Both Hands

Emergency Vet

Last Saturday was an adventurous day for us, to say the least. Not only did I have to make one trip to the emergency vet, I almost had to make two!

The day started off relatively relaxing, with both Frinklin and I sleeping in. He was planning to do some Christmas shopping and I was getting ready to attack the massive piles of laundry that were taking over our bedroom. We were watching the dogs play with a new toy in the living room when things got a little heated between The Jeffrey and Perdita. Suddenly, Perdy decided the new toy was hers and hers alone and grabbed The Jeffrey's head in her jaws!

Normally little tiffs between dogs are no big deal. They happen from time to time and you assess the damage and move on. However, Perdy happened to catch The Jeffrey's eyelid on her canine tooth from the inside and we couldn't separate them easily. The stupid dogs wouldn't hold still long enough for us to grab them, so I was practically sitting on Perdita when they magically came apart. Somehow, The Jeffrey only had a small puncture wound in the bottom part of his eyelid - no major damage. Whew! Escape Emergency Vet visit!

I should have never said those words aloud.

Not an hour later I hear one of the cats errupt in a loud scream, which is not unusual, considering the difficulty Sadie has had fitting into our family of kitties as of late. My usual course of action is to scoop Sadie up and soothe her, as she usually dissolves into a puddle of purrs and cuddles within seconds.

This time she growled and hissed at me, and when I ran my hand down her tail my fingers came away wet with blood. I discovered a large chunk missing from her tail and when she squirmed away from me red droplets followed her. On closer examination, I found a V-shaped slice in her tail, obviously requiring stitches.

"Now I'm off to the emergency vet!" I called to Frinklin, who was prepping for his foray into the wilds of the mall.

"What now?" He yelled in reply.

"Cat damage!" I exclaimed as I packaged up Sadie into her cat carrier and bundled her out to the car where she pitifully cried the entire drive to the Animal Emergency Clinic. It must not have hurt too badly though, because she was all charm and love when the vet on call examined her once we arrived. Her paperwork states, "Purr to loud to read pulse."

The vet initially recommended $700 in surgery for her tail to keep the blood flow active (don't want to kill off the end of her tail!). But because Sadie is so sweet, we opted for sedation and local in the tail while the stitches were put in (only $275!), which seems to have worked just fine. Everyone at the Emergency Vet's office fell in love with her. I told them that they could keep her, but so far no takers.

Upon her return home she appeared to have a giant dread lock attached to her ass:

Sadie remedied this quickly by ripping the vet wrap off almost immediately and rendering herself even funnier looking:

Our own awesome vet checked Sadie out on Monday and declared her to be healing. Her stitches come out in another week or so. As great as the emergency clinic was, I have no desire to go there again soon.

Film Review: Juno

Thanks to a couple of free passes picked up at Comic Book Ink over the weekend, I was lucky enough to catch an early Seattle showing of the movie Juno I've been desperate to see. It required a pilgrimage to Seattle along with Frinklin, as well as fellow bloggers Kevin Freitas and his lovely wife Cassioposa.

There's been so much hype about this movie, about the writer Diablo Cody - she's The Next Big Thing!, how this is Ellen Page's breakthrough role, and could Jennifer Garner win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for this film...and it's all true. Juno is superbly written (if not a little too smart in places), Ellen Page is perfect in the role of Juno, and Jennifer Garner transforms from an uptight woman you think you know into a vulnerable one you genuinely care about.

This film nicely skips over all the clinches you've seen in every other film about teen pregnancy. There's the 16-year-old girl who gets pregnant and makes her own decisions about what to do with the baby. She's definitely the odd one out at school, but her best friend is the head cheerleader. The stepmother who may not be so wicked after all. The adoptive couple who has their own hidden issues to deal with.

Juno's smart mouth made me love her, but the fact that she's not quite got all the answers made her real. The moment that her stepmother explains to her that she cannot spend time alone with a married man - that moment stood out to me. Her refusal to accept her stepmother's warning leads to a painful realization, prompting Juno to ask her father for relationship advice. Seeing a smart-ass kid who still needs her parents is cool.

The trip was definitely worth it. Juno is a lot of fun to watch and I can't wait to see it again on DVD to make sure I didn't miss any good lines because the people in the audience were laughing so loud I couldn't hear them. I highly recommend you get your ass to the theater to see Juno immediately. The film hits theaters today.

Trip to Home Depot

Ensie: "Which part do you think we need?"

Frinklin: "I'm pretty sure it's this one."

Ensie: "I think we should wait for the plumbing guy to confirm your expert opinion."

Said plumbing guy does confirm expert opinion.

Frinklin: "You can't see it right now, but I'm flexing on the inside."

Tacoma Firemen Rescue Kitty

I really thought this was an urban myth. But this morning I awoke to a Tacoma Fire truck parked outside my front window with ladder extending to rescue a wayward neighborhood kitty named Max that had managed to get himself stuck on a slippery roof yesterday.

Saving Max, originally uploaded by ensie1.