Spoiling the Spoiled

Ever since Winston was diagnosed with mouth cancer in April we have been spoiling him almost beyond measure. Whatever we eat, he gets some. If he likes it, he gets more, up to a point, but far more then I would ever dream of giving a pet. I also was pretty strict about waiting until the meal was over before he would get table scraps.

So yesterday was Winston's 13th birthday. With the kind of cancer he has, we were told that 3 months would be a good outcome and 6 would be great. He's approaching 5 months since surgery with still no signs of tumor regrowth. Technically he's in remission, at least for the time being. Since it will likely be his last, we wanted to do something really special for him. Two things that will always make him happy are food and catnip.

I was thinking steamed fish for food, since we rarely eat fish at home. We do eat steak and chicken which he gets a small indulgence of about once a week, so we needed something to top that. However, after asking my husband what he thought, and him being the treat/table scrap giver, he said, "sashimi". Nothing but the best for a very special cat. I went to the not so local Mitsuwa market and picked up 3 different types of raw fish and some yellowtail collars. For the humans, we had a Korean style rice bowl called hwe dup bap. It's rice, lettuce, raw fish, seaweed (aka nori) and a spicey/sweet sauce all mixed together. I broiled the yellowtail collars with just some salt and pepper and we dipped it in purchased ponzu sauce. My husband told Winston to have birthdays more often. For dessert Winston got a bit of muffin. When Winston lived with my family, my older sister would try feeding him everything. The two more unusual items he really liked was apple pie and muffins, we already knew about the cantaloupe and salt & vinegar chips.

Winston also got a fresh catnip toy tonight and I think he had a really great birthday. He doesn't know why he was spoiled, but it just makes us happy knowing that his probable last birthday was something really special. We have come to terms that our time is limited with him, and are no longer upset, just thankful he's so far living past what was expected. We took videos of him enjoying his day, but I will abstain from sharing.

In other news, I opened up a small etsy shop. I'm still on a big spinning kick and started dyeing some of my own fibers. I'm not using what I've been spinning, but I'm enjoying dyeing things up and seeing how it turns out. I have also meant to get my stitch markers up for some time, so it was a good kick in the butt combination to get me moving. The store is Simply Basics and I also started a blog for it here.

I wanted to separate my excessive cat talk and personal stuff from shop updates and miscellaneous back story to some of what I do over there. This blog has mostly been ignored the past year, so we'll even see if this blog survives.