Sad week.

Friday night, I came home after a long day at work. It had been a stressful few days and I was ready to get in bed with Ty and relax. I needed to give my 14-year-old cat Nala some medicine and called to Ty to ask if she was in the bedroom. He said yes, and when I walked up to her, I saw she had passed away. It was a rather traumatic way to end the evening. Ty was great and helped me put her in a box (and in the morning, we took her to the vet to be cremated), but I was too upset to sleep and had to work Saturday. Getting through that day at work was awful. I knew Nala had some health problems and that she was getting up in age (we had her twin sister, who did not live with me, put to sleep a few months ago), and I always hoped she would die at home so I wouldn't have to put her through the trauma of riding to the vet in the car, but I also wasn't expecting to be at work when it happened. I don't even remember if I interacted with her that day. Ty said when he left for work in the morning, she was lying on top of me purring while I slept, but I don't remember seeing her other than to give her her morning medicine. I've had Nala since she was born. In fact, she was born on my bed while I was still in it. I was away in Eugene for about six years of her life, but for every other day of the rest of her life, she slept in bed with me and always, if she was sitting near me, purred loudly enough to make it hard to hear the TV. I'll miss her.

Adventures in dog ownership

Saturday, Ty and I got back from running errands very eager to make sandwiches out of some challah he bought from our favorite bakery while on his morning walk with Bugsy. I asked where the bread was -- we keep it on the counter but he sometimes freezes it -- and he insisted it was there. That's when we saw the empty bread bag on the living room floor. At first, it was just annoying that he cost us $4 and we didn't get to eat any of the delicious bread, and the bakery was closed by then.

Over the next 24 hours, we had other reasons to be concerned. Bugsy began to show signs of intestinal distress, including gas so horrendous it could be used to make biological weapons. He looked bloated and was clearly uncomfortable, breathing more deeply and panting more often than normal. So, we made an appointment at the one vet in town open 7 days a week. He got an x-ray to make sure his intestine wasn't completely blocked and $150 later, we brought him home with some pain pills to just wait for it all to come out. By the time we woke up today (Monday), he seemed back to his old self ... except for one thing. My first thought when I saw him this morning was, "why is he orange?"




Ty left for work before I woke up, but he wrote a note explaining the dog's new fur color. An empty container of paprika and a white leather chair tinted the same orange as the dog's fur.

I called the vet and was told to just wait for it all to pass.

The closing line of Ty's note?

"We may need to rethink how we organize the kitchen."