Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans!

So, in the midst of my despair, the Eternal one threw me a curve ball, distracting me from the dark place I was looking forward to hiding in for the weekend.

My poor, dear kitty, who has an affinity for swallowing plastics of any kind, including the wrappers to my lady products, suffered a terrible and debilitating stomach sickness beginning Saturday afternoon. Shortly after I returned from my Saturday class I found her heaving in the hallway. In getting that all cleaned up I discovered several more heaps in her room. I put her food dish up on a high surface, emptied her water dish, and began the vigil of watching to see what would happen.

Under normal circumstance, this would have warranted a trip to the vet - no big deal. But 21 months after losing my job and health care of my own, there is no way I can start an open-ended vet bill. So we wait. She continued to vomit thru the afternoon. Finally we made it thru 4 hours without a hiccough so I returned the water dish to her with a small amount of water in it. She proceeded to lap up 6 or 8 mouthfuls and promptly vomited it back up.

I got the pedialyte out and started drip feeding her a tsp every hour for the next (yes, all night long) 12 hours. About halfway thru Sunday I started introducing some light chicken and gravy, which she ravenously consumed. She began thwarting the pedialyte so I had to institute the turkey baster method of administration, and even tried dipping the chicken in it to get her to take something in.

Luckily she was not feverish and showed no other signs of discomfort. This morning I gave her a solid tablespoon of the chicken and put the water dish back down for her.Before I left for work she had mozied on over to her bed and looked like she was finally ready to settle in for a nap, the first real sleep she's had since all this started! I've had her looked in on and so far so good. Apparently she was still in her bed when my helper stopped by. She got up to visit with them and seemed pretty okay. Financial crisis averted for now!

The upside of all of this chaos is that I sailed thru what is usually the darkest weekend of my year. I guess in it's own way, this was the best kind of distracted to be, it left me no time to dwell on things I have no control over.