smacky and bucky

Our girl cat Madeline jumped on the counter Tuesday night and peed all over it. Okay, WTF? If she was a little person, I'd think it was a plea for attention, but she's a cat (and a spoiled one, not a neglected one) so instead I figured this would be a good time to take both cats to the vet. Better to have them get a clean bill of health now than after the human baby comes and they actually do start to feel neglected. I put them both in the carrier (yep, the ride together. They hate riding in the car, but they complain about it less if they're in the same carrier, we discovered) and went to the vet's.

Buzz got called fat but happy (and healthy, if a bit pudge). He had his ears cleaned and I got some drops to use on them if they look waxy inside.

Maddie was checked out for any kidney issues, and they took blood and gave me a cat urine collection kit, consisting of small gray plastic beads, a large plastic bag, and a twist tie. The vet explained I had three choices: take the kit and isolate this cat from the other in order to get a urine sample, bring the cat back tomorrow morning and drop her off for the day, or allow them to collect the urine from her bladder with a needle (which could get contaminated with blood and/or lead to a bladder infection in the cat).

Proving how much I love this cat (and didn't want to drive to the vet's the next morning) I took the kit and headed home.

We have a second smaller litter box we put out when we'll be gone a few days so the cats have a second clean place to go. I poured in a little clean litter, covered the litter with the clear plastic bag, and poured the plastic pellets on top of that. Then I closed her in the baby's room with the box, a bowl of water, and a magazine (ha). I put a towel down outside the door to cover the small gap so she and the dog wouldn't try to talk to each other the entire time (and Laura said the cat could then smoke pot, so there's that too), and didn't disturb her for two hours.

At 4:30 I opened the door a crack and discovered my plan had worked (you can figure out what that means). I closed up that bag with the beads and urine in it, tied it off, and put that bag inside a ziploc bag so it wouldn't leak. Then I drove a bag of cat urine to back to the vet's office.

I want to avoid attributing too many human emotions to the cats, but both cats slept on the bed with us last night (usually it's one or neither), so I think Maddie is glad to have gotten this examined (or she's relieved not to be at the vet's any longer).

And, oh yeah, the due date for the baby is now 12 DAYS (if not sooner).

I have an appointment for Saturday at noon to have the county fire department confirm I installed the car seat correctly (either confirming I am a genius or an idiot).

Saturday is also Glen Beck's lame-ass rally on the mall. It's officially being touted as a nonpartisan salute to the troops, but c'mon. Sarah Palin is talking there, and the tea party is having a national conference that weekend in DC. You know what that means? Yep, my father-in-law will be in town this weekend, but we won't see him, because he doesn't want us to know he's attending that and we don't want to spend the weekend around him pointedly not talking about why he's in town, so we're all pretending we don't know he's going to be minutes from our house and he's staying in a hotel somewhere. And we're avoiding downtown DC completely.