The cat still breathes with difficulty and spent the whole day panting.
However, the temperature has gone up to normal levels which is a very good sign.
The vet checked again and her jaw is definitely broken, but not loose, which is very good. Apparently she’s broken the left corner and the vet moved it a bit to get it in place. She appears to have no other fractures, but she still doesn’t stand by herself and always falls to her left.
We can’t feed her, she won’t swallow. We did manage to give her some water though, with a syringe.
It was a normal work day, meeting in the morning, meeting in the afternoon. They both went OK.
Later, Dee joined me at the art school where I teach part-time; since they need a new person for fourth year design class, Dee went to interview for the job.
Never mind how it went… we were coming back and we saw a small black cat lying by a tree, on the sidewalk. First I thought it was dead, but then it moved and I felt somewhat relieved it was alive. Well… we were just going to pass the cat and be on our way, only we looked back. It’d been hit by a car, no doubt. It’s eyes were half closed, the swollen tongue hanging from it’s mouth underlined the visible difficulty it had breathing. The left side of it’s head was bleeding.
The dilemma struck, obviously. What to do? Here we are, not exactly near home, we don’t have a car. A ferry trip, plus a bus trip await us. We have three cats already, and we have no idea if this one is even near making it.
Dee couldn’t take it, and while I fought my tumbling stomach she made up her mind. She picked the cat up and wrapped it in her coat… The little animal was clearly in bad shape, but there was no other choice for us, we had to take her.
As fast as we could, we took it to the vet “It” is now a “her”. The odds aren’t looking too good. She’s hurt bad, she can hardly breathe and she probably won’t make it through the night. The vet gave her a couple of shots: antibiotics and anti-inflammatory and instructed us to keep her warm. Her body temperature had dropped quite a bit. She wouldn’t have lasted a couple of hours more on the street.
It was a long, sleepless night. After a while she started panting for air, just like a dog, her tongue going a hundred miles an hour. The whole night she breathed like that and I thought her heart wouldn’t take it. But it did and she lived through the night.
It’s a wonderful thing, the human brain… it can come up with solutions to complicated math problems and, at the same time, make the silliest mistakes ever known to man.
Of course my brain can’t solve much math, but it does some pretty cool things which, compared to what it did today, are quite impressive.
Today I went back to work. Back in town for three meetings.
I thought, of course, I was cured… I thought that having food poisoning was something you could cure by having your dose of diarrhea, drinking a lot of liquids and eating only grilled food with rice for one day. The next day you’re OK, right?
WHY??
I mean: my parents are doctors, they taught me every little detail of how to handle yourself when you’re sick. Why is it that I seem to forget about it when I really need to remember it?
So after the first meeting everything was normal up to the very minute when the cramps began. I couldn’t believe myself… first I left the cream out to rotten for over 24 hours, then I ate it, then I didn’t come home straight away from the “client’s bathroom” incident, then I went back the very next day for some more…
Of course I left again and this time the trip home was even worse… I almost lost it completely while on the ferry crossing the river home. Now I’m better, but I feel terribly ill and I have a slight fever.
Well, at least I’m hoping I will not get tremendously stupid tomorrow and go out again…
If I was a superstitious person I’d say that 13 was my no-luck number.
I woke up quite early to face one of those gruelling total-exhaustion days I’m starting to grow accustomed to, working for the company. Me and Tritão had four meetings on agenda.
After a long weekend with lots of action I was tired, it was a challenge to get up, but nothing particularly different happened. Routine. When we arrived at the town where the first meeting was going to be I started feeling kind of ill. My abdominal area was starting to ache… if you get my drift.
I must make a note for a small explanation at this point: This is not uncommon for me. Lots of times it has happened, and I suppose it will continue to happen. Unless I wake up one and a half hours before I actually have to leave the house I can’t get my intestine to work, I can’t go to the john and let the bombs away. That usually means major cramps and an almost irreversible need to take a dump which always come along when I’m at work, in a meeting or teaching class.
I thought this was it… although it was kinda weird, since I had already been to the toilet that morning. Since I’ve dealt with this situation before and, however painfully, survived it, I thought we should just go ahead.
We went to meet the client and the cramps got worse, much worse, and I felt I was loosing control. At the risk of loosing a client in the process I asked for a bathroom. And I did it. I confess… I unloaded my baggage in the client’s bathroom, 5 meters away from the office where Tritão was still talking to the man. Also, the whole setup was a studio in a basement, so I feared some echo would reveal my illegal activities.
Anyway, thinking I was free I gave thanks that there was toilet paper and washed my hands… But I was not OK… Eventually I had to leave the meeting and wait outside, since I was sweating and in terrible pain.
Then I felt better, it seemed to go away and I thought I was back to normal and all that pain I had after going to the client’s bathroom was just due to the fact that I had taken it for so long.
WRONG!
I went to lunch, and by the end of it I was in such bad shape I had to leave the restaurant… I walked up and down the street, breathing deep and almost shitting my pants a couple of times. This was it: I was seriously ill. I went to meet Dee, who was arriving in town at that time for a later job interview she had.
With her she had some Imodium, which I’d ask her for. I took the two pills, but it was clear that it wasn’t going to “cut it”, no pun intended. I left, leaving Tritão to handle some of the afternoon meetings and cancel others.
The trip home was agonizing and I almost didn’t make it. I felt myself change colour as cold sweat went down my neck. My bowel was twisting and turning so hard that I felt like I had an Alien growing inside, ready to jump out at any second.
I went to the toilet a grand total of six times, took some more Imodium and was damned glad I was home. I also had some fever by the end of the day, but it went away.
What happened? Simple: Saturday, after lunch, the remaining food (remember? the steak with cheese, ham and cream?), didn’t fit in the fridge, so it stayed in the oven. I gets VERY hot in my kitchen, since it’s under direct sunlight the whole day. For 3 hours at night I cooked away on the stove, making the inside of the oven even hotter… The cream went bad… when we finally put the meat away in the fridge it had been outside for over 24 hours. And on Sunday at lunch and dinner we ate it.
So, what shall we do? Since her parents had been here for dinner on the 8th, and they’re always out for the weekend anyway, we decided to invite my parents, sister and grandparents for lunch.
I made a simple but delicious steak dish, which goes like this: start by putting some spinach on a skillet just enough time to soften them, then put them on the bottom of a deep oven dish.
Next, you lightly fry the steaks, which should be very thin and also not very large. Fry them only until they change colour and then begin putting them on the dish, vertically (or at least, as vertical as you can). Put one steak in the dish, followed by a slice of cheese, then another steak and a slice of ham. Continue to alternate steak/cheese/steak/ham, until you run out of dish, out of steak or both.
Now, in the remaining butter from frying the steaks mix some mustard, more or less is up to you. Mix it in by stirring quite vigorously, otherwise it will not blend. Quickly add two packs of fresh cream (400 ml) and mix that in until the cream is yellowed by the mustard. Add a teaspoon of corn flower, previously melted in a bit of water and a bit of wine, Madeira wine is my favorite, but I’ve used white wine and it’s also very good. Let the sauce cook for a while until it thickens just a bit.
Now put the sauce over the steaks on the oven dish, making sure everything is nice and saucy. Finally, cover the whole thing with a layer of cheese slices, then a layer of ham (in little rolls) and sprinkle with grated Mozzarella or Parmigianno. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes, until it’s nice and roasted on top.
Eat.
Everyone did and it was delicious. My family left and we rested for a while… because at night we had more people coming over!
Around 7 pm I started to prepare dinner. It was going to be a chinese dinner. I marinated the sliced beef in soy and oyster sauce with garlic for thirty minutes and soaked the dried chinese mushrooms in hot water for 45 minutes.
Well… the rest became to hectic to describe… for about 3 hours I would not leave the kitchen, slicing onions and green peppers, frying chicken, prawns and beef, cooking rice noodles and coating food in high calorie sauces of all kinds; only near 10 o’clock at night did I manage to finally have everything done and everybody ready to eat.
It was quite good and everyone seemed to like it or fake very well. I think it went almost perfect, although I would have cooked the chicken some more and added salt to all the dishes which had none.
At the end of the night I gave Dee my actual birthday present: a flatbed colour scanner, which I suppose she loved.
Not bad, we had a great time, although the words “we should do this more often” don’t really cross my mind right now… at least not two meals totaling four different dishes in one day… :)
The cat still breathes with difficulty and spent the whole day panting. However, the temperature has gone up to normal levels which is a very good sign. The vet checked again and her jaw is definitely broken, but not loose, which is very good. Apparently she’s broken the left corner and the vet moved it […]
It was a normal work day, meeting in the morning, meeting in the afternoon. They both went OK. Later, Dee joined me at the art school where I teach part-time; since they need a new person for fourth year design class, Dee went to interview for the job. Never mind how it went… we were […]
It’s a wonderful thing, the human brain… it can come up with solutions to complicated math problems and, at the same time, make the silliest mistakes ever known to man. Of course my brain can’t solve much math, but it does some pretty cool things which, compared to what it did today, are quite impressive. […]
If I was a superstitious person I’d say that 13 was my no-luck number. I woke up quite early to face one of those gruelling total-exhaustion days I’m starting to grow accustomed to, working for the company. Me and Tritão had four meetings on agenda. After a long weekend with lots of action I was […]
It was time to celebrate Dee’s birthday. So, what shall we do? Since her parents had been here for dinner on the 8th, and they’re always out for the weekend anyway, we decided to invite my parents, sister and grandparents for lunch. I made a simple but delicious steak dish, which goes like this: start […]
