Alas! It looks like the stress of moving has kicked poor Ben into another flare-up of kitty herpes. I called the vet and left a message…hopefully we can get some meds for the big lug. (Mind you, he seems to enjoy the chance to eat all the cheap stinky catfood he can gobble down, which is one aspect of the treatment.*) He seems to be adapting pretty well, all things considered, but of course it’s a major system stress moving to a new house with dogs and strange cats and occasional kids.

*sigh* Even though I know what it is, and that it’s going to be fine–and that there’s really nothing else that one could do–I still feel the obscure pet-guilt of "I should be able to make this better!"

Still, I had to move. Kevin told me yesterday that he’d heard from a cop friend that my area apparently had some fairly significant gang activity and there had been a number of break-ins, which I’m kinda glad I didn’t know when I was living there as a single woman and feeling reasonably confident about my safety.

Although it DID suddenly make one thing I’d wondered about come clear…there were a couple of cars and trucks in the neighborhood painted a truly objectionable shade of kelly green. I mean, the WHOLE CAR. Hubcaps and all. It was an intense kelly green that was not at all the sort of color you’d normally paint a car. And come to think of it, the guy on the ten-speed who tried to pick me up–the one with the cornrows and the blinged-out teeth*** had been wearing a football jersey in the same godawful shade. I had chalked the prevalence of kelly green up to a bizarrely consistent lack of aesthetics, but gang colors might also explain it.

(It must suck to be a gang when that shade of kelly green is the only color you’ve got left. Then again, I suppose blue and red and black and silver were already taken by the bigger kids, and the pastel shades are…maybe not so much what you want. But kelly green? What do you call yourselves? The Limes? The Fightin’ Veggies? East Side Asparagus, represent!)

All in all, probably lucky to get out with nothing worse than some lost electronics and a sick cat. Otherwise I’d have made a smartass remark to the wrong person and they’d send me to sleep with the avocados.

*The mouth lesions tend to make him kind of stuffed up, so he can’t smell as well. Cheap soft food–and tuna, and canned mackerel–stinks enough to get through the haze, and he’ll eat it.**

**And by eat it, I mean "plant his face in it, snorting like a little piggy."

***My thought was "Aww, poor guy, he had to get some really severe adult braces. That’s gotta suck." Kevin explained to me, very gently, that no, this was actually a fashion statement. Who knew?

Leave a Reply