Katie's Tragety

6/16/2010 (Actual Date of Event: 6/14/2010)

So my cat, Katie, is pretty old. I've had her since my little sister was one years old. Katie is about twelve years old right now, so you can tell she's elderly. She's always stayed energetic, though, and she's hardly graying. I know she'll have to go one day, but we thought it was sooner a few days ago.

Katie is usally bright-eyed and loving. While I visited my dad for the weekend, my sister recieved a call from my mother. She said she'd have to take Katie to the vet the next day because she felt warm, her eyes were foggy, and she didn't eat or meow. Drinking wasn't a problem though.
When I heard about this, I thought instantly of Shadow (A.K.A. Big Fat Tom Cat), a former cat of mine. He was a gray tabby with plenty of weight on him. He was the first pet I'd owned that had to be put to sleep. He had cytauxzoonosis (Sy-toe-zoo-no-sys); a rare tick-borne disease originated from mountain lions or bob cats. He had similar physical symptoms, but I knew they were different. Katie was drinking; Shadow didn't drink. Katie was still walking around, but, sadly for Shadow, cytauxzoonosis shuts his body down painfully so he wouldn't be able to move after it set in about a week after he recieved the infection.
Though I knew Katie didn't have the lethal disease her former "aquiantance" had, I couldn't help but cry. I couldn't help but think that the next day, when I would go to the vet with my mother and Katie, I'd have to put her down. Luckily for me, and Katie, it was nothing of the sort. I held Katie in my lap on the drive to the vet. Since we didn't have an actual appointment to see a vet, we waited in the lobby for about an hour until a space opened up. We entered the room.
The nurse came first. She did the usual: weight and temperature. Katie had a temperature slightly above normal and she was dehydrated. The vet comes and looks over her. Her lymph node on one side was enlarged and hard. They figured out it was an infection somewhere around her jaw that enflamed the node. They gave her an anti-biotic shot and a shot just for fluids. I was seriously relieved, but still worried.
So we left the vet with a live cat named Katie. We still have to go back in a week to get an additional anti-biotic shot, but other than that, it's all good!

Wolf

First Post and Many to Come

6/16/2010

I'm not sure if anyone besides myself might read this, but I'm here to write out the summer. For the past two years, I've written my summer down. The eventful days are hard to remember years away, so I decided to write the journal of my summer starting in the year of 2008. My first journal was actually in a journal; one of those 80-paged, college ruled school journals. Red to be exact. My second was in a three-ring binder. Sadly, I lost my second year's work in the 1,000-year flood that hit Nashville. My home was right where it all happened, but, luckily, we lost only a few things in our flooded basement. My things were my binder and a single "Life is Good" shirt.

Anyway, I thought I'd catch you up with the events of this summer that will come up. First of all, I'm out of school and will be off to eighth grade next year. I'm excited to go, but first, I have my wonderful three-month summer vacation to lok forward to. It's about two weeks into the summer, but events have already taken place. On the first weekend, I went off to camp at Fall Creek Falls where, after a day's delay due to a flat tire and a slow packer (refered to as ME), I entered the Talent Show to play my clarinet to the theme song of... something. I also played piano to "What a Wonderful World". Before that, though, we went to the Falls themselves. After the flooding, there was plenty of water and it was beautiful.

But after the lovely weekend camping at my favorite family camp, I headed back home where some things are going on. I was, and still am, home. I'm getting ready to go to Everett, Washington, my grandparent's home town, and visit all of my mother's relatives. I'll see my Grandma, Grandpa, cousins, "God-Mother" (Not technically; we're not Catholic), and her two baby boys (who are ages 4 1/2 and 2). I'm always super excited to go there and I'm bursting with excitement right now. It's Wednesday (6:09 A.M. to be exact) and our flight is on Sunday. I'll be sure to post that up, but for now, I'll be signing off.

Wolf