phatDonna

(I promise only two of them are running related)

When I run, my nose runs like crazy. Like, disgustingly runny. I can never ever run with anyone that I want to get naked with because after seeing my mucus situation, it would be game off. Just call me Snotty McKee.

Tonight at running class, we had to do a drill called Fartlek. Apparently this is a Swedish term. Regardless, it makes me giggle like a twelve year old. Sadly, the funny name does not carry over into the actual performance of said drill. Fartleks are mean. My knees may be out on strike tomorrow.

I seem to have a problem with gummy Sweet Tarts. I can only find them at Valentine’s Day and Easter, so that’s a blessing. But I can’t just eat a few. I have to eat all the gummy Sweet Tarts in sight. I had a weak moment in Target yesterday and bought a bag. They are all gone now. The only good news is that they gave me such heartburn that I truly cannot imagine ever eating another one.

I recycle far more than any of my neighbors. Living in a small condo community, I have the opportunity to see the recycling they put out every week. Now, our waste management company provides each of us one small blue bin for recyclables. I went out and bought a second one. And every week, I put them both out full. Everyone else puts out one half full one, or none at all. This bothers me a lot. Either they don’t know what all is recyclable, or they don’t care. Or maybe it’s something else. Either way, I feel like I should offer a recycling seminar to my neighbors. I’m sure they would all appreciate that very much.

Robbie is getting old. This is not news. But lately he’s been pacing around downstairs a lot and he’s been trying to curl up on Bridget’s bean bag, which he can’t do because he’s too big. So yesterday I went out and bought him an $80 downstairs bed so he could have a place to rest his old arthritis-y joints and still be around me. And the fucker won’t lay on it.

I’ve been watching Friday Night Lights on Netflix and I’m almost at the end of the series. I do not want this to end. I’m going to make t-shirts that say “What Would Tami Taylor Do?” because I want to be Tami Taylor when I grow up.

Oh y’all. My poor Robbie dog. After months of being fine, I noticed tonight that he was shaky and limping. I had to give him a tramadol for the first time in months.

My poor dog has terrible hips, as do many of his breed. He doesn’t complain about it ever, but I can tell when he’s in pain because he gets whiny and shaky. I have ways to manage his pain, but I know that the day will come when I can’t manage his pain anymore and I’ll have to make a very hard choice.

So every time he has a pain episode and I have to medicate him, I get panicked that THIS is the time when I’ll have to make that choice. I’ve done it before with two pets. I know I can do it when I have to. But I know I’ll never find another dog as great as Robbie. I can’t even think about losing him.

As Forest Gump would say, I am not a smart man.

Every time I board Robbie, we go through the same thing when he comes home.

At home, Robbie is not meal fed, he’s a grazer. I put his food down and he sort of nibbles and snacks all day, then usually right before bed he finishes it off. I don’t have the heart to tell him that eating that close to bedtime will make the food go straight to his ass.

At the kennel where he boards, they can’t really let him graze all day, for obvious reasons. So they split up his daily allotment of food into two feedings like a normal dog would eat. But Robbie is not terribly interested in his own food, so in order to get him to eat, they put “add-ins” in his food. They use either plain yogurt or beef broth.

And every time that damn dog comes home, I freak out for two days because he won’t eat his food and I work myself into a tizzy thinking that this is the end for my poor old hound dog. Then I remember the add-ins and realize that my dog is simply waiting for yogurt or beef broth. Oh, and he is a very patient dog. I always fall for it.

I can’t be the first human who is this well trained by their dog, can I?

• So far 2011 hasn’t been very good. Not really to me, but to people I love. Not cool, 2011. Not cool. Shape up, ok?

• The date is on for tomorrow. Coffee around midday. I’m sure I’ll have very little to say about it, but I’ll say something I’m sure.

• I have to take my dog Robbie to the vet tomorrow. He has very bad hips, like many Labs. But he’s not a complainer at all so it’s not always easy to tell how he feels. He hasn’t had Xrays in a few years but I’ve had an anti-inflammatory I can give him when I suspect he’s in pain. About a year ago, our new vet here in Austin put him on a prescription dog food for joint mobility, and that has really seemed to help him. But the past couple of weeks, he’s walking funny and I can tell he’s just not himself. Could be just getting a bit older, could be just the cold damp weather, but I’d feel better if we got a new picture of those hips. I am dreading tomorrow’s visit because I’m scared that he’s going downhill. I know that there will come a point in his life where the pain won’t be manageable and I’ll have to have him put down. I’m just not ready for that day to come anytime soon.

• Bridget is off with her dad this weekend and will be there through Monday afternoon, since Monday is a holiday. I’m happy for now to have some quiet in the house and to be able to sleep in a bit. The thing is that as a single parent, my choices are being with her and sometimes off my rocker with having to repeat myself eleventy billion times and cleaning up toys and messes and get dinner ready and then clean it up and do bedtime and bath, or being all alone. Having a partner in parenting is so much better because it’s not all or nothing. Hmph.

Back in August when I was hopped up on the newness of cute kitten, why didn’t you all remind me of all the cat things that are so damn annoying? Things like:

Trying to dart out of or in to every single door that is opened;

Running down the stairs and getting in between my feet as I am going down the stairs, almost killing me;

Instantly defiling a sparkling clean litter box as soon as I finish cleaning it;

Knocking shit off my counters constantly; and

Attacking my feet under the covers when I am asleep, thereby scaring the ever loving shit out of me.

I mean, I love this cat, and she fits into our family  and puts up with the abuse Bridget heaps on her under they guise of “playing with kitty.” But wow, the phrase “Dammit, cat!” is coming out of my mouth more and more often these days.

Good thing she’s cute.

I’ve been asked for an update on Gracie, and I can’t help but oblige.

She is awesome. I love her so much and I’m so glad that I made the decision to open up my heart to another cat.

She continues to be a love bug, she kneads on me and in my hair, which can be annoying in the middle of the night, but it’s so sweet. She puts on a nightly Kitten Olympics and Acrobatics floor show and that is crazy adorable. She’s also not shy, and so far has come out and been social with the few people who have been over.

Betsy is still pretty rough with her, and she gets in trouble for it. It’s not intentional and she’s not being mean, she just LOVES the kitty so much she can’t keep her hands off her. Betsy has been scratched a couple of times in retaliation, but all in all, the cat has a great deal of tolerance for Betsy. If I were Gracie, I’d have gone all ninja on Betsy’s ass about a week ago. But she hasn’t.

One of my hang-ups about getting a cat was the litter box. Bowser is a notorious lover of Kitty Box Krunchies, and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to find a solution to keep him out of the litter box. But I discovered the Clevercat litter box, which is basically a storage container with a lid on top that forces the cat to jump down into the litter box through a hole in the top. Gracie has had no issues with using it, and Bowser can’t get his head through the hole. Although I have no doubt that he has tried.

So far, knock on wood, Gracie doesn’t have a problem with scratching. That’s my main fear because our previous two cats were big scratchers and destroyed carpet. She does scratch on my kitchen rug and the door mat at the back door, and she does use the cardboard scratcher I bought her, but so far I haven’t seen her scratching on carpet. I’m keeping my eye out for that.

I really couldn’t be happier with her. We got lucky with her, no doubt about it.

Well, right after I posted my last post, things changed on the kitty situation. The cat I was going to pick up in Dallas suddenly got a more local home. Which was fine, really, except for the fact that I had JUST ten minutes before I got the email about that, I had told Betsy that she was getting a kitty and that we were going to Dallas to see Grandma and Grandpa and to get the kitty. I mean, I had the suitcases out and ready to pack. Shit.

But I was really disappointed too. I had gotten very excited about the idea of a kitten in the house. So I talked to Betsy and explained that we couldn’t get the kitty we were going to get but we could go to the shelter to pick out a new one. She was very insistent that she wanted to go “tomorrow!” I explained that we could do that, but that meant that we couldn’t go see Grandma and Grandpa. Or we could go see Grandma and Grandpa and get the kitty when we came home. No, she wanted kitty now!

So Monday we had a lazy morning, went out and grabbed lunch together and went to the Austin Humane Society when they opened at noon. It was so terribly sad because there were SO. MANY. CATS.  Tons of kittens but also older sweet cats. In my heart, I would have loved to get an older cat, but I knew that the odds of that working out well with a three year old in the house were not good. It wouldn’t be fair to do to an older cat or to Betsy. But how do you go about choosing one adorable kitten out of a hundred adorable kittens? Betsy had really been going back to this one kennel that housed two kittens. I figured that was as good a place as any to start. They brought us into a room and the cat in a carrier. We opened the door to the carrier and the kitty slowly poked her head out. Betsy was quite exuberant and wanted to hug and kiss and just be in the cat’s space. And that kitty didn’t seem to mind one bit. We spent about 20 minutes with her, and she came out of the carrier, climbed right into my lap and started purring. I just knew she was the one. The shelter had named her Gracie, and I decided to keep it. It suits her, and it solves the problem of having to argue with Betsy about why we can’t name the cat Strawberry. She just accepted that the cat’s name is Gracie.

We brought her home with no drama. I knew Bowser would be fine. We used to have two cats and he never once paid either of them any attention.  But I had no idea how Gracie would react to this big dog. She just went with it. He sniffed her and walked away. She didn’t seem concerned at all. She just started exploring the house and getting into trouble. She hissed at him one time, when she was in my lap, and he walked by and his tail hit her in the head. But that is the only time I’ve heard her hiss.

Betsy has been a bit rough with her, but not intentionally. She just really loves Gracie, and wants to pick her up and snuggle her. I feel like I’m constantly scolding her, but I want to make sure that she doesn’t scare Gracie too much, or else Gracie will grow up and avoid Betsy like the plague. So far the message is not getting through, but I figure if it bothered Gracie too much, she’d just go hide under a bed, and so far she hasn’t done that.

We took her to the vet yesterday for a check up. Since Gracie is already six months old, she was spayed and given her vaccines at the shelter, so that was a cost I didn’t have to incur. But a check up with a vet you trust is always a good idea. Turns out that the poor thing’s spay incision is infected. So they put her in a cone. Or the Cone of Shame, if you’ve seen Up.

That’s not her but it is a funny picture.

The cone lasted about eight hours. The poor thing couldn’t eat, and she couldn’t fit into her litter box. So it had to go. But she doesn’t seem to be licking and she is on oral antibiotics, so I hope that will be enough. She also got treated for ear mites. Nothing serious, and all things you’d expect from a shelter cat. So far she hasn’t shown signs of an upper respiratory infection but if she has one brewing, I’m pretty sure her antibiotics will clear it up.

I had forgotten how fun and annoying having a kitten is. Everything is a toy! She loves to lay on or walk across my laptop, and of course cords are fascinating. But she’s a lovebug and it’s really sweet to have her cuddle up with me. I’m really happy we got her. Keeping up with her and keeping her from killing me is tough now, but she’ll grow out of that bit. I hope she stays this affectionate. I really want a lap cat.

I never used to be a cat person. My mom always said she was allergic to them (which, sorry Mom, I think now that you were just saying that because you don’t like them) so I never had one growing up. We were a dog family when we had pets. And I am a devoted dog lover. I can’t imagine ever living without a dog.

When I met the EX, he was more of a cat person. Actually he used to be pretty afraid of dogs, because of a very bad bite he had gotten as a child, but for my sake, he developed a tolerance for the dog I had already, and even indulged me when I wanted to get a second dog. But he did turn me into a cat liker. I won’t say cat lover, at least not at first. Together we had three cats in our time together. Two of them died, and one of them had to be surrendered soon after Betsy was born because he was very jealous and I didn’t trust him around her.

Our last cat, Kiri, had to be put down almost two years ago. Her kidneys were failing, and one of the ways we discovered a problem with her was that she used our formal dining room as a litter box. While it broke my heart to have her put down, because as bitchy as that cat was, she was ours and we loved her. But I swore I’d never have another cat over and over as I tried to rid my living room of the smell of cat pee.

Now, I’ve never smelled a decomposing body, but I’d venture to guess that that’s the only thing in the world that smells worse than cat pee.

Finally as we were listing our house for sale, we had to replace the dining room carpet because the cat pee had soaked the carpet, the pad and had gotten to the slab. It took away much of my sadness as I wrote a check for new carpet for a house we were selling. Also, remembering all the things she (and the other cat) had destroyed by scratching made me certain that I would remain a dog lover and one who admires cats from afar.

Lately, though, I’ve been feeling the urge for a kitty. A little purring lump next to me on the couch or in bed just sounds really appealing. My biggest concern was the litter box, as my dumb dog Bowser really enjoys snacking from the litter box, which is the most disgusting habit a dog can have. Trust me when I say that we tried every option we could think of in the old house to keep him out, but finally had to install a cat door into the garage, and put the litter boxes out there. But I did a bit of research and found an option that I think will work now.

Still, I was on the fence about whether to do it or not. Taking on another animal to feed and care for, who will require trips to the vet was a bit daunting. Then a homeless kitty that needs a home sort of fell into my lap, so I took it as a sign. And tomorrow Betsy and I are headed to Dallas to visit my parents for a couple days and then to pick up the kitty and head home.

Betsy wants to name him Strawberry. She refuses to believe the cat is male, so I’ll have to convince her that he needs a more manly name than Strawberry. Does it really matter what the cat’s name is anyway? It’s not like they come when they’re called.