zoology

well i took Tao to the vet to get his urine tested to make sure the bladder infection was gone (it was) and the vet found crystals (bad news – even though they look cute under the microscope, those things could kill my baby!). so now i have to put him on special food to dissolve the crystals. and cut the treats and tuna water. then if all goes well (pray the goddess) in 45 days he goes back to normal-ish food, and the others go on it with him… except Milady, who will be twelve tomorrow, and needs to stay on the weight control diet. oh boy. yeah that means separating the five cats at meal time. yeah that means removing the food in between meals.
but that’s not even what freaked me out at the vet’s. not by far. see, i had taken out the pink blanket that is usually in the pet carrier (that blanket has quite a history – it was the one i used when i picked up Milady twelve years minus six weeks ago and i used the other half of it to put in the box when i brought my sweet Rimbaud (rip) home a year later), because Tao had been without a litter for a few hours. well over there on the vet table, we saw little pink things. they looked like bits of paper, perhaps, or little carpet fuzz. pink. like the blanket. so far so good. except that the vet’s assistant noticed one of them move. there were little worms in there, one to each fibrous pink cocoon, and they were moving around, extending their body out and then dragging the cocoon forward. we’re talkingtwo millimeters long, three at the most. but… yuck! and even though the three women at the vet agreed that something pink could not be evil, i’m not so freaking sure! the bugs were nothing vet-related though (phew). right now the blanket is soaking in hot water (i found more bugs when i shook it over the balcony) and i’m planning a visit to the insectarium on saturday morning to get those things identified (the vet was so curious she looked at one under the microscope and called the insectarium for me!).