Another End

We've had to have our wonderful Siamese cat put to sleep.

His name was Oniko, and he was eleven years old. But in the last year, he was having trouble jumping onto chairs, due to arthritis.

He was losing a bit of weight in September, which would be a good thing. Except that starting on Wednesday of this week, he was unable to eat or drink, and on Thursday evening, he was in obvious distress. My Beloved took him to the vet on Friday; he was diagnosed with diabetes, which had damaged his liver and possibly kidneys. They transferred him to a 24-hour care vet, who called yesterday (Saturday), with the news that he was showing extreme jaundice, and wasn't responding to treatment. They could have done an MRI and inserted a feeding tube, but they could not promise any quality of life, and didn't think the prognosis would be at all good no matter what interventions we paid for (and pay we did!!).

So Middle son and I bicycled to the vet yesterday to say our goodbyes to a friend and companion. And Onkio has been given his chance to fly...

Of Bicycles and Cats

Having bought and transported home by bicycle (on separate occasions) a tent that will comfortably sleep five, and a four-foot ladder, I found today that a new propane stove was in order. Of course, it came home on the bicycle. In terms of attaching things to a bicycle, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.




In light of my use of a bicycle for transport, I ask you, gentle reader, to comment with the strangest thing you have seen being transported on a bicycle. No, your little sister/brother doesn’t count. I will start the bidding, as it were, with having seen a cyclist pulling another bicycle; he had the front wheel strapped to an Xtracycle (a kind of frame extension/funky pannier), but it would have been little trouble to do the same trick with a regular bicycle. Or would it? Hmmm. Perhaps I’ll have to try it some time.

Meanwhile, it’s a cat’s life at our house. Our Siamese helped clean Youngest Son’s room by preventing any books from falling behind the bed.


I see a LOLCats caption for this photo: “Now that I’ve finally finished reading these books, I need a nap.”