New Kid on the Hallway

The problem with volunteering at the cat shelter

Is that each week I find new cats I want to take home. And Middle Cat, who is now TWENTY years old, and doing remarkably well if you overlook the hyperthyroidism, renal failure, and brain tumor, really really really likes being an ONLY cat and does NOT want any companions.

Okay then.

But I can't help but pick out beasties at the shelter for the "if Middle Cat dropped dead tomorrow [because face it, she might] I'd take you home" lineup.

There's the lovely white cat with brown tabby patches, who is completely blind, yet rushes to find out who you are when you enter the room, purrs like a maniac, and has this delightful habit of batting you with his (declawed) front feet to figure out exactly what space you take up. (He's been there quite a while - not only is he blind, he has a history of housesoiling. Sigh.)

There's also a sweet long-haired gray and white girl, who tends to sit with her face to the corner. She came in all matted so was shaved from the neck down, and is fat enough that she looks terribly silly, her gray and white mane next to her white-fuzzed pink piglet's body. People would walk by and laugh at her. But she's awfully sweet and likes nothing more than for you to rub her ears, and she'll fill the kennel with her purring.

Last week there was a delightful portly long-haired calico. She was sitting in the windowsill, hiding from the other cats in the room. I petted her and she rubbed her head against my hand. Then I sat down on the floor across the room, and was working with other cats, when suddenly thump! she jumped down, raced over to me, and plopped herself in my lap. There she sat, purring and purring, until you could see it dawn on her that she was surrounded by other cats and had no idea how she would ever get off my lap. Poor thing, she was so sweet, but not the most forward-thinking.

And then this week there was a doppelgänger for Youngest Cat. It was a girl, not a boy, and she was a tiny little thing with a sleek triangular face, unlike Youngest Cat's big thuggy square-jawed maw. But she had the same dark orange stripes and golden eyes, and she used her front paws to give hugs the same way Youngest Cat did. She even made the same little noise chewing on things that he did - gnar gnar gnar. It's a good thing she was being held for someone, or I'd have snatched her up and made off with her. NLLDH and Middle Cat would have forgiven me, right?

Yeah. Honestly, it's a good thing Middle Cat us a crotchety old lady who loves her solitude, or we'd have twenty cats by now.

I love courthouse security

For it is because of the sign-in sheet at a certain courthouse that I know who two of my competitors are for a job I interviewed for today.

(No idea how the interview went. It felt decent, but who the hell can tell? Good thing I have bar review - in particular, an ALL DAY SIMULATED MBE tomorrow - to distract me from worrying about it. Oh, and a cat with a urinary tract infection to distract me from the ALL DAY SIMULATED MBE. Best. summer. ever!)

Why, yes, we DO treat our cats like children

We took Middle Cat to the vet earlier in the week, just for a basic checkup (she hadn't been in a while, and she IS seventeen). The bloodwork came back today, and they said that there are very mild changes in kidney function, so they recommend putting her on cat food designed for management of renal disease.

The thing is, in the past Middle Cat has had some serious food allergies (they began after I gave her some cat food designed to prevent hairballs). What we were told at the time was that cats with this kind of irritable bowel problem are reacting to the proteins in cat food, which are overwhelmingly from chicken, so one solution is to give them food made out of more unusual proteins, which they haven't yet developed a reaction to. So for a time, Middle Cat was eating food made from duck, rabbit, and venison. (Which I don't think she appreciated as much as she should have!) Also, so many pet foods are bulked up with corn, and cats have a hard time digesting corn, that we were advised to avoid it as well (so she was eating exotic meats with rice).

Over the years, she's had no problem being transitioned back to non-exotic meat foods, so now she eats stuff made from chicken, beef, turkey, and fish with no problem (in fact, she looooooves tuna, which often gets put in cheap cat food, and is so strongly flavored it can make cats unwilling to eat anything else).

But the biggest thing is that we've ALWAYS bought really good quality food. Stuff made with human-grade ingredients, without corn, and WITHOUT BY-PRODUCTS. For instance, these are the ingredients in the food we currently give her: Chicken, Chicken Liver, Turkey, Chicken Broth, Carrots, Natural Chicken Flavor, Sweet Potatoes, Squash, Zucchini, Cranberries, Blueberries, Guar Gum, Dicalcium Phosphate, Carrageenan, Ground Flaxseed, Potassium Chloride, Calcium Carbonate, Taurine, Iron Proteinate (a source of Chelated Iron), Beta-Carotene, Zinc Proteinate (a source of Chelated Zinc), Vitamin E Supplement, Choline Chloride, Cobalt Proteinate (a source of Chelated Cobalt), Thiamine Mononitrate, Copper Proteinate (a source of Chelated Copper), Folic Acid, Manganese Proteinate (a source of Chelated Manganese), Niacin, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Sodium Selenite, Vitamin D-3 Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin Supplement, Vitamin A Supplement, Vitamin B-12 Supplement, Potassium Iodide, Biotin. And I have had really healthy, long-lived cats. NLLDH swears that Youngest Cat (who was feline leukemia-positive) lived as long and as healthily as he did because he got such good food.

So now I've been looking these renal diet foods up online. They ALL have meat by-products -- ALL of them! And not just as a component -- in some cases, as the first ingredient listed after water! Now, a few of them name specific by-products (e.g. "pork by-products"), which is supposed to be better than the generic "meat by-products," but I really dislike the idea of feeding her by-products, given what can be in that crap. IAMS is also chock full of corn meal -- yuck. (Hill's Science Diet has some cornstarch, but I don't know if that's quite as bad, and it's not one of the very first ingredients, so...)

It's surprising to me how much this bothers me, but it does. I don't WANT to give her messed-with by-product crap -- I want to give her the good stuff we've always given her. But I guess we'll get some of the prescription stuff from the vet and see how it goes. Blechh.

Some days it seems like the only good use of the internet is for posting cat pictures

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

(In honor of my own dear departed Basement Cat.)

I also recently enjoyed this one, originally seen on someone's Facebook:

And, of course, there is always the genius that is Maru.

Now back to whether it violates the Constitution to award someone $1 million in compensatory damages and $145 million in punitive damages.

Update in three completely unrelated acts

I know most of you who read here have probably seen this on Twitter or Facebook already, but Eldest Cat had to leave us finally earlier this week. He was eighteen, and had been sick with hyperthyroidism for years; he had a heart murmur, his kidneys felt ominous, he walked crooked, he weighed less than half he did in his prime, and he continued to lose weight. The vet had given us medicines to try to halt the weight loss, and he lost four more ounces. He was clearly hungry - he wanted food all the time - but it didn't make a difference. Wednesday night, he cried for food much of the night, and he was so weak that he couldn't counter his crookedness anymore, so he kept falling over into things. He was no longer comfortable.

I'm glad we did it, and our vet was - as always - amazingly nice and supportive. He went very peacefully, without fear. But when they took him away, I had an awful moment of thinking, Wait! I take it back! I made a mistake!

I got Eldest Cat just before my college graduation; I'm not sure I know how to be a grown-up on my own without him. And when I hear (Formerly) Middle Cat's collar-bell jingle, I still can't help wondering, for a minute, which cat is that?

* * * * * * *

The last day of my internship was Friday. It was a good experience: I learned a lot, I liked the people I worked with, and the big boss told me a number of times that he was happy with my work, volunteering to be a reference for me, so I accomplished pretty much what I set out to accomplish (I wanted a good reference and a writing sample I could use, but everything I worked on turned out to be too confidential to use as a sample, so nothing I could do about that).

Something valuable I realized, I think, was that I do like working with people, more than I realized. I think I used to underestimate how social teaching really is; academia values research more highly, and research (in the humanities) is a relatively isolated endeavor, and so I always thought of academics (and myself) preferring to work independently. And it's true that historians don't have traditions of collaborative work the way that people in the sciences and social sciences do. But when I started my internship, I was one of the only interns there, and got given work to do and sent off to my cubicle to do it. And that work was interesting, but became much MORE interesting when there were other interns around and I started to be able to discuss it with them.

Anyway, it was a good experience. Certainly other summer opportunities would have given me different experiences, but overall, this was a good one.

But I am still looking forward to not getting up to my alarm tomorrow.

* * * * * * *

Wish me luck at the tailor tomorrow - I pick up my amazing suit, and am crossing my fingers that it looks decent. I bought it thinking, Of course, the tailor can take the jacket down a size, tra la! But it turns out that the tailor didn't want to take in the shoulders, which, it seems, is reasonable since it turns out this is the most complicated kind of tailoring you can do, requiring you basically to reconstruct the entire jacket. But which I didn't know at the time I bought the suit. It's just frustrating, because I can't buy a suit in a size that fits both halves of me, so I'm stuck either taking in the jacket or letting out the bottom - and many garments don't have enough extra fabric to let out, so that's no good, but if every jacket ends up too big in the shoulders and therefore gapping across the chest, that's no good either (there are always separates, of course, but they're harder to find). I mean, I'd pay for the darn shoulders to get taken in! But if the tailors don't want to do that... What I need is a size ying to my yang, so we could buy the same suit in two sizes, and I could take the smaller jacket and bigger bottom, and she could take the bigger jacket and smaller bottom. Sigh.

I also have to see how the pants look. To get pants to fit me properly in the waist, they tend to have too much fabric in the, um, rise. But since these are non-stretch pants (all hail the glory of Lycra), they can't be too fitted when I'm standing up, or they'll be too tight when I sit. Which perhaps really means I should just wear skirts all the time.

I should probably post something to move my melodramatic ER post off the top of the page

Not that there is much going on to post about, mind you.

Middle Cat went to the vet on Monday for a (VERY EXPENSIVE) teeth cleaning/extraction (just two molars). It's not that I at all begrudge paying for her, but wow, was that total depressing. Anyway, we got told to have canned food on hand for the following five days, for her poor sore mouth (the irony here is that my cats get canned food ALL THE TIME. Eldest Cat, he is way spoiled and will not. eat. anything. else). I take her home, and what does she do? Makes a beeline for her crunchy food. Silly masochist cat.

Also, since she's been back, she's has been OBSESSIVE about sticking her paws in the water bowl and sloshing everything around. We'll be sitting in the living room and hear *splish* *splash* and find puddles all over the kitchen floor. (She then likes to detour into the litter box, which is filled with clumping litter, then traipse through the apartment, leaving little litter-mud footprints EVERYWHERE. It is so disgusting.) She did this before the dental surgery, but has been manic about it since getting back. No idea what that's about.

We also have pain meds for her. I've never had cat pain meds for after a dental before, and all our cats have had multiple dentals! (but not at this clinic.) I guess their wonderfulness extends to making sure our babies don't suffer any pain. Middle Cat doesn't seem remotely in pain from the surgery, but I'm giving her the drugs anyway. I have to give her antibiotics, so I figure maybe she can enjoy some good shit, too.

NaBloPoMo #16: And now he is gone

We took Pekoe (Youngest Cat) to the vet this morning, and had him put to sleep. It was completely the right thing to do - yesterday, courtesy of the steroids, he was relatively perky, at least spending the day out in the living room with us. But last night he retreated to the closet again, and this morning he used the box, then flopped on the floor right in front of it, as if it was too much for him to move any further. I wouldn't have wanted him to have to hang on any longer.

It was extremely peaceful. The vet - who is extremely kind - gave him a shot to make him sleepy, which he didn't seem even to feel. We let him walk around a little, and he eventually sank to the floor. NLLDH picked Pekoe up and held him on his lap, where he fell fast asleep. Then the vet shaved a little patch from his front leg, slowly injected the second drug, listened for his heartbeat, and told us he was gone. He didn't move at all - just slipped effortlessly away.

When they took him out of the room (we're having him cremated), we had to laugh because his tongue was sticking out of his mouth, just a little, and he often used to sit that way, when he'd finished cleaning himself or just woken up from a nap. He'd have no idea of how silly he looked, sitting in his most dignified pose with the pink tip of his tongue sticking out.

It pretty much sucked to come home tonight and see his collar, the fuzzy donuts he used to sleep on, and his little bouncy ball. But not to see him.

We are probably a little over-invested in our cats. For instance, we liked to say that Pekoe was going to law school, too, and that he answered every question by saying, "I object!" Another example is how we came up with cosmologies for them. If we're right, that means by now Pekoe is supping in the hall at Valhalla.

Sitting at the kid's table.

Sleep sweetly, my baby boy.

NaBloPoMo #13: Professor v. student

It's funny to think about whether I look at law school from the perspective of a professor, or a student. I know I do both, but it's interesting to see when/how.

On the professor side: the other day, one of my classmates was talking about their big research memo (we got them back recently and have to rewrite them), and pulling the "the professor didn't like my paper because he didn't agree with my point of view/I didn't argue the side he wanted me to argue." I'm sure I've said the same thing, back before I ever started grading papers. But now, the professor part of me just wanted to tell this student, "Look, the professor doesn't care WHAT you argue, as long as you argue it WELL. If the professor didn't like your paper, there's probably something else going on rather than him disagreeing with you."

I mean, I'm sure it's possible that professors exist who penalize students because they don't like the students' opinions. But honestly, I would say 99% of professors do NOT CARE what a student argues, as long as they do it well. I find it frustrating when students see it otherwise, partly because it (sometimes) reflects an attitude that this is all some kind of game, that there are ways to get around professors and requirements, that there are strategies and tactics and things that matter besides doing your work. Seriously, you're much better off if, instead of trying to scheme your way through, you just pay attention, read the directions carefully, and do what's asked of you, okay?

(But I think this is a particularly law school thing, fostered by the dreaded curve - there is a whole industry out there that tells students they can't just go to class, do the work, study, and do well; they have to FIGURE OUT the SYSTEM!!! and if they purchase this one product that holds the SECRETS TO SUCCESS, they will do better than everyone else!!! Because it's not like anyone else can actually buy the same product. Nah.) (And I should add that maybe I will indeed lose out in the future because I'm not frenziedly buying all the SECRETS TO SUCCESS!!!!!!, but so far, having worked on the other side of the classroom, it all seems pretty transparent to me. I'll let you know how this has worked for me once I get my grades!)

It's also sort of funny to watch the professors that I think are really good, and be able to observe what I think makes them really good from a professor's viewpoint, not just a student's. One of my best professors is so good, that in those few instances where things aren't quite as clear or engaging, I can recognize - from someone who's been there - that they're either really tired, or just got their organization just a little bit off, that kind of thing.

But I've also reverted to student mode. Recently, I was a little horrified to realize that when I e-mailed a classmate about something I had to miss, I said, "Let me know if I missed anything important." Ack! If I'd said that to me-the-professor, I'd have had to restrain a really snarky response! Thankfully, I didn't say it to a professor, and I don't think I would have, but it was funny to recognize the studentism in my attitude.

And when my professors are, well, um, not so good (thankfully very rare), the student in me comes out much more than the professor. I probably could come up with a more pedagogically informed analysis than, "they don't make sense," but I get all sulky and feel no need to! (and yes, during such classes, I will check my e-mail. Which I said I'd never do. But I do. Briefly, and I don't surf, or chat, or write e-mail; but I will glance and see if I have new messages!) (and FWIW, I am considering hand-writing notes next semester to ensure I can't do this.)

So, I don't think I will ever entirely lose the perspective from the front of the classroom; but there are elements of student-dom that definitely outweigh the professorial voice in my head.

* * * * *

Follow-up to my last post: thank you, everyone, for all your sympathy; it really helps a lot. Youngest Cat is much the same today, though I'm proud of myself for managing to squish up one of his steroid chews and get most of it down his throat. Whereupon he promptly hid under the bed.

And within 10 minutes of that, Middle Cat, who'd been sitting in the tub drinking water from the tap, must have ingested something that didn't agree with her (a little soap or shampoo, maybe?), because she yakked a buttload of water (and a little food) all over the bathroom floor, then freaked herself out and ran around the apartment drooling and licking her lips, trying to get rid of the taste. She's fine now, but the cats around here aren't the happiest lately!

NaBloPoMo #12: Not the substance I wanted to write about

Youngest Cat hasn't quite been himself for the last few days - he's got very quiet, and has started spending a lot of time curled up in the corner of the closet (it's carpeted, and warm and cozy among my clothes). We noticed that he hadn't been jumping on the kitchen counter, he hadn't been knocking anything over in the bathroom, he hadn't been pushing stuff off my bedside table, and he hadn't been beating up on Middle Cat.

NLLDH took him to the vet this morning.

Youngest Cat has severe non-regenerative anemia, caused by his feline leukemia. He's dying, being starved of oxygen by his body's inability to produce red blood cells.

He's home now, with some steroids to make him more comfortable, but there really isn't anything much they can do. We could give him blood transfusions, but they won't cure him - just prolong the inevitable. And he won't understand what's going on.

We're planning to take him back to the vet on Monday and to euthanize him then.

We knew, when we first found that he was feline-leukemia positive, that he would have a much shorter life expectancy. According to one of the vet sites out there, more than 50% of FeLV+ cats succumb to related disease within 2-3 years of infection, and in September, Youngest Cat turned seven. So we did well to beat those odds. And we have been SO LUCKY to have him in our lives as long as we have.

Youngest Cat, around 6-7 months old.

In solidarity with my fellow cat-blogger, Dr. Crazy

I am fighting the cat-blogging hatred of a certain site (the name of which rhymes with Shmate Shmour Shmudents) by posting this. If you disdain (former-)academic cat blogging, look away now.

Okay.

Last night I set my alarm for 6:30 (which is sleeping in for me these days!!).

My morning so far:

4:45 - Youngest Cat starts knocking things off the kitchen counter.

4:48 - I get up and open a can of his preferred tuna delicacy, then return to bed.

4:55 - Youngest Cat returns to bed and settles down for a bath on top of my legs. I try to go back to sleep. My allergies mean that this is a bit of a struggle (because I have to keep blowing my nose).

5:20 - Eldest Cat wanders into the bedroom, yells at me for some food (because Youngest Cat's preferred tuna delicacy does not meet with Eldest Cat's favor), and starts scrabbling on the full-length mirror.

5:21 - I spray Eldest Cat with a squirt bottle. He runs into the living room

5:25 - I realize that there are suspicious sounds coming from the living room. I leap out of bed and run to the next room to discover...

...that Eldest Cat has pissed on NLLDH's messenger bag.

After dealing with that, I'm pretty much wide awake. Good morning, world!