We usually eat fast food on road trips because we are trying to save time or we can’t leave the dog in the car…but today we found a place that had a patio so we could actually stop for a decent road trip meal (she’s under Tom’s chair).
Someone was being grumpy and didn’t want their picture taken.
But this one let me.
Katie was all gung go about fishing… until nothing was biting and it was boring.
This is how she ended up “fishing.”
The only thing Tom caught!
Maggie was READY to go. Once she got outside while I was loading the car, she did NOT want to go back in and she just stood there waiting.
Unfortunately Tom didn’t get out of work as early as he’d hoped so we didn’t get on the road until 4…and with an 8-hour drive (well, 7 actual hours but 8 with the time change) plus construction and rush hour traffic…we didn’t pull in until almost 1:30am. Yuck.
But, because we could, we picked an awesome-sounding BBQ place on Yelp as we drove down the highway, called in an order, and picked it up within 15 minutes…eating in the car as we continued down the highway. Easy peasy. And then we took about seven minutes and stopped for ice cream along the way as well. We even got Maggie a dog ice cream which she wanted no part of. Kids! 🙂
Maggie usually hops into bed with me after Owen lets her out of the crate. This morning Katie hopped in, too, and gave Maggie some snuggles.
We spent the day in Cadillac with Tom’s extended family at a local campground where the kids enjoyed meeting new friends and playing in the pool.
Katie liked the animals. (Yes there were animals there. She especially liked the goats.)
Maggie didn’t bark once all day…until she got in front of the goats. At which point she thought she was ferocious.
After some visiting I just amused myself. There might have been margaritas involved.
I put Maggie’s collar on in preparation of our road trip and she is ready.
We found a great Lands End coat for Owen at the Salvation Army today. It must have come from a house with pets because Charlie went crazy on it. Rubbing and pawing and just laying on it.
She sits next to me at the table when I’m working.
MEOW!
It’s hard to get back to sleep after you’ve been awoken at 3:30am by your dog screaming (seriously, that’s the best way to describe it…and it’s seriously awful) because she’d gotten her mouth/snoot/teeth hooked between the bars of her crate and her paw was bleeding from scratching at it.
If Tom wouldn’t have been here I’m not sure what I would have done. We didn’t even have tools big enough to cut the wires—he had to bend them with brute force until they broke.
We wondered what on Earth was going on…until we realized it was raining again. She must be REALLY messed up from that lightning strike.
(Much after the fact we both said we really wish we would’ve gotten a picture of it because it was truly unbelievable. Honestly, I had thought about getting a picture but I had left my phone upstairs because we hadn’t expected to find anything insane…and we were too wrapped up in extracting her safely to worry about it.)
So we bandaged her paw and Tom stayed up (since it was almost his normal waking time) and I was up—trying to calm down—until about 6am when I finally crashed.
This is the solution Tom had come up with by the time I rolled out of bed at 9:30.
It’s not perfect but we really don’t want to let her free roam if we can help it as she tends to move around quite a lot at night and wakes us up.
She doesn’t seem too worse for the wear. Thankfully.
Ha! It’s not who you thought, is it? (We sold our couch in preparation for a new couch that is taking longer to arrive than we initially planned.)
Okay, one of my personal hells: A garage sale. Last minute. In the rain.
This is a community-wide sale that we only found about Thursday so we didn’t put much effort into it. And since it was rainy we didn’t really have much to do anyways so I sat there and worked on business and blog stuff the whole time.
I did have a helper for a bit.
And a cuddler.
So one afternoon I noticed that the whole right side of Charlie’s face was swollen. A quick Google basically said you need to get to the vet immediately so I got an appointment for the next morning. Turns out it was something wrong with one of her teeth and we needed to schedule surgery. Estimated cost? $600-900. Just let that sink in.
The soonest opening they had was two weeks out so they gave her shots for pain and swelling. Thankfully they worked well and the swelling went down and she seemed to be getting back to normal.
Fast-forward two weeks. A tooth extraction is routine but I was still nervous. And it sucks because she seems perfectly fine now. No swelling. Eating great. Back to normal. So part of me thinks why spend $1000 on something that seems to not be a problem. But we know the problem is still there…
So…once they got in there and saw what was going on they really needed to remove some other teeth, too. She ended up having FOUR teeth removed…plus she needed extra tests and X-rays due to a heart murmur and surprise (new) kidney issues.
So $1500 later (let that one sink in, too) I have a happy kitty who doesn’t seem to be in any pain and is really loving and cuddly. (She’s always been cuddly but today has been even more so—I don’t even want to go to bed because I’m loving the cuddle so much..and also, if I’m being honest, I still have a fear that something is going to go wrong and she’s not going to make it and I’ll have missed out on this great cuddle time.)
I also got to see her drunk on pain meds. It was cute.
But this face!
Now I get to figure out how the hell to pay for this.
But what’s worse is the first available appointment isn’t for two weeks. 🙁
Overnight, Charlie’s one side of her face ballooned up—and she hadn’t been eating. A quick Google said it was likely an abscess. So of to the vet…where she got a shot for pain and an antibiotic (so we didn’t have to pill her) and a date to get her tooth out in two weeks.
So it was raining and lightly storming again when it was bedtime. We put Maggie in her crate and went upstairs. Within minutes she was clawing madly at her crate again making all sorts of racket. We went down to check on her and her paws were already bloody. 🙁 We couldn’t leave her in there so we thought maybe if we put her in our room in a different crate it would be better. But first we had to bandage her paws. (I didn’t think when I bought the self-adhesive bandages I’d be using them on the dog first.) Then we put her in and tried to go to bed. Nope. She clawed like mad to get out of that crate, too. And knocked her bandages off. So we had to clean her up (again) and bandage her up (again, better this time) and figured the only way this was going to work was to just let her sleep with us. We figured we wouldn’t get any sleep because she moves constantly… and snores loudly. But amazingly the weather calmed right as we were getting back into bed and she layed down and didn’t move all night.
I wanted to read on the front porch. Guess who had to come sit on my lap?
So Tom was a little surprised to come down at 4:30 this morning (his normal wake up time) to find me on the couch. I had texted him what had happened of course but he never checks his phone right away. So I basically told him what happened and then went back up to sleep for a few hours.
So what we figured happened is she was still probably extremely freaked out from the lightning strike we had yesterday morning. Her crate is right next to the electronics cabinet. We weren’t in the room when the electronics died so we don’t know exactly what happened but the lightning strike was loud enough to scare all of us in the house so I can only imagine what may have happened right next to the electronics. And she hates when it’s simply sprinkling so can you imagine how she was handling a full-blown storm with the final lightning strike?!
Also, there are two latches to lock on her crate but we really only ever lock one because she doesn’t try to get out so there’s no need to lock both of them. But she hates the rain and it started raining last night plus the memory of the lightning strike… I’m sure she tried to push her way out and then got stuck. I still cringe thinking about what we might’ve been dealing with today if I had been asleep and didn’t hear her. 😞
I went to bed quite late after staying up to work (normal for me lately) so I was in bed and heard some weird screeching noise downstairs and thought it was a cat or something and ignored it. Then it happened again, louder. I couldn’t place what the noise was—it was really very strange and nothing I’d heard before—so I went to investigate. I thought maybe the raccoon was in the window and both cats were squawking. I turned on the living room light and HOLY F’ING SHITBALLS!!
Maggie’s head was sideways, squeezed halfway between the metal bars on the door and side of the crate, and she was drooling and wheezing and “screaming.” She probably couldn’t breathe. I’m guessing she tried to push her way out (why?!) and got stuck.
I opened the door and pulled her out and petted her and she seemed okay but just freaked out. She eventually let me hold her on my lap and after awhile I pulled her bed out (blood splatters—not sure if it was from her claws or teeth or what), wiped up the floor, and tried to put her back in. She went but she wasn’t happy. I went back up to bed and before I even got settled she was manically pawing at her crate again.
So I’m sleeping on the couch with her at 2:30am. 😣
I’m glad she’s okay, of course, as this could have ended very differently had I not heard her or gone to check.
But still. This was just the topper on a mostly shitty day.
I was getting ready to do a live unboxing for my upline and had my selfie light set up on the side of the bed. (A special shoutout to Tom for creating the hanging holder last minute.)
Of course, Bella has to be right there.
I might be spoiling myself after innumerable hours of work this past month by sitting outside on the patio reading a real book—I can’t remember the last time I did this…and it’s heaven.
Unfortunately for both of us it’s time for me to get up and start working.
