“What are you going to say his name is?” Rob asked as we were crossing the street to the vet. I shrugged. He DOES have a name, but did I really want to say it out loud to people? While filling out the form I hesitated, and then wrote “Bra”. What else was I going to put?! I then got made fun of by the vet tech (who said I should call him Lucky, which, no.) and the vet, who cried out, “He’s a BOY!”, although I didn’t know when I named him. This is what I get for not thinking harder about a decent moniker.

Bra has heart murmur which makes putting him under for neutering slightly risky. Normal procedure in this case is a two hundred dollar ultrasound to determine if anesthisa for neutering would kill him, and then making a decision based on that.

“I hate to ask,” I said, “but if he does die in surgery, would it hurt?” And then I started to cry.

The vet told me it wouldn’t, and it would “probably be just fine” anyway, so I decided to go ahead with it, because 1. the risk is small and two, if he dies than he dies, you know? The alternative is him living and making kittens all over the neighborhood, kittens that would have a very low survival rate, a minimal chance at a decent life, and the opportunity to make dozens of kittens of their own. If he was an indoor cat this might have played out differently, but he’s not and I can’t give him a home here because of the trio, so risking one life to reduce the future cat population by hundreds was the sensible option in this case. I’m still worried about my buddy, though.

** Update: After I wrote this, I got a call saying he came through swimmingly and was awake and ball-less. He can’t stay here, so he’s staying there overnight, which will cost us $58, which is about what I paid to sleep in the scary motel in the middle of nowhere Connecticut when my mom kicked me out of the house. **

The biggest problem they had with Bra during the exam was that he wouldn’t stop purring long enough to let the vet get a really good read on his heartbeat. His demeanor the entire time was a little nervous and stiff because it was all new and exciting, but mostly you could tell he was digging being warm and getting lots of attention.

The hurt paw is an abscess that will clear up with an initial drain and clean, and then injected, long-term antibiotics. I’m glad it’s an abscess, not an injury, because it means that someone didn’t hurt him on purpose. He’s getting a flea treatment, too, which I will keep up once a month until he finds a good home, and he’s getting a rabies vax. There are other vaxes he SHOULD have, but we decided against them.

The grand total for everything was $315 and the flea stuff will be another $15 – $20. It’s not horrible, but I really didn’t want to have to pay more than, like, a hundred bucks max for this cat. But it is what it is.

Would anyone like a just-over-a-year old, neutered orange and white cat that purrs all of the time? I won’t even be offended if you rename him. Drop me a line, lemme know.

Ok, look. If you like your furball of a cat, great. Have a cat. Have two. Have three for all I care, just know that once you hit three, you are, officially, crazy. (And no, the same can’t be said of dogs.)

I don’t like cats. They’re weird and dodgy and snobby and not my thing. Dogs are deliriously devoted, predictably friendly and charmingly stupid. They have the good sense to look happy when they are, look angry when they are, and, even, look sad when they are.

That said, I’m terribly worried about this stupid cat, Bra. He showed up today with a visibly swollen paw that he was not putting weight on (oh, btw, I can say he with certainty now. I saw fuzzy balls.) (Sorry.) I let him in to the front entry way and closed the door so he could be in the warmth and I could take a closer look. Rob sat so he was blocking the way to the rest of the house, and Bra stepped from me to Rob to me, basking in the warmth, attention and water we gave him. He seemed otherwise OK. Rebecca says he’s probably fine, and she’s pretty cat savvy. Overall, though, I’m not sure what to do with him. Something like 70% of cats delivered to shelters are put down, so I don’t want to go that route. On the other hand, I don’t want him to be left on the streets where he could possibly be killed by car or a mean dog. I can’t take him in, obviously (if I could, you’d be reading about my new pet cat and Rob’s constant sneezing).

The bed I made for him is cozy and warm, and he gets food every night, but it’s growing increasingly difficult to care deeply for something that is small and wandery and living in a pretty bad neighborhood.

I am so sick.

New Years eve, in the morning, I slipped on my bathing suit for the last time in a long time, threw on a gauzy skirt and tank top over it, and padded down to breakfast with the family in my flip-flops. Afterward I slathered myself with sunscreen and collapsed into a chair poolside in the hot sun, trying to soak as much of it in before I went back to New York, and the cold, and the snow. I went swimming with Rob’s super adorable nine year old nephew and his mom, and floated around on a blow up raft with my feet dangling in the water.

It took forever for our plane to pull up to the gate, and forever to get our bags and forever to get to our car. By the time midnight came around, we were almost home, and we listened to the countdown on the radio. Rob pulled over on the deserted side street, and we kissed quickly, said “Happy New Year!”, and continued on.

The dogs jumped all over us and we kissed and patted them all hello. It was a few minutes before either of us realized something was off: the furnace. The thermostat read 49 degrees, although the heat was set to 70. We called the landlord, the super and 311, but no help came until the morning. It was, literally, a “three dog night”, with the five of us huddled together as the temperature in our bedroom dropped even further.

We waited for hours the next day while they tried to fix it before we gave up and packed everyone up to go to Rob’s parent’s house. We eventually got a phone call saying it was all done and the heat was working again. We waited until after dinner to give it a chance to warm up and then drove home again. We we arrived, it was as cold as ever and the furnace still wouldn’t kick on.

“We’ll be back in the morning” we were told. “Something must have gone wrong.”

Yeah, no kidding.

“I can’t spend another night in this cold!” Rob declared, and I agreed. We packed up again and drove the hour back to Rob’s parent’s house, and the next morning, it was finally warm in our apartment.

Now we are so, so sick. Rob spent most of Friday laying in bed, full-on miserable, while I slumped on the couch feeling “not so great”, but ok. Carissa had come over to collect her stuff from house sitting, and we watched movies. Saturday I couldn’t get up until well after the sun had gone down again. I spent the day mostly awake, reading, and, at one point, getting attacked by a giant house fly that had survived January by living in my bedroom. He was HUGE, and he wasn’t going down without a fight. It was horrible. He kept flying into my face, and tried to steal my sandwich.

We have mice, too. I saw them, and not a “glimpse” of a mouse either; I stood by my stove and watched them boldly play on top of the burners and dirty plates and cups: their own mousey jungle gym. They didn’t notice me if I didn’t move, so I stood quite close to the stove, and watched them for a while. If they weren’t infesting my house with their mouseness, I would think that they are pretty cute.

I tried to set traps for them involving complicated series of wooden spoons, boxes, trap doors, cardboard tubes and soda bottle caps, but nothing worked and I kept being outsmarted. The score currently stands Mice: 2, Amber and Rob: 0 (call me a granola hippie douche bag if you want, but I’m not breaking their necks with normal traps). We’ll keep trying. When I catch them, I have plans to insert them exactly where they belong in the Circle of Life: I’m giving them to Bra the cat. Bra is pretty cool. He has gone from running away at the mere sight of me to scurrying out of the way cautiously and watching me from a distance, to not moving at all as I brush by, to letting me stand near and look at him from a few feet, to cautiously sniffing my outstretched hand, to letting me pet him with one finger behind an ear, gently, and just for a second before he gets too scared. We’re growing fond of one another.

You’re not supposed to feed stray cats, but I’ve never been overly concerned with what you are “supposed” to do.

He has a cozy cardboard box in my front entry way with an old towel in it, and he eats dog food.

“Can you make sure that my cat has food?” I asked Rob as he came in last night.

“Your cat? He’s not your cat.”

“He is SO my cat. I love him.”

“Oh, and I suppose you’ve named him, too.”

“Um… yeah. I have. So he’s mine. ‘Cause I named him!”

He raised an eyebrow. “What’s his name then?”

“Um…” I glanced at my shoulder; a strap was peeking out.

“His name is Bra.”

“Bra?”

“Yes. Bra. Bra the orange cat.”