Global Eyes Mini

And a cat update

I took the weekend off, which I don’t usually do, because I figure you might like having something to read over the weekend. (I do take days off, don’t worry—just not those days.) I didn’t plan to skive off over the weekend, but something in my soul just revolted. I just couldn’t face the news. Or my email. Or really anything that would require me to confront reality. Every time I sat down, I got so itchy to stand back up again that I began twitching.

So rather than fighting it and sending you something that showed obvious signs of composition under duress, I decided I’d spend a bit of time repotting my plants and making faux-chinoiserie planters for them out of glue and napkins so they’d feel they’d really arrived.

They turned out great:

What you got instead of a newsletter. I’m hoping these cuttings like their new digs so much that they take root.

I also repainted a bookshelf and fixed my washing machine, which had inhaled a wad of fur too many. (That machine is a trooper, though. I bought it, used, ten years ago for a hundred euros and have abused it ever since by throwing everything a large and hairy family of cats can cough up straight into its maw and never once cleaning the filters. That this is only the second time it’s gone on strike must be reckoned a deliverance.¹) I was inordinately pleased with myself for fixing it with the aid of the manual, which I found online, and very relieved not to require the expensive services of a repairman. Or a new machine. But I made a hell of a mess and spent the rest of the day mopping it up. So that’s why I didn’t send a weekend newsletter.

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Speaking of domestic distractions, a number of you have been kind enough to enquire after the well-being of my cats. The news is good, so far. Féline adapted so quickly to the loss of her leg that I have to suspect she’s always privately held that a fourth leg is a needless encumbrance. I expected her to be confused and distressed, but she doesn’t even seem to remember the old leg. She does everything she did before—she even does that thing cats do when they suddenly race about the apartment, frenzied, chasing the resident poltergeist. She jumps everywhere she used to jump, except right to the top of the bedroom door by means of the dresser. (But this was always a high-risk maneuver that I’d have preferred she not attempt, since she didn’t seem to understand that doors by their nature swing—so she’d wind up swinging with it, then realize she could no longer get down the way she got up and panic.)

So Féline’s doing great. The tumor, by the way, was a fibrosarcoma, which is a particularly nasty neoplasm. Fortunately it was on her leg, not her trunk, so the odds are nonetheless good that they got it all. Not 100 percent, but definitely on her side.

Zeki has proven the more challenging patient. There’s no cure for chronic kidney disease, only management, and my first efforts to manage it didn’t go well. He was back in the cat hospital within days. He wasn’t eating, and he was clearly miserably nauseated, which I know because he spent all day gagging and barfing. So I brought him back, and alas, his numbers were terrible again, and his blood pressure was way too high.

They put him back on the IV drip for another four-day spell, which is pretty much all they can do. I’ve never felt guiltier than I did when I left him, again, at the cat hospital. As I got up to walk out the door, he let loose a howl of infinite heartbreak. He looked so small and so powerless. So not the master of his fate. He had no idea why I was doing this to him again. Hadn’t he been a good cat?

His little heart was breaking into a million pieces. I went back and stroked him, trying to reassure him. He grabbed me and clung to me and hid his head in my chest. If cats could cry, he’d have been sobbing his eyes out. I just couldn’t leave him. Finally I went home, got my computer, brought it back, and worked from the floor of the clinic for four days, holding his paw while he took his cure. I know that sounds nuts, and it wasn’t especially comfortable, but if you’d heard that howl, you’d have done it, too. I just couldn’t leave the little guy there all by himself. He’d have died of a broken heart.

He’s back now, on a different medication for his blood pressure, and I’m giving him his fluids at home. So far, so good. The fluids do seem to help a lot. They’re easy to administer, too. He doesn’t even seem to notice it, really.² So far he’s okay. Fingers crossed. Any day when he doesn’t have to go back to the clinic counts as a good day, as far as we’re both concerned. Thank you for asking.

Now I’ll return to thinking about everything I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about all weekend. But I’ll ease back into the water gently so as not to shock the system. We’ll just do three items per region today—perfect both for those who prefer Global Eyes mini and for editors who’ve gone a bit nuts and spent the weekend making faux chinoiserie planters out of napkins and glue.

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Global Eyes

Ukraine