The Family

Well.

As everyone knows, Mileva has been having trouble for some time. She had slowly worsening kidney issues diagnosed back in North Carolina, which I think accelerated due to age and the stress of a new alpha cat and a baby in the household.

She was also having issues with arthritis, and of course the stress of having her food moved around all the time as we tried to find ways to keep Eleanor out of it.

So we’ve known her time was coming.

This morning she started vomiting blood. Not huge amounts, and it stopped and she seemed fine … but cats are going to seem fine for as long as they can fake it. It was enough of a sign for me that things were worsening for her to that ‘quality of life’ point.

So we had her put down today.

I hate it, and I hate that it was necessary. As one always does. But I sincerely believe it was the right thing to do and the right time to do it.

I miss her, of course, and tonight is going to be especially hard (we didn’t have a cuddle every night, but night time was cuddle time when we could).

Mileva’s last portrait

OK, total breaking news here.

Mileva caught a rabbit.

Kevin was supervising the outing, so I don’t know any particulars. But she wandered off, and then she came trotting up the sidewalk dragging a dead bunny.

She was rather miffed that he didn’t let her bring it in the house. She did allow him to part her from the bunny on the porch. Kevin then removed the bunny to somewhere else.

We’ll never know if this is Mileva’s Triumph or Mileva’s Fortunate Discovery. But either way – Mileva caught a rabbit.

We are so proud.

Well, I am so proud. Kevin, not so much. He, after all, is the one who had to deal with the body.

Our salt water fishtank is now home to three fish. Our jewel damsel no longer graces our tank. It was getting too big for out tank to be comfortable. But we are nice fish owners: now it lives in the salt water tank at work, an eighty gallon tank. (vs our thirty gallon). We believe the aggressive tendencies we have observed will go away now that there is plenty of space to be had.
For the few weeks prior to the move we have been making efforts to keep our tank extra clean and happy. Water changes were stepped up a bit (we had to buy more buckets for water) and we got a bit more aggressive on scrubbing the inside of the tank. Partly to keep the glass cleaner but more to get the fish more used to us having our hands in the tank. We also picked up a few fish transport bags from the fish store. I even talked to ‘the fish guy’ at work about the best way to introduce a new fish to the work tank. (they pay him to come every two weeks or so to do regular maintenance on the tank)

The schedule was essentially this:

• 5:00 pm – feed the fish
• 5:10 pm – minor water change in our tank (advice #1: move the fish in clean water to help them be in a stress-free(er) environment)
• 5:30 pm – capture the fish, put him in the bags (advice #2: get fish bags, not regular zip-locks: they are made for this)
• 6:00pm – arrive at the office at the normal ‘bed time’ for the work fish, keep the fish light turned on, and put some food in. (advice #3: fed fish are happy and less likely to attack new fish. advice #4: do it when the fish are normally going to sleep so they will less likely to be aggressive to new fish)
• 6:10 pm – put our fish in the work tank after doing a drip line of water to acclimate them to the new environment slowly.

The reality went something like that, if a bit behind schedule.  All has gone well for the last week though.  Last reports indicate our fish has started eating with the others and I have seen our fish swimming around the tank.  If not being sociable to other fish, at least being out and visible.

So now we are down to three fish in our home tank.  Of the three, one of them might be needing a new home shortly… if we can get her healthy enough for it anyway.

Our fish were the first to be moved into the new appartment. Before we had a single box, the tank was setup, running, and the fish were exploring their new rock setup.

These are a few pictures of the new tank taken of the new tank.

First, a picture of our crab population. In this picture the fish have knocked their feeding clip off the side of the tank and the crabs have moved in to clean up. There was a good amount of food still left on that clip, which I later removed since we don’t want the crabs eating just leftover fish food.

Second, a picture taken with the camera’s flash. You are not supposed to take a flash picture of fish. It startles them and their eyes aren’t used to that kind of light. This was an accidental photo, but I’m not going to toss it out just because it shouldn’t have been taken.

The third shot is another full tank picture. You can see the color on the rocks better, although the picture is a bit grainy. Effect of a no flash picture.

Each picture is linked to larger ( > 2mb ) versions of the thumbnails; I’d say they are worth a look.