Valentines and cat rashes

I've learned something today. It's that you don't give cats liquid medicine unless you shoot it down their throats or put it in their food. That lapse of common sense is why I was standing in my kitchen wiping cherry-flavored Children's Benadryl off my cheeks this afternoon. One cat is not speaking to me, and the other one is looking at me strangely. It's all because of Maddy's itchy neck. About twice a year, she starts scratching under her neck and gets broken out. The vet says it pretty common in cats and gave her something, maybe a steroid, when I took her last year. She also said I could give her a little Benadryl if she started itching, so for a $3 bottle of Children's Benadryl, I figured I could avoid a $100 vet bill. I just put some in a plastic syringe left over from Darby's illness, put about 2 cc in and sweet-talked her into opening her mouth. What resulted was a combination of shaking her head, spitting, and sneezing, so probably nothing went down her throat. It was all in my face. I didn't expect quite the reaction she had. She ran around wildly spitting and licking her lips. I tasted it myself, and it wasn't that bad, but then cod and sole Fancy Feast is not my favorite food. She reacted for about 5 minutes and then kept running from me. I finally got her to drink some milk, but she wouldn't look at me for a picture.


The afternoon is gone, just fizzled away. I had to take Mama to the orthopedist at 1:30. She was already sitting in the kitchen waiting at 1:00, so we left. It took 5 minutes to get there, and we had to sit in the cold waiting room watching people limp in and out. Most everybody (us included) kept moving around to try to find a place where the air conditioner was not freezing us. She did get released though today. When we left, she remembered a prescription that she needed to get filled, so we went back to my favorite store - Wal-Mart. Picture Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve. That's about what the parking lot looked like. I didn't realize Valentine's Eve would be so frantic. Red and pink balloons everywhere. Huge ones. As we walked in, the display of roses we saw yesterday was empty except for one broken rose lying there. The card aisle was impassible. Everywhere you looked, grown men were walking around carrying pink and white teddy bears. As we passed the sleepware section, I saw one man holding a pink card and fingering a fuzzy chenille robe with big pink hearts all over it. I hope that's not what he ended up with.

I never plan to be in Friday afternoon traffic in Montgomery between 3 and 5, but it's amazing how many times I do just that. Today was our Chick-Fil-A day, so we went and got that before coming home. I just made some coffee and decided I would work awhile. So if anyone reads this, Happy Valentine's Day tomorrow.