Kitten Olive with her best friend Angus, may they both rest in peace.
It’s been a sad few days for me. But I’m forcing myself to go outside and walk. I also spent time going through all the Olive photos on my iphone. I’m sharing some of my favorites here today.
Olive enjoying the Palm Springs lifestyle.
Olive in a negative mood
Olive found herself locked in the car. I have no idea how that happened. She was deathly afraid of cars and hated them.
A picture taken by my daughter on one of Olive’s first days with us.
Below is Olive enjoying indoor/outdoor life in Palm Springs.
Indoor Arizona life.
My favorite photo of Olive.
Closet cruising.
A stowaway in my suitcase.
My pretty kitty.
One of Olive’s favorite things to do. Harass the quail.
Olive was on top of the world, and my closet, a few days ago.
She threw up Friday and once on Saturday. Saturday she hid out under a bed. She walked from room to room to find another bed to hide under.
Olive was not interested in food or water, which according to my daughter is not a good sign.
I was grocery shopping Saturday afternoon. I decided to take Olive to the vet if she was still hiding when I got home.
But, no. She zipped by me and was walking around the house. So I decided not to.
Sunday morning she looked awful. She was lethargic and not moving.
I drove her to a 24/7 emergency vet as soon as I got dressed. They said she was very sick and couldn’t measure her blood pressure. They filled her with fluids and her blood pressure went up to 70. They wanted it in the 100s, but said it was a massive improvement. However, her blood work came back with liver and kidney failure. This must be why she was having ups and downs the past few months. A year and half ago her blood work was fine.
Did I mention how I don’t like Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving week? I wrote about it HERE.
Olive is feeling better. I keep finding her up on top of things.
I had a few stress-filled weeks when we came home from vacation. Olive the cat was not her usual perky self. I wrote about it HERE.
For about two weeks, I monitored Olive. She’d have a good day followed by several bad ones. On her bad days, I wouldn’t see her. If I did see her for a few brief moments, she looked really scruffy and miserable.
One of my neighbors asked me how old she was, When I said 11, the neighbor suggested maybe it was time. You know what? I pushed back on that. I took Olive to the vet. I waited, watched and eventually Olive no longer hid under the bed all day. She started eating like a champ. Her other bodily functions became normal. Definitely it was NOT “time.”
Our last cat, Sherman, was 17 years old when he was attacked by a neighbor’s dog. No, he didn’t make it. Olive is an indoor cat and I expect her to have a long life.
Now, she’s leaping to the top of the closet. The shelf she’s on is six feet high! Yesterday she was up on the closet space a few feet higher than that!
I walked into the casita to see this! She’s never been a counter shopper before.
FYI, the photos on this post are taken with my iphone, not my DSLR camera.
I’m getting ready for guests this coming weekend. The Wickham Casita has been a popular place this past month. Our last guest is a world champion spear fisherman. He’s entering a competition at Lake Pleasant, which is about 30 minutes from us. He’s planning on scouting the lake several times before the event. He brought us black cod, salmon, rock fish and lobster during his last visit. I wrote about Black Cod also known as Sablefish HERE.
We enjoyed lobster over the weekend. Our houseguest free dives off the coast in Southern California for lobster.
What a treat! I had to share the lobster photos.
Lobster poached in lemon butter with steamed broccoli. Yum! Yes, our last guest is welcome to our casita anytime.
What is your most favorite food and why?
If you’ve had dogs or cats, do you get stressed if they aren’t feeling well?
It was windy and beginning to rain when I went outside to bring in a towel out by the pool. I didn’t want the towel to end up in the pool, or get wet from rain.
I pulled the towel off the recliner and a bobcat jumped out of the fireplace! We both were surprised. She ran to the fence and crawled through to the wash behind our house. I ran into the house. A few minutes later, she returned to the fireplace. I grabbed my camera with the telephoto lens and took a few pictures from inside our bedroom.
Olive the cat noticed her first bobcat. She got low into stalking mode — but stayed far away from the window as she watched. If it’s a bird, she’s right up against the window whacking at the bird through the glass.
The fireplace makes a cozy cat cave.
House Guests
The last house guest stayed with us for several days to scout a local lake. He’s entering a freshwater spearfishing competition. He arrived at our house with his boat and spent the next three days free diving in the lake from dawn to dusk.
He also brought us some treats from a recent fishing trip to Alaska. The freezer in the casita is filled with salmon, rock cod and black cod. There’s also lobster from his free diving off the coast of Southern California. What a treat! He’s welcome back anytime.
This is Black Cod that I cooked in foil on the barbecue. It’s my favorite fish which I used to get in Seattle’s Chinatown while I was in college. Incredibly delicious!
Things are not going swimmingly!
The past two weeks, I got back into the pool at the YMCA for lap swimming. I had stopped swimming during our wet, cold winter months ago. Then summer came and the weather was hot, which means I don’t like being out in the sun.
I was proud of myself and wanted to be consistent with swimming. Then on my swim day, the weather dropped overnight by 50 degrees! It was windy and rainy. I cancelled swimming. It warms up a bit this week, so I’ll get back to the pool.
One day while driving home from the pool, I heard INTELLIGENCE FOR YOUR LIFE MINUTES by John Tesh on the radio. It was about a Harvard study on ending your daily shower with 30-seconds of cold water.
In the study, people who ended their daily shower with 30-seconds of cold water had less sick days than those who took hot showers. I’ve heard of a trend of cold plunge lately by a number of celebrities. My college roommate’s husband said he takes a cold plunge in an icy stream at their home in Sun Valley, Idaho.
I found this information from UCLA:
What is cold therapy?
Cold therapy, also called cryotherapy, uses exposure to cold temperatures to cool the body’s tissues for therapeutic reasons. There are several ways to apply cold therapy, including:
Cold showers, which involve lowering the water temperature below 60 degrees for two to three minutes at a time
Cold spray, used to numb a small area
Cold water immersion or ice baths, or submerging everything but your head and neck in cold water
Localized ice application to treat injuries or specific muscle groups
Whole-body cryotherapy, which exposes the body to very cold vapors
Why cold showers could be good for you
Cold showers are not the primary treatment for any conditions, and conclusive research about cold therapy is still limited. But a quick blast of cold water can be beneficial when used for symptom relief.
Taking cold showers may:
1. Bolster your immunity to common colds
2. Combat symptoms of depression
3. Improve circulation
4. Increase metabolism
5. Reduce inflammation and prevent muscle soreness
6. Relieve localized pain
Our daughter used to take ice baths at swim meets in our hotel room between prelims and finals. The purpose was to flush out inflammation and increase blood flow to her legs.
Our pool isn’t heated and I could use it as a cold plunge pool this winter. Or, try the 30 second shower method. I’ll tell you how it goes.
What are your thoughts about cold showers or ice baths? Would you give it a try?
Have you tried Black Cod otherwise known as Sablefish?
Olive has taken over my desk and office like she owns the place. Yes, she’s feeling better.
You know those emails you receive that have interesting facts or funnies? I received one last week that had origins of old sayings. I knew a few of the idioms and origins, but most were new to me.
I’m sharing a few I found most fascinating:
During WWII, U.S. Airplanes were armed with belts of ammo, which they would shoot during dogfights and on strafing runs. These belts were folded into the wing compartments that fed their machine guns. These belts measure 27 feet and contained hundreds of cartridges. Often times, the pilots would return from their missions having expended all of their bullets on various targets. They would say, “I gave them the whole nine yards,” meaning they used up all of their ammunition.
Personal hygiene left much room for improvement. As a result, many women and men had developed acne scars by adulthood. The women would spread bee’s wax over their facial skin to smooth out their complexions. When they were speaking to each other, if a woman began to stare at another woman’s face she was told, ‘mind your own bee’s wax.’ Should the woman smile, the wax would crack, hence the term ‘crack a smile.’ In addition, when they sat too close to the fire, the wax would melt. Therefore, the expression ‘losing face.’
Ladies wore corsets, which would lace up in the front. A proper and dignified woman, as in ‘straight laced’ wore a tightly tied corset.
Common entertainment included playing cards. However, there was a tax levied when purchasing playing cards but only applicable to the ‘Ace of Spades.’ To avoid paying the tax, people would purchase 51 cards instead. Yet, since most games require 52 cards, these people were thought to be stupid or dumb because they weren’t ‘playing with a full deck.’
In George Washington’s days, there were no cameras. One’s image was either sculpted or painted. Some paintings of George Washington have him standing behind a desk with one arm behind his back while others showed both legs and both arms. Prices charged by painters were not based on how many people were to be painted, but by how many limbs were to be painted.
Arms and legs are ‘limbs,’ therefore painting them would cost the buyer more. Hence the expression, ‘Okay, but it’ll cost you an arm and a leg.’ (Artists know hands and arms are more difficult to paint.)
As incredible as it sounds, men and women took baths only twice a year (May and October). Women kept their hair covered, while men shaved their heads (because of lice and bugs) and wore wigs. Wealthy men could afford good wigs made from wool. They couldn’t wash the wigs, so to clean them they would carve out a loaf of bread, put the wig in the shell, and bake it for 30 minutes. The heat would make the wig big and fluffy, hence the term ‘big wig’. Today we often use the term here comes the ‘Big Wig’ because someone appears to be or is powerful and wealthy.
Did you know any of these origins of old sayings? Which ones?
I love this bobcat kitten photo. There were two and a momma visiting, but I only got a picture of this one.
I have been anxious about my cat Olive. She got stressed and sick when we went out of town. She was doing better after her visit to the vet, but on Friday she stopped eating and was curled into a ball hiding under the bed. Although we were giving her laxative twice a day, nothing was moving. I wrote about Olive last week HERE.
I drove to a pet food store and bought a variety of treats and wet food for her. Something to entice her to eat. I bought canned salmon, sardines and anchovies at the grocery store.
She turned her nose up at all my treats and Saturday she refused to eat. But finally things were working for her in the litter box. Also, she wasn’t drinking any water and she felt bony, thin and dehydrated.
My daughter called and said not eating for two days was a bad sign. I told her our vet wasn’t open on the weekend. She suggested I find a pet ER. I couldn’t find once close by. But I read an article online about how to get your cat to eat.
It said to place small amounts of food in several places around the house. Also to put some food on your finger and rub it on her gums.
I woke up Sunday morning to see that two of the containers of food were almost gone. Now she’s no longer hiding but sitting on the throw rug watching birds through the window. She looks alert. She looks like she on the mend.
I can’t tell you how relieved I am!
In my opinion, the only thing worse than having sick pets and not knowing what is wrong, is having sick children. What are your thoughts?
I made the executive decision to take Olive to the vet yesterday morning. I was waiting to see if she’d get better. Saturday she pooped after we got home. This was good news because the cat sitter said she had not done that in several days. She ate on Sunday. More good news.
Olive has an Rx for laxative and after a few doses, she seemed back to her normal self.
And then she didn’t.
She quit eating, drinking water, peeing and pooping. She’s been lethargic hiding away under the bed in the casita. She’d sneak out to vomit white foam. I didn’t think that was a good sign, so off to the vet.
Because this is a recurring issue with Olive — whenever we go on an extended vacation — the vet treated her symptoms rather than using diagnostic tools like X-ray, Ultrasound and blood work. This happened two years ago and they did all those tests. You should have seen the bill!
Now I’m waiting to see how she reacts to treatment. Waiting and waiting. The vet filled her with fluids, plus vitamins and a pain med. She’s drowsy and I’ll just have to wait some more.
I’m having a stressful day hoping Olive feels better. If she doesn’t get better, than I promised to bring her back for diagnostics.
Do you remember the old fashioned veterinarians we used to have? In our town, one vet would treat cats, dogs, horses and cows.
