SPRING BREAK!!!
Rambo had to go to the vet today. :-( He peed blood yesterday morning (Easter Sunday, of course!), so I had to wait to take him until this morning. He has cystitis, which means crystals are forming in his urine. Luckily, he wasn't blocked, so they didn't have to do surgery, but they gave him some medicine and some VERY expensive food and sent him home. A 4 pound bag of this food costs $10.00!!! That's fine for him for right now, but I have 4 other cats to feed - I buy cat food 20 pounds at a time. While I'm more than happy to pay a few extra dollars for Purina One urinary tract health food, the stuff that the vet sent home will be a one-time thing. I checked the labels between the two bags, and the ash/magnesium content are nearly identical (high ash and magnesium can cause this in cats - we had a cat about 15 years ago that went through the same thing...except he had to have the surgery). Why on earth would I pay $40-$50 for 20 pounds of cat food?
I know that some people may think this is terrible, but my animals will *not* eat better than my kids do!
On the knitting front, I've recovered Inishmore from the WIP pile:
I know it's hard to see, because the yarn is extremely dark. I finally have the pattern memorized, though, and as long as I have good light, I'm plugging right along.
I tried Wendy's short row heel on my toe-up sock, and I really like the way it turned out!
I don't think I like this 2 circ thing, though. I'm getting ladders no matter what I do, and I don't get ladders when I use 5 dpns.
And I made this today:
It may look ugly, but I guarantee it will look better when I unmold it. I made a small 3-lb batch of my mechanic's soap - I used coffee for the water, wild boar tallow, coffee grounds, cornmeal and peppermint essential oil. In fact, for you soapmakers out there, here's my recipe:
Kim's Mechanic's Soap
6 oz palm oil
6 oz almond oil
2 oz avocado oil
2 oz castor oil (added at trace)
8 oz coconut oil
6 oz olive oil
2 oz shea butter
16 oz tallow (I prefer tallow for the mechanic's soap, but you can sub any other oils if you object to tallow- just be sure to run your new oils through the lye calulator...)
12-18 oz water or black coffee (I used 14 oz)
6.6 oz lye
1 oz coffee FO
1 oz peppermint EO (you can use 2 oz peppermint instead if you like)
1/2 cup used coffee grounds
1/2 cup cornmeal
(I also added a pinch of silk to the lye water)
If you're a soapmaker, you know what to do from here! I CPOPed this batch, so as soon as I unmold it tomorrow, it's safe to use. It'll be completely hardened within a week. I really like this recipe - a friend of our uses it exclusively when he's working on cars...and it's great for getting fish/onion smells off of your hands, too. :-)
posted by Kim at
6:28 PM
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2 Comments:
I do not think your approach to feeding the pets is rediculous. I take a very practical view of the matter, we have pets because we love them and we hope that both the pet and the owner is happy with the arrangement. However, we cannot sacrifice more than we can afford and when pet costs get out of hand it may be for the good of the pet to make other arrangements for the care of the pet. Hang in there though, sick pets can bring a lot of stress to a family. So can spring brak for that matter!
oh, poor rambo! but, i'll say this -- my tiger had the same thing happen to him in '96. not exactly the same: we discovered the problem not because he was peeing pink, but because he was *not* peeing at all. it was really freakish -- one day he was fine, and the next day he was wandering all over the apartment, squatting every ten minutes or so like he was trying to pee, but actually doing nothing. i called the emergency 24-hour vet and they were like, "oh my god, get him in NOW." it turned out that the crystals in his urethra were so bad he was completely blocked, and his bladder could actually have ruptured. they kept him overnight and i switched him to low-magnesium food and have kept him on it ever since, and he's been fine for ten years now. (holy cow, my poor kitty's getting old.) i used to feed him a friskies low magnesium stuff, which was not in the grocery store but was still pretty much grocery store-priced food -- i could only afford college-student prices at the time! -- but i switched to a science diet version a few years later (trying to get him to lose weight). anyways, if they have it where you are, the friskies stuff kept tiger healthy just fine. it's just important to read the labels and make sure it's low magnesium.
i hope rambo's feeling better now! poor little guy. man, you guys have not had a good year on the veterinary front.
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