Kitty Graves’ Disease June 29, 2004 ~ 2:47 pm
Posted by Julie in : Daily Grind , comments closedMy mom’s cat has hyperthyroidism. She apparently lost two pounds (while she was a little cat to start with, now she only weighs 7 1/2 pounds), so mom took her to the vet. The vet ran blood tests ($130 worth of blood tests), and they came back saying that the kitty has some pretty high thyroid activity. They’re retesting the blood to make sure, but if it’s true, she’s gonna have to be on medication the rest of her life.
I called mom to find out if her little eyes have started to bug out like Billy Joel’s or Barbara Bush’s. Apparently the answer is no.
While this is much better than the cat having something terminal, I was reminded again how lucky the cat was to wander into our lives. She’s already had to have half her teeth yanked because the gums were growing over them, now this. How many people would pay for the vet to treat these problems? I would, because my mom raised me like that. But I don’t think it’s a common attitude. How many people would have taken the dog to the vet and when, finding it was severely dehydrated (I forget why), would let the vet put a little IV into her (the dog) to rehydrate her? I think that trip to the vet cost something like $500 with tests and x-rays. We still refer to my cat Joe as the $200 cat because of one of his more costly vet trips, caused by him drinking dirty dishwater. We think. We’re still not completely sure about that one.
Pets win the damn lottery when they end up in my mom’s house. And they may not know that, but I do. Even the demon spawn from hell dog that chewed everything in sight, including a set of dentures, and used to bite my cat and snap at me when I came to visit. Eventually mom had to give that one up as a lost cause, but she found a nice home for it where it could be the center of attention. At last check, the dog from hell and her new owner were still completely enamored with each other.
So I’m thanking my mom for the animals. Including the dog she’s taking in this weekend because my aunt doesn’t want it anymore. Brown Dog doesn’t know it yet, but he just won the Doggie Lottery. Thanks, mom!
I made an old lady cry June 29, 2004 ~ 2:24 pm
Posted by Julie in : Daily Grind , comments closedI tried to post this earlier, but Blogger apparently hates me today. We’ll see if it takes this time.
So, I made an old lady cry this morning. Before you start sending me nasty emails and comments, let me just say that they were tears of joy. Remember the woman I wrote about last week, the 77 year old who had been mugged? Well, the guy got $200 of hers, since she had just been to the bank. So my boss and I took it upon ourselves to start a collection to replace the money. We finally got it all today, and we gave it to her in a little card. We told her that this was the only way that we could think of to make it better, and hugged her. She cried.
But you know, I feel good about making her cry. I’d like to think that if something similar happened to me, the people I work with would do something like that. And even if they wouldn’t…well, in this case it was something I could do. And dammit, that made me feel a little better.
