Geeky Parents

We were speculating at bedtime how Neal Stephenson would have written The Tale of Pigling Bland, since (being geeky parents) we were reading both Beatrix Potter and Anathem at bedtime. *

–It would have been even longer! (That publisher’s blub doesn’t mention that Anathem is more than 900 pages long.)

–There would be a long expository digression about the history of the Market.

–And the agricultural economy. And the pigs’ place in it!

–Somewhere in the story, he would fit in a didactic bit about computer programming or information theory.

Having read about half of the novel (plus all of his others) I would add:

–The female character would be capable and tough yet sensitive, and would probably rescue Pigling rather than vice-versa. (Unless she were an evil literature professor or administrator).

*Since we started reading bedtime stories when he was a newborn who couldn’t really tell the difference, we used to read aloud mostly from Lord of the Rings or whatever we were working on at the time, and then a little bit of baby stories. The ratio has reversed now that Zebediah has his own book preferences.

Your Cloud, My Silver Lining

Since I moved to The Republic of X, my favorite possible words in a weather forecast are “cold front,”* but I feel a little guilty that the most recent one is Ike-related.  While other people are dealing with power outages or drowning cities, I get to enjoy turning off the air conditioning and opening the windows.

*The most depressing forecast is “no more cold fronts until September.”

Rest in Peace, Goddess

The Goddess Cat died last night. I hope it was in her sleep, but I am not sure, because we were asleep.

She was nineteen years old. Mr. Luo just turned forty. They had been together almost half of his life. And all of Zebediah’s life, for that matter.

We’ve known for a couple of years that her kidneys were failing. We’ve been injecting her with subcutaneous fluids since then, though not always as regularly as we should have.

This spring at her regular exam, we had the discussion with the vet about the cost and benefit of tests and interventions. We all agreed that it was more important to keep her comfortable than to sedate her for exams or shots and so on.

In the past few months, she has spent a lot of time resting in the easy chair. She would occasionally come to sit on our stomachs or sides while we were sleeping, but nothing like the old days.

Recently, her vomiting seemed to be worse, and we debated taking her back to the vet. We didn’t want to stress her unnecessarily, but in the past, we felt guilty when it turned out a spate of vomiting wasn’t the old problem (blood sugar) but a new one (the kidney failure).  Finally, Thursday afternoon we took her over.

On the one hand, we worried we had waited too long, but on the other hand, the visit was too hard on her.   She didn’t yowl like she usually does when put in the carrier. She peed in the carrier, which she had never done in the time I’d known her. The vet was shocked by how much weight she had lost–she was down to 4.1 pounds. She didn’t fight back when the vet examined her or when they drew blood. The vet said we should inject her with fluids twice a week instead of once.

After we got home, she was listless and it seemed she was having difficulty walking. She didn’t want to be in her chair. We thought she might just be recovering from the blood draw, so we waited until Friday night to give her an injection. She spent a lot of the day laying on the floor of the bathroom. The vet called and told my husband that the problem was still her kidneys, which were 75%  impaired. She didn’t protest the injection at all. Afterwards, she just lay on the floor, until I tried to pet her, and she got up and dragged herself away from me. She could barely walk. We decided that if she didn’t move before he went to bed, my husband would carry her back to the bathroom, where her food, water, and litter box were, and where she could lie on the rug if she wanted to.

When I went to feed her this morning, she was dead.

So, the last thing we did to her was subject her to the saline injection, but if we hadn’t, we’d be thinking that dehydration did her in because we didn’t do the injection.

My husband wanted to bury her and have a funeral, so we dug a hole in our backyard for her and and then got together to bury her and talk about our memories of her.

I am not sure what Zebediah thought of it.