Saturday, January 10, 2009

2009-Must you be so trying?

It's the 10th day of the new year.

And I can't say that I'm impressed.

Last Sunday I discovered the car was leaking coolant. Bah I say, it's a leak in the radiator. Off I went to Auto Zone, bought coolant and anti-leak stuff. As I was checking out, the nice man said he'd not recommend the anti leak stuff, as he's seen it do bad things to car's heating systems. ORLY I say. But purchased it anyway. But it got me thinking.

So on Monday I call the garage and 'splain the situation. The garage guy said the stop leak stuff would fix it, but how about I bring it down just to make sure it's not a hose or something.

As it turns out, 'or something' has now set me back a substantial sum of money. (Which I don't have of course) The water pump went out, and to get to the water pump, one removes the timing belt, which is apparently a beotch to remove, so they replaced THAT and the thermostat and various gaskets as well.

Oh.

I trust my mechanics. They've been keeping my Volvos alive for many, many years now.

The car is still at the garage, because I've been spending money like a drunken sailor on other stuff (silly things like bills) and I don't feel like draining all three of my meager bank accounts to retrieve it. Especially since Obbie's car is perfectly fine (now that the brakes have FINALLY been replaced)

At least I still have the receipt for the stop leak junk and can take that back. Hey five bucks is five bucks, right?

Anyway.

Obbie's got a miserable cold, which is entering the third big day. He hasn't done much of anything besides eat and sleep and honk. He was off work yesterday, and spent the day napping and honking and drinking tea. He says it's "NOT THE FLU" because he got a flu shot. (Although I've been having a fine time teasing him, 'do you want me to get the Tylenol cold and flu stuff? Never mind, you had a flu shot, I'll just get Tylenol Cold") At least he's got a sense of humor still.

Here's the freaky scary thing that happened.

Last night Obbie went to bed, and I'm down here. The cats are all sleeping in their various places. Pete cat comes strolling in to the living room. Sits down and starts grooming himself. He looks up like there's a fly buzzing around the room. Faster and faster he's turning his head all around like someone is spinning something around him. He gets up, and walks to behind the cat tower, still 'looking' for the fly, his eyes are huge, and he starts going in circles. His tail is puffed up to epic proportions, and then he kind of falls over. At this point, I'm down on my knees beside him petting him, and he's just looking at me like, Who are you lady? I run upstairs and wake up Obbie, and change into shoes and jeans, when I get back downstairs, Pete is standing up looking at me like "WTF?" and purring. He walks over to me looking a little weirded out, but fine. Obbie started petting him, and he was being Pete, smiling and loving the attention. Obbie went back to bed, and since I was only just a little freaked out (only a little, cough cough) I took my blanket and pillow and came downstairs. Pete jumped up on me and we all went to sleep.

At some point I went to bed, and when I came down this morning, Pete was first in line for breakfast, and acting like nothing happened last night.

I did a search for cat seizures this morning, it could be a number of things or it could be nothing. A lot of folks wrote on a cat forum that similar things had happened to them, and they rushed to the vet, and many, many dollars later the vet told them the cat had nothing unusual in their blood tests, and to monitor them. They also prescribe phenobarbitol to the kitties to keep the seizures in check.

Well. I think for now we'll monitor the Pete for any other weirdness. The last time he had to go to the vet it was in the neighborhood of $800 (or more) for that little problem. And as much as I love my cats, I can't really swing that kind of money.

I wonder if vets read these forums online. I wonder if they realize that lots of people simply cannot afford to shell out huge amounts of money, even though they love their animals very much. I wonder if they care that many people are foregoing vet care altogether because they simply cannot afford everything. The rescue people are on TV once a week now, wringing their hands about people just dumping their animals because they can't afford them anymore. Don't you think that vets should look into their fees and perhaps modify things so people can afford to take care of their animals? Or just because you can't afford a hundred bucks to walk into a vet clinic, you don't deserve to own pets?

Yep. Happy New Year to you too.


Oh, and Amy who commented but left no email link in the comments. Thanks but not thanks. My blog has been ad free for it's entire life, and I plan on keeping it that way.

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