Why can't pets tell us where it hurts?

And so it was with Phoenix, who started exhibiting abnormal symptoms around the end of August. We didn’t think too much of it, at first. Phe has always been a bit odd in his behaviors — a picky eater who prefers his dry food to anything out of a can. More often than not, his brother Phyre will step in to finish off Phe’s bowl, and the latter barely seems to mind. We used to laugh that he prefers to stalk his food dish to actually eating what’s in it, but we aren’t laughing lately.

Roni became concerned about him because he was growing thinner and weaker, spending most of the day sleeping. His normally silky coat took on a scraggly appearance. Rather than drink, he would just hover over his water dish, his lids droopy as he appeared ready to fall asleep in the bowl. And then there was the diarrhea. A few times he didn’t even bother trying to make it to the litter box, preferring the tile entryway to our living room. And what he produced was small and phlegmy, like nothing you would expect from the rear end of a normal cat. 

Finally it became clear to all of us that he was uncomfortable and needed a trip to the doctor. If not for him, then at least for us as we struggled to clean up his messes. Of course we had been hoping for a quick turnaround, something he’d recover from on his own like a simple cold or stomach bug, rather than fork over a small fortune to have him professionally diagnosed. But after putting it off to no avail, we finally broke down and pulled out his little plastic carrier on Sept. 14.

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E HAVEN'T HAD good experiences taking animals to the vet. There seems to be no such thing as a “routine” checkup, and even those quickly end up on the expensive side. We were also less than enthusiastic about taking Phe to the place nearest us in town because they aren’t equipped to do most of the tests they prescribe, instead sending them out to a lab to be processed. So we skipped the local vet in favor of Animal Clinic of Antioch, located on A Street next to the railroad tracks (more on that in a moment.)

We had no idea what the cost would be, and if we had then we might have put the poor cat out of his misery before even trying to save him. But being the guilt-laden, animal-loving suckers that we are, we set aside financial concerns and booked a visit that morning. Phe is not a model patient, and he glowered at us once we got him into the cage. 

The clinic is still following COVID-19 procedures, so we weren’t allowed to enter the building with our cat. Instead we had to wait out in the parking lot and phone the receptionist to let them know we’d arrived for our appointment. The clinic is adjacent to the seldom-used Union Pacific tracks, its parking lot separated from them by a steel fence hidden by oleanders. And on the other side along the railroad right of way is a sprawling homeless encampment with a lot of activity, so it wasn’t exactly the most inviting waiting room we could have been assigned to. 

Once Phe had been carried inside and initially examined, we were allowed into the reception area to discuss our options. The doctor wanted to do a blood test and X-rays, which would require sedating the cat and keeping him for a few hours. She wanted to do tests for FIP and cancer. And of course there were routine fees just for coming into the clinic. Not to mention any medicines or special foods we would need. Our estimate came in at close to $1,200. Gulp. 

After our initial shock and some additional questions about the treatments, it was decided we would wait for the blood test results before proceeding to X-rays; we might just get our answer and the rest of the diagnostics would be unnecessary. So after spending only $600, we brought Phe home and waited for the doctor’s call. 

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HEN THE PHONE rang the next afternoon, the news wasn’t good. Phe had high protein levels in his blood test, so although we now knew for sure something wasn’t right, we didn’t know what that something was. The vet wanted to go ahead with the X-rays to rule out cancer, but she was suspecting he might have feline infectious peritonitis, or FIP. 

Our hearts sank when we heard that. We’d lost our cat Rio to FIP 11 years ago and it was a slow, horrible demise. In hindsight we should have had him put to sleep, but we held out false hope until the end that he’d been misdiagnosed, that maybe it was something that wasn’t terminal. At least now there are some experimental treatments that weren’t available then, but success is still limited. And even if we plunked down $400 for an FIP test there was no guarantee the results would be accurate. Yet if they showed he had the dreaded disease (which curiously is caused by a type of coronavirus much like the one we humans have had to endure the past two and a half years) we would probably just put him down anyway rather than try in vain to save or prolong his life. 

So now it was back to the vet early Friday morning. Phe didn’t relish another ride in the cat carrier, but we needed to get an early start because the vet wanted to give him the anesthesia and keep him for observation so he would be recovered enough that we could have him back before the end of the day. 

We would have to wait on the X-ray consultant’s review until Monday, but in the meantime we were sent home with our groggy cat and some meds to give him to hopefully stimulate his appetite. The vet had checked his mouth while he was asleep and didn’t find any signs of a tooth infection that might be causing him discomfort. And her initial review of the X-rays hadn’t turned up anything obvious. If we were lucky, it might just be irritable bowel syndrome and malnutrition caused by dietary changes that a few days of treatment would correct. If we were lucky. 

So we’re two weeks into Phoenix’s care regimen as we write this. We started him off with a liquid steroid that he had to take twice a day for the first week, tapering to once a day in the second week and then once every other day for the third and final week. He also receives a special paste that is designed to help with his inflamed colon; we feed it to him tucked inside Greenies pill pockets, which he seems to readily accept. 

Initially we noticed some improvement. He seemed more alert and had been eating and drinking more. And his strength was returning — we could tell because he was getting better at resisting us when we tried to insert the steroid dose into his clenched jaw. The trips to the litter box have looked better with less diarrhea. 

But still we are a long way from calling him recovered, and may actually be losing ground. His weight has yet to return. The vet said he should be about 10 pounds and he is only 8 right now. He has always been a slender cat, but not this thin and bony. And he has been spending a lot of time hunched up under the dining room table or hiding beneath our bed. Of course, that could just be his reaction to having to take meds he doesn’t want. 

And because the X-rays didn’t show anything conclusive, even after the consultant looked at them, the vet told us the next step would be to do the FIP test and have Phe undergo an ultrasound — which could run us perhaps another thousand bucks. And to think that we balk at the cost for our own medical care. It has us seriously thinking about buying pet insurance, but for three cats it would be prohibitive. 

So for now we wait and watch. And pray that our little cat gets better soon.

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EPTEMBER MARKS THE beginning of fall, but Mother Nature wanted to let us know she wasn’t done with summer first. Just in time for Labor Day weekend we were blasted with a heatwave that hung around for nearly a week and sent temperatures as high as 117 degrees on one day. It’s not that we are strangers to hot weather out here on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, just that usually our hot spells last only a couple of days before the natural air conditioning kicks in and we are back to something more tolerable.

This was no typical heatwave, and while we had gone the entire summer without need of our portable air conditioner, we finally had to break down and turn it on despite warnings from the state’s Independent System Operator that we should conserve energy between the peak hours of 4 to 9 p.m. We don’t like to run the AC unit unless we have no choice because it is inefficient and electricity is expensive. Even though its thermostat was set at a constant 75 degrees, the temperature in our living room rarely got below 84. Which is not exactly sweater weather, although it is conducive to sweating. 

For days, all we dreamed of was jumping inside our refrigerator for a while. Or lounging poolside on the coast somewhere. We used our little countertop ice maker to produce plenty of frozen cubes for our drinks and spent our miserable afternoons beneath the living room ceiling fan while watching live cams of various cooler places around the world. 

By the time the heat finally released its grip we were already a third of the way through the month, our plans for working in the yard mostly put on hold. That meant delaying a project Roni had wanted to accomplish, which involved making a pathway so she could reach the plants growing in Winter’s Garden at the northwest corner of the yard. 

The purpose of the path was two-fold: first, she didn’t want to accidentally trip when trying to climb into the garden from the sand below; second, she is trying to cover as much of the sand as possible so there will be fewer places for weeds to grow this winter, leaving us with less work to do in the spring. 

A few stepping stones likely would have sufficed, but we seldom do things the simple way. Because Glenn has been toying with the idea of pouring his own small patio on the side of the house behind our bedroom, he thought Roni’s path would be the perfect opportunity to test his concrete laying skills on something that didn’t need to be perfect — just in case things went south. 

We decided on a curving sidewalk, which perhaps is not the easiest thing for a beginner. We found some plastic-covered bender boards at Home Depot that were perfect for making concrete forms, then we estimated it would take about seven bags of 60-pound concrete mix to do the job. Glenn decided to mix them by hand, figuring it was a small job and wouldn’t take much effort. Boy was that wrong! 

The forms were set up in late August, and although we didn’t get to the actual pouring of the concrete until after the earlier mentioned heatwave, it was still far from cool the day Glenn decided to do his mixing. Sixty pounds is a manageable size to work with, but multiply that by the weight for an entire job and it still requires some muscle strength to mix and pour all those bags — strength that Glenn has lacked in recent years. 

The goal was to pour the entire walkway in one afternoon, but it quickly became apparent that wasn’t going to happen. First, Glenn made the mistake of trying to mix two bags at the same time in a large plastic mixing tub. He didn’t want to add too much water, but in the process managed to add too little and made the mix too dry. Stirring it with a garden spade was slow and tedious, and the longer he worked in the heat the more weary and sweat drenched he became. The first two bags poured into the forms and screeded, Glenn declared he was done for the afternoon. 

Except he wasn’t. The two bags had barely completed a third of the sidewalk. Just a little bit more, he told himself. And so he mixed another two bags, moving much more slowly and painfully. He was dizzy and seeing stars by the time the middle third of the path was laid. There would be no little-bit-more this time — done was truly done. So he wedged a strip of 2x4 into the forms to give the just-finished section a finished edge to work from next time and went about cleaning up his tools before coming back to run a trowel over the wet concrete. 

Perhaps it was the heat of the day or that the concrete mix was a bit different than what he was used to, but Glenn found it very difficult to use the finishing trowel on the rapidly setting sidewalk. And the dry consistency of the mix resulted in a lot of pits and other defects that would have embarrassed a professional tradesman. But it wasn’t horrible either. In fact, the result was a 3-inch thick slab that was relatively smooth and level. 

Glenn returned a week later to pour the final section of the sidewalk, having learned from his initial failures to use more water and not mix more than one bag at a time. It was a little slower that way, but at least he wasn’t exhausted by the end of it. It was a simple enough matter to butt the new section up against the old one and use the shaping trowel to give the concrete a nice beveled edge. 

We still need to construct a small staircase from the end of the path to the garden, but for that we have a cinder block ready to go. All it needs is some mortar. A task we hope to accomplish in cooler weather during October.

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HERE IS ONE quality of cement that can always be counted on, which is that it reacts with water. While planning our garden pathway and potential patio projects, we stocked up on bags of concrete that we purchased from Home Depot. We did this during fair summer weather, so there was no problem with simply leaving the heavy sacks sitting in the bed of our pickup, or on the pavement beneath our pergola. The idea was that they would be used sooner than later. 

Mother Nature had other ideas, of course, so one evening when our “zero percent” chance of rain suddenly turned to drizzle while Glenn and Ben were on their walk, the walk turned into a jog as they rushed home to throw tarps over exposed paper sacks. Fortunately it was just a few sprinkles and there was no harm done. And since Glenn used most of those bags a couple of days later to make the garden walkway, most of the rain threat was alleviated. 

But not entirely. Glenn has been making pots and other concrete objects this summer using his own mix of sand and Portland cement, so he had an open bag of the raw material sitting on the patio. Rather than stow it away indoors at the first hint of sprinkles, he neatly folded the bag closed and tucked it under the plastic circular table we keep on the patio under the BAP pergola. It seemed the table would be enough to shelter the bag and several cans of paint and some tools from anything but a Biblical flood. 

We may as well have done a rain dance, because amid a year filled with drought we hadn’t seen any significant precipitation until that week, when our crushing heat gave way to lightning and a torrential downpour. That bag of dry cement under the table unfortunately was below the hole for the umbrella stand, which we’d forgotten about because the hole had been covered by a stepping stone. The water accumulated on the table, ran through the hole, and saturated the cement bag in seconds. 

By the time Glenn realized what had happened, it had already been three hours and the bag had been reduced to pulp, its contents splayed across the patio and already beginning to set. Not wanting it to go to waste, Glenn ran outside at close to midnight and mixed the cement with some leftover sand and quickly molded a shallow planter dish, assuming it probably wouldn’t work because the cement was too far gone. 

It did work, however, and a couple days later he demolded a beautiful bowl that is currently curing on the plastic table. It’s a little sandier than if he’d properly mixed the cement, but once painted it should be just fine.

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IFE ALWAYS SEEMS to pick up speed after Labor Day as we start down the path to the holidays and end of the year. September has been an eventful month in general.

Roni took part in a couple of work-related events, attending the annual Fall Forum for the Contra Costa County Fish and Wildlife Committee on which she serves. The Sept. 22 forum was highlighted by a barbecue dinner and a guest speaker and normally takes place indoors at the Martinez Sportsman Club near the marina. However, because of COVID, the county has a ban on large indoor gatherings, so the Fall Forum was moved to Hidden Valley Park a few miles across town. The weather was warm and the event had to share the park with members of the local youth soccer league, but the barbecue ribs and chicken were good and the event was well attended. 

Two days later, Roni was in downtown Oakley for the annual Heart of Oakley Festival, holding down the fort in the Ironhouse Sanitary District booth as usual. We’re in our Indian summer right now, so of course the weather was hotter than usual. Attendance was lighter than normal, perhaps because of the heat. We grabbed ice cream milkshakes from Guanatos after the show to cool down before heading home. They were consumed in 5 minutes. 

Like much of the world, we were mesmerized by coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Thanks to the power of streaming coverage on YouTube, we were able to watch much of the public visitation as the Queen laid in state, and later the spectacle of her funeral procession as it took her casket through London to Westminster Abbey and ultimately to her burial site. 

We have all grown up knowing nothing other than Elizabeth’s image as Britain’s monarch — a reign that spanned more than 70 years. Getting used to saying King Charles III and seeing some other face on foreign currency is going to be disorienting for a while. If it feels that way to us, we can just imagine how those in her homeland are adjusting to the new leadership. 

Ben, meanwhile, decided this month that it was time for a new bed to replace the futon he has used for years. He ordered a twin mattress and box frame off of Wayfair, the latter of which offers some built-in storage capacity that he desperately needs in his small bedroom. The frame showed up on our doorstep on Sept. 29. Now he is working to rearrange his bedroom to accommodate the new furnishings while we go about scheduling a day when the old stuff can go to the dump. Fortunately the garbage company will pick it up for a small fee. 

Ben also got to attend the annual SacAnime convention in Sacramento on Labor Day weekend. It has been a tradition of his for at least a decade, but recently he has had difficulty lining up friends to go with. He’d thought he might get to share a hotel room with some friends, but the plan fell through and it came down to us to help him get to Sacramento and back. 

We drove up to Sacramento on Saturday, Sept. 3, just as the heatwave was starting to crank up for the week. We were lucky to arrive in town early in the day while it was still in the 80s. We dropped Ben off at the convention center and then headed to Old Town for the day. They were having a classic car show, and the streets were filled with mostly lowriders. We had pancakes and French toast at Steamers restaurant before deciding what to do. 

The Sacramento Railroad Museum was offering excursion train rides, and seeing as we hadn’t taken the trip recently we decided to kill some time by hopping aboard one of the open-air passenger cars for a trip along the Sacramento River. We literally had just a few seconds before departure, so we had to race to the depot to purchase our tickets and then back to the boarding platform where we got on just in time. 

After the train trip, we walked from Old Town to the DOCO neighborhood on the opposite side of Interstate 5. DOCO, or Downtown Commons, is a trendy live-work community that is anchored by the Golden 1 Center, home of the Sacramento Kings. The temperature had climbed to around 102 degrees and all we wanted was a place to escape the heat. We hoped Ben would be done with his convention, but it sounded like he planned to be an hour or so longer, so instead we walked back to Old Town and grabbed a pizza at Frankie’s Pizza, just so we could eat it in their air-conditioned building. Ben called us just as our pizza arrived, so we took most of it home for dinner. 

Ben said he enjoyed his convention, but he is getting to the age where it starts to feel awkward hanging around a bunch of young teens. He didn’t even go in costume this year. Perhaps next year he’ll choose not to go, or at least have worked up the courage to drive himself. But at least this year we all had a good time in Sacramento despite the heat.

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HE STOCK MARKET is an angry beast, and September has been an especially savage month. Opening up our account statements lately has been a painful experience, and while we had hoped the worst of the market crash had passed in June, it clearly hasn’t. Sept. 30 marks the end of the third quarter in what has been an abysmal year for long-term investors. Will Wall Street decide it’s time to flip the script for Q4? Or will the ongoing threat of interest rate hikes, recession, and geopolitical unrest push us to new lows by the end of the year? It’s anyone’s guess, but rest assured that any company worth anything is grossly undervalued in this market and it’s good to take the long-range view — if you can.

We made a few buys during September in Glenn’s IRA, mostly of speculative growth stocks that may or may not ever recover but are so cheap that they are worth the small gamble. We bought shares of electric vehicle maker Arcimoto (FUV), luxury consignment seller The RealReal (REAL) and online used car dealer Vroom (VRM), all of which have tanked by double digits in the past week alone. We also picked up 20 shares of Alphabet (GOOG) when the price finally breached $99 a share; this served to lower our average cost by more than $15 a share, which shows just how far things have cratered. 

We’re as tired of talking about stock losses as you probably are of hearing about them. But we’re heading into a recession and this is the way things are… until they aren’t. As the saying goes, “Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn,” and we are still getting schooled in a major way. Good luck to all. 

 

Glenn, Roni and Ben