MY OWN PERSONAL VIETNAM

I just awakened from a two-hour nap and feel somewhat better as it has been one stressful weekend. Week. Month. Season. Year. The nap was good but among the dreams about graduating from college again and the dorm room door falling off and wearing a salwaar kameez and holding hands and dancing in Mysore with new Indian friends and standing with some Denis Leary-looking guy at the top of an unspeakably beautiful zen valley, I had a dream in which the Vexx and I got back together. I asked him why we broke up and he started to write something down and stopped. Then he pulled out two antique guns and started waving them at me. Apparently he thought we would have ended up killing each other (not that far from the truth if you ask me). Then he disappeared into the sunset.

It is weird waking up without that feral beast at the foot of the bed. I guess I am hooked on scurvy Kirby after all. Yesterday at the mean 24 hour vet hospital he pulled out his catheter (that's my boy) and growled at them so much they had to put a warning sign on the cage. All that while wearing a humiliating Elizabethan collar! Apparently he did indeed have crystals in his urethra and it probably would have gotten completely blocked and he could have died. Or so they told me (they're like going to an auto mechanic you don't know; you know they're ripping you off but don't know enough to prove it). So they had to re-sedate him and re-catheterize him (additional $100), and when I visited last night he growled at me, too. He had food and gunk stuck to his whiskers and was housed next to a dog! And they were feeding him a fish-based wet food -- which is one of the possible causes of the problem!! It reminded me of this time last year when I lost Bindi's kitty (ie when he broke out of my house) and visited every shelter in the city several times. Very depressing. Two other cats there had the same problem.... DO NOT EVER FEED LICORICE TO YOUR CAT! Funny how the total cost when I picked him up this AM was at the high high end of the estimate. Funny how when the "good" (ie regular) vet examined him today he did not growl at all. Poor thing, in the collar with the catheter and smelling of pee. Funny how the mean vet said he'd probably come home today. The "nice" vet said he has to stay, with cathether and collar, until Wednesday. All for the low, low price of around $500.

Total vet bill: somewhere around $1100 (or so they say).
Plane ticket to India: $1250
Laptop computer on which to write one's first book: $1500
Aeon chair: $700
Mammogram: $450.
Income lost from losing R gig to sub: $8,800
Having an irritable feline companion who bites and wakes one up at all hours: Priceless....

Ironically we already had an appt. today to see the vet at 4. So I told her to throw in the shots and feces exam while she was at it. He won't notice. And with all the other charges I probably won't, either.