I sat on the floor, surrounded by unwrapped gifts. I took stock. Wrapping paper? Check. Scissors? Check. Tape? I picked up the tape and held it in the air. “Check,” I said.
“Check what?” Freddie asked, walking up behind me and rubbing his body against my back.
I showed him the tape. “I have tape,” I said.
He thought about this. “That’s good,” he said.
A gentle reminder of how we do things: 🐱🐶🐦
- Do not troll the diary. If you hate pootie diaries, leave now. No harm, no foul.
- Please do share pics of your fur kids! If you have health/behavior issues with your pets, feel free to bring it to the community.
- Pooties are cats; Woozles are dogs. Birds... are birds! Peeps are people.
- Whatever happens in the outer blog STAYS in the outer blog. If you’re having “issues” with another Kossack, keep it “out there.” This is a place to relax and play; please treat it accordingly.
- There are some pics we never post: snakes, creepy crawlies, any and all photos that depict or encourage human cruelty toward animals. These are considered “out of bounds” and will not be tolerated. If we alert you to it, please remember that we do have phobic peeps who react strongly to them. If you keep posting banned pics...well then...the Tigress will have to take matters in hand. Or, paw.
He sat next to me and looked around at the piles of things I had carefully organized within reach. “Why are you on the floor?” he wondered. “You don’t sit on the floor.”
“I needed space,” I said, checking to make sure I had tags and a pen that worked. “I need to get all these presents wrapped and under the tree.” I gave him a serious look. “Where you will leave them alone,” I said, firmly.
“I’ll leave them alone,” he agreed. “I have no use for human nonsense.”
I took a deep breath, then let it out, reaching for the first item.
I rolled out some wrapping paper and cut it in as straight a line as I could manage. After setting the scissors down on the coffee table behind me, I used both hands to smooth the paper out.
Freddie walked to the middle of the paper and sat down.
I looked at him, mildly exasperated. “Excuse you,” I said.
He lifted a paw and gave it a lick.
“Do you mind?”
“I do not,” he said.
Shaking my head, I picked him up and moved him off the paper.
As soon as I released him, he walked back on it.
“This is going to make things difficult,” I told him.
He licked his paw again and smoothed it over his ear.
Laughing, I grabbed him with both hands and pulled him to me, kissing him aggressively on the head with loud kissy noises and crinkling the paper on which he stood.
“Human, no,” he complained.
I let him go and he immediately danced out of my reach.
Off the paper.
I gave a brisk nod and tried to smooth the wrinkles out.
Four gifts were wrapped and I carefully wrote out the tags. These ones were different shapes and sizes, so it didn’t take much effort to figure out what went to whom. I labeled them, then looked over at the rest of the pile. A lot of what was left was going to need to be labeled as soon as they were wrapped. Counting to myself, I filled out the tags I would need so they’d be ready.
Freddie watched from under the coffee table.
“About a third of the way done,” I told him, reaching for the next gift. I rolled out more paper and he stood. “Nope,” I said, shaking my head while I cut the paper. “We aren’t doing that again.”
“Doing what?” he asked, then leapt over my leg and landed in the middle of the cut paper, skidding a little.
I sighed, then laughed. “Alright. You can have this one.” I pulled the paper with my cat on it and moved him to my side, out of the way. I crumpled the edge of the paper near his paws, hoping it would distract him enough to let me finish in peace.
It seemed to work.
At least for now.
The gift were all wrapped and tagged. It was time to decorate. I picked up a large spool of ribbon that I had bought at Costco. “Do you think this is enough?” I asked, showing it to Freddie.
He was crouched on the crumpled paper I had given him, silently watching me.
“Can I trust you to leave this ribbon alone while I try to use it?” I asked him.
He said nothing, his eyes not leaving the spool in my hand.
I chuckled. “Take that as a ‘no,’”
“This was my mistake,” I said, watching as Freddie rolled around on the floor, wrapped in thick Costco ribbon.
It had been a definite mistake to pull the ribbon off the spool in such an ostentatious way, throwing it into the air to float down gently to the floor. No cat could resist that.
And Freddie had very much not resisted it.
“I can’t let you keep it,” I said, as he ignored me, rabbit kicking and biting the ribbon. “I don’t want you to eat it. I can’t afford that vet bill.”
He rolled all the way over again, his mouth open as it always was when he was deep into play. With a grin, I grabbed the end of the ribbon and tugged, watching in delight as he dove at it.
“Get it!” I said. “Good boy, you get it!”
He got it, sliding across the hardwood paws first.
I pulled it away from him, wincing a little bit at the slobber on it. “I guess this is trash,” I told him, dangling the end of it in the air above him.
He leapt for it, mouth open.
I tucked the last wrapped gift under the tree and stood back to admire it. “The tree never looks right until there’s presents under it,” I told Freddie.
“Obstacle course,” he breathed.
“Absolutely not,” I said, frowning down at him. “You promised.”
“I’m too tired for that right now, anyway,” he said, sauntering up to the tree and smelling the closest package. “And you didn’t even let me keep any of it.”
“That was trash,” I said, looking over my shoulder at the cluster of empty boxes next to the couch. “And you already have plenty of trash to play with.”
He rubbed his cheek against the corner of one gift. “Be careful,” I said. “Don’t wear a hole in that paper or the person who I give that to will know what it is.”
He looked at me, confused. “It belongs to me,” he said, earnestly. He turned back to it and rubbed his whole face against it. “It smells like me.”
I struggled not to laugh. “Well, I’m just glad you were here to help me with all this work,” I said. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”
“That’s true,” he said, wandering deeper into the obstacle course of brightly wrapped gifts.
“Don’t eat any ribbon!” I called after him.
“I won’t!” he called back.
Happy Caturday, Peeps!
In the interests of full disclosure, I feel like I should tell all of you that Freddie spent some time at the Vet on Monday. I’ve noticed an increase in his water intake and his respiratory rate over the last few months and finally made the appointment to get him looked over. I assumed that his diabetes was no longer as well controlled as it had been and that we might need to increase his insulin. It happens.
We did some bloodwork and X-rays and found...not much. His lungs are not 100%, but they aren’t out of the ordinary for his age. He has developed some mild kidney disease which might explain the extra water intake. We’re going to see if he’ll eat the special kidney diet food (my hopes are not high, he’s a picky man). Most troubling is that he seems to have lost quite a bit of weight, though he’s not showing it in a bad way like he did just before he was diagnosed as diabetic. He had started rejecting the fancy feast, so I had to switch him to food he would eat that is a smaller portion. The vet thinks it might be “good” weight loss (and notes that he can stand to lose a little more), but said we’d need to wait and see if it continues since he didn’t find anything in the tests that would explain it.
Strangest of all is that he seems to possibly be in remission from his diabetes. We’re going to test that on Monday: I’m going to feed him breakfast and skip the insulin dose, then take him in for a glucose test. It’s possible he won’t need insulin anymore — at least temporarily. The vet credits the weight loss, mostly, but says sometimes it works out this way. It’s rare, but cats do sometimes go into remission.
The news is good? Sort of? The vet didn’t seem to know. And he took a terrifying conversational detour into cancer (“sometimes it doesn’t show up on bloodwork or x-rays...”) but when I asked said that other than the weight loss, he doesn’t see any signs of it. Freddie is not behaving as if he is ill — he’s eating with enthusiasm and running around the house. He’s not hiding at all like he did when he first got sick with diabetes. No unusual vomiting or diarrhea. He’s taking good care of his fur (we haven't seen any mats since August and his fur is shiny and healthy). All signs point to him feeling good.
The bottom line is that my guy is aging and I have to accept that. He’s not going to be here forever. All I can do is try my best to take care of him and make him safe and as happy as possible. I am committed to that.
