Shadow Cat ~ Wicked Willow

Shadow cat Willow loves to find the sunbeam.

"Let us be honest; most of us rather like our cats to have a streak of wickedness. I should not feel quite easy in the company of any cat that walked around the house with a saintly expression." ~ Beverly Nichols

Willow loves to find the sunlight in shadows and hide or sit, half in and half out of light. She is a wicked cat... dominant.. bossy.. and yet angelic when she gazes up into your eyes. She barges in on any other cat who is eating or getting a pat on the head. In fact, now that they all love a little wet food in the evening, I sit and guard the old lady, Chloe as she eats. She eats slowly and Willow gulps hers down. Thank goodness I still have the clout as head honcho of their world.. all I have to do is point at Willow as she starts to sneak up on Chloe and she stops, stares and when she realizes that I will not blink.. she backs off. Of course this means I have to spend ten to fifteen minutes in the eating area simply sitting in a chair... alert at all times. It is at this time I am grateful for the Kindle.

In other news, Picasa and the usually simply "Blog This" button to send my pictures to Blogger is somehow broken... defunct... not doing what it says it is doing and generally acting all looney-toon on me. This was supposed to be a post for Shadow Shot Sunday, but the pictures I thought I uploaded simply disappeared. I see that at least two others have posted on the Picasa forum that they have the same problem.. now, if only a Google employee will see the problem and FIX IT!!!!!

It has been a group of "those" days in a row. I took Mom in for an outpatient procedure... an iron infusion, since she seems to be unable to absorb iron. She was in the middle of a flare up of gout that her primary physician didn't catch on her last labs... her uric acid was very elevated and her office did not pass on our call nor did they call back. So her nephrologist reluctantly gave her medication to decrease the uric acid but on Friday her foot was still in the stages of progression with increased swelling, pain, warmth and redness that was branching out across her foot and up her leg. This was very worrisome to me.. so when her blood pressure spiked before the iron infusion and she began having chest pain and they cancelled the procedure and wanted her to go to the ER, I was not too upset... I really wanted them to check that foot. I know her blood pressure does this when she is concerned about IV's and in pain and after I looked at her nitroglycerine pump and saw that it expired in October 2009.. well, the foot was my prime concern. I must say that Chesapeake hospital was very efficient... she didn't have to wait in the lobby when we got to the ER and they did an EKG, drew cardiac enzymes, did a chest x-ray and an ultrasound of the vessels in that leg and foot within a half an hour. There were no clots in that leg... major relief. We spent the rest of the day in the ER and then they kept her in observation overnight. Her cardiologist came to see her in observation and decided not to stress her with the stress test with her gout flared up and such. A bit of morphine IV relieved the pain in her foot and that chronic pain in her back that has been really bad lately and I brought her home on Saturday morning.

So, now I have to somehow balance a gout diet with a diabetic diet and most things are diametrically opposed... low protein, high complex carbs for gout... high protein, low carbs for diabetes. There must be a happy medium in there somewhere. The biggest problem and the biggest asset to help both the diabetes and the gout is good old H2O... water. I got 64 oz down her yesterday... and all the time she complained and fought and said she was nauseated from it and she just couldn't swallow it and... well, the foot is getting better. If anyone has ideas of how to get the required water down her every day without devoting all my time to .... "drink water", "is the glass empty yet", "we haven't gotten the required amount down yet", "do you WANT to go on dialysis?"... well, let me know.

That is why I have been out of pocket.... oh, yes.... and it froze last night... temps down to 28℉. We even got a little sleet when the rain first started and folks just north of us received almost a half an inch of snow. And here I thought spring had sprung. I sure do hope they get the Picasa blog this thing fixed and soon.

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Cats on Tuesday