Monthly Archives: September 2017

Hunker Down or Evacuate?

41 Replies

We are watching Hurricane Irma closely. Currently, the projected path is unclear. Some forecast models have the storm turning north and heading up the east coast of Florida. Other models have it turning north and heading up the west coast of Florida. Others have it going straight up the state. We live in Clearwater, on the west coast, and are considering our options about what we are going to do.

National Weather Service Map

The problem is we have four cats and few options on where to go. Rose considered going to stay at her sister’s vacation condo. Her condo is on the eighth floor, well above any chance of flooding. It is also high enough to be less affected by blowing debris. On the other hand, the wind blows harder at those heights and right now Irma is a category 5 storm, so even if it is downgraded, those winds will be very strong. In addition, the condo sits on a peninsula in Tampa Bay, so it is essentially surrounded by water. Worse, the parking garage is below the building so our cars won’t stand a chance.

Her other thought was to stay at her other sister’s house but where she lives isn’t much better than where we live. There’s no sense in packing up four cats to bring them somewhere just slightly better.

The other problem is, we have one large and one small cat carrier. Enough for three cats. One short. I went to Petco today and they were sold out of carriers. According to the woman there, everyone was sold out. It is like gas and water around her. There’s none to be found.

I decided to look online. I found a cheap carrier on Amazon for just over $11. I then paid almost $12 to have it shipped here by Friday. I don’t care how good it is, I just need it to work twice.

Our best option now is to stay with friends who live about six or eight miles east of us. That is a last resort. We don’t want to leave and we will ride it out if we feel safe to do so. We should know more by Friday.

My Mistake

34 Replies

Happy Labor Day to everybody in the U.S. I hope you are not laboring today.

I was laboring yesterday morning trying to get a post out about Chris’s vet visit and I sent it out into the world with so many mistakes that it was practically unreadable. Sorry about that.

cat and upside down keyboard

I don’t like making excuses so we will call this a “reason” instead. Chris was on my lap and I couldn’t type. Not wanting to kick him off, I used my microphone and spoke what I wanted to say instead. Of course, that method always leads to plenty of mistakes that need to be corrected later.

What’s worse, I can’t touch type and I often type entire sentences, only to find out later that several words are missing letters. I’m not sure how that happens but it is common. I replaced my keyboard thinking that was the problem but it’s me. Even the previous sentence was missing three letters and this one was missing one letter and a space.

I was on a deadline yesterday morning because we had to leave for church soon and I wasn’t ready. I wanted to finish before we left but my wife kept calling me, telling me to get ready. I did a quick read through and thought it was okay but I must have missed whole sections because what I saw after I got home was pretty embarrassing. In retrospect, I didn’t need to publish it right away. I should have waited until I had time to properly look it over first.

Has anybody else ever published something that they were embarrassed about? Please, tell me I am not alone.

Chris Visits the Vet

20 Replies

Recently Chris developed a sensitive area on his back. His skin would tighten when we pet him in a certain area. At first, I thought it was like that weird nerve on a dog that causes him to lift his hind leg when you scratch his back but then it started seeming like touching that spot was causing him pain. We didn’t see anything obvious but there was a slight bump under his fur. We didn’t want to hurt him by prodding so we decided to make an appointment at the vet for Saturday.

On Saturday morning, I brought in the cat carrier and opened it up thinking that Chris would walk right in. He was about to do that but Frankie beat him to it. Once Frankie was out I was able to coax him inside by sticking my finger through one of the holes and making noises. I brought Chris outside and put him on Rose’s lap in my car and we drove the three minutes it took us to get to the vet. Chris didn’t seem to mind the trip. He can be an adventurer sometimes.

Once inside the little room at the vet’s office, I opened the cage and expected him to get out and go exploring, but he didn’t, he just stayed in the carrier. That worried me a bit because that is definitely not Chris Behavior. Normally he would be out inspecting every inch of that office.

Chris at vet

The vet tech came in and said it would be a while because an emergency walk-in had just come in. We asked her if there were any treats and she brought back a handful wrapped in a paper towel. That did the trick. I put them down in front of Chris and he was out in an instant.

The vet tech came back and weighed Chris and looked at the spot we were talking about and said it looks like flea dirt. We asked, “What’s flea dirt?”  She said another word is “flea poop.” She said fleas like to congregate in certain areas on a cat and one of them is the lower back. She got a flea brush and started brushing him and found two or three live fleas.

chris at vet

We then talked about treatment options and decided to just use the Activyl that we had already purchased but we’re behind schedule on applying to our cats. She asked if we still wanted to see the vet or should we just call it a tech visit? We said we didn’t need to see the vet now so she left and we tried to put Chris back in his carrier. He did not want to go back inside and made it very difficult for us. When we checked out they didn’t even charge us for the visit. They just charged us the $5 for the flea comb that we had bought that was totally unexpected and a pleasant surprise. We were expecting to spend another $200 at the vet.