I had to take our ElderCat, Amber, to the vet on Friday. (That’s her up there in the picture, sitting on my desk.) She has had mouth problems for a while now, but we’ve been reluctant to do major dental work on her because she’s 16 and anesthesia can be a problem for the older ones. But she has not been eating well and she kept opening and closing her mouth and pawing at it. I looked and saw a hanging lump but I couldn’t get it to pull loose and wasn’t about to try and force it. Sure enough, the left side canine had come almost out but was hanging on by just a tiny bit of tissue. Our vet managed to snip it off without needing to knock her out and the bleeding stopped quickly with just pressure. She’s much better now and is eating pretty well again.
But- her mouth is a mess. Lots of tartar buildup and a good case of gingivitis. We are going to go ahead and schedule a dental for her. There’s risk, yes, but she’s a pretty dang healthy 16. Her heart and lungs are good, kidneys fine, no indication of any other health issues so far. I think it’s best to get it done now before any “old cat” stuff starts. She’ll be much better off even though I am sure we are looking at some extractions. Just getting the teeth cleaned up and the infection cleared will make her life better. Then I will have to get serious about cleaning whatever teeth she has left. She will let me get in there with a finger toothbrush; I just don’t do it. I will have to be better.
The BaldMan has his first COVID-19 vaccination scheduled for Wednesday. I tried all of last night to get one on the same day. The MA vaccination scheduling site is ridiculous. You can get a list of places that (supposedly) have appointments available. Pick one and you go to a page that tells you what your place in line to actually schedule is. It refreshes every few minutes to update you on where you stand. My updates looked something like this: 15 minutes, 23 minutes, more than a day, 1 minute, 2145 minutes, 5 minutes, more than a day, 1 minute… I did get to the page where the appointments were supposed to be listed, but time slot said not available, even though it said they had multiple appointments still available. The one time I thought I had a time slot open, as soon as I clicked on it, I got “No more appointments available at this time slot”. And I heard the state paid something like half a million dollars for that software. From whom? Acme Software Inc? I will keep trying and plan to get up early on Thursday (when new appointments are released) and just sit on the site. Fingers crossed.
Is it March already? Wow. I do have a few seeds started for the garden already. Slow growers like peppers, some herbs, and one of the flower boxes for the deck. Have to start the flower seeds indoors because the squirrels and birds will clean out the seeds before they have a chance to sprout. The rest of the indoor starts will happen over the next month and a half or so. It will be nice to be growing things again.
Let’s all hope for a good, productive, fun week ahead, okay?
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And So On... 