We have a new cat in the house. Her name is Aughra NoNo OneEye Duncan. She came from the Goderich SPCA. She is beautifully ugly and we love her already. She is a persian with a nose so flat it’s practically concave. She has a gooey eye, like NoNo GooEyes Duncan and her other eye was so gooey it had to be removed. She is tremendously sweet. Just a floppy furball.
Please, please, PLEASE. If you are thinking about adding a new animal to your family, check out shelters and rescues. A common response to getting shelter pets is that they don’t want somone else’s problem. But you know what? The animal itself often has very little to do with the owner needing to surrender. It’s often that the owner moves, or divorces, or has a new baby. The animal in question is a totally cool, loving little beastie, who needs a new totally cool loving home. PETFINDER is a great place to look if you are looking for a little love, or looking to build an army of smashed face cats.
Without further fuss, meet Aughra.
Made a whack of cheese on Tuesday, in an approved kitchen. (Which has a flat electric plate stove – the HORROR). The chevre worked out, but all four gallons of feta are ruined as the uneven cooking surface (by “flat” I should have said “warped”) burnt a couple of spots of milk and now the whole lot tastes like the bottom of my Birkenstock. Lovely. Looks great. Perfect consistency. Our best yet. But. Tastes like burnt rubber. And is therefore compost. We’ll be at the Saturday morning market at Conaught Park in Kincardine with chevres with various herbs and spices and St.Maure, a mouldy delight.
Additional annoyances as of late include my broken Bodum (my caffeine needs have escalated); Ed My Nightmare Neighbour decelerating to a crawl every time he drives past our house and sees we’re outside (subtle, subtle); and our (lack of) health care.
Mags has had a terrible cough for two months. (So has Scott). She was diagnosed with pneumonia, and treated with antibiotic injections. She was better, briefly. We bought a HEPA filter for the bedroom and it worked, briefly. At least it made a dent in her gooey night breathing. But the crazy cough remained. Since it takes four months to get in to see our GP, I caved and drove to the ER first thing Monday morning. Every seat was taken, so we walked out. (Waiting 6+ hours in a germ filled ER is not gonna make my Meeps better). So we walked over to the GPs office and tried to get an appointment in person, with the nurse. (Since you don’t have a hope in hell of getting one via telephone with the people who, you know, MAKE APPOINTMENTS…you have to stage a sit in). We got an appointment for the next day, she gave me one of those appointments that techinically doesn’t exist.
My GP comes in and asks how her follow-up Xray went, he sees a note that he’d ordered one, since he thought the ABX she was on wouldn’t be enough. We got NO CALL about that. (ARE YOU EFF-ING SERIOUS). So he orders another one. (Highlight of my day in between cheesemaking, strapping my baby with her hands over her head into a plastic tube and making her cry for a good picture). She STILL HAS pneumonia. Instead of prescribing an antibiotic that she needs to take a significant quantity of 3x a day (an impossibility, she barfs it all up and therefore winds up with shots) he gives us one that is only a tiny amount once a day (how come the first doc didn’t do this?!) But we can’t get it in her on our first attempt and use up the entire five day supply in one sitting. I manage to get the GPs nurse on the phone. She says she’s going to call in the Rx to the pharmacy. I go to the pharmacy to get it. The pharmacy tells me that since he had remembered filling the same Rx the day before, he called the nurse to double check and she told him it must have been a mistake. So he trashed it. Head? Meet Desk.
I know our system is stressed to the max. We have an intense doctor shortage here. We don’t use the medical system often, but when we do we know not to expect efficency, but at least a minimum level of COMPETENCY. If my little girl has lung damage from the ridiculous handling of her illness, I am going to be seriously upset.
My gorgeous kiddos playing on their nice locally made ride-on toy together. Check out our new long-horn cow rug from a neighbour (Kincardinites, our neighbour is Murray Johnston, the chap with the delicious pastured long horns, who we got a giant skull from, and who we buy everything from tasty steaks to outta-this-world, no-nastiness hotdogs). We like to joke it’s the skin from a 1,800 pound pitbull, as it’s a lovely brindle.
Today I cannot forget to:
-return and pick up library books
-mail cheque for Scott’s ambulance ride
-deliver cheque to neighbour for yard work
-pick up bread from neighbour
-fill out farm GST
We seriously need to build rockets to send psycho neighbors to outerspace.
The new cat’s name is perfect!
I can’t believe that you have a shortage of doctors in Canada! All our young South African doctors go straight TO Canada after completing their studies. I hope young Meeps makes a speedy and full recovery! Soon!
i agree, perfect name for the cat! and wow, that rug looks exactly like our new (adopted) boxer’s fur!
hope meeps gets better soon. what an ordeal!
Jaime – yes, yes we do.
Ro – they may come to Canada, but they don’t come to the country.
Rebecca – pictures of your dog online anywhere? Boxers are so cute.
You sure do find the most amazing looking cats.
What a nightmare for your poor babe. I point blank refuse to complain about the NHS these days, it’s a British hobby but we’re extremely, extremely lucky. It’s kind of mind boggling to me that they even made you wait a day, surely a child her age should be top priority? I hope you get it sorted and she gets better soon.
Aughra… that’s awesome… although I thought Wilford Brimley at first.
http://gatoisland.com/archive/wilfordbrimleycats/
So… did you get the antibiotics after all or what? You’re not gonna just let it go and hope for the best? Please update!
Hi Twwly,
I live in Australia and I’ve been reading your blog for quite a while now
Thank you so much for spreading the world about adopting from pet shelters. It’s something I’m really passionate about. Keep up the great work and I hope little Meeps gets better really soon!
Poor Meeps! I can’t believe how hard it is to get to a doctor over there! Here, I just wander into a center and see one. Any one. The wait is usually 20minutes? My mom once went because she was in the local mall (ew) and felt dizzy so she just wandered in to see if there was something wrong. Turns out her blood pressure was a bit messed up! I hope you can go see a doctor soon, it would be horrible for her to get lung damage.
She looks a little sick in the picture too, I hope she’s doing ok. Hopefully she’ll get a killer immune system from all this. Shame about the cheese! I’m a Greek girl so Feta is a way of life. Good luck with the kitty, I’ve always wanted a persian but I don’t want to buy one from the petshop so I have two domestic shorthairs instead. Both really needed good homes.
Awesome kitty name! She looks just like Aughra. (LOVED that movie as a kid… still do.)
when you speak of “approved” kitchens – are you talking home-made food, for sale to the public, made in a home or public kitchen free from pets/animals?
I looked into making food to sell (as a business) and that was a stipulation. I was just curious.
I am looking into the public school kitchen by my house as a cooking lo-cal.
your kids more beautiful every day!
we have eight, six of them from shelters …
Buttercup
Lucky
Carmen
Bandit
Weezer
Mallory
Heidi
Jax
… all canines, we like our dogs here in Austin …
I have so many rescued cats (more than 30) that I don’t think kittens are cute anymore and I actually feel relieved when I see a tricolor dead by the side of the road because I know it’s a female at least it won’t be getting pregnant. I’m sorry but that’s what I have been reduced to by the state of things in this society… and I hear it’s even worse in other parts of the US (I’m in Massachusetts where I hear we are really progressive and on top of things regarding this…)
Lauren – approved kitchens here need to meet a variety of requirements and they vary county to county. Three sinks, stainless, certain flooring and toilets… You can sometimes have a home kitchen “approved” – but it varies so much!
OH NO!! How frustrating….
Poor little Mags. Are there any walk in clinics in the area? Or GPs who hold walk in clinic hours? I hope she gets better as soon as possible!
Michele1 – I pick up more ABX this morning. Wish me luck getting them down her gullet!
The cat is gorgeous! I love the fact that you take in older animals in need, lucky kitteh.
What a lovely addition to the family…she is a cutie. Hope all is well with you guys. It was great to see you scott, even though it was short, it was sweet. I am seriously hoping the next time I come it will not be so difficult, I was greatly dissappointed to not see Ash and the little ones this visit and it dawned on me when I got home that I shoulda just hopped into a cab…brain slap! Though your blog has updated me on all that I have missed, and fortunately so. Well till next time guys…miss ya and love ya…T
My goodness. What a horrible time you’ve had with Maggie’s cough/mucous/snot/goo! I cannot imagine the frustration and worry your going through. I hope someone pulls their head out of their asses soon and helps you.
What happened to Scott? An ambulance ride? Did I miss something? I hope it wasn’t too bad. What a spring/summer you’ve had….
Take care!
Oh, I do love your new addition to the family. She’s pretty in her own way! You really captured her kitty-ness in those pictures, I could almost hear her purring.
Ash,
I took the liberty to search around for you. Maybe this will help? Certainly help heal little Meeps and make sure she has no long term damage as per your concern. As there are no NDs in Kincardine, I looked at the closest ‘bigger’ cities
Sat Dharam Kaur, BA, ND
235 9th St E 2nd Fl
Owen Sound, ON
Canada
N4K 1N8 Phone:(519) 372-9212
Fax: (519) 372-2755
sdk@log.on.ca
http://www.trilliumhealingarts.ca
Katie Branter, ND and Courtney DeBoeck, ND
288 Wellington St
Stratford, ON
Canada
N5A 2L9 Phone:(519) 271-4518
Fax:
http://www.sunrisehealthservices.ca
I can’t recommend enough Naturopathic Medicine hand in hand with ‘western’ med (especially when any medical attention is hard to find). And as you probably know, try to keep her off dairy and wheat until her lungs start to dry up. All the best and GET WELL SOON!!
Sounds like your place is filled with mould.
I know I’ve mentioned it before, but maybe it’s worth a second look.
It’s stupid busy at work, but there’ll be time enough to rest once it slows down.
LOVE your new kitty!!
Valjean was very ill recently and I was very fortunate to get him emergency medical care.
I saw something about “Scott’s Ambulance Ride”
What up with that?
Hope everything is ok.
My weekends are now taken up with a locations gig, but I will endeavour to get my sizeable butt up there to see everyone.
Is there still a serious sushi deficiency up there?
Diane
[...] c’è un certo numero di persone con gli occhi a mandorla… guardate le foto dei bambini qui in fondo, dopo il gatto! … potrebbe essere la discendenza indiana. (uh… abbiamo visto [...]