The Odds and Ends of Thanksgiving Weekend

The weekend started out on a fun note. A couple of weeks ago, we heard from my nephew inviting us to Thanksgiving at his house as opposed to my brother's house in South Florida where we've been gathering for decades.  It was shaping up to be a family get together like we haven't had, not just in years, but some of the group has never gotten together. 

Nephew is around 5 months older than my son, but while I've known him since he was in diapers, there have been times when we saw each other more often.  Suffice it to say that several years ago, we went through a stretch of hardly ever seeing each other due to the place he was working.  He ended up in West Central Florida and around three years ago, got married. Last January, first child was born. We still hadn't met his wife or the "great niece" (I think that's the relationship). 

The place where they live is one of those areas of Florida with no easy way to get to. While it's about 65 miles between us "as the crow flies," every route the mapping software came up with was around twice that mileage and a two hour drive. 

It was a very nice afternoon, getting to see folks that (in a couple of cases) I hadn't talked to since the late '70s, or early '80s.  Great niece is adorable, and at 10 months, not walking much and not very vocal.

The slide into negative experiences started Saturday morning. I've written many times about our "old man" cat, Mojo, or just plain Moe as we tend to call him. A couple of years ago, he got started on some medication for some blood cell count issues and he has responded very well to the meds he's on.  It'll be three years that he has been under treatment this February.

Saturday morning, I found some blood near one of his food bowls. It looked like he had coughed or sneezed because it was a lot of drops.  As the day went by, we found more blood in more places, but with the exception of some blood very visible on his white fur, no evidence to show this hadn't all happened the previous night. He sneezed a few times, but never expelled any blood, so it was hard to figure.

Until about 10PM last night.  We have two chairs in the radio room, one at the operating position and the other at my workbench. He likes to come into the shack and be social - or just be near me while he takes a nap.  I heard an odd, almost bubbling sound, turned around and he was bleeding from his left nostril. The chair was bloody, blood was dripping onto the floor from sneezing, and more.  After a few minutes it stopped and we put aside our plans to go to a nearby veterinary emergency clinic that's open 24/7.  

He came to bed with us, as always, and in the morning there were no signs of a repeat.  

Until close to 2PM when we heard him sneezing again, this time in the living room.  Again, bleeding from his left nostril, and blood spraying when he sneezed. Again, it didn't last long, and it wasn't what I'd think of as a lot of blood. Maybe a tablespoon.  Maybe.

So it has been a weekend that started with a fun get together and is ending with a couple of nerve-wracking days. His regular vet opens as usual tomorrow morning and we'll call to try to get in ASAP. 

A positive side is that I finally fixed the gate issue caused by Tropical Storm Milton back in October.  The gate now latches and stays latched. I'm not "Done done" - I still have some position tweaking and most of all, patching all the holes where the hardware ripped out. And cleaning the damned fence.

It took too long to figure out how to approach this, but after trying a bunch of times to figure out how to replace the side that got ripped out, it occurred to me that the height of the latch really isn't critical, so why not lower both sides and install both in fresh PVC, around two inches lower than they were?

The piece that was ripped out of the gate is in the red box, but both sides got lowered about an inch.