Aside from critter pictures, I haven’t been posting much about how things are going. Mostly because, it’s all pretty mundane right now. It’s been so awesome to have the warmer temperatures, and I’m so looking forward to being able to continue working on the yard!

The outside cats are appreciating the warmer temperatures, too.

Bob was just rolling all over the step, after greeting me as I finished up my rounds. :-D

I am happy to say that the cats all seem to have gotten over their colds. Doom Guy still sounds stuffy when he breathes, but everything else seems back to normal. Unfortunately, that includes having more energy for less pleasant things. On discovering the water bowl was knocked off the warmer last night (yes, we are still using it, though even the outside water bowl only had a film of ice over the surface this morning), I went to fix and refill it. I discovered the mat in front of it covered with tufts of cat fur of various colours, and a spot or two of fresh blood. The water bowl had been knocked off by a cat fight. From the colours, I’m guessing Nicky the Nose and either Slick or Not-Slick got into it.

It sucks that they fight at all, but even more that they do it in the sun room.

I think it’s time to move the food and water bowls away from the house again, to where we had them last year. Now that things are thawing out, remains of food that was covered in snow is now being uncovered, and that will attract all sorts of unwanted things.

I am so looking forward to when things are dry enough to empty the sun room out and clean it! Between the cats and the skunk, we’ve got a few “presents” thawing out right now, making it unpleasant to open up the bathroom window. Ah, well. All in good time!

With my daughter’s new job, the morning routine has changed up a bit. Though hired for primarily weekends, she’s still in her training phase and has a full week of shifts this week. So now I save my rounds for after I get home from dropping her off at work.

The outside cats seem confused by the change. ;-) The time I’m doing the rounds really hasn’t changed much, but they see us out and about earlier and I can see them trying to figure out what’s going on! :-D

This past Monday, I was planning to take my husband into town for some blood work, but he wasn’t up to it. The prescription the hospital gave him for the pulmonary edema was only for 1 week. That’s been done for a few days now, and while it helped a great deal, he can feel he is getting worse again. We got him to the clinic yesterday for the blood work, and it really wiped him out. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot that can be done. Most of the suggestions to help are either too long term to help now (dietary changes, for example), not possible for him to do right now, because of his pain levels (increasing physical activity), or not possible at all, because of his medications. One of the recommendations is weight loss, but a side effect of one of his medications is, it prevents weight loss. Even before he was on that medication, as the extent of his injury was still being assessed, a spine specialist told him flat out (after my husband asked, due to being harangued about it by his primary care giver at the time), “sure, losing weight would help, but it’s not going to happen for you. ” The nature of his injury and the pain levels made it a completely unrealistic expectation. Plus, even if he did lose weight, the injury would still be there and he would still be in pain.

Everything goes back to the pain.

Meanwhile, we’ve still heard nothing from the Pain Clinic in the city, after more than a year on the waiting list.

He has an appointment with his regular doctor next week. Here’s hoping we can learn something about all this.

The Re-Farmer