Pics of The Crazy Guard Cat Candy

SOOOO SWEET!!!

Crazy Guard Cat Candy

The mice thing was getting way out of hand (see post titled Quick)

They were in everything including the bedrooms the dressers and the living room sofa! We tried traps (the bait and trap to release later kind 'cause Karen can't stand the snap noise the other ones make) which worked until they seemed to realize what those were and stopped going near them. Tried the things you plug in that make a noise that you can't hear but is supposed to drive mice away. Still mice in everything and on everything. Sitting in the living room watching TV we could hear them in the kitchen. And this was even after we cleaned out the cupboards and put stuff in plastic containers. When I say they were everywhere I mean EVERYWHERE! Clean the kitchen put everything away and wipe down all the counter and in the morning? Fresh dropping ALL over the place. Can I just say icky?

It was like they called out, "In here guys! Mousy houses and mousy roads and mousy parties and mousy nude nude nudes! Now open: Mousy town, come on down!"

Karen had talked to Nanny before about getting a cat because a friend had one she was trying to find a home for. Nanny said no because the dogs might gang up on a cat and hurt it. The dogs are 4 year old beagles. The dogs are afraid of their own shadows.

So with Nanny in rehab for her hip, Karen decided that with the mice here and Nanny gone it was time to test the dogs eat cat theory. We went to fuzzy friends. We looked in the cages and didn't see one that we really liked that well. So we went into the "free room" were it's basically 4 giant litter boxes and 30 cats just running all over the place. We walked around looking at cats and petting them and after we got to the back of the room and started to head back out we saw this crazy insane freaky cat chasing... nothing. Not even a little tiny piece of pocket lint. Just nothing. Going totally berserk over nothing, just making her own fun. I thought 'that is one spazzed out crazy cat!'

Karen rubbed Crazy Cat's head and then went to the desk to ask about which ones got along with dogs and all that.

I talked to the Crazy Cat. I said "watcha doin Crazy Cat?" and Crazy Cat came running over to me and rubbed on my ankles. So I bent over and scratched Crazy Cat's ears and she seemed to like that so I tried picking her up. Crazy Cat snuggled in my arms and immediately rolled over and showed me her belly. Karen got back and held Crazy Cat and got snuggled and shown the belly too. In the words of Ellen DeGeneres, "Ya gotta reward that!" So we took Crazy Cat home.

They were calling her Priscilla. She is 1 and a half and has had kittens but is now fixed.

After 2 hours we settled on calling her Candy because she is SO sweet. She loves to snuggle and lives to show you her belly for a tummy rub. She is though, as I first thought, crazy. But we figure that's good cause she has lots of mice casing energy. She rips through the house casing whatever. Sometimes a toy, sometimes a dog, sometimes nothing.

She hasn't had to case any mice though because from the day we got her we have had no new mice evidence except one lone little dropping one night. It's like they smelled cat ran from the house screaming "Run for your lives! Mousy town is closed!"

As far as the dogs? They are indeed, afraid of the cat. Candy never even gave the dogs a glance. They hid in the corner while she explored. Her favorite game now is to bat at their noses. Not with claws out or anything, it's just her paws and their response is to run away.

When they try to sniff her, she bats at them and they run away.

She lies in wait for them to come around the corner, then jumps out and she bats at them and they run away.

When the dogs go outside she guards the doggy door from the inside, waiting for them to try to come in and then she bats at them and they run away.

She guards my bed at night, 'cause the dogs try to get in bed too, and she bats at them and they run away.

I give you: The Crazy Guard Cat Candy!

Nanny

Well Crap! I just spend 20 minutes typing a post only to have IE freeze up on me and lost the whole thing. Oh well, I'm over it.

So Nanny's fall: this is one of many, the fourth resulting in a break. This time it's her right hip. Before it has been her tail bone, left hip and pelvic ring. The fall that broke her pelvic ring broke it in three places. After each of these prior breaks she spent a few days in the hospital before being sent to a nursing home for rehab for about 6 weeks. All of this BTW in the last 3 years. Also in that time she has lost a drastic amount of weight. She is 5' 7" and now weighs 103.4 pounds. She won't eat - Karen has tried all of Nanny's favorites and she only ever eats a few bites of anything. They have her on meds now that are normally for cancer patients to help her appetite.

After this break however, they saw fit to send her home directly from the hospital after only one night. She was unable to walk at all or even stand with help. She had to be lifted from the wheelchair or bed onto a potty chair. Karen and I did that with no complaint except that it was causing her pain and we didn't understand why this didn't merit rehab. ***Not to mention we were pissed at the hospital for bringing her downstairs to Karen's minivan to go home - with no pants! She had a little blanket on her lap but when the nurse picked her up out of the wheelchair to get her in the van the little blanket fell down and she was NAKED from the waist down on a cold windy day at the main entrance to the hospital in front of many people coming and going. --- Yep, I said naked from the waist down - don't even get me started about that.

After one week at home and home aids and nurses visiting from time to time she had gotten worse. While one of the aids was helping her wash Nanny's feet swelled (a lot!) and turned blue. Back to the hospital she went and a few days later, into rehab she went.

It has been almost 5 weeks since she started rehab and she has made almost no progress. The other times it was only about a week before they had her up and walking the halls (with a walker and a PT walking along with her) during her therapy sessions. By the time 5 weeks rolled around it was like "okay, i think she can go home now, she's moving better than before the fall!" This time at past 4 weeks and she still can't take more than 1 step, MAYBE 2 if she's feeling frisky.

Also, before this fall she had started over the last couple of years to have some confusion here and there but for the most part the woman was sharp as a tack. Especially considering she is 79 years old. But since this last fall she is having more and more confusion. It seems that there are more "off" days than good ones now.

Things like asking about pets that died 30 years or more ago. And when her son-in-law asked if she wanted him to call to get the yard guy to come out to the house she told him to "wait until George gets home and talk to him about it." -George was her husband and he died in 1983.

Day before yesterday we were visiting and she asked how Pam was (her daughter, Karen's mother, who BTW had a heart attack less than two weeks ago but is home now and doing okay)
Karen,"Mother's doing okay she called me this morning and she's feeling much better."
Nanny, "Called from where?"
Karen,"From her house, she went home three days ago member?"
Nanny "What house?"
Karen "Mother's house, Nanny. You know, the trailer house?"
Nanny "I thought they gave that up?"

They have been living in that house for years. When Karen asked what she meant Nanny shook her head, shrugged her shoulders and said "never mind I'm thinking of something else."

She also has in the last 6 weeks gotten to where no matter how we or the aids or nurses get her seated in her wheelchair, bed, or recliner (we took it to the nursing home so she'd be more comfortable) within a few minutes she is slumped over to her right side. She doesn't notice when this happens.

At first when we told the nurses the confusion had gotten way worse they said not to worry it was just from the surgery (after the second trip the er they decided it was a good idea after all) and that older people take longer to rid they bodies of the anesthesia but after this long that is so not even possible. They are going to run some evals this week for psych and nerve stuff and see if they can't figure out what's going on.

Hopefully they will be able to do something for her.