Sarah Ettritch

I realized this morning that I haven’t posted to the blog yet this month. Time flies when you’re busy. Not only that, life threw us a curve ball. Nothing we can’t handle, but everything else fell by the wayside for a while.

A few weeks ago, one of our four cats was diagnosed with diabetes. We had a diabetic cat 10 years ago, so we weren’t completely blindsided, but it was still unwelcome news. Like humans with type 1 diabetes, cats require insulin shots. But they can’t inject themselves, and they need to be injected twice a day, roughly twelve hours apart.

The number one cause of death in diabetic cats isn’t diabetes, or the hypoglycemia that can occur when cats are receiving insulin. It’s euthanasia. Caring for a diabetic cat requires a serious commitment. Your life pretty much revolves around the shot schedule, and going away on vacation (or even a weekend) is problematic.

Since I’m the only one who can handle Hickory, I’m the shot giver. We got Hickory about 10 years ago from Toronto Cat Rescue. She came from a feral cat colony in Wasaga Beach, Ontario. Another rescue group trapped the cats and shipped them to Toronto, where there would be a better chance of finding homes for them.

They estimated Hickory to be about 4 months old, and she’d never been around humans. She spent the first few months after we got her living under the futon in the guest bedroom. When we took her to the vet for an exam (miraculously, we managed to get her into a cat carrier), they had to muzzle her, and the vet had to wear gloves to handle her, otherwise she would have bitten and scratched him.

Fast forward to now, and she’s still shy and prefers the company of our other cats to us. However, she hasn’t needed a muzzle at the vet for years, and she’ll let me (but not my partner) pick her up. She’s come a long way, but she’s still not entirely comfortable around us. So when we got the diagnosis, I thought, “I have to give Hickory insulin shots? You gotta be freaking kidding me! This is going to be a nightmare!” But it’s turned out to be pretty easy. The vet suggested that I give them to her while she’s eating, and that’s worked out so far.

So for a couple of weeks, we were consumed with getting into the insulin shot routine, seeing the vet more often than usual, and, of course, throwing ourselves a pity party. Not again. Why us? The usual crap. Then we got over it. Life goes on, and we’re hopeful that Hickory will live for many more years.

Other stuff that’s been occupying my time:

A wonderful game called Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning has really grabbed me by the throat, in a way that Skyrim, the latest game in my favourite gaming series, never did. Kingdoms of Amalur is massive, the world is colourful and enchanting, the lore was written by fantasy writer R.A. Salvatore, and there’s just so much to do that I probably won’t finish it by the time Mass Effect 3 is released in early March. I see lots and lots of gaming in my future!

I’ve also been writing. The final Rymellan story is on schedule for March, I’m polishing a short story I wrote in January (I’ll submit this one to e-zines and the like), I’m writing what will probably turn out to be a novella or novel and the beginning of a series (not sure what I’ll do with this project), and I’m working on a longish project (time-wise, not length-wise) that’s still in the research stage. Also, more than six months on and with fresh eyes, I reread the initial story I wrote for the Sapphic Signs line; the one I didn’t submit. I’ve decided to salvage it and will start on that soon.

So…I’m writing quite a bit and enjoying the variety of projects.

Later.