chesneycat

Jeremy from the cattery is making his way over to the vets right now, to be with Chesney at the end. He loves Chesney to bits, nearly as much as we do. The vet really doesn't see any hope for him at all, and it'd be very, very cruel to force him to hang on at this stage.

So this is goodbye.



Shit.

Chesney's at the vets.

It's not looking good.

One of the big questions about the Big Move is what the heck we do about Chesney?  He's in not-great health, somewhere in the vicinity of twenty years of age, and assuming he lives beyond next July, I really don't think it'd be fair to make him travel all the way to Germany. Stressing a cat of his age with sedatives, airports and planes?  Or a several-day journey over land? No, I think that'd be cruel.  I wouldn't mind paying out all the necessary costs for getting him a pet passport sorted out, and he's even the sort of cat that'd happily put up with the discomfort... but he could die any week, really, and with the travel stress... nuh-uh.

So that leaves us with only one option really - re-homing.  Sarah has her mental springer spaniels, Julia and Trish the lab/retriever combo, and while Jez's parents would love him to bits, they can't really risk their one-eyed dog Monty (who's calm enough to adjust to a cat, probably) losing the other eye courtesy of Chesney's claws.  He would do it, if the dog got too close!  The only option is my parents.  They've already got two cats, but the separate feeding could probably be made to work.  Chesney doesn't move around much, and would happily occupy a sunny spot all day long.  There's a slight worry that Peugeot would nag him a bit too much, but Chesney gets along okay with other cats - basically, he lets them walk all over him - so perhaps Peugeot wouldn't get a rise out of him, like he does from cat #2, Nissan.  Anyway, I've just discussed it with Mum and Dad, and it looks like they're happy with the idea.

Chances are he won't make it to July, but if he does, he's got a lovely retirement home waiting for him.  And Dad'll be pleased to have his company - neither of their other cats will sit with him!

• Chesney's doing much better today!  He's still wobbly, but the anti-inflamatories and antibiotics have boosted his appetite enormously.  I think he got through four packs of meat and a bowl of biscuits yesterday... normally, he only manages a couple.  Given how skinny he is, this is a Good Thing.

• Today, astro-ph (the astrophysics pre-print server) has provided me with my first entry for "Incomprehensible sentence of the week".

"Using ab initio cosmological Eulerian adaptive mesh refinement radiation hydrodynamical calculations, we discuss how very massive stars start the process of cosmological reionization."

And no, it doesn't mean much more to me than it does to you.

• Ah, first year undergrads!  Without fail, there's always (at least) one every year who thinks that it's warmer in summer because the Earth is closer to the Sun.  For the umpteenth time, NO!

• In other news, I have a job interview! I'm off to Heidelberg in mid/late November.  Fingers crossed!

• Finally... we went to see Stardust last night. Wow.  Yet another reason to love Neil Gaiman.  Yeah, it was all rather predictable, but that's not the point.  It's a fairy tale, and I know the genre inside out.  Of course you're going to get all the usual traditional elements, but it's the execution of them that makes the story.  What does the tale tell you about human morals, and does it do so in a unique and interesting way? Aside from the quality of the film itself, Jez managed to identify half the cast of Green Wing... Mmm... must watch that again and drool over the delightful love triangles, and giggle at the sheer randomness of the Heron incident...
  

Today, Chesney has mostly been falling over...

Off to the vets at 3.

Edit: He's not just wobbling and falling over, he also fell off the window sill today! According to the vet, it looks like he's had a vestibular episode, possibly associated with the cat equivalent of a stroke, or possibly just an inner ear infection.  His pupils have slightly different reactions to light though, so it's most likely that something has gone wrong on the neurological front.  On top of that, he's probably stiff and sore from arthritis anyway.

Poor old thing.  He's been dosed up with corticosteroids and antibiotics, and hopefully we ought to see an improvement over the next day or so. Anti-inflamatories are pretty much the best treatment, whatever the problem is, and for a twenty-ish year old cat, forking out for an MRI is really not an option.  Fingers crossed...

Chesney discovers that Daleks are not edible.   And, in fact, all that evil makes them taste rather nasty indeed.

( Chesney... )


( Fanfic and self-analysis )

( school fete, books, general crapness )

Picture the scene.  One cat, old and ginger, demanding that the remains of his breakfast are removed right this minute, dammit, and replaced with a fresh pouch of chicken-flavour cat food for dinner.

As if to emphasise the enormity of his hunger, the second the bowl is placed in front of him he launches into it.  Face down, jaws chomping, motionless body, and the straightest tail you've ever seen extending out behind him. 

Jez is standing next to me, watching Chesney stuff his face as if it's the last catfood in the cupboard and he hadn't been fed all week.  And then he stretches out his arm to make a couple of yanking motions, as if grabbing a tail, and says...:

"Hungry, hungry, Chesneys!"

It was bloody hilarious, I tell you.

It's been a while since I've done a Chesney POV post, hasn't it? This isn't quite going to be one of those, despite what the title suggests - it was Jez and I getting up at 2am this morning, not Chesney, who was happily snoring on the arm of one of our sofa chairs. I probably anthropomorphise a little too much as far as Chesney's concerned, but you can tell a lot of what they're thinking just at a glance.

This morning, as he squinted balefully at us when we got downstairs, he was very clearly thinking "What the fuck are you two doing out of bed at two a.m.? And turn that bloody light off; I'm trying to sleep here! Bastards." You'd think that a cat that sleeps all day long might go off out and do something more interesting at night, but not Chesney.

Anyway, we'd got up stupidly early so we could go meteor watching. The skies were nearly totally clear above the house, so we quietly jumped in the car and drove out to the Peak District in search of darker skies than those above England's fourth largest city. Twenty minutes later, we were out in the wilds, heading for our idealised meteor-viewing carpark on the far side of the Surprise view, Higger tor and the Carl Wark Fort near Hathersage. [Lovely organic restaurant in Hathersage, by the way. Highly recommended.] We parked the car, got outside, and realised that we'd driven up into a small cloud hanging around on top of the hill. Disaster? No, we just drove halfway back down the valley, and had a good twenty minutes of viewing before the cloud sunk on top of us again. Then it was back to the Surprise carpark on the other side of the ridge, where the sky was still mostly clear. Overall, it was pretty dark. Still a bit of a glow on the horizon, but we got a good view of the Milky Way. I've seen better darkness, of course, but then I would have done! We didn't quite get the 100 an hour rate, but hey, eyes aren't the best instruments, and it's easy to miss a lot of the fainter meteors. We did get at least one every two minutes, if not better, and most of those where whopping big ones - the best travelled a good 30 degrees across the sky, and left a bright trail for a good five seconds or so. Most where white, but we got a few yellows, oranges, blues and greens as well.

Eventually, we decided to pack it in, and got home at about half three.

Chesney hadn't moved an inch.

Picture the scene.  One cat, on window ledge.  In front of the window is an armchair.  On the arm of the chair is a big pile of wall-charts - the freebie ones from the Guardian, that we picked up via freecycle just the other day.

Chesney decides it's time to move to the sunny spot on the floor, and begins his usual route from the window ledge.  A small hop to the back of the chair, then down onto the chair arm... and he starts walking across the piles of charts.

Which don't stay put. 

Chesney digging in his claws doesn't really improve the frictional coefficients between the lower layers, and the whole pile, charts, cat and all, starts to slide off the chair.  Next, he tries scampering off, but that just sends them flying across the room one by one.

Of course we're laughing at him quite loudly at that point.  We haven't seen him look that embarrassed since he fell off the bed.

Chesney doesn't understand laser-pointers.  But he does like chasing them!


Hours of fun for the whole family...

Poor old Chesney.  His gingivitis has flared up badly, and he can barely eat - plus, the usual anti-inflamatories are out because of his mild kidney failure.  We've got alternative pills for that to give him every other day, and antibiotics twice a day.  For the latter, it's a nasty balance.  Stick them in his food which he barely touches, or shove 'em down his throat as gently as possible.  Despite eating like a mouse, he seems determined to say "See?  I don't have any quality of life issues!" as loudly as possible.  All week he's been chasing screwed up bits of paper across the lounge floor, and his purr has gone up a few more decibels to pneumatic drill level.

As for me, well, I feel like death warmed up.  I knew tiling was hard work - I've seen my Mum do it often enough - but sheesh!  I must have used muscles I'd forgotten I possessed!  But, it's looking great.  There's about 6 square metres of tiles up where there weren't any before: door to bath, over bath, round to sink/window.  I'll grout tonight and seal the bath so we don't have to shower in the gym everyday, and finish off the last awkward stretch (lots of tile cutting to go round furniture/pipes etc.) from the window to the other wall at the weekend.  If I'm still alive.

Because right now, I hurt so much that I'm not sure I want to be!

Must! Finish! Science case!


*sigh*


If only to stop me thinking about tonight's visit to the vet.

What is it with those bastards?  They entertain their friends, but when I want to share my oh-so-tasty prescription catfood with my mates, they get all huffy about it!  Okay, so BlackCat had to deal with that bloody cat-flap the hard way, but the least they could have done is reattached it properly!  So what happens instead?  I race back inside out of the rain, clamber through the damn thing as gracefully as I can manage (which isn't very gracefully at all, what with my arthritic joints and all), and end up with the whole darn frame slung round my middle!  And what do those bastards do?

I'll give you one guess.

They stood there, laughing!  Laughing, and taking photos! And all the while, every last shred of my dignity was vanishing back out the way I'd come in.


Bastards.

But at least I know where their dark clothes are kept.

It's been a while since Chesney last had a bit of an update here, but as he spends most of his time firmly affixed to the arm of the sofa (and usually snoring louder than you'd think a cat could), this one's coming from me.  For an old cat (18 years, with a two-year error bar), he's not doing too badly, and still chases leaves when he thinks we're not looking.  But he started drinking lots of water two months ago, and sure enough, 100 quids worth of blood tests confirmed that we've picked up the very early stages of renal failure.  So, he's on to a prescription diet (and anyone looking for a supplier of such things for their pet can really do a LOT worse than heading in Nutrecare's direction), and actually taking to it pretty well.  In fact, he's putting on a bit of the weight he's lost in the past two years, and hopefully we can get him back up to the 5kg mark again.


Anyway, sunday was a lovely sunny day, and we noticed that the disco-ball tree ornaments were reflecting rather a lot of sunlight onto various patches of carpet.  A gentle tap, and off they went, cat in hot pursuit. 

I think that's his exercise for the month.