Life and Times in the Cat House In The Cedars

So some of you might have been aware that my White Lady Coon Queen developed… a LUMP on her neck, which made panic-prone mama panic and take her to the vet, who looked at the lump and poked at it and biopsied it and did a look-see under a microscope and then told me that it was a cyst, that it was benign, that i could just leave it alone if it didn’t seem to be bothering her (which it didn’t), and that I should just assume that this was now the new shape of the cat.

Which didn’t fill me with delight, but at least it allayed my more immediate panic-stations anxiety attack somewhat.

And then the lump felt like it had got… BIGGER (or maybe it was just my paranoia…?)

And then something else happened (on a Saturday, of course, because when do these things NOT happen when an emergency vet is not involved???) because there was a smear of BLOOD on the back of her neck and the entire thing seemed to have ruptured and deflated but it was under SO MUCH FUR and I couldn’t tell if it was now an open wound or what or if I should race her to the emergency ver forthwith or just clean it up and see what happened… I called two emergency vets. Both told me that from their reading of the situation it might have just popped and that I should keep it clean and watch if she showed any signs that it was bothering her (how does a cat show that something is BOTHERING her?) and so I climbed off the ledge and waited until the Monday to call her regular vet and find out what they thought. And they said much the same thing which is just as well because I can’t take her in on Monday or on Tuesday (because I have a house that’s crawling with workmen right now and I can’t just duck out and leave them alone in the place while I go wait in a vet’s waiting room to be slotted in as an emergency patient…) and probably not on Wednesday either because I have a medical appointment of my own on that day – so the earliest I can get that cat to the vet would be Thursday – to HER vet, that is – or I need to bite the bullet and take her to the (much more expensive) emergency vet’s office after hours, as it were, and I am FREAKING OUT…

A word about the workmen. They came last week and installed stuff (a heat pump system, and a couple of bathroom fans). Turned out that the downstairs bathroom which nominally had a fan basically didn’t have a vent connecting the fan to, yanno, anything. Anywhere that it might have been actually venting, as it were. If utilised (which, granted, was rarely because I don’t really use that downstairs bathroom much) it just vented… into the space between the downstairs ceiling and the upstairs floor. WHich… is not ideal. So the workmen were back on Monday morning to do some insulation work in the attic (it took a while and was exceedingly messy…) and to try and figure out the downstairs bathroom fan vent ductwork situation. The cats are upset at all this because they need to be herded out of harm’s way and *I* need to be where the workmen are so I can’t be where they are and they are muchly wroth with me for this. And I can’t even keep an eye on the cystburst cat to see if she is more uncomfortable than just being denied the freedom to be where she wishes to be (which is always on the other side of a closed door.This workman business is going on tomorrow too and ends with a test wherein they install a large fan in the front door and check on how well the house retains heat etc. To do THAT they insist they need every door in the house open. I don’t know what I am supposed to do with the cats while this is going on.

Your friendly author is over her losing her freaking  mind. This too shall pass, as the saying goes, but man it’s a freaky week while it’s passing, here in the Cat House In The Cedars…