Cats and Canadian Geese

Yes, I know I just fell asleep 4 hours ago. So, why the hell am I up? Well at 4 a.m. I heard a cat barfing a different barf than a hairball. I got up to find Clawdio scampering out of the bathroom leaving a white foamy vomit on the tile. This is a sign that his belly is empty, and he needs some food to help keep from trying to digest his own pancreas. 

I run down and serve him up an extra half can of Prescription ID food as a snack. This brings out Looseyfur, who starts whining because heaven forbid one of my two geriatric cats gets something the other doesn't. So she got a 1/4 can of Friskies. 

Clawdio was diagnosed with pancreatitis in 2005 on top of his feline herpes. Yes, that's right, I said herpes, which he has had since we adopted him in November 1998. He has not had a flare up of either condition, since 2005. I'd like to keep it that way. But as we just got back from a week away, he likes to remind me that the only person he likes is me by being high maintenance and really needy for a few days. Clawdio will turn 11 in October.

Looseyfur, our oldest cat (estimation has her turning somewhere between 19 and 23 this January), has been on fluid therapy (she gets 100cc of an IV solution drained into her shoulder area each day) for over a year now to help her kidneys, which were in renal kidney failure last year, but improved to being "borderline" within 2 months of starting the therapy. In addition to the fluids, she receives a pill and a half of tapazole for her hyperthyroidism a day and the supplement azodyl. We know we don't have much time left to spend with her, so we humor her. She gets anything she wants at this stage, as she slinks around the house in her tiny 6 lb body that is made up mostly of bone and fur. 

While we were on vacation, we put the cats in our bedroom/bathroom, to make it easier for Quigs, who so graciously pet sat for us for a week (really, I mean, that's friendship, her thank you gift is on the way, even though she says it's unnecessary), to wrangle them. She had to utilize her pet care training from her own cat ownership experience of a cat with pancreatitis (the lovely Cheeto) and her years working in a vet clinic. She reported that they hated being kept in here and not able to roam the rest of the house, even though they have a king-sized bed to lie on and a cat tree to sleep in. Plus, this is where both of them normally sleep all night long. But it's safer for them to be quarantined, since they need to be watched and monitored on a daily basis, particularly for folks that aren't me and don't know their strange habits. 

Anyway, now the little bastards who have full run of the house again think that there should forever be a bowl of food in my bathroom and they sit in there and WHINE LOUDLY. I picked up the litterbox that we used and washed it out when we got home. I put away the dinner bowl. But apparently, they liked having a second service station on the top floor versus eating in the kitchen and using the bathroom facilities in the basement. 

Lord help them if they decide they're too lazy to go to the basement to use the boxes. Cause the secret to this is, when they get old and crazy, they're going to spend their days stuck in here with me, so I can watch them and care for them. No more lying on the kitchen floor in the southern exposure. No more thundering around in circles around the first floor. No more trips out into the backyard to pretend like they're tigers as they stomp on giant crickets, maim them and move on. (Well, okay Clawdio isn't really allowed out there because he's afraid of his own shadow.) They'll be stuck in here with the cranky old lady who pills them and pokes them dutifully because she loves her cats and has had both of them for over a decade and isn't about to just give up on them. 

So what the hell do Canadian Geese have to do with this? We have two "lakes" (i.e. retention ponds) behind our house and it's migratory season. Apparently a gaggle of geese have decided to slumber 20 feet behind my backyard fence in the open field that will in the next year be more houses. And man are they seriously freaking noisy ALL NIGHT LONG. Honk. Honk. Honk.

Recap, elderly cats woke me up for food by vomiting and shouting. And now 60 minutes later, I can't sleep because I can hear the constant honking outside my window. Seriously, thank goodness X-man was so easy tonight cause the rest of the world is obviously a nuisance.