The good, the not-so-good, and the downright crappy - updated!

It's been a crazy couple of weeks.

The good: the new job is exciting and only a half-hour drive from home, compared to the roughly two hours each was I was travelling. I miss my friends from the last job, but that's about it. As a going away gift, the company gave me a round-the-world tea package. Once a month for the next 6 months, I will get two fancy teas in the mail. Usually people who quit there get a "Don't let the door hit you on the way out" kind of good-bye, so the gift was quite a pleasant surprise. I got spoiled for my birthday this year too, with knitting books and yarn and more tea and an evening with Fred (he works the afternoon shift, so we don't see each other during the week usually), and I went to meet some internet knitters and eat gelato last night.

The not-so-good: Last Sunday we brought Fred's 14 year old husky/shepherd cross home to live with us. We expected that the cats would be unhappy with the change, but the level of unhappiness was far worse than we expected. Like, Zoe climbing the blinds in the kitchen then making Fred bleed really badly when he tried to get her down, then her racing across the top of the kitchen counter trailing urine (the cat's) and blood (Fred's) after her. The cats have pretty much lived in our bedroom since Sunday night, although they will go out into the hallway for food and to use the litter. We had to put a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs so that the cats live on one floor of the house, and Roo lives on the other.

The downright crappy: When I got home from knitting in public last night, Roo was sick. At first I thought it was just because she had gotten ahold of and chewed up a bunch of kleenex. So I cleaned up the carpet, gave her a drink and took her out to pee. Then she threw up again. All the water she'd just drunk. This went on all night, with her only being able to keep water down for about 5 minutes, and not wanting to eat anything. She didn't even want any peanut butter. Fred is on his way to the vet with her. We're both thinking kidney failure, and Fred said that while the vet didn't want to diagnose over the phone, he felt from her tone of voice that she agrees with us. So after a traumatic 5 days with the cats, it's about to get a whole lot more traumatic.

Edited to add: Apparently we get the slightly broken animals. Roo has the same thing that Zoe does - vestibular disorder. This is something that manifests in young cats and old dogs. I'm very happy that Roo's illness is not the worst-case scenario, but boy, it would be nice to have an animal at some point that isn't dizzy or limping or running away from dust.