critters | Spokalulu

Photo taken by SuperDad who can walk around outside (unlike yours truly)

Although we’ve had snow on the ground for several weeks, it feels colder these days — or perhaps that is simply because there is no longer a baby here with whom to snuggle. At our house, we’ve shrunk back to four humans (plus the dog and cat) from the eight of us who were living here for nearly two weeks. Gone are the sounds of Little Foot as he protests having his diaper changed; gone are the voices of brothers playing games together; also gone is the need to text the college student to tell him to turn off the music and go to bed.

I miss my sweet snuggler (and his parents).

The dinner conversations have devolved as well. What starts out as intelligent conversation, centered upon lab results in the genomics studies course taken by the teenager, ends abruptly on this sub-freezing evening by a simple statement from The Barefooter:

I saw some insects today — outside. I ate two of them.

I stop and stare… and hope desperately that no one observed this occurrence (for employment purposes if nothing else). In his defense, he claims that the bugs were quite small and he scooped them up with snow, which he also ate. Whether or not this happened on his lunch break, I do not know.

I’ve been avoiding snow and ice, but not for the reasons one would think, given my injured ankle; I can’t walk, so going outside is a moot point. But I did discover last week that it is a Very Bad Idea to ice my ankle, regardless of swelling. Applying a cold pack to an ankle that has the equivalent of a K's left ankle x-ray, webshare hardware store section attached inside causes the person who just had surgery 6 weeks prior to actually feel each piece of hardware in that ankle. I thought I was imagining it, but my feeling (I was especially feeling that bowed plate on the left) was corroborated by a nurse and several friends with metal hardware in their limbs.
Lesson learned! I plan to keep my ankle away from extreme cold.

Later this week I will get to see an updated X-ray and hopefully it will show some positive progress toward healing.

It’s been an expensive two weeks.

First the cat developed an abscess on her chin…

That’s not her tongue.

…so off we went for a day with the vet for draining, antibiotics, and pain meds for home. Because I was so worried about her that I paid for the additional $69 bloodwork fee, we now have the comfort of this good news: she has a clean bill of health (minus the infection at the time).

But what kind of people do they think we are? We were told to apply warm, moist compresses to her wound site several times a day for the following few days. Have you ever tried to hold a damp washcloth on a cat’s sore chin? Guess how many times we accomplished this task?
Answer: exactly once. It traumatized all of us. That was also the only time we managed to get pain meds into her. She preferred to hide from us whenever she saw us over next 2 days instead of repeating the experience.
Luckily, she’s back to being herself now.

On Wednesday morning, EB took the dog for a walk. Then we received a call to tell us that Moses had tangled with a porcupine and needed to go to the vet. SuperDad called the vet (a different one — the cat’s vet is in a cat-only clinic) and made sure they could fit us in while EB carried the 70-pound labrador up from the woods by the river to a road. He called us when he could tell us where he was — about 5 miles from home. (My sons seem to think that 8-10 miles is a perfectly normal walk for a 10-year-old dog.) I got ready to go to work while SuperDad drove to pick up the injured and his accomplice and take them to the vet. They got home before I left, the 22yo looking like he’d been at a crime scene with blood all over his clothes, and my dh talking about a $400 vet bill.

The dog, whom I normally credit with above-average intelligence, saw something small-ish down by the river and lunged for it. Turns out it was not a squirrel but a baby porcupine. After shaking it thoroughly in his mouth, the baby’s mama (I’m assuming it was the mama) got irate with our sweet dog. (In her defense, I would have done the same thing. It is not sweet to shake a baby! ) Pretty soon there was a battle with both dog and prickly beast looking worse for wear. EB rushed down to break it up and managed to not get any quills of his own. I hope the mama porcupine recovered, because it really wasn’t her fault. Moses had bites in his right ear, about 40 quills in his mouth, and approximately 20 quills on each foreleg — this was after EB pulled about 20 quills out, so we’re guessing that 100 quills became successful ammunition.

Mr. Silky Ears, post-sedation face

If only we had a blue collar to go with that bright green bandage — then he’d be wearing Seahawks colors!

Despite 40 quills to his mouth, his licker still works.

Despite 40 quills having to be removed from his mouth, his licker still works.

We go back in to the vet tomorrow and get his wound and stitches checked. Moses is hoping to leave without the bandage. I’m not sure if that will happen.
I’ll be the one going this time, because this is the weekend of the big Boy Scout winter campout. Good thing SnakeMaster got over his illness (oh, yeah, that happened too — he missed a day and a half of school) because SuperDad was going with or without the boy.