Thanks to everyone for their condolences, It really means a great deal to me.

There's an obituary post coming, but it's going to take a little bit. Meanwhile, there's other, much better news that I neglected to mention: The Trib has given me a blog on their website to talk about weather. It's called "Joe Weather" (my notion was to call it "Wait Five Minutes," but the website manager wanted something you could more easily tie a face to for marketing purposes. Astoundingly enough, they decided my face would do).

So, I'm going to be a star! (For extremely limited values of "star.") There is a price to stardom, though: For one thing, I'm actually going to have to get up at 7 am or so Saturday to go to a National Weather Service severe-weather workshop starting at 8:30. Ack. (I'll be getting off work Friday night at 11 pm at the earliest.)

He's gone.

I'll likely post more tonight when I get home from work.

First, thanks, everyone, for the prayers and GoodThoughts. He's at the vet's again, having fluid drained from his leg. She gave him a shot of Valium, which had him eating ravenously in the approximately two minutes he could stay awake. She agrees, though, that the endgame is near.

The plan right now is for me to get him back tomorrow...

I haven't posted about this, out of denial, I suppose. Basically, Dinsdale's cancer has come back, or never really went away. Over the past month and a half, he's been at the vet's more than he's been here. Since he came back from the vet's last week, he's eaten very little; in the past 48 hours, as near as I can tell, nothing. Also, as near as I can tell, in the past 24 hours he hasn't moved from his leave-me-alone-I-feel-like-crap hideyhole.

I fear there is a post involving rainbows and bridges in my very near future...

UPDATE: OK. I've coaxed him out of the hideyhole and onto a towel on my bed, where I'm typing this on the laptop. And I have just discovered bloodstains on said towel, and on my sweatpants where he's been leaning up against me. Apparently the incision where the vet drained some of the fluid buildup is weeping. Stand by...

Dinsdale is grooming himself on the sofa back in front of the window. For fleeting minutes, on the corner completely across the room from him -- next to where I'm sitting, at the Mac -- I see a strange triple shadow of a moving cat head...

Went to the doctor yesterday; he couldn't find anything wrong with me and even the blip on the EKG vanished, but I was still having some shortness of breath. The current theory is anxiety, so I now have a prescription for low-dosage Celexa (actually the generic version thereof). Having taken it a couple of days now, I remember why I took it at night when I was on it for depression some years back -- a couple of hours after I take it, it's naptime. So tomorrow instead of taking it in the morning I'll take it in the evening after I come home. The shortness of breath is still there, but not as much as previously. Thanks to everyone who wished me well...

We broke our string of 100-degree days; Thursday only got up to 99, and Saturday only to 98. Friday, though, got up to 101, and today it was 100. So we're 10 for the last 12 on 100-degree days (and the weekend was when it was supposed to cool off to the low 90s).

Dinsdale is looking up at me and meowing, probably for attention. He's doing pretty well, as near as I can tell, though he's due back at the vet's for a checkup sometime this week.

I have a showstopper -- one verse and chorus -- I'm preparing for Conestoga next weekend. I've been dithering about whether to post it or leave it entirely a surprise, but there's only a couple of people I can think of offhand who'll be there who read my journal, so I'll probably post it in a bit. I certainly hope the drive to and from Tulsa is cooler than the drive to/from OKC was last weekend -- OKC has been having even worse heat than Waco (isn't it supposed to get cooler as you go farther north?).

Main item: Still four-legged.

( Possible pet TMI alert )

So we decided not to go through with the amputation and instead keep giving him the prednisone. He's home now, active (he was scratching at my bedroom door this morning for the first time in a long while), his appetite's back up; as far as I can tell he's comfortable (though I'm not sure just how well I can tell).

So. We'll just see how long this goes...

Thank you very much for all the GoodThoughts and prayers and support.

I meant to post about this earlier but what with one thing and another didn't... I got Dinsdale back from the vet's today. He went in a week and change ago after I noticed a fist-sized mass under the skin on his right hind leg. The vet thought at first it was an abscess, but when she drained it she got not the pus she expected but blood serum. So after checking with me she opened it up to take a look...

She wound up taking out a large tumor. By the time I got back from ApolloCon and was able to take him home, she had the tests back and told me it was a sarcoma. The serum came from its eating into a blood vessel; it had taken out a lot of muscle as well. She hadn't been able to get all of it, either, and although she said it was slow to metastasize, it will eventually if left untreated.

So Dinsdale comes home to rest for a bit, and then next week, in all likelihood (the vet wants to talk with her consulting oncologist at A&M first, I think the one who did the tests), he gets that leg amputated. He seems to be doing fairly well otherwise; he was agitated at the vets and moving around a lot but has settled down significantly once home.

Prayers and GoodThoughts are appreciated...

The doctor says the new antibiotics -- the second they've tried -- broke the fever. She did not say anything about an x-ray; it may be that the lack of fever obviated the need for that. She says Dinsdale can come home in a couple of days.

Thanks for all the GoodThoughts.

I wasn't initially going to post anything about this, since I was expecting to have Dinsdale home by the time anyone saw the post. But the fever he had when I found him in his hidey-hole Friday morning after a night of sneezing and not eating keeps coming back (it goes away during the day and comes back at night, the vet reports). She knows a lot of things that it isn't, and hopes to get Dinsdale calm enough to take an x-ray tomorrow (he's (understandably) irritable), though because of his age she's reluctant to sedate him. He's been eating and drinking well enough while at the vet's.

GoodThoughts would be appreciated...