De Fenestra

E and I are a one-cat household for the first time since we got together.

Kinda sucks.

Mina went from normal to under the bed, freaking out, howling, and drooling in about 72 hours. A trip to the emergency vet showed encephalitis of unknown origin and a fever of 106º. She spent the next two and a half weeks in and out of veterinary care, alternating with home care involving six or seven (I lost track) different prescriptions. None of it did much good. Basic biological functions were working but there was no cat there. We made the decision to euthanize this week after consulting with our regular vet.

She was not my cat - never my cat, always E's cat - but she was a good cat.

Last night, Komatsu pissed in a surge protector.

Aside from the minor issue of my job ending on November 1st and no replacement income on the horizon, this hasn't been a bad October.

With the summer drought behind us, weather in central Kentuckistan has been just about perfect lately. Cool, crisp, with only a few days of cold snap so far. My usual morning commute route runs through a swath of horse farms here on the south end of the county and it is painfully picturesque. The trees are just about at the peak of fall color. If I'm particularly lucky, there'll be fog along the creek where the road descends to the one-lane bridge spanning it.

The weather's also good for walking. elalyr got a FitBit this spring, and her father was sufficiently enamored of it to buy copies for most of the immediate family (he does things like that). It is useful, if a bit disturbing, to see just how sedentary office jobs make us. The web site's food tracking function follows suit: utilitarian and unsettling. I began using it mainly to support E's own weight loss efforts, but the data kind of scared me - and showed me how I got up to 208 a couple of years ago. Between a conscious effort to stand up and walk around the building periodically during the day, more walks with E in the evenings, and paying attention to what I'm cramming into my gaping maw at all hours, I'm down from 185-190 in July to just brushing 175 (I actually dipped below that mark briefly during September's sinus infection - the hidden benefit of several days of sub-1,000-calorie intake and no hydration).

Walking. A few weeks ago, we finally got around to exploring the slightly larger of two city parks within walking distance of our house. The one we'd been visiting on our peregrinations is usually somewhat well-populated and distinctly suburban, surrounded on all sides by houses with little to no vegetation cover. The new one seems to be the product of a rare intelligent decision by some urban planner. It abuts a branch of South Elkhorn Creek and has a small walking trail along the bank. The floodplain in that part of the park is a no-mow zone, making it an excellent habitat for small birds (and the cats what stalk 'em). It's rare to run into more than one or two other groups on the path, so while not exactly private, it occasionally has that vibe.

It has, unfortunately, been an autumn of illness at the House of Cats and Dice. Both E and I had the aforementioned sinus infection in September, which has trailed off into weeks and weeks of incrementally-decreasing sore throats and sinus drainage. More disturbingly, though, Komatsu came down with a urinary tract infection last week. If you've never lived with (or had to clean up after) a cat with a UTI, consider yourself fortunate. The effects are sanity-blasting. As is typical for him, though, he's been remarkably brave and placid about all the trauma we've inflicted upon him: emergency vet visit with two shots last Thursday night, regular vet visit with IV fluids this Tuesday night, and twice-daily squirts of kitty amoxicillin down his gaping maw. The good news is that the UTI and the crystals that caused it appear to be on the way out. The (latest) bad news is that now he has some sort of cold - acquired, we suspect, at the emergency vet. Hearing and seeing a cat of his size trying to clear his sinuses is horrifying. We felt awful while petting him a few nights ago - he couldn't purr through all the horking. He is slowly recovering but still prone to fits of gargling.

Although the budget crunch of incipient unemployment has curtailed almost all entertainment expenditures, I am getting something of a regular gaming fix. drlucky was kind enough to resume last summer's Space: 1889 game recently, so we've been back on Mars for intrigue, forbidden archaeology, and other shenanigans. The good doctor had to wave off this week's session for trauma related to his day job, so tracker7 broke out his Nightfall set. I am still undecided on the deckbuilding game genre. This was my first exposure, and my initial thinking is that it has some of the gameplay of simpler CCGs but little of the tactical depth or self-determination that make CCGs appealing to me. It did get me thinking about breaking out my old collections, building some decks, and trying to get group play going, but I'm not sure anyone but me would actually dig on that.

Of the many nifty things I've picked up from County Comm over the years, perhaps the ones that get the most actual use are my SO-LEDs. They're nothing more than keychain LEDs mated to alligator clips, but the combination makes them insanely useful for point lighting. I keep one on most of my medical kits and my laptop bag so I can illuminate the dark recesses of a container and find something that's slipped to the bottom of the bag without blinding myself. Two or three are floating around the interior of the Outback for seeing stuff I've dropped in places the dome lights don't reach - you'd be amazed what can disappear into black upholstery. I keep one in the gun safe for finding things in the back corners there, too.

Tonight, we determined that one clipped onto a cat's collar makes a pretty good locator beacon when someone wants to make a nocturnal excursion for yard salad.

Cat twining around feet and purring: kind of comforting.

Cat lurking behind chair and making slurping-chewing-heavy-breathing sounds: kind of disconcerting.

We... okay, elalyr fixed homemade pizza for dinner last night. While we were putting toppings on our respective concoctions, Riley wandered into the kitchen. At the crinkling sound of me opening the bag of pepperoni, he perked up.

"Riley, this is not cat food."

<myow?>

"Not cat food!"

<myow!>

"Okay, but don't say we didn't warn you. Look, meat frisbee!" I flipped a disc of pepperoni into the hall.

My lovely wife glared at me. "When he pukes, you're cleaning it up."

I peeked into the hall. "Well, he's licking it, but it's too big to get into his mouth." I snagged another piece of pepperoni, shredded it into bite-sized pieces, and dropped it in front of Riley. "There he goes. Om nom nom."

"You are so cleaning it up."

Riley sauntered into the kitchen, licking his chops. As of this morning, I don't think he's uneaten it.