MissMeliss: Escribition

It’s a cold gray day here in Texas, and I needed something cheery, so I put on last year’s Christmas mix cd that I made, an entire cd of women singing Christmas songs, and forwarded to this lovely non-soprano, belty version of O Holy Night. I was singing along, rocking the proverbial rafters, waiting for my tea kettle to commence whistling, when a flash of color outside caught my eye.

I turned toward it, and was caught, breathless, watching a pair of cardinals feeding from the tray of wild bird food we keep on the picnic table (with a smaller table positioned over it as a concession to weather. The female was eating, the male, in his crimson glory, was perched on the top table, guarding her and waiting his turn.

I watched at the window, and he turned as if he could see through the glass and mesh and see me. For a heart-beat it seemed as if we communicated, and then the female left, and he moved down to the food, sampled a few seeds, looked toward me once more, nodded his little bird head, and disappeared.

Only after that did I think, “Damn, I should have grabbed the camera.”

… and it’s already nearly 90 degrees. Wake me up when summer ends, please?

In truth, this summer’s been pretty mild, and it isn’t even all that humid, really. But I wish it would rain again. Soon. I like rain. I especially like the way it rains every day for about 20 minutes in places like Colorado, almost as if someone’s scheduled a daily downpour.

This Friday is my birthday.
I’ll be 37.
I don’t feel that old.
But I also don’t see the point in lying about my age.

The dogs and I just got back from morning walkies. Cleo has very thick soft fur and does not do well in the heat. This means that she stops pulling after half a block. Zorro, despite his medical issues, is speedy and spirited, bounding over tiny rocks as if they were huge boulders, jumping onto curbs, and landing weightlessly in the grass, and walking with his tail curled happily over his back and his ears alert for anything and everything we might encounter.

As for me, I’m hot, and sticky, and so I shall end this.
Shower. Coffee. Work.

My house has been adopted by an orange tabby cat. It’s a pretty cat, scrawny, the way street cats are, but the fur looks healthy, if a tad dirty, and it’s been sleeping on our front porch for about three weeks now, on and off. Today, when the porch got too hot, it was underneath the shrubbery against the foundation of the house, um…cat-napping.

This, of course, has kicked Miss Cleo into “Queen of the House and Protector of All She Surveys” mode, because she’s part Staffie, and thinks any movement beyond the doors is an attack upon herself. She sits inside the door with her black nose pressed against the glass making low, threatening growly sounds, almost like she’s percolating.

The cat deigns to raise its head every so often, then goes back to sleep.

This makes Miss Cleo even more pissed off. Kitty should be scared, dammit, she growls. Then she comes to me for attention whining abut how Kitty won’t run away when she growls.

I thank her for her diligence, pat her on the head, and ask her where her chewy is. She dutifully trots off to find her chew-stick, and this keeps her occupied for an hour or so.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

It’s a bit past two in the morning, and my eyelids are heavy, but I’m not quite ready to turn out the light. I am writing in bed, where the words flow more freely than anywhere else, except in the bath, though I never write there, I just have small thinking sessions.

As I write this, Fuzzy is upstairs playing computer games and Miss Cleo is flopped out between the edges of the covers, and the edge of Fuzzy’s pillow, with her nose under the comforter and one paw on top of it. She isn’t snoring yet, though she does. Low, doggy snores that sound as furry as her wriggly black and white and pink body is. Soft. She’s so soft, like a plush toy. She looks like one, when she’s all flat and asleep.

Zorro is not sleeping, and though I have the covers drawn up to my chest, almost, and he is on top of them, he is pressed tightly against my right thigh, and I can feel his head bobbing as he licks his crossed paws. Like cats, chihuahuas are obsessive about grooming themselves. Unlike most other dogs, chihuahuas have no body odor. In fact, this morning Zorro smelled like marshmallows and cinnamon, which is odd, since I haven’t used the latter in a while, and we don’t have the former in the house. When I turn out the light, he will walk to the end of the bed, around my feet, and back up, where he will curl up against my left side, nestling into the curve of my arm. He does not like to sleep between us - we humans move around too much.

Zorro had a tough morning. We took him to the vet who confirmed that yes, he has a tooth root abscess. He tried to pull the tooth (with a local), but our boy dog wouldn’t cooperate. He’s usually good at the vet, but I can’t blame him - I find it difficult to sit still when a dentist is going after my teeth, too. The vet assured us that while a ruptured abscess would be gross, and would require cleaning/disinfecting, it won’t kill the dog. This is good, as we were worried about his, having heard horror stories. He also said that the the tooth has to come out or this will happen again, and that it will require general anesthesia. We expected this. We were not expecting to be told that this could not happen without a full cardio workup ($500) because Zorro’s stage three heart murmur is now a four-and-a-half to five (on a scale of six). Frankly, I think it’s stupid, as having a picture of his heart will not reduce the risk one iota, but I really wasn’t in the mood to argue. I AM asking a vet-friend who no longer practices, but teaches, for a second opinion.

His last dental cost $500. I don’t have a spare thousand lying around to spend on Zorro right now.

So the plan, for the moment, is to give him his course of antibiotics and pain meds, watch the abscess, and clean/disinfect if it ruptures. A rupture MAY push the tooth out, or it may fall out (he lost the same tooth on the other side earlier this year, with no warning - we simply found a dog tooth on the floor one morning). In a couple weeks, when cash flow is better, and if my vet-friend supports the decision, we’ll do the cardio stuff. Zorro’s showing no symptoms right now - no coughing, no energy loss (he’s more energetic than ever), no struggling to breathe. These are all good things.

I’d feel more comfortable about all of this if I liked my vet more. I don’t dislike him. I just don’t have a connection with him. I don’t believe he has a vested interest in my dog’s well-being, and this worries me.

On the other hand, I love Zorro. I love Miss Cleo as well, but Zorro…Zorro’s special. He always knows when I don’t feel well, and stays near by. He growls at possums that are twice his size, and tries to bait the Rottie across the fence. When I have cramps, he curls up against my lower back, and if I make popcorn he goes through his entire repertoire of tricks just to get a piece while it’s still hot. He’s a very sweet dog, and we rescued him from the streets.

He’s also at least ten, and possibly older. Somewhere between eleven and thirteen, and while chihuahuas can live to fifteen or eighteen years old, Zorro’s already been through severe epilepsy (cluster grand mal seizures, weekly for over a year) and bounced back from it. So chances are even if he’s as young as we think he his, he’s not as resilient as we want him to be.

It’s taken me almost 20 minutes to write this. I’m tired, and itchy, and post-show wired-ness has dissipated, so I think I shall switch off the computer, and the light, and get some sleep.

Especially since Zorro is looking at me with big brown eyes, and Miss Cleo has started snoring, and somehow it feels as if this year, August really does have “dog days,” even if it IS my birthday month.

Zorro Dog isn’t feeling well today, and I’m worried about him. He’s got some swelling under his left eye, and in dogs - especially in small dogs - such swelling is generally related to an abscess in the third or fourth pre-molar. Because chihuahuas have such small heads, their teeth are much closer to their brains than say, those of a rottie or lab, so if the abscess bursts it can lead to brain infection and death. (Actually, even if it doesn’t burst infection is a serious issue - dogs can lose eyes as well as teeth from stuff like this.)

Dental issues are fairly common in toy breeds. Because their mouths are so small, getting a toothbrush in there for regular cleanings is a challange.

Then there’s Zorro’s medical history. My plucky little street survivor has a history of ideopathic epilepsy, and while he hasn’t had a grand mal seizure since 2002, he did have an “absence” seizure just last Tuesday, during a storm.

Oh, and let’s not forget that he’s got a stage three heart murmur.

So, we are stressing - I am stressing - over the fact that we can’t bring him in until Saturday, and I don’t want to wait that long, and this is also going to be horribly expensive - his last trip to the doggie dentist was around $500 - and he’s ten, so he’s a senior dog, which has its own issues.

We’ve made the “no extraordinary measures” decision already, and I’m probably worrying over nothing, but it’s upset the entire tone of my day.

It was nearly five pm before I sat down to lunch this afternoon, and though the sky had been hazy all day, the clouds were thickening. Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed outside my window as I sipped coffee and nibbled on tabouleh with tomatoes and cucumbers, but no rain fell.

Unable to focus on work because the dogs were circling my feet demanding attention and treats, I gave up, and escorted them to the kitchen. I let them out into the back yard, finished my coffee, and then prepared their dinner. Calling them in at this time of day is always easy. “Dinner!” I yell, and two small furry animals come running giddly toward me.

While they ate, I slipped outside to check the mail. No bills. A dvd from Blockbuster. It’s all good. But they were waiting for me when I came back in, and demanding a walk. It still wasn’t raining, so I said, “Okay - walkies!”

Rain began to fall as soon as we reached the corner, but we kept going. Why? Because it was one of those summer rainfalls that can be so refreshing. The air was cool and alive, they were anxious to move. We took the long loop, up around the park, over two blocks, down the long block home. We arrived home damp and happy, all of us.

But in the middle of the walk, there was a brief downpour. I stopped under one of our neighborhood trees, and barely got wet, but the dogs took it as a personal attack, and for three minutes I smiled goofily while they stood barking in the rain.

We never did stop in Marshalltown, IA, despite the offer of a free place to crash and a game of Scotland Yard against Flavia the Swiss foreign exchange student, opting instead to spend Wednesday evening curled up on the soft comfy couches at Ben and Julia’s cuddling their beagles and chatting with Ben (as Jules was out of town for work).

It was relaxing, but there were silly moments, and it’s good to have friends you share in-jokes with, and who can invite themselves into your home, just as you invited yourself into theirs.

(Speaking of the beagles, Molly and Daisy are cuter than I ever imagined, and while they completely suck at coming when called, they do get in their kennel when told, so it’s all good. I did note, however, that calling “Beagles!” worked better than either name.)

In any case, we left Minneapolis around 10 yesterday morning, stopped at Caribou Coffee, and then finally crashed for the night at a faded but functional Ramada in Oklahoma City. We’re so close to home we can taste it, but it was late, and we were tired and crabby, and we’re about to go eat free food.

The plan is to retrieve the dogs from the vet, and then go home and sleep for a long long long long time.

ATTN: CARYNSILVER: Have fallen in love with the game “Valley of the Pharoahs” do you know it?