Recently in Calli the Wonder Cat Category

I've been meaning to write a post all week. Enough stuff has happened in the "can't make this up" category. Really.

Last week I had two good days, straight after finishing 20 days of antibiotics. Then I started going backwards, badly. Obviously, I hadn't quite shifted all of the chest infection of doom. So on Thursday it was off to GP#4 (I don't like #1 or #2; #3 was booked out and my own GP doesn't work that day). I handed over my discharge letter from my hospital visit two weeks earlier, it was scanned for my files, and I took it back since otherwise it would have been binned. I ended up with prescriptions for a 14 day course of another antibiotic and a Bricanyl inhaler, another medical certificate giving me all of this week off, blood tests and an appointment with my own GP for Tuesday.

Now, Calli, my faithful companion, has been doing an awesome job of comforting me while I have been ill. She has been near constantly on my bed while I was bedridden and on my lap while I have couch-surfed.



So I got home from the GP, and she followed me into my study and sat down. I went to leave the study and she must have moved - and I tripped over her. Cue drama. A wailing Calli looked practically murderously at me. I managed to calm her down enough to examine her left front leg and establish that nothing was broken, but she couldn't put weight on it and was clearly in pain. So we had to go to the vet. The vet suspected it was a dislocated elbow and gave her a shot of anti-inflammatories and pain killers. I had to take her home and return on Friday after withholding food for her to be put under anaesthetic for x-rays.

Calli had an uncomfortable night, but still had enough spunk on Friday morning to jump up on the dining table to demand the breakfast she was not allowed. She did get hugs instead.



It was a simple dislocation of the elbow, which the vet fixed, and Friday afternoon I collected a very groggy Calli and brought her home again. She was so wobbly that I had to shadow her around the house to stop her doing stupid things. Saturday was better, and by Sunday she had bounced back to practically normal.

Meanwhile, I was neither getting better nor worse with my chest infection of doom. I had some of the Bricanyl puffer on Thursday, but wasn't convinced it actually gave me any of the medication (it was a twist dispenser of a fine powder that you then inhaled without seeing it). I took it regularly on Friday and felt awful, but I had been making trips back and forth to the vet that were more exertion than I needed. Saturday was spent on the couch going nowhere. On Saturday evening I took my first puffer dose in about 24 hours because I was a little wheezy. Within half an hour I was having the most awful crushing chest pain. I did not want to have to go back to hospital again, least of all on a Saturday night. But once it became clear that the pain was not going to let up, I called my sister, and my brother-in-law came and took me to hospital.

Surprisingly, the Emergency department was no where near as busy as it had been on my previous visit. I took the letter from my previous visit with me which helped them quickly bring up my records without my needing to fill out forms. I also took the box the puffer came in so they knew what I thought had caused my problems. Crushing chest pains get you in the door quite fast too. The vein blood was taken from on Thursday was completely trashed by another cannula, and they gave me a shot of antihistamine in my other arm that hurt like hell. After a few hours of observations, they let me go home again.

On Sunday and Monday I felt awful. Late on Monday I finally coughed up some horrid stuff and the tightness in my chest finally loosened. Since then, I have been better and better each day. I saw my GP on Tuesday, had the second hospital letter scanned for my files, and had my allergy list updated. I already have a problem with prednisone (I had to stop the hospital from giving me that on Saturday) and with sulfur food preservatives. The Bricanyl is a sulfate (terbutaline sulfate, for future reference), so it might have been a sulfur reaction, or might have been simply an adverse side-effect of the drug. So both that drug and all sulfur containing drugs are now off-limits. I'm sure that's going to create some fun in the future for prescribing anything to me. The blood tests confirmed I had Influenza A.

So bye-bye May. You sucked. June is a nicer month already.

Three years ago, I promised myself a cat. I had wanted a cat before then, but had been turned down by my then-landlord. I moved back to Sydney, passing up the opportunity of a free Burmese kitten about a month before I moved. I asked the FLA and owner's corporation if I could keep a cat. The owner's corporation said yes. The FLA did the whole black hole thing (since I put it in writing) and I eventually got a 'no' (by email). So I became a naughty tenant, and got a cat anyway.

In the long time frame between deciding to get a cat and actually getting it, I decided I wanted a Burmese cat. I found my cat through the Burmese Cat Society of Australasia (their site doesn't appear to be working today). When I first met her, she was called Sally, but I named her Calli. When first I met her, she was a tiny thing:


She was the runt of the litter and was rejected by her Mum, so she was hand reared. Her Mum was not very big, and Calli has always been small - 1.7kg when she came home with me in December 2007, and now at 2 years and 1 month old, she is 4.2kg. She's been getting herself into all sorts of trouble from the start:



She jumped into my work backpack one morning after I put my phone charger in there. I got to work and pulled out the charger to start charging my phone... and found she'd chewed her way clean through the cable. She has since destroyed a USB mouse cable (these days I use a wireless mouse) and my work laptop power supply cable was damaged twice (the IT staff at work were not impressed!). The power cables were live, by the way, which is why I call her "Calli the Wonder Cat" (as in "wonder why she's still alive!"). She has plenty of toys I encourage her to chew instead, but thankfully she hasn't shown as much interest in chewing cables lately. Or yarn. She chomped her way through the leftover yarn from the Noro Scarf and the Earl Grey Tea Socks. Works in progress are always kept safely in drawstring bags to prevent her getting her paws on them and the stash is all cat-proofed.

Of course I've knit for her:



...but of course that photo was staged - she prefers the cat bed from the Reject Shop. Or lying on any of my jumpers. Or on my lap.

She is my constant companion, telling me when the heater should be turned on, when it is dinner time, when it is bed time, following me around the house. And, being Burmese, she can be very vocal about it. She always wants to know what is happening:



(The computer blows warm air out that side where she's standing.)

A few weeks before we moved house, she suddenly fell ill. She was in the Vet hospital for five days on a drip. Neither of us enjoyed it. The vets couldn't diagnose anything specific and labelled it 'gastritis'.



Due to her hospital stay, she couldn't go visit my parent's place for the week while I moved house (she loves staying at their house - her toys slide around better on the tiled floors and there is more sunshine). She found the house move fun. It gave her new vantage points:



She is very happy at our new home. At the old place, there were seven other cats living within 30 metres. She's an indoor cat, but was bothered by the other cats outside. Here at the new place, all the neighbours have dogs, but I saw a cat over the back for the first time today. She should be a lot less bothered by other cats though. She loves watching the birds outside and I have built an enclosure so she can sit outside but not try catching the birds. Now the chaos of constantly changed surroundings of mixed up furniture and boxes everywhere has given way to long expanses of cork flooring (rattle balls roll better and louder...) and glorious sunshine, she's a happy pussy.