For days now Mom has been saying she wanted to call Aunty Daisy. Most of the time when she asked me it was too late (there's a 5-hour time difference) and she would forget to call the following morning (or lose the phone number overnight). She finally called Aunty Daisy yesterday. I had her dial all the numbers on her cell phone, then hit "send", before she hung up on me. This morning I confirmed that they talked with each other. I may have to talk her through the dialing every few days or so while Aunty Daisy is at the rehab center. Being a long-distance dementia patient caregiver requires flexibility to find new ways to accomplish things!
Mom called this afternoon and remembered why she called me! She misplaced her cell phone and wanted me to call it so she could find it. I did. Twice. She did not pick up. So I called back on the land line and gave her the number and told her to stand in each room and call to see if it was in that room.
Happy Birthday to Tom, Pedro, Laura, and Jeannine!
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11/27/2015 Day 13 Buy Nothing Day
For about 20 years now I have celebrated the day after Thanksgiving as Buy Nothing Day. It is an international day of protest against consumerism. I usually don’t even drive so that I am not consuming gas, but today I did in order to take Mom to see her cousin Jane. We had a great time visiting with her. As we were about to leave she told us about her neighbor’s “turtle" that she said they had since their son was a little boy. I assumed it was a red-eared slider until she said it weighed 99 pounds! As luck would have it, the “turtle” was out and active. I think it is actually an African spurred tortoise. According to Wikipedia they can get to be about 200 pounds and live for over 50 years.
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| African spurred tortoise (Centrochelys sulcata) |
The Saturday after Thanksgiving is Small Business Saturday, I started celebrating this one in 2011, though I had been supporting small businesses through The 3/50 Project since about 2010. Since we’re not big in to stuff, but we like to eat, we choose different local small restaurant businesses to support by eating out 2 or 3 times a month. I will probably continue this when I move back to Hawai’i.
Shiro kindly made a hole in the sliding door screen so that he and Momo could come and go without bothering us, it was so very considerate of him. Tomorrow I shall be celebrating Small Business Saturday by taking the screen door in to Screens and Things, a locally owned small business that specializes in sliding doors. They can install pet screening as well as a pet door in to the sliding screen door. Here is our attempt to tape up the hole.
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| Shiro-enhanced hole in screen door |
11/28/2015 Day 14 Small Business Saturday
Saw this in the newspaper this morning; sulcata is another name for the African spurred tortoise. They should come with a sign, “WARNING: This critter will be with you long after your kid has left the house and may become too large and heavy for you to lift.”
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| Pet store ad |
I helped support 2 small businesses today. This morning I took the sliding screen door to Screens & Things with the intent of having them replace the torn screen with pet screen and add a pet door, plus replace the rollers that were cracked and rusted. They said the door should be replaced completely because of corrosion in the bottom rail, which is not unexpected since it is about 45 years old. I went with a new heavy-duty door which was only $25 more; less likely to get frantic calls from Mom when I am back in Washington about something being wrong with the door. The door should be ready for pick-up next Friday. Hopefully the cats will be quick learners because I will only have one day to train them on how to use the pet door.
The other business was City Mill, my favorite hardware/lumber/do-it-yourselfer place on O'ahu; I probably go there every other day. I picked up hardware and lumber for improvements to the cat run. Instead of a cat tree I built shelves, one for each cat. They are somewhat angled because of how I had to build the wall so that it would be temporary and not put any holes in the concrete block wall of the house. I also made the left end about 1/4” lower so that rainwater would drain off of them. (The rain coming off the eaves will hit the ones on the left.)
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| Cat shelves |
One of Mom’s friends dropped by and gifted us with more dessert, we now have the equivalent of about 3&1/2 pies worth of cake/pie-type dessert. And about 2 gallons of ice cream. And who knows how many cookies and chocolate candies! I am amazed that neither Mom nor Dad have problems with their blood sugar. (And some of you were worried about me making pancakes for them once a week. FYI - I found a Bisquick pancake and waffle mix that says it is “Heart Smart”.) Here’s Mom showing off “her” new cat to her friend.
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| Mom and Shiro |
Hopefully the weather will be good tomorrow morning so that Mom and I can do her walk again. The rain has kept us from walking for over a week now.
11/29/2015 Day 15 Hawaiian Kine Parking
My back is finally complaining about the things I have been putting it through. I think the last straw was the cat shelves, pushing up while turning the screwdriver was like lifting a heavy weight. (There is no drill here so the pilot hole is just a hole made with a 16d nail, I have to keep pressure on the screw to drive it in.) I am resorting to an old Japanese remedy and a new western one: salonpas and ibuprofen!
For those who asked why my brother doesn’t take care of the things I have been fixing, he’s not a very handy guy. He’s an electrical engineer not a mechanical engineer. If you want him to build an electrical power generation plant (or keep all the power going at Pearl Harbor), he’s your guy; but if you want him to build a cat run, good luck. He’ll probably give you a big box and call it good.
When I put the cats out this morning, Momo checked out the view from the shelves. The others opted to sleep in their usual places. It may take a little time before they decide to make use of the shelves.
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| Momo checking out the view |
Made pancakes again this morning, used the Bisquick Heart Smart mix. The 0 gm cholesterol is because you are supped to use egg substitute.
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| Bisquick Heart Smart |
Went to City Mill again today. Here’s a perfectly acceptable parking spot in Hawai’i, you have to snake your way in to it. You can also see it on Google Maps in the southwest corner of the lot, no one was parked in it when they took the photo. The address is 3086 Waialae Avenue, Honolulu.
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| Hawaiian kine parking |
And finally, May the Force be with you.
11/30/2015 Day 16 Cyber Monday
Right after breakfast I did some weeding in the back yard while it was still shaded by the house to the east. I was selectively removing the nastiest weed there, something that we call kukus. Apparently the English name is sandbur or sand spur. No matter what you call it, they hurt when you step on them with your bare feet! I carefully removed all the seedheads I could find, trying not to dislodge any of the stickers. Now I will go back and pull the rest of the weeds. (I contemplated using the Shark to vacuum up the fallen seed heads.) I am sure there will be more when I return because there were more this time than there were in July. Auwe!
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| Kuku (Cenchrus sp.) |
After weeding I took Xander to the vet; I noticed he was coughing a lot more than before. Based on the x-rays the vet said he has feline asthma. She gave him a cortisone shot so that Mom and Dad would not have to give him a daily pill or use an inhaler on him. When I return in the spring I will take him for his annual geriatric kitty check-up (he’s 13) and we will figure out at that time what to do to control the asthma. If left untreated the bronchi could become so constricted he would not be able to breathe. He also needs to lose some weight to improve his breathing; he’s 15.06#, which is 0.82# more than he was in July 2014. (He was 11.9# when he arrived in Hawai’i in April 2014.)
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| Xander not looking too happy |
You may remember that I took Momo and Shiro to the vet last week. Their blood test results came back on Friday. Momo (who was the reason they went to the vet in the first place) had normal readings on everything; but since he’s started to lose weight we need to keep an eye on him to see whether he has cancer or if he’s just showing his age. (The Boys are 14.) Shiro, who I took in for a sore near his eye that seemed to be getting worse, had results that showed he might be heading towards kidney disease; so he will be on a special diet to help control that. (Xander also had the senior blood panel done, his results will be back on Wednesday.)
Which brings me to Cyber Monday. I have never bought anything on Cyber Monday before. But now that Shiro needs a special diet and Xander needs to be on a reducing diet and we need to keep an eye on how well Momo is eating, I needed to find some automated way to handle all this since neither Mom nor Dad will be able to do this. It’s amazing what you can find online! Though because these are not items in demand there were no Cyber Monday deals to take advantage of.
Xander, Momo, and Chibi will be getting the Wireless Whiskers AutoDiet Feeder. It can be programmed for 8 cats (or small dogs), can detect which cat it is and knows how much food it should be getting, will not allow feeding if the cat has reached its limit, and will give an alert signal if the cat has eaten less than 65% of its normal amount for the day. It identifies each cat by an RFID tag attached to the collar and supposedly addresses the cat by name. (The demo shows a readout, I assume it also has an automated voice since it didn’t say it would also teach them how to read … though it might do that in v.3.) How do you know how much to tell it to feed the cats? You don’t, but the feeder keeps track of what each cat eats during the 1 to 3 day calibration period and uses that as the baseline for you to then tell it who needs to get less or more food. The hopper holds 5 lbs of food so will likely need to be filled up only once a week, which means Curt can do that when he comes by with the Costco stuff. Since Shiro won’t have an RFID tag he won’t be able to get anything out of it.
Shiro will be getting the OurPets WonderBowl Selective Pet Feeder. It has a tag which sends out an infrared signal so only Shiro will be able to open the bowl with his prescription diet and the other cats will not. Its drawback is that it can only hold 1.5 cups so Mom or Dad will have to fill it more frequently. (The seller with the best price on this feeder did have a Cyber Monday special price 46% off, but they did not ship to Hawai’i at all so it really wasn’t a “special”.)
The other option currently out there is the SureFeed Microchip Pet Feeder. It actually reads the microchip that was inserted in your cat by the vet; it can be programmed to recognize up to 32 microchips so is a good option for crazy cat ladies. Though I’m not really sure why it needs to recognize 32 microchips since it does not have a hopper and can only hold enough food for a day or so for one cat.
If it ever goes in to production, the feeder I really want to get is the CatFi Pro, formerly known as the Bistro. It has cat facial recognition technology to keep track of how much each cat is eating and drinking, a built in scale to weight the cat as it is eating, a camera so it can livestream video to your Smart phone when your cat is eating, and you can access data on your cat’s food and water intake and weight on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis via your Smart phone (and probably your tablet, laptop, or desktop). It was an Indiegogo-funded start-up so they are not yet being commercially produced.
Does this mean I am now officially a Crazy Cat Lady?
12/01/2015 Day 17 What's That Sound?
On Sunday, at about 1 am, Mom was knocking on my bedroom door saying, “There’s water running, where is it coming from?” Which caused me to be immediately awake thinking, “I know where the water shutoff is … maybe.” It turns out nothing was broken, she convinced herself that what she was hearing was the cold water line that the Cat Genie is hooked in to and went back to bed. I stayed up a little longer but didn’t hear it. (The Cat Genie wasn’t running either.) Early this morning I heard the “running water” she heard on Sunday morning, it was an intermittent leak in the toilet in the main bathroom. I fixed that today.
I also finished trimming the 'ohai ali’i between the driveway and the corner. It is now safer for us to back out of the driveway as well as for drivers at the stop to see whether traffic is flying over the crest of the hill at them. I painted the cut stubs with undiluted Roundup concentrate, not sure how well that will work. It should kill most anything, but I was told it takes about 3 treatments like this to kill black locust and the ‘ohai ali'i reminds me of black locust - big thorns, pinnate leaves, bean-like seed pods, persistent, weedy. Here are before & after photos.
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| Before |
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| After |
Shiro discovered he can get near the kitchen window on the cat shelves. During lunch he let us know he was not happy we did not include him.
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| Shiro letting us know he is not happy |
Dengue fever 117, not dengue fever 227. The State Health Department has been holding numerous outreach sessions, urging people with symptoms to be tested so that they can plot the concentrations of the incidents and try to contain it. The State has set up a lab on O'ahu which is speeding up getting results since they no longer have to be sent to a continental lab. Several CDC experts arrived a couple days ago to assist. I have not heard if they have located Patient 0 yet so that they can determine where the dengue fever came in from.
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