"I pray you learn to trust, have faith in both of us"

I'm not sure how many of you have met Whitey, my endlessly sweet, huge, pure-white cat. He's an older gentleman of 14, and though he's just a big cat in general, he used to be a little pudgy--21 lbs. And yes, given his frame, that was only a little pudge. The past few months he's dropped a huge amount of weight, which we thought was attributed to the dual-nature "Ziggy diet" of Ziggy chasing him all over the house and eating his food. He hasn't been acting sick at all--he's been alert, happy, playful, and eating well. We were glad he dropped some of that weight and that his overall energy level has gone up, but we took him to the vet yesterday for an evaluation anyway. He weighed 12 lbs--he had dropped almost half his body weight. They did a panel on his blood and confirmed that he has hyperthyroidism, probably due to a benign secreting thyroid adenoma, which are apparently common in older cats. Apparently, his levels were "off the charts"--three times normal for a cat his age. It's a good thing we caught it when we did, because though he may seem a healthy weight now, if allowed to continue he would have become emaciated. We're going to start him on a topical medicine on Tuesday and see how he does. He'll have to have blood panels every six months or so. I hope he doesn't get heavy again, because for a cat his age (about 75 in human years) it's crucial for long-term health that he stay slim. Bassy's lost a little weight too, but nothing compared to her brother. She's still fat.

I'm just glad it turned out to be a very containable problem. I love that cat to death. If anything were to happen to him, it would be catastrophic emotional fallout over here for quite a while. And, hey, at least he did lose some weight.

There's a lab party this evening at my P.I.'s house. Last time we had one of these, his boss's wife (the center director) got drunk and told us about her marital problems. It was awkward. Neither of them will be in attendance this time, but it still promises to be an interesting time. Now that I'm finally 21 I can actually bring something to drink (not just to drink). I'm going with raspberry lambic, huge surprise, because it's one of the only things I like and damned if I know jack shit about fine wines or beers or anything of that sort.

Also, South Park totally dissed Scottsdale, LOLOLOLOL. "Worst place on earth." I think the Tribune totally missed the point when they thought the goth kids only disliked it because it's sunny.

I hung out with hilorain yesterday evening. It was sexytimes. I miss her already.