Editor’s note: The following is a guest post from Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment).
We have been to the dentist. We are not amused. We wish we were a bear like the one on the Apple TV screensaver. Then when someone thought we needed to go to the dentist we could slap all the ass off of them and eat a salmon with our funky teefers.
Christmas has come and gone without incident, mostly.
On Christmas Eve, at the urging of Herself, we streamed “The Interview,” because freedom, and now I consider that freedom owes me about $7 and 112 minutes of my life. Herself only gets about 90 minutes back because she fell asleep before the big denouement.
Come the big day we cooked up a mess o’ U-nited States of America American® vittles, just the way Jeebus likes ’em (roast turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, giblet gravy, stir-fried succotash with edamame, and raspberry cobbler). Later we rang up or emailed various friends and relatives, and parceled out tasty tidbits to all the critters.
We engaged in no elaborate gift-giving. The move to Duke City and the ongoing reconstruction project that is The Six Million Dollar Boo did to our Visa card what Seth Rogen did to Kim Jong-un’s head, but our executive decisions and the consequences thereof have failed to draw the compensatory attention of the White House and the media.
Then it was early to bed — but not to sleep, not right away. Just as we drifted off, The Boo somehow tumbled out of the rack and onto the deck. I leapt from the sack to see whether his sole remaining eye was skittering around the carpet somewhere like a ping-pong ball that had escaped the table.
Nope. No harm, no foul. As Herself clicked on her bedside lamp, there sprawled The Boo, with a slight list to port, peering at me through the Cone of Shame like a dimwitted Soviet cosmonaut who’d forgotten to close the visor on his helmet before launch.
I’ll call that a Christmas gift.
Yesterday was a bit overcast, and there were things to do, many, many of them, so I didn’t sneak out for a skull-flushing bike ride until 3 p.m.
With Mister Boo still on a rigorous doping schedule — jeez, you’d think he was riding for Astana or something — I can only get away from Rancho Pendejo for a couple hours at a time. So, given that, and since it was late, I just explored a couple unfamiliar trails branching off the Foothills Trail near the Embudo Dam trailhead.
I didn’t drop down the other side toward Interstate 40, but so far I haven’t found anything I can’t ride on the old Voodoo Nakisi Monstercrosser®, which has 700×43 Bruce Gordon Rock n’ Roads for traction and that nifty 22×26 bailout gear (23.6 gear inches) for emergencies and/or sloth. Had I known I’d wind up liking this bike so much I’d have ordered two framesets and built a disc-brake version with wider rims for really fat tires. Alas, the model is no longer with us, having been discontinued.
The Boo has another follow-up appointment with his veterinary ophthalmologist this morning, and I’m hoping that he’ll enjoy longer intervals between medications henceforth, for his sake and for mine. I’d like to start getting some longer rides in, and I expect he’s getting sick of me grabbing him by the skull four times a day to hose down the only eyeball he has left.
All is well on the Island, for those of you who expressed curiosity. Herself is sounding less like Tom Waits and more like (wait for it) Herself, and Mister Boo is adjusting nicely to monocular vision.
The former has been subsisting on a diet of health-restoring soups (chicken noodle, posole), cough drops, and various over-the-counter nostrums, including a nightly hot toddy made with Jameson, local honey and lemon.
The latter is taking more prescription drugs than a right-wing radio personality, shamelessly using his disability to extort treats from anyone in his vicinity, and sleeping in the bed with Your Humble Narrator, who as a consequence has grown slightly red of eye himself.
He has his first follow-up appointment with the eyeball doc on Wednesday — the Boo, not YHN — but our uninformed opinion is that the little guy is doing quite well. And Herself has only missed one day of work, which is fortunate, because someone has to pay for all of this, and I don’t think it’s gonna be Obama.
Speaking of vision issues (see the 2014 midterm elections), we learned last week that Mister Boo’s eyesight had finally deteriorated to the point of requiring surgery.
His bad eye had gotten really bad — couldn’t see a damn thing out of it, thanks to an old lens luxation, and it had begun causing him some discomfort, being subject to periodic corneal abrasions. His good eye, meanwhile, had sprouted a mature cataract. Both of these issues are fairly common in Japanese Chins.
So, we pulled the trigger on a two-fer, having the defunct right eye removed and the left lens replaced. Didn’t use none of that socialistic Mooslim com’niss ObummerCare, neither. We paid for it in good ol’ fiat currency, and plenty of it, too.
“He looks like he was in a bar fight,” the vet tech warned me before bringing Mister Boo out for pickup yesterday. No shit, and he lost it, too, I thought after seeing him for the first time.
Now the poor little fella gets to take eight medications throughout the day — four drops, two pills, one gel and a liquid — and faces several follow-up visits to the vet over the next month or so.
But his appetite is excellent, he’s taking in plenty of fluids, and while he’s down to one eye, it seems he can see out of it.
So we might not have to buy Mister Boo a white cane and a German shepherd for solstice. But an eyepatch and a parrot? Maybe. Arrr.
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