You guys, I have been really, really tired these past weeks. Exhausted. An empty lemon. Mammu the cat had a quite sudden surgery about 10 days back and although the surgery itself went well, there were slight complications afterwards.
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| Right after the surgery. |
We have been treating her ear since August (I kid you not - several AB rounds, medicine in the ear morning and evening, it's been draining for her and for us). So apparently the problems with the ear issued from some kind of tumour, which was best be taken out. The surgery went well, but afterwards Mammu developed inflammation inside the ear and she didn't eat properly or show any kind of interest towards life in general. Basically, she was just blobbing under the bed. It is awful to see your otherwise lively pet in such a vegetable state. We had to take her to the vet some days after the surgery because she ate only from my hand and was already starting to dehydrate. Oh, and apparently she also had high fever. And she didn't want to use litter box. MUCH problems!
After the vet visit, not much changed, and I was sad Mammu didn't want to eat (food is the biggest joy in her life, otherwise). So after a few more days of feeding her from the hand in every four hours or so, we went back to the vet and picked up a kind of an appetite stimulant, a little (albeit quite expensive) pill.
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| After the surgery, quite depressed. |
Guys, this was like a miracle medication. Less than an hour after I gave her 1/4 of the pill, she came yelling for food and has been back to her normal appetite and behaviour since. She is also on new AB round now because of the inflammation and the fever, but man, am I glad to see my cat alive.
All the problems were also deepened by the fact that Mammu got depression from the Elizabethan Collar (or the bonnet, as I named it). She is by nature a cat with super high anxiety level (long history, I got her 9 years ago from a shelter and she was mentally very damaged, took me a few good years to teach her to even feel comfortable around people), so when you put something around her neck it's like "ZOMG MONSTER TRYING TO KILL PANIIIIC! RUUUN!" *bumps against things* --> fear level increases --> dead circle of panic.
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| Feeling slightly better, playing cat house with Robert. |
Luckily, she didn't show any interest towards her wound and stiches, so for the past four or so days I've let her be without the collar when someone is at home. Even at night, because I figured the depression is worse than that quite low risk of something happening to the wound.
So this weekend I have been sleeping like 10 hours a night and am starting to feel like a human again.
In more bookish news, I decided to rearrange my bookshelves, quite impromptu, yesterday. I actually managed to create some space, dividing books in a different manner. There is one reason I don't like rearranging my shelves and it's the fact that I have quite many books in Estonian, and since I don't want to mix languages, I can't really create any system based on genre or alphabet. So I just have Estonian shelves, and then all the rest in English.
Now I did make a separate TBR shelf (or 1.5 shelves to be precise) out of the books I own and haven't read yet, and that might have been a mistake because while they were all scattered throughout different shelves, I didn't really realise that I have so many of them.
The bottom shelf is all the books I haven't read. It's a lot, and it's not all.. Upper shelf is the fantasy shelf and I have kindly crossed out the books I have read, so that still leaves quite some to read from there as well.
Left is my most immediate TBR (the autumn one) and then there is bunch of classics and others on the right...
I also made a "shelf of shame", basically the books I haven't been much impressed with and would happily give away, either to a used bookshop or through blog or however.
And I have done some reading and finished some books, the last one was Dracula (lovely story!) and before that Sharp Objects (Gillian Flynn), which I didn't like at all (review to come but let's just say that it was even worse than Gone Girl for me personally). Now I am reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (these books are ridiculously captivating...).
Sorry for the longest post ever, but I've skipped Sunday Snippets for weeks now and there was a lot to talk about.
Happy Sunday everyone!
Oh, poor Mammu. Those cat collars are horrible, my cat had to have a dog-sized one as he had a wound on his leg that he could still get to with the normal sized one. He has no history of anxiety but he was still extremely miserable for weeks. I'm glad Mammu is starting to feel a bit better :)
ReplyDeleteOkay, I should stop whining because I can imagine if the wound is on the leg, we would have many problems... Wound on the ear is actually quite convenient place, she doesn't really need to touch it unless it should itch. Thank you :)
DeleteWhat a sweet kitty! I am glad that she is starting to feel better and that you both are starting to get some rest! I like the new layout of your shelves!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you Victoria! I was just checking out your blog too and was impressed! It looks like we have read many of the same kind of books :) I'll definitely keep be going back :)
DeleteI'm glad your kitty is starting to feel better and hopefully there will be no more problems!
ReplyDeleteWhen I first looked at your book pictures I thought the "giveaway" pile included Fforde and Wilkie and I was going to be very sad. Then I realized no, I've got things mixed up. PHEW
Thank you :)
DeleteHahahah no. I shall not give away any of my Wilkie or Fforde books :)
POOR MAMMU. Oh man, I can only imagine your stress through all of that, worrying about your kitty. I'm glad she's feeling better! And that you're getting more sleep.
ReplyDeleteLook at all the boooooks! The Name of the Wind is fantastic, btw. I flew through The Pillars of the Earth. I really like The Poisonwood Bible too. I need to read some Robin Hobb (I think I have the Assassin's Apprentice). And My Sister's Keeper - wasn't that terrible? I read it and haven't tried another Jodi Picoult since. All the characters sounded the same and it seemed like she was trying too hard to manipulate my emotions. Blech. But basically, you have a bunch of awesome books on your to-read shelves.
I'm sure you can imagine, as a fellow cat owner, and I hope Gabby will always be happy and healthy and doesn't need to go through major health problems :)
DeleteOh, I'm glad to see you liked The Name of the Wind, because to be honest I didn't know what to make of it. I got it with my free pocket book card (buy 8 books, get 1 for free) and with that card I usually get books I'm kiiiinda curious about but have no idea how they are actually going to play out.
My Sister's Keeper actually offended me :D (That doesn't happen often) because as you say it was pretty much emotion manipulation attempt and as a reader I really don't appreciate cheap tricks. Also agree that different POVs were pretty much pointless.
Yes! Read Robin Hobb!
Glad to hear that Mammu is doing better now :)
ReplyDeleteOooh, I spy some awesome titles on your TBR shelf ;) I enjoyed The Name of the Wind, The Pillars of the Earth, North and South and Wolf Hall =D
- Lianne @ caffeinatedlife.net
Thanks, I am very glad too :))
DeleteYay, I'm happy to get assurance on my TBR books. I'm tempted to start North and South some time soon, I've never read any Gaskell before.
Poor Mammu cat! I literally want to smoosh her she is so sweet. Although, obvs not in a way that would make the injury worse. When my puppy had one of those collars earlier this year it seemed to make things so much worse. She couldn't get through doors or reach her food bowl properly and was so super unhappy. We took it off in the end too. I hope she's back to her lively self ASAP.
ReplyDeleteLoving the book pictures and oh, hello, The Moonstone!
Ellie - thank you! She is a very sweet and good hearted cat and I am happy to report that she is doing a lot better. Now if only that hair would grow back for Christmas so we could take nice holiday pictures under the tree :)
DeleteYeah, these collars are mega annoying for animals (and they don't even realise why these are needed in the first place, so must feel like some weird kind of punishment...) I saw pictures online of such collars made of cloth, so they are softer and maybe not as annoying.
Poor kitty! Glad to hear she is doing better.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of a shelf of shame! Books that fall under that category for me never linger long -- off to the used bookstore they go!
And I totally agree how it's easy to forget just how many to-read books you have when they are scattered about (though the number of my GoodRead shelf regularly mocks me) -- If I'm perfectly honest, I probably have an entire bookshelf-full if I put them all together!
We do have an international used bookshop near here so I'll probably drop the "shelf of shame" books off there (in case they want them).
DeleteThe cat's doing well, now we are just waiting for her hair to grow back to that side of the head so that we can take nice Christmas photos of her under the tree :)
Oh yeah,
ReplyDeleteI have a big bookshelf that needs some re-arranging, too! When we moved to Helsinki, the book boxes were unpacked by guys from a moving company without any sense of putting the books to the shelves in the order of how they came out of the boxes. I agree that it's really difficult to have books in different languages mixed in a shelf, but fortunately I don't have so many German books (o:
I decided to sort the books by genres a long while ago, so I have rows of scifi, classics, crime stories, fairy tales, song books, travel/geography, romance etc etc - and more than 2 shelves of un-read books as well!
So, here's my question to you: How do you remember which books you've read and which ones not? Honestly, from the title of the book I often don't remember the content, and even after reading the summary on the back doesn't always help me. I used to put blank post-it papers to the new books but haven't done that for a while - what's your trick?
Hello, Corinna :)
DeleteI also find it makes the most sense to sort books by genres. I've seen some people creating "rainbow" bookshelves and sorting books by colour of cover/spine, but although it looks quite nice, I don't think I'd be able to find anything from my shelves if I did that.
You pose an interesting question! I don't think I've ever had the situation when I don't remember a book I've read. Often I don't remember much what happened in the book, but I usually remember whether I've read it or not. I was trying to figure out how it could happen that I wouldn't remember a book and I think there is one scenario, for me I can confuse books that are really similar in plot or style, or written by the same author. For example, often times it's hard for me to remember which book by Virginia Woolf I've read, Mrs Dalloway or To the Lighthouse. So I think if I read a lot of mysteries or romance novels, which can be quite similar in their construction and story, I would possibly forget as well!
There are of course solutions - post-its or marking the book somehow would probably help, and then there are online sites that help keeping track of the books you have read and not read. I use goodreads.com, where I mark all the books I've read (I've been using it since the beginning of this year so naturally there are not *all* the books I've ever read marked there), but since I started with this blog, I've been using the site and it's really helpful! When I get a new book, I also list it there as "to be read", so yes, I'm pretty much on top of things with the help of Goodreads :)