Hey there... it's been a bit longer than I'd intended since my most recent post. I was inspired to have a look at my own blog after exchanging emails with The Other Donna in the past few days.
This week marks a good time to refresh the blog, as we have a dose of Vitamin SEA coming up this week. To that end, the cats have been taken to the vet for their annual checkup, shots, bloodwork, and boarding. Baxter will come with us "down-a Shore". Where we're staying, they even have a dog beach a couple blocks away. Last August, we introduced Baxter to the ocean. I wish I'd felt brave enough to actually handle my camera while the dog and I were standing in salt water, because the bewildered expression on Baxter's face was priceless. He watched as a little wave came up and swirled gently around his paws, and he was not sure what to make of this water that comes right up and meets you. Maybe this year, we can convince him to have a good play in the waves. But we shall see.
Captain and Stanley are 11 now -- go and look at the posts from January 2005 to find the time frame when I was just bringing them home for the first time. They were 9 months old then. How time flies!
Today's vet visit went as smoothly as can be expected. In prior years, both Captain and Stanley had gotten a bit overweight from free-feeding, so I began measuring their food. Fast-forward to now, and Captain is at a perfect weight, while Stanley has gotten a bit too slender. Combine this with the fact that the prescription food (to prevent crystals) they're now eating actually has fewer calories than the Iams they'd been eating before, and I worked out with the vet just how much to increase their daily food intake per day. Where they each used to be eating 1/2 cup in the morning, now they will get 2/3 cup apiece. That should make them happy.
Other than being a bit thinner than he needs to be, Stanley passed his exam with flying colors. Captain's weight is perfect, but the vet felt what could be nodules on the thyroid. There's also one small tooth that might be affected with gingivitis (that old bugaboo again) and need to be removed.
Both of them will have a complete senior blood panel, for which the results should be back about midweek, so if there are any issues going on, we should be able to flag it right away and start taking care of it. But I hope all will continue to be well. The good news is that they're as active as ever, playing and getting The Zoomies regularly. Stanley jumps to the top of the china closet, which is no mean feat, while Captain prefers the top of the refrigerator. I have stopped reprimanding them for this, figuring that if they can still make that kind of leap at age 11, then more power to them. Heck, Captain only recently resumed making jumps like that -- while he was a little butterball, he couldn't launch himself to such heights. Nobody camps out in front of the water bowl, nobody is lethargic or hiding, nobody gives any evidence of pain or discomfort, and there's no sign in the litterbox of any problems going on. So that's about as good of a track record as we can get, going into the annual senior bloodwork.
I'm almost completely packed for tomorrow. The only things left to pack are the ones I will still be using tonight and/or tomorrow morning. My goal is to resume blogging by documenting the coming week, and just keep going from there.
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