dreary weather and zippo

Here in northern Illinois, it has been dreary and rainy for days now. A lot of the trees are already bare. I took this shot out my front door this afternoon. No editing. It's really that dark and gray. And then with the time change, it's now dark at 4:30. I hate it. The evenings are sooo long. My body takes at least a week to get used to each time change. In this case, I'm still going to bed at the same time - between 11:00 - 11:30, but I've been waking up much earlier than I normally do.

I crave light and sunshine. I want to be working in the yard and hanging out on the patio. Guess I'll just have to live vicariously through those of you who live in the warm, sunny parts of the world.

 This past weekend, we went to a shop that had its Christmas Open House. I don't decorate for Christmas until after December 1st, but I was more interested in some of the antiques in this shop. Unfortunately, there weren't many. It was mostly cheaply made decorative items from China. No thanks. Brian did find an antique map of the Chicago railway system. It's already in a mat, so we just need to find a frame.

I'm very worried about Zippo. He's 19-1/2 now, so I know his days are numbered. He has hyperthyroidism and slight kidney disease, both of which are very common in older cats. He also has glaucoma and a cataract, but those conditions are actually doing really well under the care of a wonderful eye vet. However, a couple of weeks ago the eye vet discovered he now has high blood pressure, so he's on medication for that. Why he developed it, we don't know. It could be from the kidney disease. At the same time, I also noticed Zippo was drooling a lot from the right side of his mouth. The eye vet tried to look at his teeth and gums on that side of his mouth, but she couldn't really see anything. That's not her area of expertise, so she told us to take Zippo to his regular vet.

(Zippo in better days ~ March 2017 ~ my loyal companion after my knee surgery)

We had an appointment to see the regular vet (Dr. C) later this week, but in the meantime, Zippo is now sneezing a lot and is very congested in his head. Even worse, yesterday his left nostril started bleeding. I talked to Dr. C's office this morning and unfortunately, he wasn't in. They said it was up to me whether to take him to the emergency vet or wait to see Dr. C on Thursday. His nose bleeding was worse today, so I took him in to the emergency vet.

(Zippo snuggled up with Clementine a few nights ago.)

The emergency vet thinks it's an upper respiratory infection but is not 100% sure without putting him through tests - a scope and/or CT of his sinuses to see if he has a tumor. For now, they put Zippo on an antibiotic and I'm following up with Dr. C tomorrow. (I was able to get Zippo's appointment bumped up.) The emergency vet said his thinking is that if the antibiotic doesn't help, it's probably something else. And at his age, we'd have to think do we really want to put him through tests to find out what would most likely be bad news. (Of course not - especially since nothing could be done.) So then we'd have a very hard decision to make. This emergency vet did say it didn't appear like Zippo was in pain, so that made me feel a little better. He's also eating, drinking and using the cat box, so those are the other good things.

(Me and Zippo - 2017)

I'll know a little bit more tomorrow morning. I have a lot going on - including Tim moving out into his own apartment this weekend - but I hope to do a blog update on Friday. 💗