I've tried several times over the past few weeks, and many more over the past school year to daylog. It seems like every time I try, something else comes up, and when I return to the draft, it's terribly out of date-- which I suppose is what life is, but it makes it frustrating.

The last time I logged was a looong time ago. It feels like a lot has happened, while at the same time nothing has changed.

I'm fully credentialed now. Completely clear.

My principal is now working at the district, my favorite Assistant Principal is now the principal, and because of low enrollment, teachers who have no business teaching ELD are going to be teaching ELD in order to save jobs

I'm currently teaching summer school, which will end in a couple weeks (because summer session is super fast).

My sister moved out of the house.

My cat, Bosco, broke her jaw.

Bosco

Bosco is an enormous and enormously fluffy black cat. The vet put her breed as “longhair,” which I suppose is more professional than “dark wrathcat.” However, despite her gigantic and intimidating appearance, she is the cuddliest cat we have. She hates being held, but she adores it when people come to her and pet her. She will crawl all over you if you are sitting down and purr like a 6 cylinder engine.

One time, my sister ordered Doordash delivery, and the dude sat outside our house for fifteen minutes. We wondered what was up, but were too skittish to actually go out (the reason we’d ordered food, after all, was because neither of us were properly dressed enough to venture outside). When he finally came up, he whispered nervously,

“There’s a really big black cat on your porch.”

To which my sister said, “Oh. . . kay?”

“No, really. It’s a really big black cat!”

“Yeah,” my sister said slowly. “She lives here.”


Last Wednesday, around 10pm, my sister came over to visit and noticed that Bosco’s mouth was hanging open, and she was missing a tooth. We all freaked out (except my brother, who despite being raised in a house of crazy animal women, does not care about our pets at all) and took her to an emergency animal hospital.

We arrived there around 10:30 and stayed until 12:00 or so. We weren't the only ones there; there was a couple and their son there, the family of a dog named Cosmo who had arrived before us, and the hospital apparently only had one vet there that late. We all waited in the same little lobby/waiting area for several hours.


I don't remember much of those few hours, except that at one point, we heard the receptionist lady answer a call. After a moment, she said, "Bloating? Bruising? yes, you can bring him in for an examination."

Fifteen minutes later, a lady with dark brown skin and long, bubblegum-pink hair came in with an energetic pitbull on a harness. She was distraught, worried that he was bloated, and that there was some bruising around his chest.

A vet tech came out to examine the dog, who appeared excited. he was wagging his tail and sniffing around and having a hell of a time outside the house.

The tech said, "the bruising is from his harness. See how he's pulling on it? It's fine."

To which the owner was insanely relieved. Apparently Chet, the doggie, was sixteen fucking years old and she was continually concerned about his health.

Chet went into the back for his proper examination while his owner talked to the receptionist and filled out paperwork.

All of ten minutes later, he came back out with the vet.

"It's food bloat," she said. "The food is uniform and round-- likely he broke into his kibble and ate too much, then drank water."

His owner burst out laughing, and all the rest of us were trying not to laugh as well. She was instructed not to feed him for the next 24 hours (though he could drink water) and to walk him around their yard or block.

The moment they were gone, Cosmo's family and the receptionist started cracking jokes about the pig-dog and how he had a great day; all the food he wanted, a ride in the car, and now he got to go for a walk. It had only cost his mama the 108$ mandatory examination fee.


Eventually, Cosmo and Bosco were both simultaneously transferred to a 24hour emergency animal hospital. I didn't catch too much what was going on with Cosmo, but my sister did and said that it was something about a tumor in his spleen. They were mostly fatal, but his family was hoping that the new place would take a closer look and see if it was benign.

Both of our families arrived at the new place, Sage, at the same time.

Cosmo's family beat us to the punch and were seen first, but unlike the last place, this one had more than one doctor on-site and were able to get us to a room quickly. The lady took Bosco in back to get her looked at by the doctor, and we suddenly heard the sound of a woman crying out in the hallway. Not just sobbing, normal kind of crying, but the almost theatrical wails of lamentation kind of crying.

My sister looked at me and said, "I think that's Cosmo's mom."

She went out to the bathroom and returned a bit later, confirming that it was indeed Cosmo's mom who had been crying, and that the father of the family was talking to someone about taking him home for the end.

The tragedy of the situation hung in the air, and my mom repeated to us once or twice that Bosco was likely fine. It was just a broken jaw. The other animal hospital had done an x-ray on her to see if there was any internal damage done, and there was none, just the jaw. They could fix those.


According to the CT Scan they did, she has a broken jaw and a fractured nose. They think she was hit by a car; apparently when cats get hit, they tend to look up at the oncoming tire, and 99% of broken jaw cases the hospital sees involve a vehicle.

We were terrified that she would need surgery, which we were willing to do, but would eat up my entire next three or four paychecks. But we were lucky; only one half of her jaw was really broken, the other side was dislocated, and the vets thought that, provided she stay muzzled, it ought to heal on its own.

After an overnight stay, we took her home Thursday.

The vet/nurse/anesthesia guy who helped us was, like everyone we had dealt with there, incredibly friendly. He went through the instructions for how to care for her, managed to trim a few things off our bill that we didn’t need, provided us with a dozen extra feeding syringes. He explained the purpose of each medication, and made special note that one of them was a narcotic, and that while it was “use as needed”, it shouldn’t be used more than once every 8 hours. He explained that the pain meds had a sedating effect, which would help her settle into the tape-muzzle and cone she would be wearing for the next six weeks, and then he went to get Bosco so we could take her home.

As I have previously stated, Bosco is one of our more chill, friendly cats. So it was astonishing when Matt returned a few minutes later, sans-Bosco, holding paper towels to his arm and saying, still smiling, “Bosco is fine!”

“What happened?” we asked.

“It’s nothing, don’t worry. Bosco is just a little scared right now. I’m having another member of her team help me get her.”

He finally did show us his arm, and it looked like he’d been mauled by a bear.

“She didn’t mean it,” he said. “She was just freaked out, claws out. Wasn’t trying to scratch me, just get away, you know?”

He left again and returned with her wrapped in a “purrito” -- which was apparently the hospital’s word for kit-in-a-blanket. He showed us how to administer her medication through the E-tube and, because she was so high strung, he let us chill out in the tiny room with her until the meds kicked in and she was sedate enough to get into the carrier.

We were obscenely grateful and apologetic, and he was gracious and kind, and helped us carry her to the car.

Then, the moment we got home, she ripped her tape muzzle, so we had to go back, this time in heavy Bay Area traffic.

Goddammit Bosco.

They gave her a new muzzle, and then a spare one in case it fell off, and a new cone, because the stiff one was too uncomfortable for her.


Friday went without incident, except that we've discovered that she hates hates being tube-fed unless she is cuddling with someone. So now when I feed her, I have to be on my back or on the sofa, with her hugging my chest. Tube feeding is a sloooooow process (we don't want her to throw up, after all) and while the paper says it should take 10-20 minutes, I find it takes us an hour, just because we all are terrified of her barfing into her muzzle.


Saturday-day went without incident, but in the evening time, we noticed there were maggots burrowing on her chin.

We drove her back to the hospital (again at night time), where they gave her pills to kill the bugs, identified the source as a cut in her lip, gave us special antibiotic spray and vaseline to cover it, and sent us on our way. This time around, they didn’t charge us for half the stuff they’d given us or done for her, which was kind.


Then on Sunday, her muzzle kept falling off. We replaced it several times, and realized that the swelling of her jaw had gotten so bad, the muzzle was no longer slipping over her mouth, but was only holding her bottom “lip” up. She had swollen up enough that it no longer fit her.

We called Sunday about it, and the advice nurse said that we could wait until morning to bring her in, provided her cone stayed on. We took her back to the vet on Monday, and this time that made us another muzzle that covered the entirety of her bottom jaw, not just a horse-bridle-style one like she had been using before.

The didn't charge us at all, which was nice. I'm actually really liking this place so far. Its the Sage animal hospital in Campbell, in case anyone is looking.

Hopefully, this will solve the issue.


Today is Tuesday, and I am really hoping that was the last of our adventures.

Bosco currently spends most of her time in a big-dog-sized cage/crate thing on top of a blanket, but we've been letting her out to sit with us. The important thing is that she doesn't run around or jump or climb. Even so, despite her cone, she still will go sit by the door, as though we're going to let her back outside.