When I came down to the office this morning, I found the roll of paper towels had been savagely assaulted, disemboweled, dismembered, scattered across the floor and left to die. I've decided to blame Artemis, who has a previous record of paper towel disemboweling. It must be a good way to exercise her thumbs.

I looked out the living room window this morning. Uni was lying on the deck watching Puck who was below the deck next to the bushes. Puck was in turn watching a family of quail -- mom, pop and a dozen or so babies -- who were casually strolling along the strip of land between my deck, the bushes and where my lands fall steeply into hillside. To my amazement, neither cats made a move on the quail. One of the quail parents belatedly spotted them and the whole mini-flock took roost in the oak tree. Uni took a nap. Puck wandered off in search of something else of interest.

Around dusk, I saw Uni lounging on one of the big railroad ties that lines the patio, while a pair of bunnies fed on the pile of bird seed I leave on the patio. Forget birds, forget bunnies. Uni is a specialist. It's gophers or nothing.

At long last, I caught Diva in the act of taking a dump, though I had to catch her while doing it outside. Apparently, she likes to pee in the boxes, but crap outside. Everything looked fine and normal and she's been her usual bouncy self.

I've been keeping an eye on Nefreet's limp, which comes and goes. Yesterday she was racing around being a rocket-butt. Today, I saw the slightest bit of a limp. She may keep re-injuring whatever she's done, but it doesn't look serious.

Having spent some time vacuuming the office and having achieved a spotless, clean rug, Owl christened it with a nice, large gift of cat vomit. I can manage to keep the carpet clean for about five seconds in this place.

There are certain sounds that can occur right at the subaudible levels of hearing and they'll still make a cat owner leap out of the chair and go running, which I did this afternoon. Outside, I discovered that Sly and Knobby had both decided to climb the same oak tree. This oak has a long, straight trunk that goes up quite a ways before branching into a large fork. Knobby was lodged in the fork and Sly was hanging onto the tree trunk for dear life, either unwilling or unable to back up. But every time Sly tried to move forward, Knobby nailed him. They were howling and yowling and making such a fuss.

I went to fetch the Weapon of Deathwater Discipline aka the water squirter bottle. I think the mere threat was enough because by the time I came back, Sly was on the ground. Later, I had to comb out both of them because they were covered with as many burrs as there are galaxies in the universe. Now I pray there will be no abscesses. Please, dear Bast, I deserve a break. No abscesses.

Diva continues to do fine, though I won't declare her absolutely back to normal until I catch her doing a #2 in the catbox. So far, every time I catch her in the box, she's taking a pee. I want hard evidence...er, so to speak.

But it seems I'm destined go be given no break at all because now Nefreet has a limp. Randy thinks she hurt herself when she jumped down from the bedroom window. She is getting up there in age and she could actually be older than I estimate. She has to be 11-12 at the absolute bare minimum, but I have no way of knowing exactly how old she was when she adopted me.

Anyway, it's not a terribly bad limp. I'm going to watch it for another day or so to see if it clears up. If not...off to the vet.

I'm happy to say that Diva has bounced back very nicely. But to back up a moment...in stark contrast to the drive *to* the vet's, Diva was quite vocal on the way home. She sang Chinese Opera to me. I joined her in a duet which I'm glad no one else could hear.

She also had the final "word" by peeing in the carrier, thus she was somewhat bedraggled when I let her out. Since it was early in the day, I released her outside the office and she was happy about that.

She slept under my desk most of the afternoon and evening. By late evening when I was getting out the pills and treats, she popped out and wanted her treats. Then I put out some canned food, and Diva happily stuck her snoot into that. I went to bed feeling reassured.

This morning I spent hours thoroughly cleaning my car inside and out. My poor car had come to consist of smashed bug juice holding together an inch of grime. During this major job, Diva came up to see me, hung around and talked at me rather a lot. When Randy came out, she sucked up to him and took all the attention he could give her. I'd say she's pretty much back to her old self. Now to hope she stays that way.

Bast is not letting me off easily on this one. Things have taken a mysterious and disturbing turn. Around 9 this morning, my vet called with a report. Diva's insides were...uh...cleared out, but the vet had done an x-ray and found something totally unexpected.

Large portions of Diva's liver are calcified. My vet said this was "extremely rare". In fact, so rare she couldn't remember the last time she'd seen anything like it. It was time to do more tests.

About an hour or so later, the vet called with more mystifying news. Everything was coming out normal. The blood count was normal. No anemia, no elevated white blood cells. The liver functions were normal. Diva has no temperature, no other signs or indications of problems. She's hardly wasting away. Since the last time I had her in (over a year ago at least), she's gained two pounds. She's a little over 12 lbs. now and overweight.

The one and only minor thing was an elevation in a protein that usually indicates some kind of infection or inflamation...except there are no other signs to go along with it. All in all, I'd say the vet is baffled. I certainly am. I discussed many possibilities with her on the phone and again when I got there around noon to pick Diva up. The vet figures Diva may as well be in her own environment for now and we'll just have to see how things go in the next couple of days. She gave Diva an anti-inflammatory shot, just to see if it would help.

I saw the x-ray while I was there. I could easily see the outline of the liver. In the center was a large white area of calcification, and along the entire lower lobe there was a thick scattering of calcification. The vet said this doesn't happen overnight. It takes a while. It could well be old damage, especially since her liver seems to be functioning fine right now.

My main concern tonight is trying to get Diva to eat. She continues to act like a cat who doesn't feel well. She's hiding in a dark corner under my desk. Time to break out the canned food and see whether she'll respond to it.

If anyone reading this blog has dealt with a cat having these kinds of symptoms, I would love to hear from you. Use this email address: moonfire (at) sti.net

It's a sign of how worried I was about Diva that I arose at what I consider to be a genuinely obscene hour of the morning, unable to sleep and determined to get her there first thing.

Unfortunately, I thought my vet's office opened at 7 am. They don't open until 8. I did take the precaution of calling first, which saved me from sitting there for an hour.

I spent the extra time in my office observing Diva. She seeme about the same -- trying urgently to use the catbox and unable to produce anything, and spitting up pieces of saliva foam. It's ironic that she's one of my most talkative cats, yet she hardly uttered a peep the whole way into town (a 20 minute drive).

They've had her all day. They're swamped and trying to fit her in inbetween surgeries and other appointments. I called once to check on when I might pick her up. Maybe by the end of the day, but apparently my vet is still trying to figure out what's happening with her.

I know one thing...it's going to cost me. Sigh...

Later:

While there is still no answer to "why", it now looks like Diva's problem was -- getting ready for it -- X-Treme Constipation. As in being packed up solid. Other than that, she doesn't show signs of other problems. The vet said extreme constipation can cause all the other symptoms, such as spitting up.

So I'm paying for one hell of an expensive moggy enema. Diva is spending the night where she can be messy in a cage instead in my office, and be checked again in the morning.

After being a client of this vet for over ten years, and with hordes of cats passing through her doors, we've gotten to be good friends. She called at the end of the day to give me the information. Afterwards, I said, "Do you ever stop to think -- "I went to school for this.' "

She said, "I was sitting here thinking, 'I love my job. It's a Friday night and I have my finger up a cat's behind.' "

We had a good laugh over that.

Diva is definitely going to the vet first thing tomorrow morning. I had a long talk with one of my vet tech's. Her main concern is that Diva needs to keep hydrated. I haven't seen Diva eat or drink anything, but I often don't because I'm otherwise occupied. She went outside briefly this morning, but for the rest of the day she's done nothing but lie around inert.

The tech suggested I try giving her some melted ice cream. Something cool and delicious should appeal to her. I tried that tonight and she wouldn't have any part of it. I even tried smearing bits on her muzzle that she would have to lick off to entice her. No go.

I also saw her in the box straining to produce something solid and not being able to get anything out.

As I type this, she's thrown up a couple of globs of mucous. Not good, not good.

Now I'm worried about Diva. Yesterday afternoon, she began spitting up foam all over the place. That in itself isn't a big thing to worry about. I've seen my cats do that after eating a bitter-tasting bug.

But she hasn't been entirely her normal self since then. She went into hiding. In fact, I had to have Randy come down last night and help me search before we finally located her. Imagine a coal-black cat on a pitch-black shelf in a dark corner. She's sitting around inert instead of being her usual, bouncy, energetic self. And she refuses to touch the treats, which she is normally enthusiastic about.

I've checked her over the best I can. I can only guess that she's eaten something that is making her feel unwell, but I can't figure out what would last this long.

The question becomes, can I afford another vet visit, especially for something this vague?

With the arrival of company, Unicom's nose is severely out of joint. Nefreet is mostly unfazed, of course, but Uni goes into major avoidance mode. He stayed outside or went into hiding. Randy got worried.

"He's been outside all day and night without coming inside. What if he needs food and water?"

"He won't starve. If he wants food, he'll come inside."

Immediately after that, I decided to check on Uni and found him chomping down a gopher on the back deck.

However, Uni heartily dislikes having a strange person around and having his routine disrupted. He won't be a happy moggy again until the visitor leaves.

I had a notable first with Puck. He showed up on his own and knocked on the cat door to get in after I had called for him a few minutes before. Usually, I have to go search for him, find him, and carry him down to the office after lunch. I'm hoping this is the start of a new pattern.

Although I'm having to give Tribble his pills the hard way, it isn't proving to be too much of a hardship. He shows up to get his treats with more interest now that they aren't spiked, and he doesn't give me much trouble with the pilling part.

All twelve office cats are curled up asleep at the moment. Ah, the peacefulness....

Tribble made his position clear this morning. "That's it. I'm not eating another one of your nasty, pill-spiked treats." He spit it out and that was that. I had to do it the old-fashioned way.

Thank Bast that Querida is still in love with treats and seems oblivious to the pills, since I have to give her more pills per day than the other cats. She comes to my feet and demands her treats. "Where is it? C'mon, c'mon, I'm WAITING. Can't you hear me down here?"

Tosca has decided that her first duty of the day is to get as filthy dirty as possible. As soon as she goes outside, she rolls in the dirt and grasses and whatever else she can find. She is the cat version of the Pigpen character from Little Peanuts.

Uni's paw is healing rapidly and the skin is a healthy pink again. No worries there.

Now it's Tribble's turn to give me fits. He's always been right there demanding his treats and gobbling them down with his pill inside. Suddenly, for the past couple of days, he's developed a total aversion to the pill and has come up with the most cunning way of eating every *but* the pill, which he spits out all nice and clean.

I've tried breaking the pill (actually half a pill) into smaller pieces and putting the smaller pieces into separate treats, but Tribble is able to sense the least atom of a pill and tries to work his way around it. I hope this is a passing phase, as it used to make my life so easy when he would just take the blasted things without a fuss.

Poor Uni is an unhappy boy tonight. He napped the afternoon away. When we checked on him around 6, the swelling had gone down and his paw is pretty much back to normal size.

Nonetheless, we aren't letting him outside, much to his annoyance. He keeps going from door to door, wondering why his human door openers AREN'T DOING THEIR JOB. He went to the dining room doors, to the front door, to the side door, to the bedroom glass doors, and not a one of them was opened. Poor Uni.

My day did not go as planned. It started normally with Unicom scratched at the bedroom door. We let him in for the morning bout of petting and adoration. I noticed that his left paw looked odd. Then Randy also commented on the left paw. We took a closer look and realized that Uni's left paw and most of his leg were swollen to twice their normal size. He was using his paw normally, behaving normally, not showing any signs of distress or pain...yet he had this enormous paw.

I called the vet who is only in for a few hours on Saturday morning and was told I'd have to drop him off. I gave all the other moggies their pills, had a quick bite of breakfast and got Uni to the vet's by 10 am. For the next hour, I did errands in town: went to the library, picked up mail, bought groceries, and went back to see what Uni's condition was.

He was a lucky cat. It was a rattlesnake bite. They shaved the top of his paw and now I can clearly see one big fang hole. The skin is a dark, lurid purple. This must have happened last night. I brought him inside around 10:30 pm as usual, and he was totally relaxed at the time, not acting at all like a cat who'd had a close encounter with a rattler. That meant over twelve hours had passed since the bite. It would seem he was only gotten by one fang and must not have taken a heavy dose of poison. The vet did blood work to check for the kind of internal damage the venom can do to liver, kidneys, etc., and everything looked good.

Uni is home on anti-biotics and under house arrest for the next couple of days because the vet said to keep a close eye on him. The first thing Uni did upon getting home was eat, complain because we wouldn't let him out, then he curled up on the bed and was blissfuly asleep in minutes. Moggies are made of tough stuff.

Kate seems to have traded in one set of symptoms for another now that she's done with her pills. She's no longer growling or swallowing the way she was. Now she's wheezing, sneezing and her eyes are runny. She has a cat cold. It's not too bad, but I left a message for the vet anyway, just as a precaution. Also, I really hate having cat snot all over the keyboard.

Okay, that will teach me never to say anything positive about the condition of Owl's back. He has created three new bald patches in spite of all the anti-histamines. I sure wish I could figure out what his allergy is, not that it would necessarily help.

Tribble had a gopher for brunch. Or I should say, for crunch.

Diva was fast asleep on my printer a few minutes ago, when she suddenly jumped up making loud sounds of distress, and has gone off somewhere else. I think she had a bad dream.

Poor Owl! He turned over in his sleep and fell off my desk. It wasn't a bad landing, so he stalked off with as much dignity as he could muster, while complaining about the suddenness of it all. He has gone to soothe his nerves with food.

I had to fight off a shampoo-crazed Puck again this evening. I really should write to Pantene and suggest a new advertising campaign: "Drive your cat wild with Pantene!"

Owl is lying on his back with his hind feet splayed in a pose that proves he has no real dignity whatsoever. Being Siamese, he likes to pretend he has Dignity, but he is silly far too often to be convincing.

I'm relieved to say that so far Kate has been relatively easy to pill. I was afraid she was going to be like her brother, Knobby, who is impossible to get medicine into. Just give me a lobotomy first, please, if I should ever have to pill Knobby again.

Apparently the smell of my shampoo is enough to drive Puck mad. I came down to the office right after drying my hair and the Puckster got onto the desk, clambored onto my shoulders, slid down my back, wrapped his paws around my neck and assaulted my hair in a frenzy of abandon. Then, when he was sated and exhausted, he curled up in my lap for a long nap.