Walking My (Re)tail Off (photo and beg intensive)

Did you see the totals up above? We broke the $500 goal in less than a week (actually, it was broken by the end of the weekend, I was just waiting for paypal to transfer the amount to the Cancer Walk Bank Account.) So I've upped that total and fully expect y'all to rise to the occasion (go ahead - make me up it several more times before we're done!).

In addition, I've been walking my little tail off (and Oscar's, too, since he's been joining me for nearly all the training), so I'm over my anticipated mileage goal, too. Just so you know, I'm rounding down all the distances to the nearest half mile. If I walk 1.9 miles (as I did the other day) it gets rounded down to 1.5 for the tally. The two days in a row I did 2.1 miles (ME! TWO MILES!!!) got rounded down to 2 miles even (each). That's to guarantee that anyone who chooses to sponsor me by-the-mile training is getting their money's worth! I'm feeling my health/stamina improve pretty quickly, and find myself really looking forward to the time out walking with the dog (despite his rolling in raccoon poo today, literally cutting off my sentence explaining that I wasn't worried because he's never rolled in anything gross. My only theory is that he was thinking like those hunters who spray themselves with deer urine before they go in the woods, and was thinking he'd catch himself a raccoon. I didn't have the heart to tell him pitbulls are not hunting dogs. I did have the heart to let him pick the shampoo for his shower when we got home - he picked the Green Apple scented dog shampoo over the Johnson's baby wash.)

My walks are nothing compared to what Mokey just finished though! While she's resting up from that, she has VERY generously donated some lovely things to the cause - two causes, really, because she's donating half of the sales to my Walk Funds, and the other half to bandwidth fees over at Knitter's Review.

I've added a little info about the fiber content and yardage where I could, but otherwise, I'll let her explain it all (my additions are unbolded):


Please keep in mind that the proceeds will be evenly split between RoseByAny's walk and Knitters Review. You won't get a tax receipt but you will be helping out a wonderful board member, a wonderful web site and your wonderful stash!

Everything can be mixed and matched, provided someone hasn't gotten to it first. If you want sock pattern A with yarn Z instead of yarn B, be our guest.

I can only accept PayPal, prices include postage (to Canada or US) and all prices are suggestions - feel free to make a different offer if anything interests you.

Just e-mail if you're interested in anything!

OPAL CROCODILE (brown)

divided into 2 50gm balls

OPAL CROCODILE (green)

sock unravelled for you on request!

Opal Crocodile is very hard to come by!
(Opal Crocodile: 75% wool/ 25% polyamide, 425 m per 100gm ball, Superwash)


RBK MEXICAN DANCE $20

Another great sock pattern, this one is perfect for knitting a bit at a time since it is based on building up squares. You can really make your feet dance with the yarn, Fortissima Colori 1000, Colour 9057, a mix of pink, red, white and black with sparkle.
(Fortissima Colori: 75% wool/25% nylon, 550 yds per 100gm ball, Superwash)


NORTHERN SUNSHINE "WATERFALLS", $12

A lovely pattern that would actually work with this variegated yarn. The blues and greys will enhance the waterfall effect!
(Schachenmayr Crazy Cotton: 100% Cotton, Approx. 137 yds / 125 m per 50gm ball, Machine Wash)

RBK SQUARE DANCES, $15

As with all patterns from Red Bird Knits, well written and creative. I don't know exactly which yarn that is, but I am 95% positive it is from the Schoeller Stahl/Fortissima Disco series. This one is blue, brown, grey and white with some sparkle.
(Schoeller Stahl/Fortissima Disco: 71% virgin wool/ 26% Polymide/ 3%Polyester metallisiert, 460 yards per 100 gm ball, Superwash)

RBK PARTY STRIPES, $20

This is part of a trio of modular style sock of the month kits from redbirdknits.com
The yarn is Lana Grossa' Meilenweit Party in marled grey/blue, gold/brown, and blue black. A good yarn to knit socks for guys without getting bored.
(Lana Grossa Meilenweit Party: 80% wool/20% nylon, 462 yards per 100 gm ball, Superwash)

ASSORTED FINGERING/SOCK WEIGHT COTTONS, $10 (lot)

The beige, off white and medium green are all Scheepjes Cotton 8. The blues and dark green are Mandarin Petit
(Scheepjes Cotton 8: 100% Cotton, 170 meters to 50 gm ball, Machine Wash
Mandarin Petit: 100% Egyptian Cotton, 197 yards per 50 gm ball, Machine Wash)


NOVELTY YARNS, $10 (lot)

This is one of thsoe love it or hate it products for knitters. If you love it, buy it and support a couple of good causes.
3 x 50g Red Heart Twinkle(Black)
3 x 50g Moda Dea Frivolous(Garnet)
5 x 50 Red Heart Treasure(White)


ROWAN YORKSHIRE TWEED $20

4 x 25g of the lovely and discontinued Yorkshire Tweed 4 ply in Shrew, a greyish brown. One of the balls was started up for a swatch but it is all there.
(Rowan Yorkshire Tweed 4-ply: 100% wool, 120 yds per 25 gm ball, Hand Wash)

KNIT ONE, FELT TOO, $10

An excellent book for those wanting to get into felting, or for experienced felters wanting to add to their collection.

E-mail Mokey if anything catches your eye!

Again, all purchases include shipping, prices are negotiable, and as long as everything's available, things can be mixed-and-matched as you wish. Half of the purchase price will go to KR, half to my walk sponsorships. Thanks SO much for looking, for purchasing, and (most of all) for supporting!!!

If Jackson Pollack Worked With Catfood...

It's been a hectic, emotional, draining, tear-filled, week.

Thank you all for your prayers for Trevor, and your cyber-hugs on Sharon's "anniversary".

Things are still pretty shaky, to be honest. My little spud who would eat anything he could catch has had to be force-fed several times a day, with a syringe and a can of special high protein/high fat catfood to try to get his liver to stop eating him alive. He did not enjoy this. I did not enjoy this. Probably all of the people I came in contact this week did not enjoy my "odeur des aliments pour chats" (it sounds better in french. Basically I have had catfood in my hair, on every article of clothing, and splattered on many walls in my house for nearly two weeks now).

Worst of all was that my extremely devoted, extremely snuggly monkey has been hiding from me, not coming when I called, and sleeping who knows where for most of that time.

In addition to cat-food-modern-art, we've had to see that this

went to this

(which was actually the easiest part - he had a much easier time being injected with fluid under the skin than injected with food via the mouth... if only I'd made that realization earlier, I could have watered down the food.....)


Tonight, though, we had a bit of a breakthrough, in the form of this:

Do you see the Heavens opening? Hear the angels singing? Are you considering naming your next-born child "Fancy Feast Beef Chunks in Gravy"?

Then you haven't been living in my house.

In any event, Trevor ate, on his own, for the first time this evening. He didn't eat a lot, maybe a third of a small can of the kitten food, but he ate. He had a few nibbles on his own (at which point I began sobbing for joy and thanking God) and then I gave him his pills, and he had a little more. When he stopped eating, I put him in my lap, put the food in front of him, and inserted the needle to start his fluids. And he started eating more, with the fluids going right in him.

When we finished dinner and the internal drink, there was a brief ticker tape parade in Trevor's honor (yes, in the bathroom - there are relatively few corners of my house that can be closed off from the other furry gentlemen in my life without damage to the baracades. As it was, there was a fuzzy sort of thudding at the door of Aslan trying to break the door down, and he and Oscar were waiting outside when we opened up.)

About an hour later, Trevor hopped up on my lap to snuggle and made a few "I'm hungry" mews - I pulled the bowl out and he had a few more bites.

It's starting to look like my little man might live through this. Thank God.

Still...

Missing you...



and you...

Adventures of the Monkey Cat

Well, things have settled down slightly around here, and your extremely compassionate comments (Trevor has never been kissed by so many strange cats!) and e-mails deserve an update!

For most of his life, Trevor has had a voracious appetite and energy/talent for finding trouble level, and the waistline to match. He's never been full-on obese, but he's generally a bit pudgy. So I've been working on this, and in the past few weeks, Trevor actually has been losing. Yay!

Well, about a week ago I began to be concerned that he was losing too much weight. And this weekend, I realized that in fact, not only was he losing too much, but he wasn't eating. The cat who would eat anything (seriously, the only food this cat has ever turned down in his life was imitation crab, so think about that next time you go to eat it) was turning down deli ham. And when I realized that I could feel his spine, which is not good in cats, I went into a panic (panic being defined as "incoherant sobbing staggered with manic babbling which leads at least one friend to think I'm on the ledge of a high-rise." Sorry, J.) Which of course happened on a weekend when the vet was impossible to reach. My parents have a different vet that they are very happy with, so I called her first thing Monday morning, and shortly thereafter had an appointment.

So we went to that vet, where they discovered just how much fight my sick little boy had left in him. It took three vet techs and a vet to hold him to get x-rays, and while they were doing that and getting bloodwork, I could hear him yelling through a door, down a hall, and through another two doors.

After the x-rays we learned that his kidneys are two very different sizes, and we don't know why, and after the bloodwork we discovered that his liver is wonky (that's a technical term that means "isn't happy, but we don't know if it's an infection, a chronic disease, or what"). Because of the liver, I was instructed to get food into him as proficiently as I could (keeping in mind that cats throw up for sport, so putting a bunch of food in his throat and having him vomit it back up wasn't the goal.) She also wanted a urine sample, which involved segregating him from Aslan (which, frankly, Aslan has been petitioning for since he moved in) so that I could keep their output properly identified, and asking him to pee in a litter box that had been scrubbed with rubbing alcohol to sterilize it, and "filled" with 3 tablespoons (ie, about 1/10 of the amount needed) of special sterile litter, then suctioning it up, putting it in the sterile cup, and storing it in the fridge until I could get it to the vet (I don't think they were providing a helicoptor for medi-vac transport, but we didn't get that far).

So I spent all night waiting for him to pee (which is like "Waiting For Godot" but more fun) giving him several eyedroppers of food on the hour, every hour, and managed to get maybe 25 ml into him. Not good. But this afternoon I went back to the vet (without him, but one of the techs had a new bandaid on her neck, and they all said the name "Trevor" in hushed, reverant tones). There I was given an appetite stimulant to get him to eat, an antibiotic to kill any infection in the liver, a food of baby-food consistancy (the better to syringe into his mouth), and a bag of fluids, which I have to inject into him under his skin. They gave me a little lesson on the fluids, letting me practice on the office cat ("he has to earn his keep somehow!") and let me know they were extremely skeptical that I would be able to pill and inject such a fiesty little monster, all while force feeding him with a syringe.

When we got home, I went to the bathroom and gave him a squirt of food, the appetite stimulant, two squirts of food, the antibiotic, then three squirts of food, before he got "fiesty" and put a paw up (claws in) to stop me. Mama's boy. I gave him an hour break, then went back and injected the fluids under his skin, with him sitting on my lap and purring. Somewhere in this time I realized that a) perhaps they should have put more stress on the "turn the fluids off before pulling the needle out of the cat" part of the process and b) I was glad I chose to do this in the bathroom and c) his shoulders squish now when I squeeze him. I gave him two more squirts of food, then set him free.

We don't really know what's wrong, and he's still not feeling good at all, but we've made strides to getting him healthier, which is really all that matters to me in the world. I'm really, totally, thoroughly, completely, and, in all seriousness, DONE with shit happening to the ones I love.

So please keep praying for my little monkey, and I'll keep chanting "Fluid off THEN needle out"



ETA: The vet's office called this morning. Not with test results, not with billing questions. Just to see how Trevor was doing. Possibly to see if I still have all my apendages (I do - no claws have come out yet). But still.
This is a Good Vet
.

Prayers Please

I know it may seem very trivial to some of you, but my little spud needs some prayers - he's not feeling well.

And I'm very, very, scared for him.

Please pray for Trevor.