep warm AND dry than it is to keep warm. This is me deciding that it may be a mistake trying to take a photograph on a nice new phone-camera in the freezing rain with rapidly numbing fingers.

Not that the dog minded. He was just happy not to be bored and left on his own in the kitchen.

...

You know, the FAQ mailbox has filled with messages from people, from many, many hundreds of you, almost all of you telling a heartbreaking or heartwarming (or, very often, both at the same time) story of how a beloved cat died. I'm reading all of them. Sometimes it's uplifting, and sometimes it feels like I'm marching through The Valley of the Shadow of Death of Cats. But I am reading all of them, and I appreciate them so much.

Labels: Cat Vomit, interesting weather, The Valley of the Shadow of Death of Cats, Webelf Wonders

Zoe update

I slept in the attic bedroom again last night. Zoe seemed weak and listless when I went in, and was huddling on the floor by the heater. She smelled weird, like bile. She got out of bed a couple of times in the night, to throw up a couple of teaspoons of foam. Then I'd clean her up and bring her back to the bed, and she'd snuggle and purr.

When I woke up this morning, she was in her cat bed on the floor. I cleaned up the vomit-foam that had happened while I'd slept. Now I'm off to drive through something that appears from wunderground.com to be a full-on ice-storm to go and get Olga from the airport and bring her back to spend a last day with her cat.

And I'm wondering what it is about this small blind cat that inspires such behaviour -- mine, Olga's, Lorraine's.... I've had cats in this house for 18 years, and there are cat-graves down by gazebo. Two cats died of old age last year. It wasn't like this.

I think it may be the love. Hers, once given, was yours, unconditionally and utterly.

Right. Off into the ice-storm. (Yes, I am taking a big four-wheel-drive thing, not the Mini. Yes, I will drive very carefully.)

Labels: Cat Vomit, Cats, ice-storms, is that what people do?

Zoe, part two

So far, a profoundly odd day. I slept up in the attic bedroom with Zoe, much to the irritation of my dog. The above was the view when I woke up, captured on Nexus 1 camera (as was the accidental video, below). Weirdly, no allergy symptoms at all. Normally I have to wash my hands after touching her, or my eyes itch and swell and go red. No problems at all today. And I lay in bed with her while she did that kneading-dough thing that contented cats do, and checked my email and learned that a TV series I've been working on for 12 years has just come together, and then the phone rang and I was offered a film to write and direct, and it all seemed very unreal and unlikely and far away.

I'll sleep with her again tonight. Olga (her other person - here's what she writes about Zoe) flies in tomorrow, and the attic bedroom is Olga's that night.

Zoe can't eat or drink - the tumour blocks the oesophagus, and she throws up everything, even water - and we're hydrating her subcutaneously. On Monday, Lorraine and I take her to the vet (edit; no we don't; the vet comes here, which will be much less traumatic for her), who will put her to sleep, which is a euphemism, and we stay with her to the end.

Thank you all for your kind and sensible messages. They mean a lot.

...

Something small that made me smile:

Did you know that people over at the Amazon Blueberry Girl page have started writing their reviews in Blueberry Girl meter?

I didn't, but I looked, and they have, I particularly liked Mariana Chaffee's.

It is good to make art in odd places.

Labels: Blueberry Girl, Cat Vomit, Cats, I miss the days when I used to make sure that there would be at least one amusing or interesting label

Things that Make you Blog part One: Avoidance...

Fred the Unlucky Black Cat has been doing fairly well recently. About ten minutes ago, he inspired a small poem, for a start.

Ahem.

A Cat in the Ointment

For some, life's one long fine surprise
the ointment's pure: there are no flies.

For some, life's one long disappointment
there's only flies: there is no ointment.

The rest of us live in the middle.
You own the cat -- clean up the widdle.

Although actually it's not widdle, but cat vomit in astonishing quantities. (None of the rhymes for vomit or puke seemed to fit though. No, don't take it as a challenge, please.) No cat can have eaten that much cat food, I thought, as I got out of bed and looked at the bedroom carpet. Then Fred staggered back over to it and began retching and hiccupping and gurgling again, and deposited yet more undigested catfood onto a fairly white bedroom carpet.

Excuse me. I really only came downstairs for more paper towels. I have some late night carpet cleaning I should be getting back to.

Labels: A Poem, Cat Vomit, Fred the Unlucky Black Cat