♫Green Eyed Lady, Pissed-off Lady....♫

Along with the zillion other things we've got going on in the way of repairs, refi, review and revision, we had to take a detour out of our mornings to deal with Zoey, our oldest and dearest kitteh.  She'll be twelve at the beginning of June, and we've been hers since she left her litter in that summer of '09.  Zo was the runt of her litter and has always been on the fragile side; she developed an asthma condition that we mistook for something else when she was a youngun and spent a holiday evening in a faraway Petsmart vet clinic. Then, not quite 18 months ago, she got, and promptly overcame, her mouth cancer diagnosis that had them even not recommending routine vaccinations at first; she still has the tumor, but it's been recharacterized as a less invasive form that doesn't have as rapid or terminal a prognosis.  Mostly, she's been herself through it all- eating, playing, cuddling with the humans at random daytimes and almost always at night.

But earlier this week, we noticed something was off, and Eleanor of course noticed more. Her right eye was sticking shut from some kind of gooey discharge. From a fight with one of the boyz? (They mostly leave her alone, but each and both have had moments of goosing her.) A longago case of herpes coming back into play? The cancer taking a turn?  We didn't know. As I've said here before, we tend to follow our original pediatrician's advice of first asking How's the kid cat? before getting too deep into the weeds of the current symptoms.   On that scale, overall it's been not that bad: Zoey still comes out for, and mostly finishes, her noms morning and night; comes a-cuddlin' with one or both of the humans most nights; and she still purrs like her usual lawnmower self whenever we approach her. Still, she's been seeking out quiet spaces all week: the bathroom heat register when we had the furnace on earlier in the week, and she currently is splitting time between the chair in front of her email computer and a basket we brought in near it for her to get away from the hubbub in:




It turned out to be one of those all-night wicker places.

Our best guess about the underlying cause of the eye goo and bruised eee-goo is the excessive playfulness of the two eight-month-old kittyboyz running all around. So we gave her some quiet time yesterday, closing the door of the wicker room and bringing up a catbox for her exclusive use (naturally comandeered by the kittens and raided by the dog at any chance).  We held off on calling the vet at first, since how's the cat? seemed not to suggest it, but the reclusiveness got a bit much for Eleanor yesterday and we got her in first thing this morning.

On the whole, they think it's treatable with drops, which they and we have each given her a round of without too much stress. They also prescribed a supplement-loaded kitty treat which we will pick up from them tomorrow. On top of everything else, they detected a heart murmur, but that can also come and go with stress. We're just doing our best to keep the chuckleheads from bothering her too much while still giving her plenty of love and attention.

Said boys have made the best of it; you can practically see them twitching in this still shot of whatever faboo squirrel they're staring out the window at-



- and I think they've been a little better about not going totally crazy beating up each other, the dog or our own fingers while we get through this latest bump in the furry road.

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Tooth extraction tomorrow, refi closing Monday, and I'm meeting a new client on Star Wars Day. I hope it works out, but I won't try to Force it;)