The Day I Needed a Clone

I really did not mean to take a three month hiatus from this blog. Things just kind of got crazy the last few months, and I have been busy literally just trying to Survive the Crazy Life. 

During my last post, I shared about our kitty dilemna. I thought you might like a little update. Its been three months, and guess who is still here. We never heard another word from her previous owners.  She has grown quite a bit, and has thrived by eating well and staying warm inside. She spends half her time upstairs, and half downstairs. The other cats are still not sure what to think of her.  Tootsie does not mind her a bit. Reeses,who is usually our most easy going cat still hisses at her at times.  Milo, our male,  has a complicated relationship with her. At times he does not mind her being in the room, and other times he tries to hit her in the face.  When he does that, she goes to the basement door and asks to go downstairs for some alone time.  While she is not fully integrated with the other cats all the time, there has been significant progress. 

Like I mentioned, these last few months have been very crazy.  The last few weeks of November, I was busy crafting up a storm for a craft show.  On Thanksgiving,  Kara lost not one, but two of her mice. which made the holiday hard for her.  After the craft show in early December, there were only a couple of weeks to prepare for Christmas, and all that comes with it. . 

Then there was January... 

The month of January was a hard one.  All three of the kids went through struggles at the same time.  My oldest had a relapse with her anxiety and depression, and really wanted to quit school. She only has one semester to go to until graduation!  Luckily everyone at the school, and close to her were on the same page. Everyone did what they could to help her to stay in school.  Her schedule was changed, and she is now in a work program for a couple of hours each day where she learns job skills, and earns a little bit of money.   The youngest has allergy induced asthma which is caused when she is around perfume and hand sanitizer.  One day in mid January her gym teacher did not allow her to leave class when she was having some trouble breathing. He did not know about her allergy, and since she did not appear that bad, he thought she was exaggerating.  (I had forgot to contact him at the beginning of the quarter!) By the time she got to the office for her emergency inhaler, she had an asthma attack. (I got a nice apology from the teacher when he did find out)  After that day, she started having frequent anxiety attacks, and has missed a lot of school.  It is starting to get better, but she has also been having some problems with her pets which hasn't helped. (more on that later)   My son, while going to school everyday, had fallen behind in all of his homework at the end of the semester. It is not the best time to be missing several assignments, especially when you have trouble doing homework.  (His Aspergers makes him hate to write)  While all this was all going on, I also had to buy a new to me car. The lease on my other car was over the end of January. I do not recommend buying car during one of your most stressful weeks.   We also lost another mouse, which was hard on my youngest.    

That brings us to February, this guy, and why I needed a clone. 

We noticed in January, that Silver was having some issues.  We took him to the vet, but the only Dr they had on staff that knew about hedgehogs was not in while we were there.  The Dr who did see him, thought he might have hurt one of his feet, since he was having some trouble walking. We were given some pain meds, and instructions to bring him back in for Xrays if he did not improve.  He did improve some, so we did not bring him in for the Xrays. The following weekend though, we were concerned about a few other things, and took him back to the vet. Of course that day they scheduled us with the Dr who did not know much about hedgehogs, and the Dr who did, was not in again.  We were still not sure what was going on, and she was concerned since he had lost weight.  She told us to contact our breeder to see what she suggested, because she did not know what else to do.   I contacted the breeder,  but did not hear back from her for several days. It turns out my message did not go through, and since we had so much other stuff going on, time got away from me.  I contacted her again, and this time she got the message.  She suggested another  vet that she really loved that knows a lot about hedgehogs.  She said that she was the only vet, she trusted with hers  I gave the new vet a call, and made the appointment for this past Monday. (she only works 3 days a week) Monday was a day, I am glad that I do not have to repeat very often.  It seemed everything needed to be done that day, and I had to be in four different towns in a matter of a few hours.  I really needed a clone to be in multiple places at the same time.  

At 11:30 am, we had a rescheduled Orthodontist appointment that had been canceled the week before when we got over a foot of snow.  At 1:00 pm I had to go to the town 15 miles to the west to get a new temporary tag for my car.  It was going to expire that day, and my license plate was not ready yet.  It was going to be ready after 4 p.m., but there was no way I could come back and get it until the next day.  Luckily my tag was ready when I got there, and then I stopped at the Post Office to mail a party order.  I got home about 20 minutes before I had to pick up my daughter.  At 3:30 pm the real craziness began.  I drove my son to the town 20 minutes to the east for Robotics. I then had to rush back to our town to pick up my daughter and Silver, for his vet  5:00 pm appointment that was 25 miles to the south. I accidentally got a little lost on the way, but we made it just there just in time.  The appointment lasted a really long time  (1 hour and 45 minutes)  but we found out what is wrong.  Turns out he has a mass on his spine that is affecting his legs.  His other functions are doing well.  We are  spending lots of time holding him, and making sure he eats which she was happy about.  She gave him an anti inflammatory med to see if it would help, and told us to keep doing what we are doing.  The tumor may eventually take away his ability to walk, which makes us sad. Until that happens though, we are going to enjoy him as much as possible. I only had 15 minutes before I had to be back to pick up my son in the town 20 minutes to the east. There was no direct route though, so we had to go back to our town first,  and then to the east to pick him up.  I had texted him several times that I was going to be late, but Robotics is in a building with very spotty cell service, and he did not get the messages.  He was not a happy camper when I finally reached him 30 minutes late. He did apologize later that he got so mad,  when I showed him that I actually did text him at the time I said I would. At the time I reached him, my daughters dance class was about to start. I took him home, we dropped off Silver, and then went to dance class. By the time we got there, we were 40 minutes late, and she was very car sick from all the driving.   I just had her watch class to see if they were going to learn anything new. She was too tired to dance. By the time we made it home, it was almost 9 pm and we were all exhausted.  The next day, they only thing on the schedule was to go back and pick up my license plate.  

That brings us to today.  I promise not to stay away for a long time again. I am sure it will not take too long for something else crazy to happen.  

Update:  Unfortunately, I have a sad update to my post. This morning, just a few hours after sharing this post, Silver passed during the night. As you can imagine, we are quite sad about it  We had hoped to have more time with him.