Get your goat

We had a scare with our Hoppsy last night.  She was in obvious pain, so sore she could not lie down.  She would try, move her feet an inch in that direction, then stand back up.  She even yelped when I lightly rubbed her tummy.  Not good.  This seemed to be something more than just arthritis flaring up, so I called the emergency number for the vet.  He listened to my description of her symptoms.  I had already given her some doggy pain medicine, which he said was good.  He advised adding a sedative to relax her muscles even more.  I didn't have any prescription stuff left, so I gave her the herbal ones.  It's a product called Mellow-Out by Oxyfresh and is the only herbal calmer I've used that works.  It's not as effective as Valium of course, but combined with the Metacam it did the trick for the night and got her to stop shaking and lie down.  I was worried that it was something internal.  I think the vet was confident that she was not suffering from abdominal torsion, which is very serious.  I will still take her in to have her checked out, but I am relieved that she's feeling so much better this morning.  I got up to check on her in the middle of the night.  Couldn't sleep worried about her. Poor Hoppsy. 

The kittens are officially tweens.  They are growing tall and lanky but still have their kitten faces and playfulness.  Ron gets upset when they, as he says, "Go after Lucy."  They don't go after her.  They just want to give her a little sniff and play.  She is not interested in getting to know them and just wants to be left alone.  So we do our best to keep the youngsters out of Lucy's personal space.  Meanwhile, Mr. Sox seems to dig the tykes.  They are his groupies, hanging around the big guy like he's a rock star.  Abby has warmed to them too, in much the way an icicle warms to a tepid ray of sun.

Yesterday afternoon, Ron spotted shadowy figures from the lanai.  

"Hey!  Goats!  They're eating my coffee trees!"

We ran out to shew them away.  They live at the neighbors, but jumped one sagging fence and found a big hole in another.  So we patched up the hole and the neighbor tethered them.  

"Shoot da fuckas," the neighbor told Ron when he went to tell the guy about the goats.  "Deya not mine."  They belong to Anthony, the man who used to live there and who recently moved to Hilo. This guy is Anthony's son-in-law (Ron thinks) so I guess he's caring for them.  But he really isn't.  As it turned out, the goats preferred the pineapples Ron had planted in between several keiki trees.  There was no fruit on them.  Just tough, sinewy fronds splaying out from the stalks.  They toppled three and nibbled the tips.  Hey, there's no accounting for taste. 

Good news at the winery.  We will be closed for Christmas Day.  YAY!  As much as I would like to earn time-and-a-half for standing around, I'd rather be home.  I'd rather be in Colorado, but here will do.

I mustered up the gumption to enter a short story contest this week.  You can't win if you don't enter, right? 

Not much else is new.  I'm reading James Joyce.  He's a genius. His stories are classics.  So far though, I'm not feelin' it.  

A hui hou.  Aloha!