Trying to Be Real

Thanks to the many FB friends that continually inquire how things are going with my cat.  To catch everyone else up, she quit eating this past Tuesday.  She's only 4 so this is not a normal thing.  On Thursday, she stayed with the vet, had xrays and got fluids.  They were quite sure that day that there was nothing in her intestines, and that the next step was blood tests.   I was kind of surprised at the clean xrays, as I know she chews and eats foam when she can find it.  I've seen it in her catbox.  As an aside, I have raided the boys' rooms for all foam, gimp and anything that looks chewable, but I fear it may be too late.  We took her home to mull this additional cost over.  These tests would only reveal something we didn't want to deal with like kidney or liver malfunction.  She ate something on Thursday evening and Friday morning, so I was hopeful that things were looking better.  Then she refused all day Friday, despite taking appetite stimulant pills.  Yesterday I took her back to the vet to have the tests.  She's lost nearly 3lb since this started.  They drew blood and ran additional xrays, this time at no cost.  The bloodwork was clean, but the vet thought that the xrays were "suspicious" - not anything obvious on them, but not nothing to say a conclusive diagnosis.  My gut is that foam, since it is mostly air, would appear like a gas pocket in the gut.  We can take her for an ultrasound, which costs $400, and will tell us for certain if there is anything there.  If there is, she's headed to surgery.  If no, then we are nowhere closer to knowing what is wrong, and we will have shelled out over $800.  It is daunting monetarily.  The vet is suggesting exploratory surgery, at a cost of anywhere between $500-1200.  The higher end will be reached if they find things in her intestine and have to remove them.  With having already spent $400, this is reaching the obscene.  They won't euthanize a young, and fixable cat because the owners cannot afford to pay.  But they see nothing wrong with sending her home to die a slow death in front of our 3 children.  It's heartbreaking.  It won't be a good Christmas this year, I'm afraid, and this is going to take every bit of our possible summer vacation fund too.  It's not like I need things to depress me this time of year, but this is sure doing that.  Somehow, I need some good news so I can get my quilting mojo back.

On Friday, I finished this quilt.  It's so pretty - lots of great batiks in one of my favorite patterns.  It was a very fun diversion to the Hell going on in our lives.

 I used 4 colors of Glide thread - red, purple, gold and green.  I also did something different.  Rather than ditch quilting all of the points, I chose to stitch on the triangles.  The addition of the thread gives another dimension to the design.  In many places the thread is a contrasting color, and this thread has a great sheen on top of the batik.

 There are feathers, sunflowers, leaves, swirls, rays.  It sounds like a lot, but it's all about the organic look.  I see this quilt as a garden with its colors - the NYBs are flower or sun-like.  Maybe my head is fogged, but I think it all turned out good.

 The center...

 And closer up it reveals a sunflower with sun rays out of it.

 The red is sub-framed to bring it out.

 I feel like there are too many pictures here, but I really like this quilt.

 The outer border.. I may never do ribbon-candy ever again.  Its one of those designs that seemed like a good thing until I realized I had about 600 inches of it to stitch!

 Her backing is a rainbow sherbet-like Indian batik.  The four different bobbin colors hardly show up because of all the backing's color.  I think you can see the patterns though.

I have a much dreaded T-shirt quilt loaded up next.  They are not my favorite quilts to sew.  Each one seems to have it's own bag of issues.   They are always tension headaches because of the greatly differing thicknesses across the top.  But business is business, and right now with cat bills looming, I have to press ahead.  Have a good Sunday and send good digesting wishes to my stupid Pica cat.