Photo Challenge Day 20

It's been a busy day! Fiona and I got a lot of yard work done this morning and the girls went to a fun birthday party this afternoon. They were so tired after the party that they both fell asleep in the car on the way home and then went straight to bed. Yep, for real! They are both in bed right now! It's a Saturday night miracle! What should we do with it? Darts tournament? Board game? Right now Ben is watching car reviews on cnet so we'll have to try to do something more exciting than that at least...

Today's challenge was bokeh. According to wikipedia bokeh "is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image, or "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light." "

I love bokeh. I love portraits with bokeh. I love the lens I have that goes down to f1.8 which gives me great bokeh. One of my favorite things about it is that when I take "blurred background" pictures in my messy living room, the mess is all blurry and therefore "artistic" and not "lazy and slightly unhygienic".

My friend Sara who is also taking the challenge went all out and pulled out some christmas lights and got some really beautiful bokeh but I don't have the energy she does so this is my offering for today...

30 day photo challenge day 20: Bokeh (with cat)

Alvin? Simon? Theodore?

We were just heading out the door this afternoon when Monty came inside with something in his mouth. He ran into the kitchen and we realized it was a little woodland creature. He dropped it on the floor and I identified it as a chipmunk.

After a few horrified seconds I realized it was not dead. It looked like it was close though, it was just lying there any twitching a little. Ben took the girls out to the car and I stayed behind to deal with it. I was looking for something to scoop it up with when it stopped twitching and lay completely still. I watched it for a few seconds and really thought it was dead when suddenly it jumped up and started scampering around. It was under the kitchen table and after some failed attempts at cornering it, it hid under the dishwasher.

Awesome.

We spent the late afternoon and evening at Ben's parents house.

Fiona did some splashing in the lake and we had dinner together. It was a very enjoyable time, but we were concerned about one of two possibilities. One, it dies while we're gone and we have to deal with a decomposing chipmunk trapped under the dishwasher. Or two, it gets comfortable and becomes a permanent house guest.

On our return home it seemed that scenario 2 was more likely. There was chipmunk poo on the kitchen floor and he'd helped himself to a beer from the fridge. Worst house guest ever.

While I was in the kitchen I heard some thumping sounds and then a wail and found that Fiona has tripped coming down the stairs and landed at the bottom on her head. She only fell down the last few steps, and seemed fine, but was a little upset. After some cuddles and a cookie she was happy again.

Shortly after that she was lying on the couch while Ben changed her diaper and I heard a nasty choking coughing sound. Ben sat her up and started patting her on the back. I thought at first she'd thrown up and was choking on it, but whatever was going on her face was all red and my heart started pounding. I opened her mouth to see what was going on but then she started taking some big gasping breaths and was ok again. After a few seconds she was composed enough to say one word. "Penny".

Aaaaaauuughhhhhh.

Yep, she choked on, and then swallowed, a penny. So much for all the credit I gave her for being smart.

I half-noticed it lying on the floor a few minutes earlier and am kicking myself that I didn't just pick it up then. She's pretty good about not putting stuff in her mouth but since she knows that putting coins in her mouth is absolutely forbidden she likes to do it just to annoy me. Same with earplugs. If she gets her hands on them she'll put them in her mouth, then come over to me and show me what she's doing. It's infuriating but she thinks she's hilarious.

Dr. Google told me that she should go to the ER immediately in case it's stuck in her esophagus before it corrodes her insides, so I called the nurse line and she said that if she's breathing and drinking and can swallow a little bread she is most likely fine, and to look for it in her poo. And she seems totally fine, so I'm going to go with the nurse, but will be keeping a close eye on her. And her poo. The nurse's tip was to chop it up with a knife to look for the penny. I can't wait...

So that was our evening. There's still a chipmunk hiding in the house, Fiona may or may not have a corroded esophagus by the morning, Ben is sick and has a fever and it's 10.30 and Adele is making is pretty clear that she feels like partying tonight. Things have never been better :-)

$2000 dog toy

Monty's surgery went very well. They removed the blockage and the vet said that his intestines looked good, and he expected him to recover well. Now we have to hope that the kidney failure and pancreatitis were effects of him being extremely dehydrated, and not a coincidental additional problem. He's home now and seems to be in pretty good spirits, considering.

Luckily he didn't have an intussuscuseption of his intestines (where the intestine gets stuck inside itself) and he didn't have a tumor or growth. So what was in there? Did he eat one too many woodland creatures? No... for some unimaginable reason he swallowed a piece of one of Brodie's dog toys making this, I think, probably the world's most expensive dog toy. Brodie has jaws of steel and will occasionally manage to chew off a chunk of his super heavy duty almost indestructible red rubber dog toy, which Monty apparently thought would make a tasty snack. It's very strange. This toy is old and filthy (Brodie plays with it in the yard) and I don't even like to touch it so I cannot imagine why Monty wanted to eat it. Yuck!

He gets to start on some small portions of food tomorrow, and we're hoping he'll start eating and drinking again and will be back to his normal happy self in no time. Until then, Monty says... "I've had a hard day, please let me sleep..."

Monty Update

So Monty appears to have some sort of blockage in his intestine. It's not bone because it's not showing up on the x-ray, so it's either some big furry lump of woodland creature, something man-made that he ate because he's none too bright (like a piece of a toy), some kind of weird intestinal mishap (where the intestine kind of folds in on itself) or some kind of growth or tumor. He's scheduled for surgery tomorrow morning and then the mystery will be solved.

He's still not eating or drinking and we're still having to give him IV fluids to keep him from shriveling up like a kitty raisin. It is odd that kidney failure initially accompanied this, but hopefully it is all related to this problem and after he has it removed he'll get back to being his normal happy self.

Here's a picture of him when Brodie was added to the family... showing him who's boss. Brodie grew pretty fast though and this didn't last for long. They're friends now though because they're both too old to tango like this any more...

Mr. Monty Mo

Those of you who have met him know that our cat Monty is without a doubt the world's most awesome kitty. When I first moved here from Scotland Ben convinced me that we should just go and look at some kittens, because I'd never held a kitten before. As soon as I met Mr. Monty I was smitten. He was so tiny and sweet and cuddly and licked us with his tiny pink kitten tongue. Since then I've learned that Ben is sneaky, and can be pretty convincing after we "just go and look" at something, and now I try to resist looking at things like cars and computers and tvs and kittens and puppies with him, but that's another story...

That Thanksgiving the three of us drove from Ann Arbor to Minneapolis. The drive is about 12 hours, and 12 hours in a car with a kitten was an interesting experience...

This week Monty has been really sick. On Monday I noticed that he was throwing up and seemed really unhappy. He felt really strange to touch too, kind of stiff, it was very weird. On Tuesday morning I took him to the vet, who was immediately very concerned and told me he was really dehydrated. He ran some tests and learned that he was in kidney failure, as well as having pancreatitis. He started saying things like "we have to hope this works, or we might not get him back"... poor Monty was not a happy kitty. He spent all Tuesday at the vet being given IV fluids and an antibiotic, and then came home on Tuesday night and just kind of sat around miserably. On Wednesday he spent another day at the vet for more of the same, and by Wednesday night he was much perkier and his test results were back to normal. We took him home with a big bag of fluids and antibiotics to inject into him twice a day (which is really awful for everyone). Today he's still better than he was, but has no energy, and is still not eating or drinking despite being tempted with his very favorite foods. We have to take him back in to the vet tomorrow morning to give him some medicine to try to increase his appetite, and decide if we should be trying anything else.

The vet doesn't know what happened. It's possible that he consumed something that poisoned him and caused the kidney failure. He catches and eats woodland creatures sometimes, so it's possible that something didn't agree with him or there's some kind of foreign matter stuck in his tummy causing him problems and making him not want to eat or drink. Or it could be something else entirely.

I hope we figure it out soon though! I'm still worried about him and hope that he'll be back to his normal happy kitty self before too long!