Kitty Update

Thank you, everyone, for your prayers and well-wishes. Ash is doing significantly better, but still very sick. She can walk in straight lines now, more or less, but she rarely looks left or tries to turn to the left. Strokes are extremely rare in cats, but her symptoms are very similar to a stroke. She leans to the right, looks to the right, and circles to the right often when she moves. I think she's figuring out three right turns = one left turn. We're pretty sure she's at least partially deaf and blind, if not fully.

I've got her installed in the bathroom when we're not home. She's using the litterbox, and has been since Thursday morning, which is pretty impressive for a cat who could barely walk. She's eaten and drank a little on her own. Because she doesn't eat very much on her own, I've been feeding her with a turkey baster, which works rather badly. If I have to keep doing it, I'm going to have to either figure out a way to puree the food into a complete liquid, or get a better delivery system. Tonight, I isolated her for forty-five minutes with her food, to see if she'd eat more on her own if I just gave her longer -- and kept Ghost from eating all her food. :P Ash ate about a quarter of a can worth of cat food. Which is ... not great. Canned cat food says to feed two cans a day to a cat, but even Ghost (who is a large and solid cat at ten pounds) won't eat two full cans a day. My experience has been that one can a day is enough. Even so, 1/2 of a can is less than I want Ash to try to live on. But she's obviously very sedentary at the moment, so she probably doesn't need as much food as normal. I set her food aside for the evening and will put it out again when I go to sleep and put her in the bathroom for the night. If she eats the rest by morning, I'll be happy. Heck, if she eats most of the rest by morning I'll be happy. If she doesn't, I'll go back to the turkey baster. You listening to me, Ash?

She purrs when I pick her up and pet her, and she's happy to doze for the evening in my lap. She doesn't seem to be in any pain or discomfort, for all her difficulties. She's a very patient patient.

I was supposed to go to Florida this weekend, but I postponed the trip to next weekend so I could nurse Ash through this one. Southwest is actually quite generous in how they treat non-refundable tickets: they give a ful credit for the cost of the ticket which can be applied to future tickets. Tickets next weekend were a little more expensive than the ones I had, but only by about $45. I'm hoping by next weekend she'll be stable, and I won't be quite so worried that she'll lose all will to live if she doesn't see me for 48 hours. She's very fond of me. Probably not as fond as I am of her.

Get well soon, Ash.

Kitty Addendum

You know how, if you sit down and a cat gets in your lap, it becomes very difficult to get up because you don't want to make the cat uncomfortable?

This becomes even harder when you have a sick kitty in your lap.

*pets the kitty*

Ayn Rand on Philosophy

seraphimsigrist wrote a bit on philosophy today, which reminded me of a piece I'd heardon NPR some time ago, commencment address by Ayn Rand on philosophy.

I am not a great fan of Rand, my libertarian inclinations notwithstanding. But I found this essay quite well done. This bit was my favorite part:

You might claim — as most people do — that you have never been influenced by philosophy. I will ask you to check that claim. Have you ever thought or said the following? "Don't be so sure — nobody can be certain of anything." You got that notion from David Hume (and many, many others), even though you might never have heard of him. Or: "This may be good in theory, but it doesn't work in practice." You got that from Plato. Or: "That was a rotten thing to do, but it's only human, nobody is perfect in this world." You got that from Augustine. Or: "It may be true for you, but it's not true for me." You got it from William James. Or: "I couldn't help it! Nobody can help anything he does." You got it from Hegel. Or: "I can't prove it, but I feel that it's true." You got it from Kant. Or: "It's logical, but logic has nothing to do with reality." You got it from Kant. Or: "It's evil, because it's selfish." You got it from Kant. Have you heard the modern activists say: "Act first, think afterward"? They got it from John Dewey.

Some people might answer: "Sure, I've said those things at different times, but I don't have to believe that stuff all of the time. It may have been true yesterday, but it's not true today." They got it from Hegel. They might say: "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." They got it from a very little mind, Emerson. They might say: "But can't one compromise and borrow different ideas from different philosophies according to the expediency of the moment?" They got it from Richard Nixon — who got it from William James.

Now ask yourself: if you are not interested in abstract ideas, why do you (and all men) feel compelled to use them? The fact is that abstract ideas are conceptual integrations which subsume an incalculable number of concretes — and that without abstract ideas you would not be able to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems. You would be in the position of a newborn infant, to whom every object is a unique, unprecedented phenomenon. The difference between his mental state and yours lies in the number of conceptual integrations your mind has performed.

You have no choice about the necessity to integrate your observations, your experiences, your knowledge into abstract ideas, i.e., into principles. Your only choice is whether these principles are true or false, whether they represent your conscious, rational conviction — or a grab-bag of notions snatched at random, whose sources, validity, context and consequences you do not know, notions which, more often than not, you would drop like a hot potato if you knew.

But the principles you accept (consciously or subconsciously) may clash with or contradict one another; they, too, have to be integrated. What integrates them? Philosophy. A philosophic system is an integrated view of existence. As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define you philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation — or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown.

I really ought to read more philosophy. :)