| death of a pet |
[Aug. 8th, 2011|03:28 pm] |
The cat pictured in my avatar, Martha, died this morning. I can't begin to explain how devastated I am. Our cats are our children. I could write fifty thousand words about every memory I have of her, everything I loved about her, but I am sane enough to realize that no one wants to read it.
She had been acting differently for a couple of weeks. Keeping more to herself, staying in one of the front rooms where the boxes we haven't unpacked are. (One of the few things besides boxes there are all of the cat toys, so I assume they comforted her.) Over the last week, it seemed like she would be terribly bloated or swollen one night, then back to normal the next morning. We didn't know how to explain this, so we went with the simplistic, optimistic rationales. It's been less than two months since we moved into this new house, so maybe something used in the carpet cleaning was giving her an allergic reaction. Maybe it was just gas. For once, we didn't take her to the vet.
Last night around 9:45, my wife said she hadn't seen Martha for hours and asked me to find her. She was curled up in the front room with her legs folded beneath her in a kitty loaf pose. She didn't make so much as a squeak when I picked her up. My wife gasped when I brought her in the room -- I didn't see it, but her face and neck were severely swollen. As we held her, she seemed to be panting or struggling for breath. We packed her in a kennel and drove her to the emergency veterinary clinic.
We described her symptoms, filled out paperwork, and tried to give a history of her past health problems. Food allergies, seasonal skin allergies, cataracts, and the condition we hadn't been able to figure out where she starts biting at her rear feet. They shaved her belly and neck and found that she had extensive bruising from her chin to her back legs. The vet questioned us about a few things -- had she fallen from a great height? No, we live in a one-story house with no high furniture and besides, Martha doesn't climb or jump. Did we have rat poison anywhere? No, apparently that can prevent coagulation. Were either of us on any anticoagulation medicine that we could have dropped, even aspirin? No. We waited as they ran a panel of blood tests.
The results baffled the vet. Liver function was normal. Platelet count was slightly low but close to normal bounds. No sign of anything they had suspected, but her red blood cell count was very low. The vet said he would consult the literature again and perform an ultrasound. Meanwhile, Martha was in an oxygen chamber and didn't seem to be in discomfort. A vet tech brought us a range of cost estimates; she would probably require two to three days of hospitalization, oxygen therapy, a number of tests, and possibly even a transfusion. This would run somewhere between $1500 and $3000. We were aghast -- we didn't have anywhere close to that much money at hand, and their policy required a payment up front of the minimum expected. We applied for a "Care Credit" card at the clinic's recommendation, and were approved for $1500. After signing some release forms, we left Martha with the vet and came home. Due to her food allergies, we put some of her Eukanuba into a ziploc and drove it back to her. When I dropped it off, I asked to see her again. She seemed comfortable, and I whispered some reassurances in her ear and kissed her.
By the time we returned home, it was about 1:30 AM. I called work to tell them I'd be in late, and tried to settle down for some sleep. My wife (who couldn't sleep) answered when the phone rang around 3:00.
Her sobbing woke me. It took several minutes until I could understand what she was saying, and she finally told me that the clinic had asked me to call. I did. Martha had taken a dramatic turn for the worse. The ultrasound had shown that her chest and abdomen were both filled with fluid, presumably blood. Her lungs had collapsed to about 30% of their normal capacity. She was laboring to breathe and seemed to be in pain. The vet spoke for quite a while using medical terms I couldn't understand before saying that it appeared that Martha had some form vasculitis, meaning that something had attacked her blood vessels. It could be cancer, although he couldn't be sure. The bruising was due to blood pooling in her lower body after the vessels burst. He could perform a transfusion, but to be honest it had only a tiny chance of doing anything more than putting her through more pain at great expense, since her veins and arteries were in such bad shape. There was nothing more that he could realistically do for her, and we should come in to say our goodbyes.
Cold panic and desperation overwhelmed us. My wife kept wailing that there must be some mistake, they could still save her. Somehow I managed to get us both to the clinic again. Martha was still in the oxygen chamber, in her kitty loaf position blinking at us. We signed consent forms and opened the chamber to comfort her. I tried to pick Martha up and she lashed out, biting my hand below my thumb. So we just stroked her fur and mumbled to her in what we hoped were soothing tones.
The vet mentioned discreetly that it might be difficult to euthanize her in her current condition due to the vasculitis. He could inject a very strong dose of sedative into her muscle, which would put her out but also likely send her into respiratory arrest. However, once she was unconscious, he could inject the lethal dose directly into her heart. We agreed to this for lack of alternatives, but asked to stay with her.
We spent several more minutes cooing at her and petting her, trying to keep our tears under control. When we felt as ready as we could be, we nodded to the vet, who stepped forward and gave her the sedative. The door to the chamber had to be closed while it took effect. Martha tried to get to her feet, silently retched a few times, then sagged and her face fell forward onto the blankets. The vet opened the door and listened with a stethoscope. She still had a heartbeat, but it was weak. He pulled her, blankets and all, onto a table and quickly shaved one of her legs searching for a usable vein. The bruising was terrible even on her legs, so he indicated that he would have to inject into her heart. We nodded and kept rubbing Martha's head, telling her it was okay. That we were sorry. That she was such a good girl. After the injection, her body convulsed a few times, ten to fifteen seconds apart. "Reflexive action," said the vet, "although it may look like she's gasping. She's fully unconscious." We petted and stroked and whispered and cried until the vet removed his stethoscope and said that she was gone.
The vet and tech left us in the room with her, and we sobbed and caressed Martha and talked about her and her personality and favorite things. By the time I thought to look at a clock, it was 4:30 and she had been dead for around ten minutes.
We made arrangements with the vet tech to receive Martha's ashes. For reasons I cannot begin to guess, the tech told us that Martha would be kept in cold storage until a service came around on Wednesday, and then would drop off her ashes the next week. We opted for a box engraved with one of her nicknames. After collecting the kennel we'd left at the clinic, we wandered to the car on numb legs.
Mercifully, there was little traffic on the way home. Tears came and went, along with denials, speculation, and remembrance. We sat in the kitchen and sobbed for hours. How could it have happened so quickly? We knew she was acting differently, but we never expected that they'd have to put her down within hours. How long had she been like this? Could we have saved her if we'd taken her in sooner? Was she scared or in pain?
I tried to sleep around 7 AM. I only got tiny snatches of sleep before visions of Martha woke me up again and again. The grief would withdraw just long enough to allow me to drift off, and then club me with full force. She has been gone for about eleven hours now. It feels like weeks.
We have very strong bonds with our cats. Yes, we are the crazy people who continuously talk to their cats as if they are people, sing to them, make up silly nicknames, and feel fully responsible when bad things happen to them. To go from "oh, I think something's wrong" to "she's gone" in the space of seven hours has been brutal. If it was cancer, then seeking treatment two weeks earlier probably wouldn't have made a difference. We aren't seeking a necropsy, so we will never know. That's very difficult to handle.
Martha had medical issues her entire life. We bottle-fed her from the age of a few days old, and she had cataracts that obscured her vision. When she was a few years old, we gave her soft food from a can and she broke out in bumps all over her body. We had her spayed and she bit at the stitches (and the vet techs) until they put a cone around her neck. In the past few years, every spring she would get itchy bumps again that would last until fall unless she got a steroid injection and regular doses of Atopica, an immunosuppressant commonly used after organ transplants. She had a rough life but a happy one. We spoiled her rotten. She was about two weeks away from turning ten years old. That isn't long enough.
Our other two cats know that something's wrong. They have been walking around unsettled, yowling. That's probably due to our emotional condition and the upheaval of our schedule. I still see Martha wherever I look. This is going to be a very rough time. |
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| statistics |
[Aug. 3rd, 2011|09:08 pm] |
Words used on They Might Be Giants' new CD Join Us that I had to look up:
- cephalophore
- Canajoharie
- cloisonné
- duende
Words I was glad to hear used:
- Quonset hut
- Sleestak
- conversatin'
- Hieronymus Bosch
- métier
- fors
- daguerreotypes
Words I was saddened to hear used:
Best song (in my opinion):
When Will You Die
Weakest song (in my opinion):
Dog Walker |
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| oh, and also |
[Dec. 24th, 2010|11:13 am] |
I am going to seriously start looking for a new job. Can anyone recommend a good site on which to seek same? I had a bad experience with monster.com a few years ago. More specifically, I uploaded my resume, entered my geographical preferences, specified the type of job I was looking for, and was promptly inundated with jobspam that had nothing to do with any of it. (Even more specifically: I entered that I was looking for software jobs in any of several specific states, none of which was Florida, and got a few hundred solicitations for openings in Orlando.)
Thanks in advance for any advice. |
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| ha? |
[Dec. 24th, 2010|11:06 am] |
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During my walk today, I saw a license plate that read R5ATZ. It looked like a real car, though. |
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| Thoughts about Monkey Island 2: Special Edition |
[Nov. 20th, 2010|04:28 pm] |
A few weeks ago, I bought the Xbox Live version of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, the "Special Edition". (Apparently for fear of colon overuse, it seems to be titled Monkey Island 2: SE.) This was my favorite of the Monkey Island games, and when they revamped the first MI game a couple of years ago, I was fervently hoping that they'd make it to this one as well.
I just made it to Act III this morning; the save game claims that I'm 74% finished. It's been long enough since I last played that I don't fully remember all of the solutions at once. (For instance, I completely forgot where the fourth map piece was and resorted to wandering through the islands until I remembered.)
There are some good points and some not-so-good points to the remake. Of course, the graphics are much better. Well, to be objective, the graphics are much less blocky and more stylized. I admit there are a few spots where I liked the original art better (and switched back and forth to verify the impression). The puzzles are, I believe, ported verbatim; this may bother some people, since a few followed somewhat questionable logic. However, I get a kick out of the ridiculously dated lines like "Hey! It's Kyle Katarn in a dress!"
One aspect that has changed is the default response to the "Look At" action. If there was nothing special to notice about an object in the original game, Guybrush replied "Nice (whatever)," which I mentally read in a sarcastic, bored tone of voice. This was particularly amusing when you saw something about which he had no reason to be blasé, like "Nice LeChuck's voodoo throne." In the Special Edition, this is sadly truncated to simply "Nice," said in an overly sincere way. (I presume this was because it would take too long, and subsequently cost too much, to record Dominic Armato saying this for each of the numerous objects to which it applied.)
The game's sense of humor has, naturally, survived since it was lifted almost entirely intact. The dialogue options when you first encounter Elaine still make me laugh out loud. (Oh, addendum: in reading up on the game, I see that the "Monkey Lite" mode has been omitted. I don't think I ever played it, but still, boo omissions. On the other hand, a developer commentary has been added.)
I didn't easily find whether the iMuse soundtrack system is still active; if so, it's suffered. The music doesn't seem to transition as smoothly as it did in the old PC version. In fact, I dislike the new system so much I've turned the music way down. One of the game's highlights for me was the skeletons' Bones song... and it's just terrible this time through. That isn't entirely due to the music itself, though.
The voice acting is... erm. Well, the old standbys are all here: Armato, Earl Boen, Alexandra Boyd, Neil Ross. (Although Wally sounds a bit... off somehow.) But the other miscellaneous characters range from decent to awful. Stan, in particular, is eminently brickable. That's the point, I know, he's supposed to be an obnoxious character, but... gah. Kate Capsize's voice is similarly bad, and the fisherman on Phatt Island (almost as minor a character as you can get) sounds completely wrong. And then there are Guybrush's parents, who are present in only one scene. Not only is the voice acting teeth-gratingly bad, but their awful "singing" destroys the Bones song. Yes, the singing is lousy, but the timing is so bad that by the third verse, the voices are a full measure or two behind the music.
I don't mean for this to be a complete slam. I still have an enormous fondness for the game, and I am very grateful that I can play it without digging out a box, trying to find a way to transfer files from 3.5" disks, and hoping that I can find some way of running 19-year-old software. However, as it usually goes, I had higher hopes than the Special Edition could probably deliver. |
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| IF Comp results |
[Nov. 16th, 2010|09:29 pm] |
Congratulations to all those that entered. The results have been released. I'm too sleepy to try to correlate my opinions with the general view.
I will make a determined effort to review the last few games soon as well. |
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| we apologize for the delay |
[Nov. 6th, 2010|11:04 pm] |
It pains me that I'm pausing now, when I only have three more comp entries to finish and then review. As much as I'd like to blame the game I'm currently playing (Gris et Jaune), that isn't the real problem.
You see, some joker in a checkered suit stole the platinum chip I was trying to deliver, then shot me in the head and left me in a shallow grave. And I can't just let him get away with that. You'd think that revenge would be a straightforward issue, but there are the ghouls to deal with, and trying to get the caravans started again, and those NCR troops are just so damn needy.
In short, I'm neck-deep in Fallout: New Vegas and might not finish posting reviews in the near future. |
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| IFcomp review: "Pen and Paint", by Owen Parish |
[Oct. 31st, 2010|01:57 pm] |
One day, and may that glorious day soon come, I will remember to create transcripts for games I'm planning to review. Until then, incoherence.
Pen and Paint is... er. See, it's about... hm. I'll start again.
Pen and Paint is a game entered in IFComp 2010. It's a Z-code game. It can be played. This is nearly all I can say about it.
( Read more... ) |
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