Life with Coon Cats – Page 25 – Sharon Lee, Writer

Socks Update

Several kind people have written (tweeted, facebooked, and LJed) to find if all of Socks’ medical expenses have been paid, or if “more money is needed.”

I’m truly grateful for the care and thoughtfulness behind the queries, and the generosity of caring people that made it possible for us to give Socks a little more time.

But here’s the thing. . .

When the ship lifts, all debts are paid.

So, thank you — all of you — no more money is needed.

If you still feel that you’d like to do honor Socks’ memory, please consider a donation to your local animal shelter. If you don’t have a local shelter, we found that the Animal Emergency Clinic in Lewiston, where the vets were so wonderful for Socks and for Hexapuma, has a Good Samaritan Fund, to assist people who can’t afford emergency, life-saving care for their pets. Here’s the website

At a slight tangent, I did bring home Socks’ ashes today. The ground is still a little hard for me to dig through, but as soon as the permafrost retreats for the few short weeks of our arctic summer, Socks will be interred in the Cat Garden in the front yard. The Cat Garden is a wildflower garden, and it draws bees, and butterflies, and hummingbirds. The front windows where Mozart and Socks shared the sun together overlooks the Cat Garden.

Yes, I’m cleaning out another file drawer

I think this Meisha Merlin ad ran in the Valentine’s Day 1999 edition of Romantic Times. The same ad ran in the SFWA Bulletin and a well-meaning colleague told us that we might want to “tone down” the romance-thing in the ad, so as not to offend the membership.

In other news, I believe I’ve had better days. I thought filing would be a nice, soothing-in-a-boring-way activity. That was before I had to put all of Socks’ vet records and bills and stuff away. I briefly considered setting fire to the office, then thought that I’d probably regret that later, and maybe I should just throw everything away, instead. That’s still on the table, but there doesn’t seem to be a dumpster company open today. Maybe I’ll change my mind on the overnight.

He must have been an admiral, a sultan or a king

Things are still somewhat in disarray here at the Cat Farm. Scrabble and Mozart are still insisting that The Kid has to be here somewhere, darnit, and they occasionally mount exploratory surveys.

Mozart yesterday went over the entire house, using the MomCat call, but damn — The Kid still didn’t turn up. He then sought Steve out to Explain This At Length, and (possibly) to Demand Assistance. Steve was, sadly, not able to bring much to this, except to offer scribbles.

Scrabble, ever methodical, periodically checks Socks’ favorite spots, and has three times now put his favorite toys into play, noisily — but that didn’t pull him out of his Silly Fluff sulks, either. There are also Other Worrisome Developments, such as Socks’ bowl going missing. She has duly noted this on the inventory.

The humans are at loose ends, somewhat, and not so sprightly as they might be. Work, however, goes on; things arrive in the mail; and laundry must be done.

Things that have arrived in the mail include three! guidebooks for Angkor Wat, which are fascinating. (No, I’m not going to Angkor Wat or Siem Reap or Cambodia or Viet Nam. No, I don’t know why I had to have these books. The backbrain at work, I suppose. I try not to question too closely in the belief that, eventually, All Will Become Clear. It would be nice to occasionally get a memo, though.) Anyhow — fascinating, with pictures! and teensytinyitsybitsy little print, and it is to swoon. So, yanno, at least the backbrain’s happy.

Also in the mail — today, in fact — was a sympathy card from the vet’s office, with personal notes from all the staff, aka Socks’ Waterville Fan Club; and Protector, the next Foreigner novel.

Speaking of guidebooks, I ought to get one for New York, so I can figure out how far things are from other things and how to move around the place. Hmm. Steve and I will be at Book Expo America (aka BEA) at the end of May, doing a book signing and some other stuff TBA. In theory, we will have some unscheduled time to do, um, stuff. Noting that the Sheer Amount of Stuff in New York makes thinking about what one would like to do-or-see. . .somewhat overwhelming.

But! What do I find, via the New Yorker, but that Kinky Boots, the Musical! is/will be at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre (located at 45th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues, it says, here, helpfully, no doubt). This is very exciting, and visions of theater tickets dance in my brain (to be immediately dashed by my lack of knowing almost everything I need to know in order to figure out if a night at the theater is even possible. That guidebook is looking like a better and better idea…)

Of possible interest to those who follow the ups and downs of the publishing biz, and wonder why writers go crazy, is the whole Night Shade Books Nightmare. Steve and I are not involved with Night Shade, we have no skin in the game, but a lot of our friends and colleagues are involved in this. . .horrifying situation.

Here’s a fairly temperate analysis, with history, written by a well-known SF/F agent.

Here’s another summary of the situation, by Tobias Buckell.

Here’s Phil Foglio’s take (Night Shade publishes the Girl Genius text novels (NOT the graphic novels)

Here’s the first i09 article regarding the situation.

And, here’s Mr. Lassen of Night Shade, in his own words.

Kameron Hurley, one of Night Shade’s authors, rings down the sky, and explains why she’s considering the “deal.”

Andy Zack, of the Zack Literary Agency, weighs in.

Progress on Carousel Seas

24,893/100,000 OR 24.89% Complete

“That’s an impressive bit of work the man does,” I said, slowly. “I wonder if it does any good, in the long run.”

Socks Update: He’s gone

. . . Thank you all again, for your support, your kindness and your understanding.

No Foolin’

This is, as it has been for some time, an April Fool Free Zone.

What we here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory do on April 1 instead of playing stressful and/or annoying pranks on each other is. . .

1. Celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of the entanglement of the Lee library and cat with the Miller library and cat. And. . .

2. (New this year!) Celebrate the first anniversary of Socks’ arrival at the Cat Farm.

* * *

Today also sees the release of the free! edition! of Fledgling (the first edition) on Amazon. The free edition has been available, and continues to be available in All Possible Ebook Formats from the Baen Free Library.

Likewise, the Agent of Change eBook continues to be available for free from Amazon and at the Baen Free Library.

Please go forth and inform your friends, your relatives, the guy at the table next to you at the coffeeshop. . . Again, the purpose of giving these editions away is to grow the readership of the Liaden Universe® — and you can help! In fact, many of you have been helping for years; we’re grateful, and hope that the availability of the free ebooks will make your work easier and more pleasurable.

* * *

We’ve had several inquiries regarding Socks, his health, and if he’s “maintaining.”

Socks. . .is on a slow downward spiral. He’s requiring more of the various medications more often than the vets had anticipated — the most worrying of those being the drug to increase his appetite. Sick cats, as sick humans, need to eat. We had two scares over the weekend when we thought we had lost him — remembering that the emergency vet had not been at all convinced that he was going to survive last weekend.

Despite the lack of appetite, Socks remains interested in the general operations of the Confusion Factory. As always, he makes certain to be with one or the other of us as work goes forth; he seeks us out for lap-sitting, and scrubbles; and stakes out his space on the bed (usually on my stomach; sometimes on Steve’s hip) for the long night-nap.

So. . .gentle thoughts for Socks, please.

* * *

Progress on Carousel Seas

20,957/100,000 words OR 20.96% complete

“It is seldom that all of one’s affairs flourish, my lady, but I have no cause for complaint of my treatment at the hands of the universe.”

And she’d throw him bouquets on the stage

A slow day of catchup of things that were let slide because of catmergencies. The laundry’s done. Go, me. I spent a little bit of time with Carousel Seas and managed to get some words down. Socks has been intermittently about. He’s still exhausted, poor guy. Scrabble spent much of the day on the rocker, while Mozart helped me and Ox hold down the couch.

I am inordinately pleased to discover at this late date that Bruce Springsteen covered “The Man on the Flying Trapeze,” one of my grandmother’s favorite songs, and one which she sang with, err, GUSTO when we went to Sing-A-Longs in the Park. (Are there still Sing-a-Longs in the Park?) I was my grandmother’s chosen companion on these trips — possibly because I couldn’t sing a note, or because she believed that children should be exposed to the classics. As a result, I know the words to a Very Odd mix of songs.

In the excitement of the Socks’ Homecoming Gala, I forgot to mention yesterday that…I bought more knives. Cheesy Dollar Store knives, but they’ll spread the mustard.

Progress on Carousel Seas:

16,353/100,000 OR 16.35% complete

He shook his head. “Wasn’t a drop of harm in that girl, an’ her father could never say the same.”

Socks update: You can never tell with cats

This is a little later than I had intended to update; you’ll see the reason soon enough. But I want to preface this with a story about another cat who lived with us, back when we were still in Maryland. This cat’s name was Buzz-z; he was a grey plush who weighed in right about coon cat size. He’d been allowed to roam by his then-owner, and one night he and a raccoon met each other out on the town, the raccoon said something, Buzz-z said something in return and, well. . .they kinda broke up the bar.

Buzz-z came home sporting multiple scrapes, scratches and bites, and over the course of a couple days, during which his owner refused to take him to the vet, because “cats heal,” he became sick, and progressively sicker. We remonstrated with the owner, the owner was adamant that it was “no sense” taking a cat to the vet, whereupon I suggested that what the owner really wanted to do, instead of talking to an animal control officer, was to give me the cat.

Steve and I then took our new cat to our vet, who checked him over, did blood work, and an x-ray, which found what appeared to be a raccoon tooth buried in Buzz-z’s right foreleg, and said, “I’m not sure I can save this one, guys.”

We left him there, and waited for the call that would tell us that we’d waited too long.

Well…the phone did ring, about five hours later, and it was the vet. And the vet said something like, Can you guys come down here and pick up Buzz-z? He won’t stay in a cage, and he’s running all around the office, flirting with the girls, and nobody’s getting any work done.

So, raise a glass of whatever it is you’re having to Buzz-z, who taught us that, You never can tell with cats.

Had we not had this lesson, we might well have told the emergency vet to let Socks go. Had we, frankly, been as broke as we have sometimes been in the past (and indeed, as we were when we intervened on Buzz-z’s behalf), we might have told her to let Socks go. Knowing that we had the funds to buy time, to see what would happen with treatment, because you never can tell with cats — I don’t think I can begin to tell you what a relief that was. Thank you all, again.

So, for today. . .We got up before breakfast, picked Socks up at the Lewiston Emergency Clinic, wearing a cone of shame and sporting some serious gearage in his right foreleg, and drove him up to our vet in Waterville to continue the IV hydration project.

The second we took him out of his cat carrier in the examining room, he perked up (he hates to be in the cat carrier and in addition this morning there was the whole cone of shame issue), he demanded skritches, he ran up to his vet and head-butted her, he made happy feet. . .

We left him, expecting that he would stay on ’til Wednesday, when the emergency vet’s 72 hours of hydration was complete. Around 3:15 (after we had a nap, and lunch, and dealt with some business correspondence), we got a call from the vet, saying that we should come and get him, the new panel of blood work had shown much lower BUN/CREA numbers (though they are still elevated); the blood sugar values were down to normal. There was, yes, still the heart murmur, and the cancer issue which another of the vets in the practice had also scoped out, so there’s three vets saying the same thing, but what we have in hand at the moment is a joyful, comfortable, mischevious cat-person, who is extremely happy to be home.

So, that’s what we’re going with. Steve and I now both know how to give subcutaneous liquids; we have needles and eleven sessions worth of lactated ringer solution, and Socks is right now sitting on the co-pilot’s chair beside me, having just finished giving himself a very thorough bath.

Socks on the co-pilot's chair. He's a little tired, thanks. — Socks on the co-pilot’s chair. He’s a little tired, thanks.

Socks update: the emergency vet says…

I spoke to the day-vet. He says that Socks is doing “OK, all things considered.” To the list of “all things” we now add a heart murmur and what this vet, as a result of performing his own examination, explains as a “lumpy, bumpy kidney,” which he finds “very suspicious,” and tentatively diagnoses as lymphoma.

On the positive side of the ledger, Socks is snacking a little, is taking a lively interest in his surroundings, and has started in to building the core for a Lewiston branch of the Socks Fan Club.

The plan remains for continued IV liquids and close observation at the Emergency Clinic, then a before-sunrise-pick-up tomorrow morning (the Emergency Clinic is 24 hours on weekends; all patients must be picked up before 7:30 a.m. on Monday), and transport to our local vet in Waterville for continued treatment.

Socks update: The news is. . .unfortunate

So, last night around 10:00, just about the time Steve and I had knocked off for the night, Socks rose from his floofy thing atop the hamper in the bathroom, walked out into hall, looked faintly startled, threw up. . .

. . .and fell over.

Long story short, Socks is at the Animal Emergency Clinic of Central Maine, in Lewiston, about an hour away from the Cat Farm. This is an excellent facility; we’ve now had three interactions with them, including Hexapuma’s last journey, and the vets are knowledgeable and caring and very patient.

I have to tell you that the vet treating Socks. . .is not optimistic of a happy outcome. His BUN and CREA numbers had gone even higher than they had been on Wednesday; his blood sugar was high; his white blood count considerably elevated; both of his kidneys were very large. The vet was concerned that what she was seeing in ultrasound/xray was abnormal — she wasn’t able to tell if it was “just” inflammation, polycystic, or if the kidneys were being infiltrated by cancer cells.

Since much of this could be caused by the sudden spike in numbers, we have asked the hospital to put Socks on intravenous fluid and see what he looks like, once he’s properly hydrated and his system is less stressed.

I’m going to be calling the vet this afternoon, and will relate any new news, if there is any. The clinic operates on a “no news is good news” policy, and they haven’t called us, so — fingers crossed, please, for Socks.

Socks update: The numbers are in

. . .and the numbers are Not Good.

Socks is in acute kidney failure*. This obviously means that our plan of treatment has been radically changed.

We’re going to be concentrating on keeping him comfortable, hydrated, and fed. I’ll be taking a tutorial on how to administer subcutaneous liquids to cats, so we don’t have to distress Socks with a ride to the vet every couple days. The vet did say that she has never seen a cat with such high numbers who was still eating and drinking and enjoying life, which is a testament to Socks’ good nature and can-do attitude.

The ultrasound image is. . .inconclusive. There was some concern about were or weren’t the kidneys polycystic — to my mind, that’s a technical detail. The vet wants to diagnose correctly, and to that end, she’s seeking guidance from her colleagues. The best she could tell me when we spoke this morning is that the kidneys are “not normal.” Apparently in normal kidneys, the ultrasound will show the structure of the organ in perfect clarity. If the kidneys are polycystic, the cysts are very visible and impossible to miss. In Sock’s case, the kidney structure is. . .not what it should be, but if there’s a cyst tell, it isn’t obvious.

. . .as I said, for us, and for Socks — a side issue.

The other question — how long will we have him with us? We don’t know. We’ll treasure each day that we do have him with us.

Steve and I want to thank everyone who donated to defray Socks’ medical expenses, and everyone who were Standing Ready. At this point, there’s really no sense in accumulating a Socks Defense Fund; this isn’t something that money — or anything else — can fix.

We’ll continue updates as seems reasonable.

Here’s a picture of Socks this morning, as Steve and I were eating breakfast. He was full of smiles and purrs. His position on the bench (on newspapers! Socks loves him some newspapers!) is strategic: the cat water fountain is directly to his left, where he can keep a close eye on it.

__________

*Kidney function is measured in units of BUN/UREA and CREA. The normal range for BUN/UREA is between 15 – 34 mg/dl; 0.8 – 2.3 mg/dl for CREA. Socks’ numbers are BUN/UREA: 180 mg/dl; CREA 8.3 mg/dl.