Date: August 31, 2000
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Most recently listened to: Elisabeth
Going to do after this: Go pick up my rental van, pack all my stuff into it (any volunteers are welcome!) and go sleep in a parking lot
Alright. Prepare yourself for the latest chapter in the never-ending saga of my life. Why can’t things ever be easy???
At the moment, I have no money (my paycheck is apparently lost in the mail), no place to stay tonight (I have to move out of my house, but can’t move into my new place till tomorrow), and I fear my cat may be permanently damaged. But other than that, everything’s great. *rolling eyes*
I had a really good time at home, though it went waaaaaay too fast. I had all these plans to get all this email and work done on my site, and got pretty much *nothing* accomplished. Oh, except scanning this picture…
🙂 (Side note: *NSYNC are doing a concert in Toronto in November. I believe I just may have to go!)
I didn’t get to see much of my little brother at all because he was in Prince Edward Island, playing in the national Pee Wee Baseball Championships. His team placed 6th, which is pretty good! He had a good time, though, and came home with the stuffed lobster he wanted, so all is well. Here’s a picture of him from the local paper with his new blond hair.
I almost didn’t recognize him at the airport! He looks so different!
So, speaking of aiports, I flew back to Ottawa yesterday. This was very traumatic for me because I was bringing my cat along, and I was worried the entire time about how he was going to react. As a precaution, I decided to take him to a vet in Edmonton and have them give him a sedative, not to knock him out or anything, but just mellow him out a bit for the trip. So, all seemed to be well as the porter took him away in Edmonton. That was at 12:00 Alberta time, or 2:00 Ontario time. I didn’t see him again until we got to my house at almost 11:00 Ontario time. That’s 9 hours later. According to the vet, the sedative should start wearing off in about 6 hours, and by 12 hours should be done. Well, as I let my poor kitty out of his carrier, the underlid of his eyes was still half up, making his eyes face outwards and up (each facing an opposite direction). Needless to say, I freaked when I saw him. And the poor thing couldn’t walk straight, likely because he couldn’t see…he kept stumbling all over the place. So I phoned the emergency vet hospital here, told them what he’d been given, and they agreed his reaction was a little too strong for how long ago it had been given, and they told me to bring him in. So by this time, I’m sobbing, certain that I’ve killed my cat. I call a cab, ’cause the vet is way out in Kanata. The cab driver shows up, and hardly speaks a word of English, gets us lost about 5 times, takes more than half an hour to get there, and charges me the full price anyway. At least that stopped me crying for a while, ’cause I was just so angry.
Anyway. We got to the hospital at midnight, and had to wait until quarter to 1 to see a vet, ’cause they had a more important emergency. I was ready to kill the technician who came out to look at Tiger and went, “Oh, he’s cross-eyed! Isn’t that cute?!” I wanted to strangle her and scream “NO IT’S NOT CUTE HE’S BLIND”, but I managed to control myself. Still crying though. Finally we get to see the vet. Now, Tiger has always hated vets. I really don’t know how he can tell when we’re at one, but he just changes into this psycho vicious cat whenever we go. But I figured, if he’s still that heavily sedated, he ought to be easy to manage. Nope. The vet wasn’t even able to examine him, because he kept biting and hissing and scratching and squirming all over the place. The vet said that normally in that kind of situation, he would sedate the cat, but in this particular case, it would sort of defeat the purpose. So his next brilliant idea was that I should hold his head while he tried to listen to his heartbeat. I now have some major flesh wounds to my wrist. Anyway, after all this, the vet finally just told me that he had an overly-strong reaction to the sedative, but there was nothing to do except wait until he metabolized it. But I still got charged the $100 examination fee. So I had to take a cab home, and sit up all night, checking my cat’s eyes every hour and crying.
Anyway, at this point in time, his eyes are almost back to normal, and he’s walking perfectly fine, so I think that physically he’ll be fine. Emotionally, I’m not so sure. I almost had another heart attack this morning when I woke up after dozing for about an hour to not be able to find him anywhere in my room. All I could think was that someone had let him out and he was lost somewhere, or had fallen down the stairs, or who knows what else. After running around the house for a good 10 minutes and scaring more than one of my housemates, I finally found him squeezed into the tiny space between the bottom shelf of my bookcase and the floor. For a cat as big as Tiger, that’s a pretty good accomplishment. He’s spent most of the day in the closet. And now we’re going to have to sleep in a parking lot tonight. He’s going to hate me forever.
So yeah, why do I get to sleep in a parking lot tonight? Well, it’s the end of the month, and the new tenants are moving into our house tonight. So I have to move out. My plan had been to drive a little ways out of the city, find a place on the side of the road to sleep. Still not great, but it would do. However, my last paycheck, which was supposed to be waiting for me here and which contains the money I need to pay my rent in Toronto, has not made its appearance yet. I phoned the company, they said they mailed it last Thursday, so it really should be here by now. But, I can’t go to Toronto without this cheque. So now I have to wait around Ottawa until the mail comes in tomorrow, *praying* that it’s there. But I still have to move out of my house tonight. And, of course, on top of all of this, is the fact that I still have to move about 30 boxes down 2 flights of stairs and pack a van tonight, while trying to make sure my cat doesn’t leave the room.
Somebody just shoot me now, please.