CITASAURUS in the house. (Kitty update post!)

January 20, 2017That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

[::ahem::] In which I bring you the state of the kittyverse chez nous, because I’ve (still) been slacking on the kitty update posts! Apologies to you who ask, and thank you again for your patience.

The main news is that Cita is doing well, but she’s still healing, and she’ll be having a procedure next week.

I’ve posted most of these Cita pics on Facebook, but a kitty update post provides a good opportunity to see the evolution of her healing… or, shall I say, the evolution of her healing apparatus. She’s gone from a cone to a onesie to an inflatable collar to a triceratops get-up (which I haven’t posted on Facebook).

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Cita’s two major wounds were looking good in the healing process. Then one of them opened up again, so we’ve been managing that situation. The other wound stayed closed… but beneath that closed wound on her belly, things got strange.

First, it was a thickening of the skin on the wound. Then the thickening deepened, and now it’s like a ball or a mass you can actually close your fingers around as you massage her belly. Her doctor’s been monitoring her, we’ve been monitoring her, and we’ve continued on with her antibiotics, along with a few other measures.

At Cita’s last appointment (a few days ago), we had an X-ray done to see what’s going on under her closed belly wound. We don’t know what it is, but we’re going to have it removed. It’ll be a minor surgery, and it’s scheduled for next week.

This is not a life-threatening situation. Whatever this thing is, it’s more than likely a result of the healing that started before we realized that she had a wound there. The doctor’s attempts at aspiration have yielded inflammatory cells and infectious cells, but, oddly, no bacteria. We’re basically removing a ball of gunk. It’s just hanging out between her skin and her belly wall (all of her organs are tucked inside her belly wall – she doesn’t have a hernia, as her doctor thought might be the case – and they’re healthy).

This brings us to Cita’s healing apparatus. A cone was needed to keep her from licking her open wound, so we tried the one we got at the vet:

Cita with cone – first attempt

She couldn’t function in the cone (she couldn’t get down from her low futon without falling, she couldn’t use her litter box, etc.)… so the doctor recommended that we put her in a onesie:

Cita in a thrifted onesie

The onesie started out well, but then she wriggled out of it, and we couldn’t keep it on her. Our next option was an inflatable collar:

Cita with inflatable collar – third attempt

She’s still wearing this collar, albeit upside-down; this is keeping her from licking her open wound (which is healing nicely, by the way)… but it doesn’t keep her from licking her belly. It’s fine that she’s licking her belly now, since her belly wound is closed, but it won’t be fine next week after her surgery.

So we had to come up with an apparatus that would prevent belly-licking. We decided to fashion an extension to her inflatable collar… something wide enough to do the job, but not angled up like the cone. Her peripheral vision still works in this:

Cita with triceratops extension

Because why not a triceratops collar? I suggested it, Callaghan made it (beautifully!), and now we have a Citasaurus. Here’s Tri-Cita-tops in the wild:

TriCitaTops in the wild

Of course, she hates it. But it works, and she can function in it. We’ll put it on and leave it on after her gunk-removal procedure next week. A whole new healing process will begin. She’ll need to be a Citasaurus for a few weeks.

Tricitatops is the sweetest Citasaurus you could ever hope to meet.

As for Nenette? Nenette is doing well and being a great sport about the whole situation.

Nenette with owl

She can’t go into my former office anymore (she used to love that window), but she’s not making a fuss. She has endless ways to amuse herself. She can stare into a glass of water for minutes on end.

Nenette with water

Here’s her favorite pose:

Nenette as royalty

So there you have it! Summary: Cita is still recovering. She’s doing well, but she needs minor surgery. Nenette is doing well, too, and she’s being awesome with the shift in routine around here. Nenette may be stranger-shy, but she’s quite adaptable.

Year in review, looking ahead, and my favorite little things (2016 favorites!)

January 6, 2017January 6, 2017That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

Happy New Year! I know I probably already said that, but “Happy New Year” again. This is my annual year-in-review/resolutions/favorites of my past year’s favorites post.

1). 2016 was exciting, but I don’t have to be wistful about it because the good things are continuing into 2017.

I’m still heartened with deep satisfaction from the life changes I was able to make in 2016. It was a particularly great year occupation-wise. About this, I can only say that I’m thankful every day to experience the feeling of vitality the luckiest people feel when they wake up driven and eager because they know they’re going to spend the day doing what they love, where and how they love doing it. Any work-related stress I experience is self-imposed, productive stress. I keep thinking this is all a splendiferous dream. I’m aware that I may have to wake up one day, so I’m enjoying it while I can.

Fitness-wise, adding (Les Mills) Body Pump to my workout routine was the best thing I did in 2016. It took me almost the whole year to get here, but I finally did, and I. Am. Loving. It.

The year was rich and rewarding family-wise, too. We spent lovely time with my family (between my brother’s wedding and Thanksgiving), and it was fun ending the year with my sister-in-law and her boys during their longish visit.

One thing we did with them was the annual Phoenix Zoo Lights, which is great, anyway, but so especially awesome with kids!

Phoenix Zoo Lights 2016

With Legoland now open down the way at Arizona Mills (where we also went with the kids), Legos were featured in this year’s Zoo Lights:

Phoenix Zoo Lights 2016 (with Lego sculpture)

On the darker side of 2016: It was a hard year in terms of our furbabies. It involved upheaval, heartbreak, and a lot of time, effort, and money spent trying to make life good for our kitties. It’s not over, but we’re determined. Our focus at the moment is on healing Cita physically. After that, we can focus entirely on healing her emotionally, with the ultimate goal of integrating her into our household with Nenette… yes, we’re going to attempt that again. We are not going to give up.

We’re already doing what we can to make Cita’s environment as stress-free as possible – putting Feliway (comforting feline pheromones) in her air, and Bach Rescue Remedy in her water – so we’re off to a running start. Reducing her stress is helping her to heal, in general.

2). Looking ahead at 2017, I am:

–Starting out the year with an updated workout routine, doing 3 Body Pump classes and 2 Body Combat classes per week, instead of the other way around. It was time for a change, and my body is loving it!

–Continuing work on alleviating (if not overcoming) my PTSD-related claustrophobia via repeated trips to the sensory deprivation tank.

–Speaking more French at home, since I completely failed last year’s resolution and spoke practically no French.

3). I usually do a “favorites of the past year” list; continuing with the tradition, here’s my list of my favorite of my 2016 favorites!

Favorite Random:

Les Mills Body Pump
Nature’s Wick Bonfire Nights candle

Favorite Skin care, hair care, cosmetics (all cruelty-free… not tested on animals):

Derma e antioxidant natural sunscreen with clear zinc oxide SPF 30
OGX Healing + Vitamin E shampoo and conditioner
The Body Shop Honey and Oat 3 in 1 moisturising scrub mask
The Body Shop Vitamin E Overnight Serum-In-Oil
The Body Shop Rainforest Radiance hair butter
e.l.f. Flawless Finish foundation (in Sand)
e.l.f. High Definition Powder in Soft Luminescence
e.l.f. Mad for Matte eyeshadow palette

Favorite Foods (all vegan):

Scivation Xtend BCAAs (strawberry kiwi)
Bragg’s organic raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar
Trader Joe’s multi-grain sourdough (with sunflower and sesame seed) bread
Eureka! Seeds the Day bread
Seedless red grapes
KIND Nuts and Spices bar (dark chocolate nuts and sea salt)
Clif Kid Organic Z Bar (iced oatmeal cookie) with peanut butter
Chipotle Tabasco sauce

Favorite Movies:

Hush
Ghostbusters
Hell or High Water
Hacksaw Ridge

Favorite T.V. series:

Orphan Black
The Americans
Empire
The Affair
American Horror Story: Roanoke
Better Call Saul
Bates Motel
Stranger Things
Black-ish
Speechless

That’s it for the wrap-up. Onward!

What’s new in the Kittyverse? (Nounours and Nenette updates!)

March 18, 2016March 18, 2016That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

Today, I come to you with a much-requested kitty update. By popular demand, here’s what’s new in the Kittyverse chez nous!

Nounours: Callaghan and I have noticed that when we text Nounours’ name, the auto-correct changes his name to “NonUsers.” Yes. Non-Users. This cracks us up because it’s so fitting… Nounours’ merits are sweetness, lovableness, huggableness, and companionableness. Smarts don’t figure into the equation of the Nounours, and the only real emotion we can ever see behind his big, blue eyes is jealousy. But that’s okay. He’s an armful of loudly purring teddy bear. He’s the teddy bear your five-year-old self always wanted to come to life.

Nounours’ superhero power: Shedding and teleporting his fur to far-off places for you to find when you least expect it. This is his way of making sure that you never forget him.

Nenette: In the spring weather we’ve been having, she’s been enjoying catching mosquitoes… those big, floofy male ones you see in the house from time to time. We can’t understand how she does it. The mosquito will be lightly bouncing along the wall high up by the ceiling, like they do; Nenette will be sitting patiently beneath it, and next thing we know, it’s in her mouth and she’s chomping away. She’s also extremely playful, despite being eight months older now. She actually makes up sophisticated games and teaches us how to play them.

Nenette’s superhero power: Solving complex differential equations and writing ground-breaking mathematical proofs in her sleep.

Together, Nounours and Nenette have reached a point in their relationship where they have four modes: Tolerating each other, glaring at each other, “playing” (Nounours and Nenette-speak for chasing each other around and clearly having no fun at all, and sometimes, every once in a very great while, actually reposing near each other for no apparent reason.

Nenette and Nounours, together in their pod. They even look like peas.

I’m sorry to say that in the weeks since my last kitty update, I’ve tried to snap good pics of Nounours, but it’s so difficult. He’s difficult to photograph. For one thing, he usually doesn’t stay put long enough for me to get a clear shot. But I thought this was cute:

Nounours holding my hand is pretty much the sweetest thing ever.

Then there’s Nenette, who’s a natural in front of a camera and couldn’t take a bad picture if she tried.

Nenette reading Anne Sexton’s letters up on the bookcase.

Nenette trying to keep me from going to work. (*winks at Aunty Carol*)

We bought this giant toy rat for Nounours, but he doesn’t know what to do with it except ignore it. Nenette, on the other hand, likes to pull it toward her to use as a pillow.

Nenette and her rat pillow.

Nenette playing E.T. with some of her toys.

Nenette chewing her toes with great concentration.

Nenette, the epitome of a girly-girl.

I truly wish I could get as many pics of Nounours. I’ll keep trying!

The state of the kittyverse chez nous.

September 29, 2015September 29, 2015That Asian-Looking Chick 2 Comments

I’ve accumulated some furbaby pictures over the last couple of months, so I thought I’d post a few, along with some intelligence from the home front. I’m mainly talking about Nenette, who has been making tentative strides in her transition to life with a family who actually cares for her and adores her, in a house in which she’s free to do what she wants and go where she pleases. We get the impression that this wasn’t the case before.

Nenette has come a long way, but there’s a final frontier: our bed. She’s reposed on the bed on several occasions, during the day, when the bed is made, but she’s afraid to go near it at night when we’re in it. It seems likely that at her former residence, she’d been chased off the bed and menaced away from it.

If we pick her up and gently place her on the bed at night, she’ll leap away like we’d set her down on a bed of hot coals. We’ve been working on it, and we’re happy to be seeing some progress now. Last night, she stood on the bed for a good minute. We watched her and saw the wheels turning (it’s funny how you can see this little girl’s mind working) as she surveyed the landscape and studied Nounours, who was asleep on the blanket at the foot of the bed. It was like she assessed the whole situation and thought about it before she left.

This morning, I woke up to find her sleeping on Ronnie James’ barstool near my side of the bed, which she’s been doing lately – another good sign. If she’s not sleeping with us on the bed, she’s at least sleeping near us. She’s gaining confidence!

Nenette hit her three-month-versary with us three days ago. She’s put on a little weight, she’s learned her name, she’s become significantly more comfortable with us, and, most recently, she’s started to play with Nounours, which is the best thing of all. Managing that situation has been another challenge, though, as Nounours is much larger than Nenette… and Nenette being declawed means that they can’t play on equal ground. He can actually hurt her and not get hurt back. We keep his claws trimmed. We keep an eye on things as they chase each other around, and if they start to tussle the way cats do, we firmly assert the need to play nice if it starts getting too rough. (In French… Nounours knows “Gentil!” better than he knows “Be nice!” Nounours is a French cat.)

So, pics, starting with Nounours.

This is the one that would mortify him if we were to show it to his girlfriend, if he had one:

Nounours hugging his toy, asleep with his mouth open.

Just to show that I’m not a totally mean Mommy, here’s a more dignified one of him:

Nounours, the teddy bear lion who was made to be hugged and assaulted with kisses.

Well, almost dignified. It’s not MY fault that he decided to lift his leg at exactly that moment.

Here’s Nenette:

Little Nenette, aka Bunny-Butt.

This one’s from August:

Nenette and her toys and her necklace of informative hearts.

And here they are together! This was a case of Instagram saving the pic from its bad lighting:

Nounours and Nenette, as close as we’ve seen them so far.

It’s a rare opportunity to get a shot of them together, but we’re getting there!. One day, I’ll be able to post a pic of them snuggling together… on the bed.