If it isn’t one thing, it’s
another. Teens and cats. The Boy started high school, and decided it isn’t to
his liking. That’s been a drama. I thought The Girl was the drama princess
around here, but it’s apparently a trait she opted to share with her little
brother. Just peachy. The good news was that at least his little black cat was
doing her job in keeping him relatively calm.
That ended. Darth Jingles got in a cat fight and lost. We didn’t notice when she came home the other night. She waltzed through the door like she owned the place, which in her mind is probably accurate, and proceeded to chow down on her dry cat food. For whatever reason, Jingles prefers dry. The Girl pointed out the next morning that half her face was swollen. Poor misshapen kitty. Although she didn’t act like she was in pain, as long as you didn’t try to touch it. Huh.
Over the course of the day, the swelling seemed to go down a bit, she acted fine. Then she scratched it, and made a big mess of herself. I won’t describe it here, but it ruined my appetite. Taking her to the vet was a no-brainer. Now she has a cone around her head, much like Princess did a few months ago. The vet bill was enough to make Hubby wonder if she was really worth it, briefly, but she’s The Boy’s comfort animal and he needs her right now. Plus she’s been a good cat. And grumble as he might, he’s not really that heartless.
So I sat there for hours last night being the cat’s comfort animal. I’m serious. She came home high as pair of mating swallows and nearly as oblivious. I’m a lot less bony than either kid, so she just lay in my arms, and stared at her boy as if he was the most wonderful thing ever. The Boy took it well. We put on a show so he’d sit still and let his cat stare at him.
Then we discovered she was too out of it to figure out how to eat or drink. So I fed her one kibble at a time (patience…) and gave her drinks with a dropper. That was fun.
When Princess had a cone on her head, Jingles couldn’t avoid her enough. The reverse is not true. Princess is fascinated by this turn of events and Jingles is not amused. Hiss hiss swat miss. So Jingles is confined to my room/bathroom with the new litter box in the shower (yay!) to keep her 1) away from Princess who’s really become a pest in the last 12 hours and 2) from hurting herself because she’s a drug lightweight and cannot figure out how this cone thing works. Seriously, Princess adapted quicker and she’s (putting it politely) dim. I have hope that Jingles will come up to speed soon because the prospect of feeding this cat kibble one at a time and giving her drinks with a dropper regularly over the next week or more is really unappealing.
And she’s restless at night and in my bathroom. For the first time in I don’t know how long, Hubby went to bed at a decent hour and actually fell asleep. Therefore I didn’t. Because the bathroom wasn’t as cat-proofed as I thought. Oh, sure I put away everything breakable, just not everything knock-down-able. Well, it’s mostly taken care of now. Of course now I have a mix of spilled shampoo and body wash in my garden tub and kitty prints tracking it all over the bath mats and counter…
