Well, crudmonkies.

Just got back from the vet. Loki’s got diabetes. Shit. I pride myself on being a tough chick, and I’m confident that I can learn to give him a daily insulin shot–knowing how to wield a needle is probably something I should know anyhow, given that both my grandmothers had diabetes and I could get it, and anyway, you never know when civilization will collapse and I’ll be forced to administer rabies vaccinations to a new race of mutant raccoons and won’t I feel silly having to practice on oranges first–but this is NOT the time for this to come up. I’m moving in a month, and I’ll be out of town off and on during the weeks prior, and my upstairs neighbor, while fine about coming down and dumping food in the cat bowls, is no more capable of giving a cat shots than he is of telekinetically solving world hunger. The vet is inclined to agree, since moving is pretty stressful and will screw up the amount of insulin to give him anyhow, and suggests that we can try holding off starting the insulin until after we move down there–he’s had it for at least three months already, and he’s dropped maybe five pounds and is urinating a lot, but is otherwise in relatively good health. Assuming that he doesn’t begin to get ill in the next month and a half, we can start it once we’re down in AZ, and then our only problem will be finding a cat sitter who can wield a needle when we go out of town. We’re putting him on a special diet as well, which may hold it off a bit longer.

But if he starts to become ill…well, a sick diabetic cat is a very expensive animal to treat, so we’ll need to start him on the insulin right away if he shows any signs of worsening, and then my only options will either be to find a reliable friend with a strong stomach, or to have the cat boarded while we’re out of town–a pricy proposition when we’ll be gone for a week. The vet’ll check back next week, and we’ll see how the big doof is doing. I’m glad it’s not something much worse–like cancer–and I’m definitely not going to have him put down for something that’s completely treatable–I mean, he’s my Loki! My little lardbutt! It’s just friggin’ stressful and makes me sad, which makes me mad, because there’s no reason to be sad, it’s not like he’s DEAD or something, so I wander around snorfling and growling to myself and revisiting the age old truth that you shouldn’t cry when lying on your back because your ears fill up with water, which tickles, and stomping snivelling into the bathroom to clean your ears out really ruins the mood of an otherwise perfectly good mope.

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