secnarf

We got Ginny’s PCR results back today - negative. It’s great she doesn’t have any of those infections but it doesn’t get us closer to an answer. We will now work under the theory that there was some sort of initial insult and she has been in a cycle of inflammation causing more discharge which causes more inflammation. We will leave her on the anallergenic food for now, and try meloxicam as a non-steroid anti-inflammatory. If that fails, we will try steroids. In the meantime, I will also try the nasal drops again using the kitty burrito technique that worked so well for the B12 injection.

Thank goodness for "Queen Charlotte". That is how I knew Queen Victoria. Also surprised myself with an automatic "Drosophila melanogaster" for the fruit fly question - had no idea that bit of information was still in the recesses of my brain. Maybe it was just a good day for me, but I felt the clues were easier than last year. Curious to see if that continuous throughout the week/tournament. I didn't remember any of the contestants.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions on how to contain Ginny for her injections - the B12 is once a week initially, and I took the week to get her used to the routine of a kitty burrito, doing it every night exactly like I would for the injection. I would even pinch her scruff like I was going to inject. She doesn't like being wrapped up, but once I've got her there, she stays with her head down on my knees and won't move, though she looks super sad :( Today was time for her next injection, and it went perfectly. She barely flinched, and made no attempt to run away. She also didn't hate me afterwards. Total success!

Please use the show topic here for any discussion of the spinoff NCIS: Sydney. Thanks!

The eight-episode first season will begin airing Nov 10 in Australia; Nov 13 in USA/Canada.

It reminded me of how he said "But that can't be! One of us? Say it's not true" during the killer reveal party at the end of last season. A nice callback, that is somewhat tempered by contradicting what Howard said in that episode about his stage career - then, he made it sound like his mother was supportive, and he had auditioned for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, presumably after high school.

Re: highlighting lines from an old script - did we see her actually highlighting? They could be old highlighted scripts that she is now shredding because they aren't needed? Re: the rat poison - it's classically warfarin or other blood thinners. I don't know if any of these would show up on standard post-mortem bloodwork, though, but would explain the bleeding. I hate fish. They creep me out, I can't even look at them without shuddering. Charles bringing President McKinley around with him was hard to watch. I had several bad experiences with fish as a child - the earliest was when we first tried to have goldfish as pets, and my parents didn't know you need to de-chlorinate the water. We lost several goldfish to chlorine poisoning (which is an awful way to die) before giving up, and only learned several years later when watching a video on how to set up our new tropical fish tank. Charles didn't dechlorinate the toilet water. It's not enough that I had to deal with the fish on screen so much this episode, but now I get to know that it will also die a slow painful death.

That is my goal as well! I came close a few times last year. Needless to say, I will be in!

I have myself down as 69. Not that it matters in the end :P I am in awe of how well so many of you all did!! Even getting more than 50% of the FJs is a big accomplishment.

Any ideas how to simultaneously hold a cat down and inject them? Attempt #1 didn't go well, and may have ended with her leaping off of the bed and the syringe flying out of her scruff, spinning until it landed needle-first into the carpet. I live alone, and Ginny is too scared of other humans to be able to have somebody come over for her injection. Of course, now she won't let me near her either. *sigh*

Can't say I am surprised, but I wonder if they will ever reveal who the father is. Or if they even know themselves.

Ginny had her procedure today. She did well with it, and is mostly back to her normal self already - very cuddly, and she perked up immediately when she saw me at the vet. They did not see a polyp, mass or foreign body in there. They flushed a bunch of gunk out of her nose, and are sending swabs for PCR. Even right after I brought her home, she was sneezing and I could hear her breathing, so the effect from flushing out her nose was short lived. We will start her on an anallergenic/hypoallergenic diet now, and see if that at least helps her GI symptoms, and maybe her respiratory symptoms too.

I moved twice with Echo. The first time was to a smaller place, and she didn't seem to have an issue. The second time was to a larger place than either of the previous two (though still pretty small), and she wandered around a lot - wouldn't settle very long - for about a month. It was longer than I would have expected, but she found her favourite spots and once all the new furniture was purchased and assembled, she did settle in nicely. She was a more laid-back cat, though.

Both cats - but especially Luna - try to eat anything plastic. I had to remove plastic garbage pail liners, and even when I have the garbage bag out to gather everything before taking it outside, Luna is chewing it to pieces. I might get away with shower curtain type material but I don’t think it would be big enough. I’m finding it hard with Ginny to gauge her quality of life. It can’t be fun for her, with her breathing issues, bloody snot, vomiting, diarrhea etc. But she seems so active, loves to play and cuddle. I think I would have a hard time considering euthanasia without a life limiting diagnosis. The last time she pooped on my bed, shortly after I got the pet cover, it was bloody and she seemed clearly distressed while doing it. This time, it was the only normal stool I have seen from her in a long time. I wish I knew the cause for her using my bed - is she stressed about something? In pain? Feeling sick with the food changes? As an aside - my childhood cat was diagnosed with CKD at 17 and died a year later. Even at the very end, to our great surprise, she never once went outside of the litterbox. At that point, it would have been understandable, even expected, given how unwell she was and her dementia on top of that. We were almost waiting for that to happen to show us all that it was time, but not once did she have an accident. Even Echo, who died from lung cancer, never had an accident even at the very end. This is definitely a new experience for me. Part of me is also worried there are some inter-cat issues between Ginny and Luna that are causing this. Because again, given my space limitations, I really don’t know what I would do if that is the case. With any luck, the new food will help - we will start that after her procedure on Thursday.

I haven't been able to bring myself to watch this season of Heartstopper yet, because I read the vague plot trajectory after season one and saw the part about Charlie's eating disorder. Generally speaking, I avoid any TV/movies that deal with addictions or eating disorders. When these come up in real life, they are really hard/heavy/depressing to deal with, and not at all what I want in something that I am watching for enjoyment. So all of these comments that they aren't spending a lot of time on it might actually convince me to watch! I love the characters and had been so looking forward to the second season until I read about Charlie's eating disorder. I didn't want it to ruin the show for me, especially since season one was just so sweet.

My apartment is small enough that the bedroom is roughly 40% of it by area. It's a huge part to deny them access to, and with work, most of my time at home is while I am asleep - I would feel terrible spending only 5-6 hours with them per day. Also it has the best window in the condo, complete with a little bench in front, as well as a wide windowsill. The girls love to watch the sunrise every morning. I already keep them out of my bedroom while I am at work or if I'm gone for the day - not if I am just going out for a short period of time, although that may change. When she was doing this repeatedly when I first got her, once she even pooped on the bed while I was actually laying in it. I have a cover that I got on Amazon that is "water resistant" (as she has also peed on the bed in the past) that I keep on the bed at all times, unless I am sleeping or it is in the wash. It does make clean up easier. Problem is, I only have one of them, and they're not super cheap. I may invest in a second one though, especially if this keeps up - I find the problem comes when I have to take it off to clean it, and then that leaves my bed without protection and hence I need to keep them out of the room. Aside from protecting the bed from bodily fluids - including bloody snot - it actually does a great job at keeping my bed underneath free of cat fur.

On Thursday, Ginny goes for the procedure to take a look and see what is causing her sneezing/bloody snot issues. She also has a history of GI issues (vomiting and diarrhea) and has been on a special gastro diet. A little while ago, we opened a new bag of that dry food, noticed that neither cat was eating it and Ginny started vomiting again. Gave them Iams sensitive stomach in the interim. Ginny stopped vomiting. Tried a new bag/lot of the gastro food, and she still vomited, every time I got past ~50% of the gastro food. Spoke with the vet at length today. We made a plan to give Ginny the Iams until Thursday when she has her procedure, and at that point try a fully hydrolyzed formula to try to "reset" her GI tract and give it time to recover (along with B12 injections), with next steps being stool testing and/or metronidazole. After the lengthy phone call, I decided to shower. When I came out, Ginny had left me a lovely present - pooped on my bed. The plus side, not diarrhea - perfectly formed stool. The down side, is that I thought we were past this and I have no idea what to do next or how to cope with it. It's just one issue after another and while the rest might ruin me financially, using my bed as a litterbox might be the thing that does me in. I can't imagine giving a cat up - especially for a reason like this - but I don't know what else to do. I have a very small apartment. I have two litterboxes, I do not have physical space for a third - even the second one was pushing it. The cats love being in my room and if I lock them out, that's also further restricting the time I can spend with them. I just don't know what to do. She is so sweet. But I don't know how to cope with this, if she starts doing this routinely again.

That was how I read the scene too - something in Joy's face made me feel she plucked the ring out of Charles' hands and made up her own story.

I did this with the sound on - both Ginny and Luna came to investigate and then were looking around for the other cats!

In the last season, the "narrator" of the beginning/end of the episode changed each episode, and culminated in the murderer (Poppy) being the narrator. I think there was a similar pattern in the first season. The narrator in the first episode was Loretta, wasn't it? And then Kimber was the third. Does that rule them out? Who was the second episode?

I laughed at Charles' comment about the murderer can't be a woman because that's been done - before the season started, Meryl Streep was my pick for the murderer, and a friend said no it can't be, they've already done two female killers. Now that the season has started, I feel like Loretta is too obvious, too soon. At this point in season 1, Jan hadn't even been introduced yet, had she? And Poppy was introduced, but there was very little to point to her. I did enjoy this episode more than the last two. I loved the lullaby, Meryl Streep is amazing. I didn't think Ben was talking to anybody in that recording - if he was, wouldn't we have heard them respond? It seemed weird that he was saying things that should elicit a response, but not getting anything back.

They do get canned wet food for dinner. Normally Ginny is not that interested - sometimes I even need to coax her to come to the kitchen with a play session. She also physically struggles to eat the wet food. She has the “lick” part down, but then she just licks it around (and off of) her food dish. I could stop giving her wet food entirely and most days she wouldn’t care. Now that she is hungrier, she is definitely more interested in the wet food but still not very good at getting it in her mouth. Luna, on the other hand, loves the wet food and is very excited about it. I had to get one of those textured mats to slow her down so that Ginny could have a chance to finish hers before Luna decides to help herself (and yes I have tried separating them - they both just refuse to eat in that case).

Ginny has a date for her exploratory procedure, on Aug 31 - we are all hoping for a polyp that can be removed. If there isn't one, then they will do a bunch of tests while she is under GA, including flush out the nose and send the fluid for analysis. I have been told that, given the progression and frank blood coming out of her nose, a nasal tumour is also a possibility, but it would be very unusual given her young age. Otherwise, Ginny has been incredibly cuddly, mostly because she doesn't like her dry food and keeps begging me to give her treats instead - we just opened a new bag of the same food, and she started vomiting again (4x in 3 days), stopped eating the dry food, stopped vomiting. I coaxed her into eating some dry food and then she vomited again a few hours later, which clued me in that it might be the dry food. Luna doesn't really care for it either. The vet will exchange the bag for a different lot, and ask the company if they have changed the formula at all - it is a prescription gastro food. Including some fun photos!

He had the heart attack at the theatre and then the scene with the doctor was at the Arconia...I can pretend in the elapsed period of time, Oliver was at the hospital. This is much easier for me to suspend disbelief about than Ben coming back to life after an hour, as if nothing happened. Although - we may get a good explanation for Ben's not-death. It's unlikely we will hear more about how Oliver got medical treatment following his heart attack ;)

Also - someone traumatized over being fired after their first table read (Ben) tries to get somebody else fired after their first table read (Meryl Streep’s character)? I’m not sure I trust anything that comes out of Ben’s mouth.