#clawdia

Clawdia's cave.

Livia and Saffy doing "Peaceable Kingdom."

It is hard to take good pictures of pocket voids with a laptop camera.. I think the light coloured cat cover on the bed helps a little.

Livia, characteristic expression on seeing me approach to pet her.

Clawdia photo bombing her sister.

Sisters

Livia supervising the mutual grooming process.

I spent all evening finishing the wonderful Tainted Cup. Charming characters, a well constructed mystery, extremely deep and unusual world buildi9ng.

This meant I had to choose between leash time and bed physio and we still didn't make it outside until a little after 9. I have lived here longer than I have lived anywhere else and it is still weird to me that 9PM is early sunset with enough light to read by even when it's overcast this late at night.

The whole complex was understandably out walking dogs in the period between nine and dark for logical reasons. They were all very well behaved except the Clawdia sized one who wanted to throw down with her. On the second pass, Claw decided "Fuck this!" and tried to go after the thing, but I had a firm hold on her leash.

Claw, in a tiny flat Denero Voice: You talking to me? You talking to me?

Saffy: What is Wrong with you?

For the record, I vote to let people have dogs here every time it comes up. They are required to be trained and there are so few places you can live with dogs. Also, I figure they get rid of dogs, they'll come for cats next. Also, fuck the HOA.

Around 9:40PM I started trying to move them inside on account of the sun being nearly down. Also I really needed to eat and have my meds. Saffy went willingly. Clawdia insisted on drama.

After we had treat time and Livia Loves, I went to check mail. They spent my whole absence yelling at the top of their lungs at the kitchen door. Saffy is Loud and has a deep voice for a cat. She's not a talker, but when she has some thing to say everyone hears it. Claw is a talker but her voice is soft and flat. S o really is was Saf I could here the whole trip down the hall and the duet only became obvious close to.

After, Livia kept trying to get me to come to her room to evict Saffy from Livia's personal favorite spot.

Livia: Officer! Evict her!

I had to give up my daily physio after something like five and a half years because I got two sick to continue. I am still waiting to see if the sinus infection is rebounding or if it's allergies, but at the moment, I'm all right if I don't have to stand up or worse move around, so Friday I brought back the lying down exercises. This, plus forage delivery, and a grand gaudy collaborative cat mess in the living room where to many things in terms of time and spoons, so the poor beasties did not get their leash time.

All three furry people got good loves and the like at least. Also, we are on day two of trick training for the kittens. They are doing well, but it'll take a few more days for it to be clear it;'s taken, since the puzzle feeder is the main kitten treat souse. I'm still trying to work with poor Claw Claw on it when her sister is sleeping, because it takes her longer to gallop in and shoulder her sister aside if she's full asleep in my bedroom. we are working on the flip top compartments, but it's really hard, because Clawdia got so good at solving sliding compartments she has trouble not applying the wrong solution to a new problem.

I kept thinking about how many problems in American politics are caused by the same thing and that was also the problem with psychiatry in the 70's and '80's.

I can eventually get her to flip it, if we aren't interrupted by the Queen of the Cats, but she won't try flipping it from scratch. I have to lift it a little and wiggle it over and over before she stops sliding the compartment back and forth frantically and flips it open.

Wednesday Techie Millennial came to visit and brought their new harp, which they've been decorating, to play. It was lovely.

After, I was able to walk the kittens, which was a great relief to them, as I hadn't been able to for a little over a week.

I am trying to work out if the second antibiotic didn't knock out the sinus infection entirely or if this is pollen. My sinuses are improved, but not entirely clear. I can't tell if I'm just clearing gunk out of my lungs from being sick since mid-March or if it's new gunk.

Massive Clawdia update under cut

I have spent the past few days repeatedly reminding myself antibiotics are waaaay slower on sinus infections and other types and I am not taking the best antibiotics for this sort of thing as I literally can't keep those down after the first few days, even if they give me the strongest anti-nausea meds on the market. These are still strenuous, and they work, just not as quickly or as well. Thursday and Friday I was enjoying the still not any better and also antibiotic sick nadir. I hate it, but I expect it.

Thursday my caseworker and I tried to solve the mystery of why are the lung people billing me medicare co-pays instead of medicaid. Our call to medicare rendered no help and it turned out Kansas had closed for the night, though it was mid-afternoon here, so we agreed than my caseworker would call right after they clocked in Friday morning, by which time Kansas should have opened up for the day. Which it had. It was a long complicated phone call for which I was very glad to have a caseworker, as amoung other things, the medical equipment guy tried to gaslight me into believing my Medicaid had been cancelled, so I should pay him, but the caseworker was like: Medicaid is literally paying me to do this; I can see the Medicaid account on my computer screen right now and it is active.

Before and after Livia and I had two super long loves, with kittens occasionally claiming my other hand. Admittedly, kittens here was mostly Saffy, as Clawdia was mostly cuddling my lower leg like it was another kitten. Eventually I dragged myself out to do necessary things, including a trip to get some chest x-rays in case we were wrong about it just being post nasal drip from the sinus infection irritating my lungs. (I've been doing this most of my adult life. This is a super normal disease progression for me, but also, I got lung MRSA that time an d I have had other serious infections, so after the first antibiotic fails there are often extra tests like x-rays and sputum samples. None of this is alarming, it's just cf carrier chronic illness stuff).

I didn't really have the spoons for any of these activities, I was legitimately feeling nightmarish bad and I had a Brand New caregiver I'd never met to charm and train coming for a four hour evening shift. I gave in and spent some of the vet fund on magic soup. I know, I know. I shouldn't be spending money on anything before the kittens' appointment, but I hadn't eaten and there was a good chance I wouldn't eat if I had to cook something. Magic soup is very much a last ditch sort of thing for me. It is expensive and will make me queasy, but nutritionally, it's ideal for my immune system is failing yet again to fight off a really bad infection. The antibiotic can use all the help it can get at this point and I've been sick since mid-March. I am exhausted and I can't get enough air if I have to stand up, let alone move around.

Magic soup is literally twice the price as it was last time I had this sort of emergency years ago. I forget how many years exactly, and given the givens, it tracks. (I vaguely remember being really sick and needing to be well enough for a necessary scheduled surgical procedure. I forget which one. Might have been the gut hernia that could kill me if it perforated, so I was in line just behind the cardiac patients during the great back up about half a decade ago. A reschedule would mean an extra three months of ticking time bomb in my gut, and the strenuous coughing was Dangerous. It tracks; I can't swear to it though.)

I could tell from the way my body reacted to the soup it was the right call. It's like the way gaterade tastes amazing when you need it and it feels really good, but the rest of the time it's nasty and queasy making. Magic soup is legitimately delicious, of course, but it's hard to digest for me so I have a vaguely queasy response under normal circumstances. Friday afternoon, by body was like: Yeah. Get that down, quick as you can. You're antibiotic queasy any way.

I started perking up about an hour after ingestion. It's about time for the antibiotics to do something besides making me ill, but a little immune system kick likely helps. I ate the rest of it later, and managed to keep it down, but it was a close thing. It likely also helped that we finally got rain to wash the pollen from the air.

The new guy has got a gruff voice, but a gentle manner. Did not balk at the pride display. Has multiple cats of his own. The dishes are clean, including hand washing the medical bits and bobs. My bed is changed, the trash and recycling went outside, and all the boxes got changed. I messed up and didn't warn him about levels in the open box, so I woke to a glorious mess and I had to go out and buy more litter, also from the vet fund. D'oh! The mess is no one's fault. Both kittens like to bury evidence at the very bottom of the box and are both vigorous excavators and vigorous buriers. Add to this, that I have two long girls, one of whom has basically doubled in length since she moved in, which is a very short time to adjust to a massive change in dimensions, so she makes mistakes and her sister helps her bury the evidence.

Friday the kittens were labour intensive for a variety of reasons beyond the litter situation, including Clawdia escaping and beelining into the bushes. Sigh. There was no chance of catching her, so I watered the plants, and then went inside to leash her sister. By the time Saffy had her cuddle and her harness on, Claw was at the door all sad because outside is not very fun without us to keep her company, so I leashed Clawdia and we all went out. This also was labour intensive because they kept grabbing each other's leashes and getting them twined around or caught on things, so I only read a couple of pages. (I finished Platform Decay this morning. This is a YA I'd had on books on CD from the library, but disks 2, 7, and 8 didn't play. Luckily it was short stories. Anyway, I moved it into the read on the porch with cat's slot as it is a fast read that doesn't need a lot of attention and I'm just reading the bits I missed).

When we came back in I got ready to clean up the litter area mess and to try to salvage as much litter as I could after a quick scoop, only Saffy needed to go, which required two separate holes. I eventually sorted it all out, complete with a new pad, and Clawdia turned up to make a whole new mess minutes later. Sigh. This is why I dislike open boxes, but Tavy needed an open box if we wanted him to actually pee in one and now we are committed, so…

I am much better though, still achy and exhausted and antibiotic sick and the sinus infection is still there, but my lungs weren't lacy when I woke up today, so there is a lot less coughing and the whole sinus situation is more manageable than it was yesterday.

Both kittens at the raised adult feeding station.

So I've been sick since mid-March. It is a slow, insidious thing that creeps up on one sapping strength until one is utterly debilitated. The theory is it's that thing where I caught a cold and then developed a secondary bacterial infection because my immune system can't fight it's way out of a wet paper bag and cares more about making own goals than doing anything about invaders. I have been doing this for decades. It happens less often thanks to modern pneumococcal vaccination, but it happens.

So after a couple months I was doing very poorly, and we started an antibiotic intended to clear the lungs, but it didn't do much for the sinus infection. The result was I did pretty well for two weeks and then the sinus infection we didn't knock out re-surged. It got pretty bad the last few days, so I had to go back in under melting mid day heat Wednesday. I am very bad in the heat, but I went.

I got down there with enough time to pick up my holds at the library before check in time. I've been quick reading some queer horror in the meantime, while waiting for the Black Death to return, and now it is here. Late June is an historically appropriate time for it really. It had just made it to England when I left off last time.

As I'd all ready spent most of the gas for it, I went and got the cheap juice at the trader Joe's and stopped by the open air fruit/veg/starts place. I picked up a full grown discount tomato plant that was already producing for two dollars and some white nectarines. I looked longingly at the melons, but I didn't dare. The allergist had just said I might cautiously truly summer cucumbers when Peace Health ended allergy treatments for my county, but a cantaloupe nearly sent me to the ER. I've been doing the local honey thing when I can afford it, but there have been gaps, so I am wary of experiments that can blister my throat and mouth and maybe close my throat especially as this is one of the worst pollen years on record locally and these are local melons.

I did buy some Korean melon popsicles at the beginning of the month and they maybe made my throat a little scratchy, but it's hard to tell if that's the pathogen or the popsicles. I have one cantaloupe I am saving and I ate the last honeydew a couple days ago. They are incredible, and I wish I'd bought two boxes as they are so cool and creamy and perfectly melon. So there's hope. The local melons may be safe or they may be poison.

(It's not the melons and cucumbers I am allergic to in themselves. It's the pollen that lands on them and grows into them, apparently, which is why I eat tzatziki a lot of the year, just not in the hot months when I most want to eat it. Sigh. I really like cucumbers. I miss them in salad and sandwiches and not just in tzatziki form. It's possible it's safe now, but it is a really big gamble I'd rather take in a year when the allergens I'm particularly allergic to aren't off the charts.)

I then went and got gas. I should not be spending money like this with that vet bill coming up next month, but I was down to an eighth and the longer I wait the more expensive it'll be.

I was utterly done in when I got home, but I had to eat so I could start my antibiotic. I was too queasy from the heat to finish, alas. I did manage to distract the kittens with food long enough to sneak out to plant the tomato and water everything. I did take my antibiotic and Clawdia and I had lung time. By the time I dragged myself back up to harness the kittens, there was a decent amount of shade.

Saffy didn't fight me on the harness at all. O.o She acted as if it wasn't there. I had to fight Clawdia into hers, but she calmed once it was on. They were so busy playing with each other's leashes I could sneak my book and ice tea out by the patio chair before collecting them. Everyone wanted to go into the bushes. Of course. I did not allow them. Of course. They had a little sniff and explore and then Saffy decided to go back inside. Clawdia stayed out for the length of a chapter of Platform Decay and then I carried her back in. Everybody got pets and treats (especially Livia who funds the whole endeavor baffling).

In related news, my suspicion that a kitten had been trying to pull down the cardboard I use as extra insulation around my air conditioner is confirmed. I caught Clawdia trying to dig an escape tunnel to the patio two nights ago. I am going to have to beef up security there, but even after my bath the heat and infection are deeply debilitating and I needed to do laundry.

Saffy and Livia continue their complex negotiations around territory and friendship. I not only get to watch this fascinating diplomatic dance, but I get to pet them both at the sane time, usually multiple times a day. When I am in bed, Clawdia has started treating my left leg below the knee as if it where another kitten in her clowder and it ended up as part of a kitten cuddle pile recently, which was delightful.