Oreo Update, Plus Bonus Nothing-To-Do-With-The-Cat Anecdote

Because I'm sure all 4 of you reading this want to know...Oreo went back to the vet today for a reassessment. Her bloodwork came back surprisingly decent, but I've been worried because despite our heroic needle-sticking, she still seems mostly lethargic and checked out (she spends pretty much all her time on the heating pad I set up for her in the bathroom, away from the hurly burly of the rest of us). We did find that she had gained a tiny bit of weight back (which is pretty surprising to me given that she seems to be eating hardly anything…maybe it's all that extra fluid she has in her now), but overall the treatment doesn't seem to be having that astounding "wow she's back to her old self again" effect I was hoping for. Josh and I keep circling around that "where do we draw the line/how much farther do we take these heroic measures" conversation. But we still have several treatment options left (I won't bore y'all with too many technical details), and I'm happy to report one tiny little glimmer of good news: the shot of B-complex vitamins that the vet gave her tonight seems to have helped somehow, because her energy seems to have come back a little (she was particularly feisty during tonight's needle sticking) and she even ate her pill-holder treat (if not her dinner) with relish, which she hasn't been doing for days. Most reassuring of all, though, she's started purring again--I'm sitting in the bathroom with her right now, thanks to the power of wireless internet + laptop chicleta, and she's been purring and purring just like she used to, when she'd get so loud we'd kick her off our bed at night. So that makes me feel hopeful that maybe we've found something that's helping. We'll see what happens after this--I'm supposed to check back in with the vet in a couple days and probably go back in at some point next week.

In other, completely unrelated, and far happier news, Josh utterly surprised me last night by taking me out on a special date night in honor of my birthday--after a delicious sushi dinner at our favorite restaurant, we went to go see Howard Jones at the Red Devil Lounge in the city. And what a great show it was! It was an acoustic show (which is kind of funny if you know anything about Howard Jones--he of the electronic synthesizer pop fame) in a tiny little club with a generally happy and polite audience (of course I'd have to say that there probably wasn't a soul under 30 in that place that wasn't an employee). Howard (and a guitar player) played wonderful acoustic versions of a lot of his "classic" (ouch) hits from the 80s, which gave me a lovely little nostalgia hit as well as being enjoyable in and of themselves. It was so fun to be out and about like "regular" (i.e. non-parent-of-small-children) grownups--even though I only wound up getting about 5 hours of sleep last night, it was worth it.

Wait a minute…did someone say sleep? Zzzzzz…