Pilling the Cat

Saori and I live in a 1 bedroom apartment about 700 square feet. It's small, but to be honest, its one of the most spacious apartments I've ever lived in. The kitchen is a little tight, but two people can work at the same time, and we have a large walk-in closet in addition to a spacious hallway closet/linen cabinet.

Lately, we've started the lengthy process of paring down our stuff in preparation for the move. It's not so much that we're going to be limited in room with our transportation vehicle- at the least I think I am going to have to rent a van or trailer (can a Prius haul a trailer?)- but its a good chance to consolidate. Yesterday, I went through my big metal file cabinet, pulling old manuals, bank statements from year ago, etc. etc. Found some old Chinese class tests, copies of a Russian visa, a detailed packing list for a 50 mile hike, and a bunch of old drawings.

Yesterday, also, we took Suki to the vet. Lately, she's been spotting the sheets- leaking a little bit of urine tinted slightly pink/orange with blood. She was not a happy cat on the drive over, and she was even less thrilled to be at the vet. Fortunately, they were able to see her pretty quickly, and the vet confirmed my suspicion that it was probably a urinary tract infection. He gave her two antibiotic shots, and a prescription for some kitty antibiotic tabs.

He also said she was officially obese, tipping the scale at 17 pounds, up a pound from a year ago. He told me to halve the food I was giving her. We don't feed her much, but I guess such a sofa cat doesn't burn a lot of calories. Suki meowed her disapproval from the cage after the vet's pronouncement.

I picked up some treat pouches and tried getting Suki to eat one with a pill enclosed inside. Suki's a pretty timid eater, and I was thinking is was probably going to be a long shot. She licked it a few times, even put it in her mouth for some exploratory nibbles, but rejected it. "There appears," she seemed to say, "to be some hard object in the middle of this thing. I'll just have the kitty chow." Unfortunately, this is not the Waldorf-Astoria, so stripped the tasty shell and wrestled the pill into her mouth and forced her to swallow it.

This is a tricky business. I got behind her, tilted her head up, and forced her mouth open with my finger. I then inserted the pill, and attempted to close her mouth while tilting her head forward and blowing on her nose to make her lick her nose and swallow the pill. Suki's plan of attack is to repeatedly wriggle like a fish in a desperate attempt to escape, and to rapidly stick her tongue in and out of her mouth to shoot out the pill. It takes a few tries to get this right, and I'm sad to say that I didn't even get the advantage of surprise as it usually takes Suki a few days to figure out how to counter my pilling.