Home for a few days

Made it in to the house late last night. Dad and Mom are both doing great and there isn't much for me to do to help them out, so they shooed me back to TN. It was soooo nice to sleep in my own bed, with my own critters last night. I'll go back to their place for a few days when Dad comes home, but I don't think they're really going to need me all that much. Dad is already maneuvering around the hospital on a walker. He'll do very well with a prosthetic leg in place.

Before we left yesterday, I took Jack to Foy's, a really interesting collection of stuff all crammed into one store. They have all kinds of penny candy (it's a nickle now), gag gifts, party decorations, crazy kid stuff like kazoos, spider rings, and rubber snakes, a hardware and small houseware department, and lots and lots of costumes. It looks like Oriental Trading's Halloween edition exploded in there, and then some. When I was a kid, I could wander in there for hours and never get bored. Still can, as we found out yesterday. :o)

Our mission at Foy's was to find a pirate's parrot. When I was making phone calls following Dad's last surgery, somebody asked if he would be issued a parrot and a peg-leg. Well, no, but that is a wonderful idea! We couldn't do the peg-leg, but we did find the parrot. Dad loves him! He's perched on the trapeze bar that is hanging over Dad's bed in the hospital, and Dad says he is a great source of comments from visitors and staff.

Mom called a little bit ago and said that the surgeon had come in to inspect his handiwork. She was there when the dressing came off the leg. She said "It looks beautiful... all pink and healthy, nothing dark or bad going on there...." Yeeehaaaa!

On another, sadder note, our household is down to 2 cats as of this morning. When we got home last night, April, the grand matriarch, was sitting in Jack's computer chair, ignoring us. We figured she was mad at us for going away for a few days and went on to bed. This morning, she was still sitting in the same spot, had not moved one bit. We took her to the vet's office. Bloodwork showed numbers that indicated pancreatic cancer that went off the chart. The vet was surprised she was moving around at all, let alone trying to argue with him when he drew the blood. He said he could make her comfortable for a few days, but that she'd be back very soon. We decided the kindest thing to do was just let her go. She'd lived 18 years and had been fairly comfortable most of it, and was most definately spoiled. She had a good life, and I'm glad to have had the chance to be her people.