MeMe!

Before I do the meme, I just wanted to let you know that my secretary mombean FINALLY posted the other contestants from the contest TWO WEEKS AGO. Sheesh, what a slow mom bean. Oh, and please vote on how often you want the contest to be. The voter thingy is on the right hand side of this bloggy. We are thinking of scaling back the frequency of the contest because we aren't getting quite as many submishions as we would like. We are still expecting to run a contest tomorrow though if we get enough submissions, so remember to send your submissions to fractiouscat at gmail dot com.

I's been tagged by The Island Cats to do the Unspectacular Quirks meme.

The rules: Link to the one who tagged you. List the rules on your blog. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours. Tag some blogger friends with links. Leave a comment on their blog to let them know they’ve been tagged.

My first quirk is that I am a Trainable Cat. My first trick is that I can give high-fives. I will do them without treats too, but Mom and Dadbean generally don't do that. So whenever they give me treats now, I get so excited I start giving them high-five. Here is a video for your enjoyment.



Another quirk is that I "fish". This is what roommate D calls it. I take my dry food, swirl it around in my water bowl, and eat it. Unfortunately, mommy just got this video camera recently, and since starting chemo I don't like to eat dry much. If I decide to fish again, mom said she'll put a video up for everyone to see.

Still have four more quirks to go. Hmm...
3. I like to sleep in a giant potato chip box
4. Whenever the harness is put on me to go outside I zoom around the room in reverse, even though I have gotten used to the harness. After zooming and crashing for a minute, I am ready to be carried outside and only once carried outside do I get interested in exploring the outside.
5. I am deathly afraid of cars. Mom says this is a Very Good Thing. Even hearing one from far away scares me a little. But when the neighbor pulls into the driveway next door, I get so scared I zoom up to the porch and drag mom or dad behind me as if I was a giant Woofie or something.
6. I am not even a little bit scared of even Giant REALLY LOUD thunderstorms.

I's tagging Abby the Tabby, Castle and Parker for this meme.

Wordless Wednesday

How to annoy your beans; timing is everything

See, my fellow cats, drinking your bean's water is often sufficient to get the beans a bit annoyed at you. But if this has become your habit, and the beans have decided it's just a fact of life, then you have to be more creative with your timing.

My secretary was a bit slow typing this for you, but a week ago we had really bad storms. Mombean was having trouble sleeping anyway that night because of all the storms, and then woke up again at 2am when the power went out. Since the bean alarm clock is electric operated and the backup battery had died, she went down to get batteries. She then realized that she couldn't see the batteries, so she fumbled around for a flash light. She couldn't find the button on the flashlight, so she woke up Dadbean and asked how to turn it on. Dadbean said "you hit the "On" button". Well, of course that smartypants response made mombean REALLL mad at 2am and they said bad words at each other. Dadbean turned the flashlight on and mombean put batteries in the alarm clock. Then she realized that since it was 2am and maybe the neighbors were asleep, she should go find the power company number and call and make sure the power company knew we had no power. So she wanders around the house more with the flashlight. The flashlight awakened the birdies, and they started banging around loudly in the cage. Several times during all her wandering around in the dark, I get underfoot and each time mom says more bad words. Mom is quite annoyed at this point, and is getting warm with the air conditioning not working, and goes upstairs and calls the power company finally. At this point while she is trying to call the power company, she decides she wants some water. And at this exact moment, she notices she hears a noise from her side of the bed--- it is ME, drinking her water! Even though I have my own cup in the bedroom to try and prevent me from doing this! See, timing is everything!!!!

-Texas

Vet Visit

So today I had my vincristine. I got weighed, and I am down to 4.5kg, I was 4.7 kg two weeks ago. This is almost half a pound of weight loss. So it seems the weight loss was not a scale variance. I lost a lot of weight with the doxo last time too, but not this much. I did eat less this time though. Mom is still not happy that the nausea doesn't seem to be quite following the usual pattern. Yes, she kept me eating well by giving me lots of Zofran, but during the second week when I should have been eating my usual can and a half, I wasn't. I still would only eat a little less than a can, and even that required almost-daily shots of Zofran. Finally, I haven't been regularly coming up to snuggle mom and dad at night for two weeks. I do this almost every night when feeling well, yet I've only come upstairs about twice in the past two weeks. This could all still be related to the chemo, and the vets aren't mentioning concern to my mom yet, but she is still worried.

Also, they wrote on the sheet that my kidneys were large and had "abnormal surface". Now, they usually write "large, lumpy" or just "large", so it seems this is just the way my kidneys have healed since the cancer. They did do an ultrasound about 5 weeks ago and found no cancer then, so hopefully this is just the status quo. Mom asked a tech, and they said that yes, it was just a different doctor's terminology, not to worry. And the detailed notes mentioned nothing about the weight loss or the kidneys, and they didn't do another ultrasound, so mommy figures they aren't worried, but she worries just the same.

Oh, I was terribly fractious at the vet's today! I was just a darling angel this morning- mommy picked me up and I snuggled her and she set me in front of the PTU and I walked right in, no problem. I was noisy the whole drive down of course, but did not growl or meow once brought into the vet's. So, Mom asked the the vets if they could try the IV chemo with me today instead of putting me in the gas chamber like usual. Well, before mommy even got back home from dropping me off (it's an hour drive), they had called Daddy and said that I was being fractious and needed the gas chamber. Daddy was home from work today and thought the call was quite funny indeed. He said "Sorry my cat is a donkey" to the vets. But he used the three letter word for donkey. I wonder why he did that. The vets also seemed to find it funny when he said that, maybe because THEY know I don't look anything like a donkey! But the really fractious part about today was when mommy went to pick me up. The tech came out, gave mom my meds and an update on me, and then went back to get me. She came back empty handed and told mom that I was lunging when she tried to close the door to my carrier! So mom had to come back to the treatment room and help. Mom stuck her hand near me and said "see, it's me, mom" but I don't like the smell of the vet place so I hissed and almost bit her whole hand off, so mom gave up that idea. Instead, she had to close my door with a ruler and then the tech distracted me while mom quickly latched the door. As soon as we got in the car I turned right back into a darling angel. :)

Finally, I got some thorough bloodwork and pee-analysis today. Apparently they do this every 90 days or so just to see how things are going, it wasn't out of alarm or anything. Not sure when we will have the results on these, please keep your paws crossed. Mommy was sort of annoyed, they made no mention that they do this, and it added $150 to our bill today! Mommy thinks she might help me add a paypal button to my bloggie. Mom and dad are definitely able to pay for my treatment, but they've spent about 6000 green papers so far to do it, and are starting to get into a bit of debt. They know everything will be fine once my chemo ends in 3 months, but they say the debt numbers are starting to get scarier.

Easy Like Sunday Morning

Oh, Mom, haven't you seen a cat trying to sleep in a chips box before? Oh you know you have, I sleep here all the time. Put the flashy box away....See, that's what you get for disturbing me, a blurry photo! Hmph!

Silly Caturday!

Firstly, we aren't quite done giving out awards and posting last week's contestants yet, we are working on it, sorry for the delay, mommy is a busy secretary for me today. By the way, be sure to vote on how often we should do funny picture Friday.

So today's post is about medicine, but more funny than yesterday's medisin post.

Mommy thinks it's funny that daddy refuses to learn my medisun names. Of course, he knows to look at the lables in an emergensy, but if mommy says to him for instance, "Did you give Texas the Zofran?" He will give her a blank stare. Mommy doesn't understand this, because the labels are right on the medisuns, and he obviously looks at them before giving them to me. She doesn't understand how if she says "give Texas the steroid" he knows which bottle to pick up, but if she says "give Texas the prednisolone" he stares at her like she's nuts, even though the bottle is labeled "prednisolone" not "steroid". But this is what daddy does. And mommy can't give me medisins, cept my pepcid that they can sneak in a pill pocket, cuz I'm just so incredibly wiggly and then mommy gets jumpy and dad gets huffy, so daddy always does my medishins.

But mom is the one that usually takes me to the vet, so sometimes mom will ask dad if i am out of such and such medisin so she can tell the vet if I need more. But she has to use the "code words" with daddy. So the point of this post is to tell you the "code words" for each medisin I take, they are kinda funny..

Liqui-Tinic= Meaty Goodness (see note at bottom on this)
Zofran= stabby nausea medisin
Reglan= liquid nausea medisin
Pepcid = pill nausea medisin
Prednisolone= steroid medisin
Lysine= antisneeze medisin

Liqui-tinic is my iron supplement, because I have chronic mild anemia (vets not sure why, perhaps the chemo ,perhaps the cancer, but as it is stable and mild they aren't worried enough to do more tests right now). The website for Pet-Tinic, the brand name of this drug, said something along the lines of it having a palatable meaty flavor, eliminating the fuss needed to get your cat to take medicine. Well, maybe the brand name is "meaty goodness" but this version sure isn't. And it smells bad, at least to daddy, so I like to get it all over him so he can scream EWWW GROSS really loud, it's quite fun.

Well, hope you enjoyed the humor. I think it's medisin time now actually, so I can fling more medisin at Daddy now! Yay!

-Texas

Funny Picture Friday Winners!

Happy Funny Picture Friday everycat! I will be posting pictures of the ofur contestants for this week and last week this weekend, and adding links and sending out awards. But for now,here are this week's winners:

Praline:


Missy Blue Eyes:


Smeagol and Strider:


Congratulashions!!

And now, here are this week's other contestants. These were also pretty funny, so thank you for submitting!

Charybdis



Ernie



Flynn






I's also posted some health info/ info about my treatment in one of the posts below, so effurybuddy that wants to, take a look at that too.

Randy Pausch dead at 47

Sad news...
Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon who was diagnosed with cancer about 18 months ago, and wrote a book about it and his life experiences called "The Last Lecture". He was never negative about having cancer, and had a lot of useful life lessons in his book. Mommy found this professor very inspirational, and is very sad indeed that he died today. Here is the article about him.

-Texas

Health Update and info about my treatment

This blog is supposed to be fun, but it also was meant as something of a resource for any other cats or beans dealing with feline lymphoma. Obviously you should speak with your betternarian as lymphoma varies greatly depending on the cat and the type, but here's what I go through every day....

As for my health, I am still eating pretty decent. Mom would like to see me eating a bit more, but I seem to be eating enough anyway and I'm very snuggly lately, she likes that! I slept on Daddy's pillow last night!

One thing I promised you guys was a description of my treatment plan. I am on the Madison Wisconsin Protocol (MadWis, for short). This is the same protocol that put Stormieinto remission for over a year! I sure hope I can stay in remission that long! I have large cell lymphoma, just like Stormie, but mine wasn't in my tummy. It was in my kidneys, spleen, and lymph nodes near my neck/chin.

Since I'm on the same protocol as Stormie, my medicines are almost identical to what she took, but most cats get slightly modified versions of the protocol, tailored for each cat. My first ever chemo drug was El-Spar (L-Asparaginase, but we like to call it El-Asparagus). Then, I started a rotation of Vincristine, Cytoxan, Vincristine again, and then Doxorubicin. I got one drug each week, in that order, then a week off after the DOxorubicin. This cycle repeated twice. Now, I will be repeating that cycle two MORE times, but these drugs will be one drug every OTHER week. And then I guess I am done. Or maybe I take some sort of maintenance drug. Not sure yet, but the paper says that I will be taking one drug every other week til my protocol is up, so that's all we know. At that point I will be about 7 months since diagnosis, which will be right at the median survival time I was quoted.

I also take a steroid, Prednisolone (this is the same thing as Prednisone, only formulated better for cat absorbtion). I used to take it twice a day, now I take it once a day. Mom thinks when I was taking it twice a day it might been making me a bit clutzy. She was glad when it was time to lower my dose that the clutziness cleared right up.

I take Reglan (Metacloparamide) usually twice a day for nausea. This drug keeps food moving through my tummy so I don't get nauseaus. I almost always take this twice a day, I usually have enough nausea to require this.

If my nausea is bad, I get stabbed with Zofran, once or twice a day. And I also get Pepcid AC, quarter tablet, sometimes twice a day, if I'm not feeling so well. My parents found out that Pill Pockets actually do work for me!

Lastly, I get lysine twice a day for my feline herpesvirus. We use capsules from the vitamin store as it's much cheaper than the feline lysine your betternarian might have, but talk to them first about this of course.

Mommy will be helping me make some links to the feline lymphoma support groups on the right side of my blog later, in case any bean or cat in need stops by.

Funny Picture Friday Reminder!

UPDATE: I had put an extra space in the email address that was listed in the rules section. Please verify that when you sent me an email with your submishion, that you put fractiouscat at gmail dot com without the space in fractiouscat! Sorry about this!

Tomorrow is Funny Picture Friday. If you scroll down on the right side bar, the rules are there now. Be sure to email pictures to fractiouscat at gmail dot com by 4EST Friday if you want to be judged for this week; winners will be announced tomorrow evening and get a cool graffic made by Ann at Zoolatry for their bloggie.

And for all that asked, that was white cloth on top of me. Daddy was slightly frustrated I kept trying to "help" him sew, so the cloth got put on me and Mommy snapped a pic.

Good luck for the contest everyone!
-Texas

Wordless Wednesday

Tummy Tuesday

As promised, I was forced to show my shaved belly to the world!! Sigh...

As you can see, I wasn't the most "willing" subject for this photo, but don't I look cute? I had to be picked up anyway for my morning medicines....ugh..

I wasn't very well behaved at the border vet yesterday. I hissed and scratched and growled REAL LOUD and they had to keep disassembling and re-assembling my carrier to get at me to weigh me and stuff. Mommy was not pleased AT ALL. There were LOTS of cats there. The good news is that I will get a really big cage because I will be in the medically supervised border room, and those cages happen to be a bit bigger. I also lost a bit of weight, about .2 of a pound. That is more than I have lost weekly since I went into remission, usually I don't lose more than .1 of a pound in a week, so Mom is a bit worried, 'specially since I was eating decently this week. The vet lady said it was probably just variance between their scale and the scale at the kemo place, but mommy is still a bit worried. I've been eating even more as of yesterday though, almost up to my can and a half that I do when feeling normal, so hopefully next week will show a gain. For those not familiar with cancer, weight loss is not good because this can mean that there are cancer cells basically stealing my food intake. This is often one of the first symptoms of cancer. However, I do usually lose small amounts of weight each week because it's hard to keep eating with the kemo, but this is the most I've lost in quite some time, and I ate pretty good! Let's hope it was just a variance on the scale; the vet thinks it's nothing to worry about.

-Texas

Mancat Monday

This is a picture of me looking very manly when I first arrived at my new forever home with Mommy K and Daddy. I was a bit of a fat pants back then though, probably about 13-14 pounds! Now I weigh about 9 pounds, I should weigh about 10.

I have to go to the vet today for a pre-boreding exam. This doesn't make much sense to me, but apparently when my beans go on vacations in a few weeks, they want to make me bored. See, usually the bean's roommate D takes care of me and the feathers, but since I require medicines daily now, the bean's didn't want to bother D with that. Plus, although I'm doing great for a cancer cat, I'm obviously not exactly in purrfect health anymore, and just to be safe, they wanted a vet with me. This I understand. I understand too that they don't want to take me to the chemo vet to stay because I always hiss and growl when I'm there. And they don't want to take me to my regular checkup/emergency vet because it costs a lot to stay there. Fine. That makes sense. But they are saying that when I go to this new Cat Hopsital, I am going to be "boreded". Why do I have to be bored for a whole week. Can't they put me somewhere fun? And why do I have to let these "boreders" look at me today before they steal me in two weeks to "bored" me? Sheesh, this is so not fair. At least no chemo though, and they are much closer to the bean's house, so I won't be away from home all day or anything. And I got to eat breakfast this morning, no usual Monday pre-chemo fasting. I've already finished most of it too. Mommy and Daddy started giving me Zofran (anti-nausea) shots before the symptoms really started this week and this, along with the Cerenia last week, seems to have really helped. I've been eating almost a whole 5.5 ounce can each day, which while just a little less than I normally should eat (I'm a big mancat), is pretty darn good for a doxorubicin week!

-Texas

How to Annoy Your Bean In Five Easy Steps

Step One: Crawl on your bean's chest and meow in their face to wake them. (This may be sufficient right here. If not, and your bean actually says "hello" and pets you nicely, your bean is WIERD and you must proceed to step two.)
Step Two: Allow yourself to be petted and begin purring. Keep purring until you start drooling from happiness. This works even better if you have persistent nausea issues which make you an even droolier cat to begin with.
Step Three: Put your face an inch away from the bean's face and shake your head, getting drool over every single inch of the bean.
Step Four: When the bean yells at you for this, demand that the half-awake bean let you out of the bedroom, whose door is closed because it is summer and they have the window air conditioning on.
Step Five: As they are just getting over being annoyed at you, scratch to be let back in to the bedroom.
Mission Accomplished!!!
Testimonial from MomBean here...he tried this this morning and it worked wonders for getting me annoyed at him! :)

Help me add to my blogroll, please..

I know's there is some offur cats I furrgot to add to the blog roll. I tried really hard to thank everyone that welcomed me, but I probably mist some people cuz mom got bizzy and had trubble keeping up. If you's want to be added to the blog roll, just send me an email or you can comment to this post.

Funny Picture Friday Contest Winners Announced!

First Place is Wally

Second Place is Scotchy

Third place is Empress

Here were the other contestants:

Zoey

Latte
Brownie

The change I am making to the contest is that now you can always email picshurs for the contest, you don't have to wait until Thursday or Friday. Deadline will always be 4PM EST on Friday afternoons, if you get in after that, we just consider you for the next week. I am now requesting that all submissions be emailed, as this makes keeping track of them a bit easier. You can always post them in the comments too, but those won't be considered official submissions. Thanks again to everyone that has submitted so far, it's really fun to see the picshurs!

-Texas

Funny Picture Friday!

Remember, you only have until 3 PM EST today to submit your picshures! I will announce the winners tonight. Ann from Zoolatry has made a bootiful graffic we will give out to the winners and last week's winners too. Please email them to fractious cat at gmail dot com or post linkies to them in yesterday's Thankful Thursday comments.
UPDATE: Due to a few issues receiving pictures, the deadline for all is extended until Midnight EST FRIDAY! Please check your comments/ email to see if I told you I couldn't open your linkie/ read your picture. Even if you hadn't tried to enter, you can still enter now!
Here is my picshur of the week to get you allz started.



Good luck effurycat!
-Texas

Thankful Thursday

Firsly, if you wants to purr-ticipate in Funny Picture Friday, please either email me at fractiouscat at gmail dot com, or post a linky to the picture in the comments for TODAY. You may submit picshurs until 3PM EST Friday, and Mommy and I will announce the winners Friday evening. If you were one of the three winners last time, you can't win again two weeks in a row, but you can still submit if you want to show me a funny picshure for fun. Mommy will try and help me make a graffic that the winners can put on their bloggy, and give that to last week's winners too. This may take her a few days though, she's not rilly artsy.

So, what am I thankful for today? I am thankful because my appetite is much better. Of course, mommy and daddy are needing to give me lots of nausea medisins right now because of the kemo, but this is normal. I also am being more snuggly and bouncy now, and this makes mommy and daddy quite happy.

I am also thankful because Mommy C is visiting me today!! Yay!! She doesn't come to visit me often cuz she is furry bizzy and she doesn't live to close to me, plus I think it makes her a little sad to see me but not have me live with her anymore, but I know she loves me very much and misses me cuz her eyes leak whenever she has to leave when visiting me, and she asks Mommy K about me all the time. The last time she saw me was when I was furry furry sick during that first week of kemo, when the kemo hadn't yet kicked the cansur's butt yet. She will be happy to see me feeling so much better, I am sure.

Ok everyone, have a good day and send me lots of picshurs for the contest!!

-Texas

Wordless Wednesday

Tabbycat Tuesday

Several pictures for Tabby Tuesday!

Don't you all think I am just the cutest tabbycat? Well, maybe not, there are a lot of other cute tabbies in the blogosphere, but my beans think I am quite cute indeed.

See....


And also, mom's been promisin' you a picture of my home made cat condo. Here is an early picture of it. Daddy has since put carpeting and stuff on it, we'll get a newer picture soon, but here's one of the first pictures of it, right after daddy made it for me.





Lastly, I got tagged for a meme by Castle. He accidentally tagged me for the fridge meme, which I did on Thankful Thursday. So, instead of showing you my fridge again, I will be showing you a picture of what's in my fridge...chikkin! Well, that would be boring for all your beans, so I will show you both a small piece of chikkin, and me making my chikkin face trying to get at it.



Off to eat more chikkin!
-Texas

Mancat Monday

There is me demonstrating a cute manly mancat sleeping pose. The green blankie is my favorite.

As for my health, I continue to worry the easily worried mommy. I ate a bit more last night, not as much as I do when I am not nauseous, but enough, about 1/2-3/4 of a 5.5 ounce can in total for the day. I am a big mancat though, so I should eat a little bit more than that. I also did not come up to sleep with Mommy and Daddy last night. Maybe I was mad that they stabbed me with Zofran yesterday to try to get me to eat. Sometimes I do this when I'm feeling OK, but I don't come upstairs a lot more when I'm sick. The good news is, I was meowing and running around this morning demanding breakfast, but mommy didn't give me any since it was a kemo day. Neither did daddy. And now Mommy has the PTU out, which means it's time to go to kemo land, which means TIME TO HIDE! I will post tonight how my visit went. It's a day stay, so it will probably be 12 hours or so until I post the update. Purr me luck!!

-Texas

UPDATE: I am home now. I had my chemo today, the doxorubicin, the not fun stuff that makes my tummy real grumpy. They gave me a new nausea medicine to try, Cerenia.

My hematocrit (how anemic I am or am not) and my weight are both exactly the same as last week. Mommy was hoping at the least my hematocrit woulda went up, since I didn't have kemo last week if it went up that woulda indicated that the kemo makes my red blood cells go down and not something else, but at least my hematocrit did not go down. The doctors still say I am in remission and don't think anything is wrong with me other than the side effects of the chemo right now. The bad news is mommy was CONFUSED, and I have to go back in 2 weeks, not 3 weeks, for my next chemo, and then I go to every other week. Mommy thought when they said I get 2 weeks off that they meant I go back in 3 weeks, but she miss understood. I just got home a few minutes ago, but I've already eaten almost the entire half a can mommy gave me. I seem to be doing well right now. Back to eating. Nom, nom, nom!

My First Two Awards!

Abby has given me my first award! Thank you Abby!




About the award:

This award was created to be given to bloggers who inspire others with their creativity and their talents, also for contributing to the blogging world in whatever medium. When you receive this award it is considered a special honor. Once you have received this award, you are to pass it on to 5 others.

Rules:

You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also contribute to the blogger community, regardless of language.
Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.
Each award-winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.
Award-winners and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of "Arte y Pico" blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.
To show these rules.

OK, so I found five cats on three blogs that I's gonna give the award to. I's bending the rules cuz I only know so many blogs and most of the blogs I wanted to give this to alreddy had the award. I's give the award to Millie, Poppy Q, and Simon, Sabrina, and Sam.


And now I find that I got a SECOND award from Sammy! This is so cool! Thank you Sammy!



I am passing this award to Abby!
****
Today will be a short post because my Dad's Mom is here visiting us today and as soon as she wakes up I will need to spend as much time as possible sniffing this strange human.

Quick health update though: I have been doing this odd gulping motion lately. Mom thinks it means I am nauseous or I have a hairball I can't get, but she will talk to the vet about this. I didn't used to do this until a few weeks ago, and I've been on chemo and therefore nauseous for many weeks before that, so Mom is a little worried. She's been poking and prodding me though and can't find any lumps, so that is good. I don't do this swallowing thing every day though. I didn't do it all week until yesterday. My appetite has also dropped off as of yesterday, so perhaps I am nauseaus. My parents restarted the reglan yesterday, and if no improvement, I will be getting STABBED soon!!!!(with Zofran). I am still eating though, but not nearly as much as I had been. Sometimes this happens when I go off my nausea medicine completely. It seems a tiny bit late in the chemo cycle for this, I haven't had chemo in almost two weeks, but Mommy seems to remember I was still a tiny bit nauseous around this time in my chemo cycle before as well, so she's only a little worried. Please purr for me though!

Goodbye, Forest

I am sad to report that Forest has been hit by a car and has went to the bridge. Please send her family some purrs of comfort.

-Texas

Funny Picture Friday Winners Announced!

The winners are Simon- 1st place





Castle- 2nd place






and Murphy- 3rd place.




Finally, here were the other contestants:
Junior:



Abby:



and Castle submitted a picture on behalf of his sister Stormie:



-Texas

Funny Picture Friday Contest!

First Ever (on this bloggie anyways) Funny Picture Friday Contest....

Mommy and I want to try a contest on Fridays for funs...

Plees submit a link to a funny picshur on your bloggie in comments, or email it to me at fractiouscat at gmail dot com and me and Mommy will pick out the 3 winners and post the picshurs on our bloggie! If you email to Mommy, you must write Funny Picture Friday in the headline. We may even post all the others, depending on time and the amount received. All picshurs must include a cat, and the cat must not be being harmed. Duh!!

Judging will take place at 9pm EST tonight and the winnerz picshurs shal be posted tomorrows. Here is a funny picture of me for starters. And yes, there was pizza in the box, and no, I wasn't nice about letting anyone get near their dinner. Mom and Dad had went in kitchen to get plates and when they came back I'd stolen the box.




If we do this contest again, we will open submissions on Thursday.

-Texas

Thankful Thursday

Wow, today is definitely thankful. I spent a bunch of time visiting lots of cat sites today thanking all the cats that visited me. I still have a few more cats to visit tomorrow though.

I am also thankful because I am no longer in the lawndry room. See, mommy and daddy have a big basement. Half of it is my room, with the big cat tree I have to show you one day, and the other half is now the lawndry room. Well, the door between the two rooms is always closed cuz the lawndry room is also a storage room and there are too many places for me to hide there (as if there could be such a thing!! hmph!). Well, mommy and daddy, in addition to having a big basement, have an absent minded roommate, named D. D doesn't notice me when I sneak into the lawndry room when he goes in there to do lawndry, what else, and occasionally I get locked in there for a little bit. This doesn't happen much, cuz mommy gets quite annoyed at D, as do I of course. I only got locked in for like ten minutes today, silly D!

Lastly, I have a meme to complete. I got tagged for this by Abby.
Here is the picture of our cold box:

Mommy has just a few things on it,but her favorite is the picture of her and daddy and she is also is quite proud of her dean's list letter and the note saying she passed her A+ exam. For this meme, we tag whoever wants to complete it.
As for what's in it, the fridge part not so interusting, but the freezer has CHIKKIN!!! Daddy makes me chikkin when the kemo is making my tummy messed up and I'm not so hungry. But now I'm eating lots, so I haven't gotten chikken :( Hmph, maybe my parents have it all wrong....

Off to chips box central, see you soon!
-Texicat

My Story, Part 3.

Now, for the conclusion...

Those next few days were the worst days, really. I stayed in my room most of the time, and only came upstairs to eat. I didn’t eat a whole lot, and I didn’t even great mommy and daddy when they came home from work. I would cry when being picked up. I wheezed a lot from the lump under my chin/near my throat. Mommy and Daddy thought I might have to go to the bridge soon. But each day I got a little better. My Mommy C came to see me that Thursday. I headbutted her like crazy- I really missed her!! And then Saturday was Mommy K’s birthday. Mommy K had been sad- she thought I was going to the bridge any day, but that Saturday I really turned around. I started the day by giving her her first present- I greeted her for the first morning in a week! And then that night, when she came home from work Daddy had made her a candlelit dinner. And my second present was to beg for food the whole time they ate! Yes, this might seem annoying, but I didn’t meow much back then cuz of the lump, and I also generally wasn’t interested in people or food enough to beg back then either, so it made Mommy and Daddy THRILLED to see me back in action.

Each week thereafter I improved dramatically. By the end of the next week, my lumps had almost disappeared, and on the fifth week I was pronounced in remission. It is now about 10 weeks since I started chemo, so I’ve been in remission about 5 weeks.

The other thing they noticed during all this was that I would still sneeze. A nice lady on the lymphoma forums told Mommy try something called lysine, and I stopped sneezing finally. It seems that I also have feline herpesvirus. That can lay dormant in cats for many years until they get stressed by something like cancer, moving, other illness, etc… So the sneezing that prompted mommy and daddy to get me to a vet may have been caused by the herpesvirus, which had also probably trigged the secondary infection of ammonia. The herpesvirus may have saved my life by prompting my parints to get me to the vet for the sneezing.

Phew! I did a lot of typing today! I have at least one MeMe to complete tomorrow, and in the coming days I will post my chemo protocol for those who are interested. I want to share the good news though- my appetite is fully recovered from the chemo 9 days ago! This morning mommy came down and saw my bowl was empty- she grumped at dad for not giving me breakfast- and Dad told her no, I’d eaten it that quick! Daddy had just given me breakfast half an hour ago and I’d eated it all that quick! So Mom gave me the other half of the 5.5 ounce can, and that was empty when Mom and Dad came home! I’ve eaten almost all of the dinner that they gave me too already! Mom says I can now stop all my nausea meds for now! Yippee! Less medicine!

Purr at you soon! Thanks again for visiting me!
-Texas

My Story, Part 2

OK, now for the part of the story about the cansur. So, like I said, in March I started sneezing. Mommy and Daddy thought I had a cold or something, it was just a tiny bit of sneezin’, but they had plans to go see sum bean family of theirs in another state. So theyz left me with their roommate and saidz call us if he gets worse, and here’s the vet #. And when they got back 3 days later I was maybe a tiny bit worse. They made a vet appointment for the day next day. By then I had developed a cough, but mommy and daddy still thought I had a cold.

So, they get me to the vet. And the Vet Lady is checking me out, and she stops all of a sudden and goes “ohhh, did you guys ever feel this lump?”. And she shows Mommy and Daddy, and they feel it, they’d never felt it before, and it was big. Mommy said her heart really stopped that moment. Anyways, they did some X-rays and stuffs and they gave me some antibiotics cuz I had Ammonia, the sneezy-wheezy kind- not the chemical kind, and told Mommy and Daddy to drive me far away to a speshulist for a biospy. Here’s a picshur of me with my “satelitte dish” on after my biospy.



The Vet Surgeon called on April 10th to tell Mommy and Daddy I had multi-centric lymphoblastic lymphoma. What a mouthful for a kitty! By the time my diagnoshis came in, I had two lumps, one under my chin and one on the right side near my ear.

Mommy didn’t know if she wanted me to have kemo. They said that I’d probably only get 6-9 months, even with kemo. They said I had 2-4 months without it. Mommy didn’t really think that 4-5 extra months was very much, and the kemo alone costs about 5 fousand dollerrs over about 6 months, after she’d just spented over a thousand dollerrs on my biospy. And way more important than that, she didn’t want me to be miserable on kemo! She spent lotses of time on the feline lymphoma support group (anyfurrbody with feline lymphoma and their bean should check out this site!) and they said to just give it a shot one-week at a time to see how well I did, and they gave her lots of links for finanshul help to pay for my kemo.

Mommy took me for my first kemo treatment, L-Asparagus (L-Asaparginase, or Elspar, but me and Mommy like to call it L-Asparagus), on April 28th. They called Mommy from the Kemo Place and said that the canser had spread to my kidneys and my spleen and wanted to know if she still wanted the kemo for me. Mommy asked if I still had a chance, and they said maybe my prognoshus was more like 6-8 months now, but yes I still had a chance, and I could always go a lot longer than that or a lot shorter, you never knew. Plus they said my canser is kind of untypical, so that makes it harder for them to guess. They told mom cuz of all the spreading, without chemo, I only had about 2 weeks left!! Since I am here writing this story today, you know mommy told them yes, do the chemo.

Mommy is going to put the rest of this in a third part so this post isn't so long.

-Texas

My Story, Part 1.

First of allz, I needs to thank EVFURRYBODY who welcomed me to the bloggy werld! That is so nice!! THANKS!! We will try and get to your blogs as soon as we can; we's already been to several and they are quite kewl.

So I will talk mostly about meez in general today. I will talk more about the icky cancer and how we are treeting it tomorrow.

I showed up at mommy and daddy's three years ago (October 2005)because someone at their offis was moving and couldn't take me wiff her. So my Mommy C asked if anyone could give me a good home, and my Mommy K volunteered to take care of me. Mommy C still visits me sometimes, and Mommy K about me a lot. Mommy C and Mommy K and Daddy are friends now and still work together.

I have three housemates, they are birds with an awfully long name, cockateelz or something like that.


Mommy was always a bird person, but Daddy was always a cat person. Daddy didn't have any cats when they got married though, and wanted one, so they got me. Mommy didn't want to give up her birdies though, so she wuz really glad that I am so well behaved around them. When I first moved in, they kept me in my room at night and whenever they left the house. Now I only have to stay in my room when mommy and daddy are at work because I am so well behaved around the birdies! I am rilly smart, I know when an aminal is in da cage it means LEAVE ALONE! I'm not nearly as nice to the mousies that we had in the basement over the winter!

In March of this year my parents noticed I was sneezing a lot. And so they thought I had a cold, and took me to the vet. And that's where the cansur story begins. It is time for my evening medusins now tho, so I have to go hide as soon as I hear Mommy or Daddy opening the medusin bottles. So I will finush the story tomorrow.

Thanks again for welcoming me to bloggie land!!
Love,
Texas

But I don't WANNA go back next week!

Darnit, I gotta go back next week to see the vet peeples! I was sapposed to be OFF for TWO WEEKS. But they said "Texie, you don't have enough white blood cells for us to give you chemo today, so go home and come back next week!"

So I gotta get in my box next week for the big long ride down to the chemo place again, instead of just a quick trip to our local vet for a blood check. This is just NOT FAIR :(

I was so upset about this in fact, that I refused to post on my blog last night because I was on strike. Mommy: Texas, you know that's not true. It's that I was busy and tired last night and forgot to help you write the post. Texas: Yeah, Mom, but I was covering for you! And, if you'd offered to help me I woulda refused anyway so I could be on strike.

Mommy on the other hand is almost relieved! Can you believe it?! Yeah, she says she feels bad and stuff that I gots to go to the chemo place again, and she don't like having to drive that far, but she's really glad in a way because she didn't think my tummy was ready for the doxorubicin, and the vet place told her when she came up that there isn't anything else they have for my tummy anyways. They also told mommy that my numbers were just a tiny bit low, nothing to really worry about or anything, just let me get some rest.

Also, lastly but not leastly, I need to thank Castle for pointing out that dates weren't visible on the time stampies and for saying he will tell evfurrybuddy about my blog. I think that is purrty kewl!! Thanks Castle!

OK, back to my chips box for a nap. I think I will post my full story tonight or tomorrow.

-Texie

Help, I'm stuck in the chips box!!

I love my potato chip box. Mommy and Daddy get potato chips in bulk at the Bulk Food Store. They get 3 big bags in a really big box. One time they left the empty box on the floor for a few minutes while they unpacked the grow sherries, and I discovered I really liked it. So Daddy keeps the chips box under daddy's computer chair for me to sit in.

Well lately I've been scratching the back of the box. Daddy thinks it's funny, and he keeps saying "Texie, if you want to leave the box, just turn around, silly kitty!"

I have chemo tomorrow, and mommy is a little worried about me. I've had chemo 3 weeks in a row, and there is a bit of a compound effect going on in that my tummy doesn't finish getting fixed before I get the next week of chemo. Well, tomorrow is the doxorubicin, the Big Scary Drug, and I didn't do so well with that last time. And last time I had had a week off chemo before it because I didn't have enough of a kind of white blood cell, and they let me rest to make some more blood cells. This time I won't have had the week off, and so mommy isn't sure how her and daddy will keep me eating. She is going to ask the Vet Peeple if there is anything else they can do for my tummy (I'm already on several tummy medicines. I don't yak hardly ever, but I cut back drastically on my food intake and lick my lips and drool a bit if the chemo makes me feel icky).

The good news is that tomorrow is my LAST WEEKLY CHEMO! I get 2 whole weeks off, and then I start every other week chemo. This makes mommy a little nervous because mommy has heard that this is when quite a few cats come out of remission--when their chemo frequency is lowered to one of the maintenace phases like this-- but we all know that I won't stay in remission forever. Hopefully I will stay in remission for quite a bit longer though- I've got about a month in remission so far now-and therefore will be able to enjoy having less effects of chemo.

Wish me luck. I will my write my Full Story Thus Far in the next few days.

-Texas

Testing

Is this keyboard on? *Taps with Paw*