Well, howdy, pardners! First of all, let me give you the EXCELLENT news that Pumpkin Spice, who last week we were convinced was lost forever, decided to pop back into existence from that rip in the time/space portal she’d disappeared into the previous week!

So we’re happy about that! Only she had a humungous horrible wound to her right eye, causing it to swell up in a hideous fashion and resulting (as you can see in the photo) in the wearing of the dreaded Cone of Shame for several days. The good news is it wasn’t a direct eyeball wound, but something right above the eyelid, which has responded extremely well to antibiotics and the inability of Miss Pumpkin to scratch it to shreds, so we have every hope that she’ll be cone-free by this time next week!

So that’s one cat doing okay! Buddy, on the other hand, had a really bad time with the urinary blockage, and was in hospital for almost a week with a catheter repeatedly inserted, removed, and re-inserted into his, well, manly parts.

Yowch! Well, he’s home now too, finally, and quite happy to have been freed from the evil catheter. (I mean, it has the word “cat” in it, so you’d think they’d like it, right? But apparently not!)

He’s also been put on a special prescription diet FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE, y’all, which means, among other things, no more Chicken & Waffle-flavored treats.

So he’s not too thrilled about it, and neither is Pumpkin S., who shares his food so will have to tolerate the prescription stuff too, except for the occasional lizard who shows up in the house — specifically, last night, in the litter box.

Oh, and did I mention that because vets and vet hospitals are so extra super busy right now due to people adopting more pets due to the lockdowns, we had to take them to two separate places, instead of one, which would have been way more convenient?

Yeah, I went there! But it’s all good, I guess, ’cause what with all the stress and the running around and the worry and the necessity of staying home and making sure they didn’t claw their way outside through the screen windows (which Buddy has definitely done before), I managed to drop a few pounds — to wit:

203.6

So there you go — this week’s weight loss tip: get pets with health problems — and watch the pounds fall right off! (The dollars, too, if you weren’t smart enough to buy pet insurance before they got their pre-existing conditions!)