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Beautiful dreamer

Because her fans demand it, a few shots from Tiny's latest fur fashion portfolio. (Tuck Willis photo)

She had to spend the whole day yesterday at the vet having a Blood Glucose Curve, where they draw blood and check glucose level every two hours. Tiny was not amused. Levels up and down. Adjusting insulin dosage for suitable long term.

Tuck was amused with our tales of stabbing ourselves trying to administer the dose. Nobody said it was going to be easy. Then, too, there's the twice-daily administration of Flovent by AeroKat inhaler. Incoherence sets in. And yet it's not a problem.

90 candles make a lovely light

Just another day on the couch for Goompa's Purrky yesterday, but we had our eye on a bigger prize, our pater familias's 90th birthday.

We three children, two spouses and four grandchildren drove and flew in from points south and west to toast the Energizer Bunny at his Down East homestead, Camelot-by-the-Sea.

Formal posing for pictures? Never our thing, as we're totally into beauty in unexpected places, snapping the shutter early and often before and after formal "say cheese" set-ups to capture Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment."

Ellen's Beef Strogie was to die for, a transcendent reincarnation of our mother's signature dish with salted butter and bouillon cubes front and center. VERY politically incorrect. She's promised to write it all down so we can publish here in our Cold Turkey Cookbook in the "Full of Calories and Loving It" section.

"Just had a nice chat with Dad," imails our sis this evening:

She: He did, indeed, enjoy his birthday celebration and was totally delighted that all four grandchildren were able to attend. He reports that the pumpkin muffins were so good that you had TWO!

We: Yes. Plus I took some home. Delicious!

She: I know that I took a Toll House Cookie, just to be polite, and THEN … I wanted to scarf down the whole container, but retrained myself.

We: Retrained yourself? Love it. You'd have to.

She: I love how all four grandchildren are great cooks. Whatever it took, and I'm sure that Mummy had a lot to do with it … my boys LOVE to cook. They are not slugs on the couch, watching football. They watch some football, then go whip up a meal. AND they do laundry and know how to iron. I think being a sluggard has helped me to raise capable children.

Update: Modulator's Friday Ark #270 now boarding.

"Other than a little hissing, she's a pretty easy cat"

In medical news,Tiny was diagnosed with diabetes on Tuesday and is responding well to insulin injections (twice a day following meals). You start with a low dose, vet checks glucose level periodically, and then you adjust as indicated. Symptoms — drinking excessive amounts of water, lots of urine in litter box, restlessness, losing weight — had developed in the last month or two and seem to be subsiding a bit already since we started injections yesterday afternoon. Because it was apparently caught early — due to our keeping systematic observational notes to guide treatment of Tiny's life-long asthmatic condition — she may be able to achieve remission, possibly within 4-6 weeks say the docs, but we'll have to see. A day at a time.

"She has a good heart, said Dr. Rossi of The Animal Ultrasound Clinic" in Salem, and "other than a little hissing, she's a pretty easy cat." The clinic has state-of-the-art equipment, identical to that used in leading hospitals for humans. Only difference is that TAUC's gets clogged with fur from time to time. We got to sit alongside the proceedings and watch the screen as the doc proceeded. Nerve-wracking but fascinating. "It looks like a weather chart," we noted, and in fact medical imaging involves the same Doppler effect, with sound waves bouncing off red blood cells instead of clouds. Tiny had to wear a wide conic collar and did, indeed, hiss the entire time.

X-rays and a battery of blood and urine tests through our local vet, together with the abdominal sonogram and echocardiogram referenced above, ruled out lots of frightening possibilities her symptoms might have presaged. Now the hard work begins, and indeed this very afternoon our first test. Just as we were about to jab the loose skin at the nape of her neck with the tiny syringe needle, she bolted. We jabbed ourselves with the needle, grabbed Tiny and tried jabbing her again. She bolted again and bent the needle. Not sure whether she got her 1U dose, but thanks to the vet's mini-tutorial and hand-out, we knew not to refill the syringe: "The danger is in insulin overdose, not short-term underdose." We'll just have to wait 12 hours and try again following breakfast. Gotta work on our bedside manner.

Earl Grey could not be reached for comment.

Note: Blogfriend Gayle Miller's golden boy Sam the Wonder Cat was recently diagnosed with diabetes and is doing fine. We invite Gayle and other fans of Tiny's to share war stories in the comments.

Update: Wonderful stuff in the comments: good wishes, good advice, helpful links and a sparkling emerald of a limerick from Elisson, Tiny's Poet Laureate:

Earl Grey dropped on by for a clowder
But Tiny was taking a powder:
An insulin shot
That will, like as not
Have her miaowing, before long, the louder!

Update II: More miaowing, woofing and such at Modulator's Friday Ark #269.

Update III, Friday morning: "This is very good," says local vet Dr. Beale re Tiny's latest blood glucose reading. Original=348=high. This morning=271=considered "under control," within 100-300 range. Will go next Friday for glucose curve, where she'll stay at the vet's all day so they can take a reading every two hours. Tiny will not be amused.

"The media treat it like a case of non-denominational shoplifting"

As temperatures hovered in the low thirties early morning, Tiny kept warm atop the kitchen counter register while Cat Whisperer Tuck murmured sweet nothings.

"Twitter makes it almost impossible to surprise people with breaking news because they all already know about it," twitters Patrick Ruffini. That's how events unfolded in the Fort Hood shooting yesterday as early error-laced reports and theories gave way, in waves, to the facts ma'am, just the facts. It was duly noted by Mark Steyn that the usual suspects on the left quickly lockstepped into politically-correct, see-no-evil mode:

Andy, you're right that there's something deeply weird about the media's instinctive avoidance of the M-word or the T-word and the careless abandon with which they speculate about "post-traumatic stress disorder."

Better to blame "man-caused disasters" on a US-foreign-policy-induced psychological affliction beyond the victim's perpetrator's control than call a spade a spade. In the light of day today, Michelle Malkin and Ralph Peters win top honors for best/most concise analyses of what's really going on behind the curtain. Malkin:

Political correctness is the handmaiden of terror.

Peters:

On Thursday afternoon, a radicalized Muslim US Army officer shouting "Allahu Akbar!" committed the worst act of terror on American soil since 9/11. And no one wants to call it an act of terror or associate it with Islam.

What cowards we are. Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Ft. Hood as surely as the Islamist gunman did. And the media treat it like a case of non-denominational shoplifting.

The Gramscian march through the institutions has well prepared susceptible self-loathing citizens of the once Shining City Upon a Hill to bow down in dhimmitude to creeping militant Islamicism.

Update: Danny Boy links.

Update II: Stoutcat links with "An Unsustainable Narrative."

Assimilating with panache

"I am a lion," oldest sister of the family next door explained as she and her siblings approached our front porch late afternoon on this Halloween Night, transmogrifying a Muslim headscarf into the golden mane of the King of the Jungle. Middle sister was also a cat, more of the domestic variety. They have a couple of pet cats at home across the yard and often wave and chat with us when we're out wrangling Tiny.

The sisters had learned how to apply the striking cat make-up at a neighborhood festival across the Creek in East Boston last summer. Baby sister (right) may or may not have been a tiger (note striped sleeves). Lots of cat-themed fabrics. Very imaginative costuming. They brought a little package of cat toys as a hostess gift for Tiny.

"We wanted to scare you," they teased. We may not have been frightened, but as far as Tiny was concerned, it was a terrorist attack. Especially on the part of baby sister, who pursued her across the yard, into the house and up the stairs for elusive petting opportunities. We hadn't had trick-or-treaters for years since the neighborhood kids had grown up, moved away and had kids of their own. Delightful to see the latest wave of immigrants assimilating with such panache — playing with elements of their native culture — to this all-American autumn ritual.

Update: More faunal delights at Modulator's Friday Ark, now boarding.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation*

"Call me Chinese. I mean they practically own us anyway," quips Glenn Beck. Tiny is not amused.

Update: All animals all the time at Modulator's Friday Ark #267, now boarding.

*Blog title is excerpt from T.S. Eliot's "The Naming of Cats."

So easy to love

Earl Grey, majestic lord of all he surveys.

Putty in Tiny's paws.

Seductive.

Voluptuous.

Wary of entering the inner sanctum.

"Now that President Obama has made it safe to hate Fox"

Tiny's main squeeze Earl Grey stopped by early morning for a nip. After we suggested the feral fellow not enter the house, he scurried into Tiny's hosta blind to reconnoiter before heading off for parts unknown.

"Obama has authorized 40,000 more troops to fight Fox News" deadpans Jay Leno in his latest monologue — available for your viewing pleasure at Weasel Zippers (via Infidels Are Cool) — playing off the Leader of the Free World's recent full frontal assault on Fox News as Faux News," side by side with the President's deeply demoralizing dithering over when/whether to send in the Afghanistan reinforcements requested by his generals. Then comes Claudia Rosett with the deliciously headlined "First they came for Fox News …" [Wish we'd thought of that. Actually, we did, but like President Obama, we dithered so she beat us to the punch]:

Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was hammering home the same message, that Fox is "not a news organization so much as it has a perspective,” and urging “More importantly is not have [sic] the CNNs and the others in the world basically be led in following Fox, as if what they’re trying to do is a legitimate news organization …

 

Caption from our March 3, 2009 "Obama's sledging strategy of intimidation": “I do think he's an intellectual force, which is why the Republicans pay such attention to him," Rahm Emanuel told CBS News's Bob Schieffer on Sunday in a rare moment of truthfulness before spinning off to repeat the big lie that Rush wants Obama the President of the United States — as opposed to Obama's socialist agenda, the real object of Limbaugh's critique — to fail.

We've had Rahm "Toes" Emanuel's number from early on when he showed his cards:

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel famously said, explaining "What I mean by that, it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do."

As we wrote back in April in our post "Roll over, George Washington, and tell Ben Franklin the news":

You remember Emanuel's quotable quote about fooling all of the people some of the time. As we wrote in our recent appreciation of Roger L. Simon, "Part of my leftism was a sales pitch," re Rahm Emanuel's conscience-free self-revelation:

Translation: Take the money and run when people are preoccupied, and you can get away with spending it in ways they would never agree to were they paying attention.

A brief encounter over catnip sets Tiny's heart aflame.

Enter center stage ABC's White House Correspondent Jake Tapper, who had the cojones to challenge Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to explain the Fox attacks:

Tapper: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one.

Gibbs: You and I should watch sometime around 9 o’clock [Hannity] tonight. Or 5 o’clock [Glenn Beck] this afternoon.

Tapper: I’m not talking about their opinion programming or issues you have with certain reports. I’m talking about saying thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a “news organization” — why is that appropriate for the White House to say.

Gibbs: That’s our opinion.

We loved Fox & Friends anchors' comments this morning:

Steve Doocy: Jake Tapper is a great reporter, who asked Robert Gibbs a lot of fair and balanced questions.

Gretchen Carlson: If I were Jake Tapper's boss, I'd give him a raise.

But even as Jake Tapper speaks truth to power:

One of MSNBC's Keith Olberman's guests last night snickered "Now that President Obama has made it safe to hate Fox ..."

Perpetual adolescence, the legacy of the the Gramscian infiltration.

Update: Way cool: Karl Rove tells Hannity "I have to compliment Jake Tapper of ABC News."

Update: We have to compliment Modulator for Friday Ark #266, now boarding.

That you do so well

Being the object of a voodoo-doll puncturing. It's remarkably effective. Could we sue for physical deterioration caused by mental anguish?

Within striking distance of the jaws

Squirrels on the lawn, skunks in the border garden, raccoon kits clinging to the Silver Maple in the predawn, sparrows flocking in the lilac bush out front on a breezy afternoon.

These crisp autumn days in Chelsea-by-the-Sea were made to please a puddy as local fauna show their cute little faces within striking distance of the jaws.

We missed Cartier-Bresson's "Decisive Moment" as a pair of adorable raccoon youngsters, clinging to the lower trunk of the Silver Maple right outside the back door, peered at us, all eyes early morning. By the time we grabbed our camera, they were scurrying upwards to parts unknown.

Update: More tooth and claw at Modulator's Friday Ark #265, now boarding.