Poor Ben had to go in for a steroid shot today to clear up the kitty herpes. (Yes, I know, he’s on lysine already. Unfortunately he’s not eating enough this last week to get the stuff inside him in any great quantity.)

The steroids are supposed to work very well, but long-term steroid use is not terribly healthy for kitties, and causes all kinds of problems. Ben’s already pretty muscular. I’d rather not see him in a roid rage… (Okay, okay, it’s mostly OTHER kinds of damage in cats. Still, the image…)

If he continues having repeated flare-ups, the vet said there’s a sort of ultimate last-ditch solution…it’s his gums that suffer, and apparently if you pull all their teeth, that tends to stop the gum irritation. Needless to say, that’s pretty extreme (to say nothing of spendy!) and while it would save Kevin from some of his war wounds, I’d feel awful about it…still, if Ben’d be in less pain without teeth, then expense be damned.

I was fairly horrified at the notion, but I suppose if it’s that or kidney failure…we’ll see how he does after the steroid shot. (Many cats apparently can eat hard food just fine despite lacking teeth. They don’t chew much anyway.)

And yes, of course, that internal narrator said "Of course this would happen. I would get a cat with a condition that requires him to be completely toothless. This is the way my life goes. Next, Angus will go completely bald and develop a skin condition that requires him to be rolled in green flocking like a cheap Christmas tree. It can’t ever be NORMAL crap. It has to be the weirdest possible variation on everything."

Actually, this is unfair. I have great luck. It’s just…weirdass great luck. I was talking to an acquaintence of mine at a party the other night, and he had donated a book to a raffle and won it back, in said raffle. "That’s just the kind of luck I have," he said.

See, my luck isn’t like that. if I entered the raffle, I’d win a trip to Outer Mongolia, promptly get bitten by a goat, and wind up in the hospital with goat-bite fever. While there, I would strike up a conversation with the guy in the next bed, who would turn out to be an editor, and I’d wind up selling him a book idea that I really don’t have time to work on, about a small cute goat named Goatrude, who falls into an ancient Scythian tomb and has to spend the night amid the ghosts of impaled steppes warriors and dead horses, and goes on a quest to lay the ghosts to rest by finding the artifacts stolen and for sale in the local market and shit I kinda want to write this now so I’m going to stop talking but hopefully you see my point.

Poor Ben. Here’s hoping his next flare-up is a long way off.

ETA: Fine. Goatrude  Don’t say I never gave you nuthin’. (NO, THERE WILL NOT BE A BOOK! )