A beautiful picture of a beautiful cat. RIP Cory 
This is the leaf-ticked tabby, a rare color scheme that can sometimes be spotted briefly in the autumn if you look quickly before the next bath.
Rascal looking toward sunrise in the Wild, Wild Woods.
And I really got amused this morning. I wanted to try to get a picture of color on both sugar maples. I planted them 20 years ago 150 feet apart; I always knew that a building would eventually go between them. So they frame the house, but for some reason, the western sugar maple has always been a week or so behind the eastern sugar maple, so you really have a narrow window to try for both looking autumny. By the time the western one is really getting good, the eastern one is on the decline. Anyway, this morning, the eastern one was at prime, and the western one is at least at partial charge, so I decided to try for the long shot of both. I fed the critters, then positioned myself under the eastern sugar maple to focus on the western one.
And then, as I was setting up shots…
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Rascal on October 30, 2015. Picture taken at Cat Lady’s. When Cat Lady got sick and went to the hospital, I still went over to her place daily to take care of the cats. Everybody else could be summed up as “pet me! Feed me! I haven’t been fed/petted in 24 hours!” Not Rascal. She would sit there and just look at me, eyes boring into my skull. She wanted to know what was going on, why her world had turned upside down, why her lifelong person had disappeared. She was sure that if she tried hard enough to communicate, she could understand this, and she knew that I had the key knowledge here. Such a thinker, Rascal is. Always has been. Unfortunately, Cat Lady eventually died after over a month in the hospital, and then the grand cat export to my farm occurred. Some of CL’s were placed in other homes eventually, but from the beginning, even while I advertised around, Rascal was the one off the list. I knew she would stay with me. The one, now two-person cat who still is antisocial and doesn’t care to expand her acquaintance with the world. But I hope that somewhere along the way, some of her questions got answered.
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Early morning feeding at the farm o’ cats this morning. Sundays have a different schedule.
Mary inspecting my current craft project in progress. It’s a rug with a cat underneath a Christmas tree looking up at the ornaments. This one isn’t a gift; just for me with my own Christmas seasonal stuff.
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I called the vet this morning to make an appointment for Pilgrim. They’ll see him tomorrow at 1:45. He just is not doing right lately. He’s eating, drinking, extremely interactive as usual, but something is wrong with this cat. We’ll see. Hopefully something minor and easily treatable. He is an extremely cool cat. He’s the tuxedo scientist and has his own chapter in The Cats Locked Me in the Well House.
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I had a flat-out fight with Solo over lunch. Yesterday, before our after-church Christmas music special rehearsal, the choir had subs. There was ample food, and they invited us to take leftovers afterwards. I’m fond of subs, so I took a takeout box. I had one for lunch today, and it had a couple of different kinds of meat on it and at least two kinds of cheese.
Solo is the strongest feline character indoors. She definitely has spice and is a very fun cat to be around. She’s extremely stubborn, but that doesn’t bother me because I’m more stubborn. She loves meat, of course, and also is quite fond of cheese. She does, however, know the Feline Household Commandments very well, in particular the Second Commandment, which relates to food. To paraphrase, it’s mine until I say it’s not.
Today, I was attempting to have a book meal, sitting at the table with one of my current books in progress. Solo got on the table, which in itself I don’t mind, but today, under the allure of meat and cheese combined, she decided to ignore the permitted distance.
We went countless rounds over the course of that sandwich. She would charge, I would bopp her firmly on the nose, she would retreat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Not a whole lot of reading got done during this meal, but I was bound and determined that she wasn’t going to win, while she was bound and determined that she was. She knows that Commandment perfectly well; this was deliberate sin.
Finally, as I was nearing the final quarter of the sandwich, I said, “You do realize, don’t you, that you aren’t going to get anything by this performance? Not even a taste at the end. A taste at the end is for polite and patient cats, and you aren’t being either polite or patient.”
At that point, I swear, she looked straight at me, and then she dropped down into a cat loaf on the table and put on her halo. I said, “Good Solo,” and she charged again, just seeing if 5 seconds of polite patience would suffice. Nope, she got bopped back again. She reluctantly returned to her cat loaf and held it.
I did give her a tiny fragment of cheese (which she ranks even over meat) at the end, because she was good for about the last 20% of that meal, but it wasn’t as much of a bite as she would have gotten if she behaved. As I stood up from the table, I asked her, “Was that whole performance really necessary?” She looked up and blinked at me and purred.
Reminds me of that nursery rhyme about the little girl. “When she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid.”
Solo had sole possession of the table at lunch, by the way, as every other cat around was appalled at her flagrant disregard for the Second Commandment and was carefully staying to the sidelines on the floor. She and I had that whole scene to ourselves.
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Back from the vet with Pilgrim. Love my vet practice. We were there for over an hour and a half, going one step at a time on diagnostics. This was just a general ADR (ain’t doing right) as chief complaint, but I was sure something was wrong with this cat recently. So the vet on appointments today (multi vet practice, but all are good) started from the beginning. The clinic is very good about asking you budget questions without sounding judgmental. Budget is a consideration, but I was willing to chase things diagnostically for a while, at least. This is a very cool cat. So we advanced one test at a time to not do more than required to find an answer.
General exam, he has a grade 4 heart murmur. Just to rule it out, tested FIP. Negative. First big guess for a cat on the cusp of seniorhood who ain’t doing right was diabetes. Did a CMP. Nope, glucose is absolutely normal. However, some (but not all) of the liver enzymes were elevated. That was the sole thing standing out on the whole panel. Which were up and which not led to the vet’s second guess, thyroid. So we ran a thyroid panel. Meanwhile, he fetched a reference book and was showing me the various branches of this differential. If it were this, then that test would probably be abnormal, too. If it were this, etc. Down to what it actually was labwise, thyroid was the leading suggestion. A few more unusual ones below that, but we’d try thyroid first.
Ding, ding, ding. The thyroid level is off the charts. So there’s our answer. They then looked up several different forms of methimazole and offered me the breakdown in cost and method of administration on those. I picked out the seafood-flavored methimazole, and that will be ordered.
The vet did comment when Pilgrim came out of the carrier (on his own, not hauled out) how alert he was. He actually called it hyper. The cat looking all around, extremely interested in every single thing, those electric yellow eyes checking it all out. He gladly would have jumped off the exam table to go explore the clinic. I said nope, that’s not a symptom. That’s just Pilgrim. Every single day I’ve known him, and I got him ages ago as an adolescent kitten, he has been wired. He is my tuxedo scientist, Sherlock Holmes on a trail. I know all cats are curious, but this one has dialed it up to 11 from day one and maintained that over the years. He’s always up.
I’m glad we have the answer and that it is treatable.
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Psalm inspects my Christmas project.
More on Psalm’s tail. There should be a video below, but it seems to be appearing and disappearing.
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I talk to my oldest brother every weekend on the phone, and tonight, we were having a conversation. Pilgrim had jumped into my lap and was lying there purring. We were discussing the recent vet visit, and I commented, “Pilgrim is still eating those drugged treats, which I’m glad of. That’s the easiest form of medicine.” Then suddenly, it struck me that the cat could hear me. That’s ridiculous, I know. If he keyed on any word out of that, it would be treats. He doesn’t know the words drugged or medicine, as those really don’t come up often. Still, part of me wishes I hadn’t said that in his presence. 
He is doing a bit better, I think. Probably, after a month or two of these, they will rerun the blood work for an update.
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Is the heart murmur new for Pilgrim? Thyrotoxic cardiomyopathy can result in murmurs due to the heart muscle enlargement. Hopefully getting his thyroid levels corrected will improve his heart condition also!
Yes, the heart murmur was new. Never noted before on any previous checkup.
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Time for a Gracie update!
My formerly hyperthyroid cat is now hypothyroid… The radioactive iodine worked just a little too well. She also is in the early stages of kidney disease.
So the vet has prescribed the kitty equivalent of Thyro-L, which should help with both conditions. Unfortunately, I can’t use my mare’s leftover Thyro-L powder for Gracie.
One symptom of hypothyroidism in cats is that they feel cold. Gracie will spend hours under the covers of the guest bed. I kind of hope she keeps doing that, because it’s terribly cute.
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Just coming on here to say that I finally read My Cats Locked Me in the Well House and it’s delightful.
Decided it needed to be enjoyed by more people and placed in in my neighbor’s Little Local Library.
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I have to share this memory from several years ago. This was on Thanksgiving, and I was putting up leftovers after getting home from the big dinner. The cats, ever helpful, wanted to assist.
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Pilgrim was not as enthusiastic about his drugged treat this morning, though we got it down. Mental note to self: Do not give the drugged treat immediately after giving turkey. Allow some gap time to lower the bar.
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