Good. Bad. In-Different-Building.

Not at all in that order:

Eleanor got the news 10 a.m. Monday: Our beloved kitty Zoey almost certainly has cancer.  The growth is in a particularly tricky portion of her mouth that would make it difficult and a little dangerous even to biopsy.  We've chosen the path of keeping her comfortable, spoiling her rotten, and savoring as much time as we get with her, be it weeks, months or even years.  From the ways she's eating, playing and cuddling, you'd never know she had any kind of illness.  If anything, we've had to back off the over-affectionateness to her a bit, because it may be freaking her out.  They even elected not to give her the vaccines she'd been scheduled for, but if she goes much into the spring, we'll likely go back for them.

We didn't need another cat in 2009 when this one came along. At the time, we had two full size dogs, a lovable but very fragile then-10 year old boykitty and the same Evil Cat we now have  And we certainly were not looking for one right out of a litter. A coworker of Eleanor's had one of her kids deposit mama and babies at their home when mama's prior owner was about to leave town. We looked. There were some orange tabbies, but Emily and her mom fell in love with the runty little all-black longhair. We named her Zoey, more or less after the character on Nurse Jackie.

From the get-go, she had spunk. She got into garbage cans; she burrowed into the washing machine on the outside of the tub. She scared us half to death one holiday weekend with what seemed to be a blockage, but it turned out to be an allergy that followed her, on and off, to this day. In time, she'd become expert at following all three dogs out the back door and hiding for anywhere from minutes to hours- and every flea out there within half a mile just loves to get into that coat.

Eleanor is shattered with the news that there's little they can do. She'll tell us when it's time- when she no longer scratches to be let in, or hops right up to empty her bowl (and any other food she can get hold of), or tries sneaking out after the dog. We will treasure every second until then.

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The bug may finally be beaten.

Needing some distraction from the news Monday (Eleanor, who'd taken her, stayed home with her the rest of the day, but I had Stuff and Things at the office needing doing), I called our doctor's office to see when I could get in to have this persistent nightmare re-checked. Um, how about in an hour? Wow. It takes close to that to get there, so I grabbed some paperwork to file Up The Transit in that direction, and was on our P.A's table at the appointed time.

Unlike Skippy the Intern at the Doc in a Box three Sundays before, Melissa actually listened to my breathing with me both sitting up (not bad) and lying down. (Hel-lo! I TOLD them it was worst when I was trying to sleep.)  This hour finally got me The Good Drugs™ I'd been turned down for on my birthday weekend: a Z-pack of antibiotics and the 6-5-4-3-2-1 Prednisone steroid treatment. I knew exactly what they were because a local friend, who started complaining of the cough about the same time as I did, got them that same first weekend. (On the other hand, a Rochester friend of ours just got the Z-pack only after her fifth week of the damn thing, and her hubby's an ER doc!)

I'm about to get to Dose Three of each. It's still fighting back pretty violently at times, but the bouts with it are way fewer and further between. 

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To distract from the bad news, we've tried different forms of entertainment. Inside, we've discovered an entire series of French comedies by Francis Veber, perhaps best known for the screenplay of the original La Cage Aux Folles.  We first watched one called The Dinner Game, later remade into a US version called Dinner for Schmucks with Steve Carell and Paul Rudd I've got on order. Then, on Monday night, The Valet, a similar madcap set of weird circumstances which homages the prior one in a number of ways. Not least among them is that the Goofy Lead Guy in each goes by the name "François Pignon."  The title has become a trope of Veber's contributions to French cinema for decades, with numerous actors playing the character, who is never exactly the same in occupation, demeanor or really anything other than general goofiness.  At least one more of the previous Pignon films is at the library along with the Carell remake, and I will be picking them up soon as I clear some crapola off my desk here.

We've also been watching the world go by outside. I can't embed it, but Eleanor got this video of one of our regular outdoor customers the other morning.  I added my own, um, contribution right before filling the feeder:



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And finally, this morning I firmed up some plans which had been percolating for some time:

The Sabres have been having an up-and-down season so far: a very good opening October, followed by a November that sucked hockey pucks until the very last couple of games, and a very nice home victory in their first December game the other night that cost the other team its coach.  I've never been to one of their games, and my first, it turns out, will be at the only NHL hockey arena I ever have been in for a game that counted:



That was March of 2015 and, supposedly, was my final chance to see my former hometown favorite New York Islanders playing in the "old barn."  I'd invited

greenquotebook and her son to join me for my first and final trip behind the Coliseum glass.  The Isles lost, but we had pizza (and no fishsticks) and a great time.  The team was off to greener pastures sharing a shiny new arena in Brooklyn with the Nets- but after just a few years of bad sightlines and flailing fan support, the owner got himself the promise of a hockey-only arena closer to their former home (next to Belmont Park) and a semi-release from his Brooklease to allow a number of Islander home games to be played back in the downsized but still traditional sacred ground of Oniondale....

where the Sabres will be making their one and only visit of this current season a week from Saturday for a 1 p.m. faceoff.

I have Met fan friends who want to join me in the nostalgia.  Two are longtime Islander fans; a third is a fan of the New Jersey team whose coach just got oot-and-abooted (he'll probably root for a tie).  Weather permitting, I will head halfway there after leaving work on Friday the 13th, make the rest of the trip to the Island Saturday morning, take the friends to Borrelli's for an early dinner and then head weeweeweewee allll the way home.  (Given that my last two trips to Met games with these friends resulted in a dog being put down and Evil Cat returning home, I want to make this getaway as brief as possible.)  And I damn better not still have this cough by then.