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Ashley Crumb has been back in our news again. She seemed to be getting a little thin, but this time she was showing signs of being manic: getting into all kinds of stuff, chewing all the time, and being super finicky about her food. When she started throwing up a lot one day, including pieces of hard clear packing tape, we figured it was time to go see Our Favorite Vet again.

At first OFV scared us by saying AC was jaundiced and could be showing signs of pancreatitis. But that got put on the back burner after OFV developed the X-rays.

That big blob there is plastic. Taking up all the room in her stomach, not allowing her to get sufficient nutrition, and giving her ulcers.

With more tests and an overnight, AC was ready to go to another special vet to have the plastic scoped out of her belly. We asked if they would be able to tell for sure what was in there. We were having a helluva time imagining how she could have eaten a piece of packing tape that large. They told us, “No problem.” In fact, we could have whatever it was back. Oh goody, we thought, we could put ACs baggie of tummy tape on the bulletin board next to the baggie of Gomey’s extracted teeth.

The scoping was successful and no surgery was needed. As promised, we were handed a sealed bag of slimy things — not just clear packing tape, but also frozen food bag plastic, cellophane, and other mysterious translucent bits. Twenty pieces in all.

When we got her home she was on a restricted diet and because she hadn’t eaten for two days she immediately started opening cabinets, snurfling around on the shelves, and looking for food. Even pistachios in a baggie. We’ve had to reorganize the entire kitchen so that anything even remotely crinkly or plastic-y is safe in a drawer. She can’t open those yet.

If only she could understand that if Ashley Crumb does “X,” then Ashley Crumb gets “Y”…

Where “X” is having a stomach so full of half-chewed plastic bits that one is becoming malnourished, and “Y” is getting wrapped in a towel and having kitty pepto squirted down your gullet two or three times per day after being denied food, carted around to doctors, staying away overnight, having an endoscopy, and getting hissed at by your beloveds when you do finally return home.

Meep kisses a ladybug…

Then chases her over to the lamp…

She will wait all night for that bug if she has to…

All night long…

The ridiculousness we have been forced to endure for the last three days:

Weezie Meep is doing better. She still has a dent in her eyeball and she’s still getting her drops. I’ve had to take her blue bonnet off because this toothless DUMPLEDORK thinks that Meep is one of those scary spitter dinosaurs from Jurassic Park when she has it on, and – as evidenced above – responds accordingly. Someone get this boy some glasses.

I’m too busy to post today. I have to clean the kitchen. Someone’s been caught red-handed making a mess.

Gomez likes to pretend that Weezie’s favorite string toy (see below) is a very, very thin and headless black snake that he can kill. Here is the link so you can see for yourselves. And, yes I agree, it is too bad I can’t figure out how to embed videos.

TTFN

Ashley had her ultrasound on Wednesday and all went well. Nothing significantly bad was noted, no pancreatitis, so we’re happy about that. The vet strung together a few words that made me think Ashley has a kind of chronic inflammation, maybe something like rheumatoid arthritis? We’re awaiting further review by the other docs and more feedback. The next thing for her may be a steroid trial, and hopefully not aspiration of the joints for more diagnostic purposes. We are still awaiting the viral screening results though, for toxo or FIP. In the meantime, she continues to maintain her improvement. She’s not 100% back to normal, but steady around 85-90%.

And, as you can see, she’s got a new hair-do.

[New photo added for Improved Mullet Viewing]

Weezie Meep, the drama queen, is bugging me to play with her string 400 times per day. She is obsessed with this thing. It has a plastic ring on one end of the elastic string that used to be attached to a catnip monkey. Who knows where catnip monkey is now though; it’s all about this string. She brings it upstairs, downstairs, to bed, into the kitchen, on the sofa, up on my desk. All the while cooing and mewing and asking for attention. And if she doesn’t get it she’ll do the SuuuuperCuuuute!Meeeew! – which is more pointed and higher pitched than her usual mew – particularly if I am trying to go to sleep, and often while standing on my bum.

To illustrate the point, as I write this post (see WordPress interface on monitor), she presents both self and string with great anticipation.

The Uncouth Heathen has requested more cats. Perhaps one of these days I’ll get a Flickr stream-thingy going so the choicest photos of the 3000 taken can be viewed and admired by all. Until then, there’s this.

The two remaining current household felines yet to be featured are Little (nee Gypsy then Vivien aka Quibble McGee), seen here trying to assert himself with Weezie…

…and Ashleycrumb Tiny (nee Patchabelle and sometimes Smashley or Crashley although for a time she was also known as Mrs. McGee but their affair was fleeting).

Ashley is in no way concerned that her shorthair makes her look dykey. It just runs in her family.