Ugh, we had to take the car to the shop AGAIN this morning (fourth time in two months) with that persistent coolant leak, but apparently it's okay now (didn't actually talk to the mechanic myself)? I hope so, because we have to go to Chinatown tomorrow, Pittsburgh on Tuesday, and of course California in June...

So with the continuing anxiety about the car, and Wally's bump, and the looming deadline on our moving 2000 miles, I'm a little stressed out right now. Wallace seems to be having side effects from the medication, which I don't remember being a problem before—he's gone a bit off his food (and for a cat who weighs 18 pounds you know this is an unusual circumstance), but the vet showed me that he also had an infected tooth, so that might be why he doesn't feel like eating so much, especially the dry stuff. The Clavamox usually kicks in pretty quickly though, and it's been a couple days, so hopefully that will clear up soon and he'll be back to his greedy ways.

We had our moving estimate walkthoughs yesterday. One guy said he had to take the figures back to his office and plug them into the computer, so we don't know the total from that company yet, but the first fellow quoted us a bit over $5000 and this other woman who came by gave us a figure of about $9000 (and that wasn't even a binding estimate as the first one was). It was pretty amazing the spread of prices there. I don't think we'll be going with that last company. I didn't like that lady anyway. Now we gotta find some boxes and start packing the books, of which we apparently have several thousand pounds...

Yesterday Wally's nose swelling was down somewhat, but then today he had these red marks in the area which I found rather alarming, so I decided it was time for him to go to the vet. The doctor examined him and concluded he had probably injured his nose somehow (since he's an only cat and doesn't go outside, the head on the door theory or something similar was judged most likely) and then it got infected, hence the swelling. The red marks actually look like scratches—my theory is Wallace was feeling some irritation there from the infection and the scratching was self-inflicted.

Anyway the doctor did not seem in the least worried that the nose condition was a sign of any serious illness, so that was quite a relief. He did prescribe an antibiotics regimen though, which is a different kind of worry—Wallace does not take medication well. Oh, Clavamox, how many pills of you have been spit behind the furniture or, in liquid form, dribbled stubbornly out of the corners of Wallace's mouth. It has gotten a little easier since the vet suggested using a piller, but it's still no fun at all for either of us.

Oh! and also, I got him microchipped, which was something I had wanted to do before we move. Obviously we're going to be very careful about securing him all through the trip, but it's nice to have a bit more security just in case. I can't believe it's only about six weeks until we go! We have three movers coming on Thursday to give us estimates; I'm kind of dreading finding out how much it's going to cost. We don't have all that much stuff, but it's a pretty long way to where we're going. (Still, it's worth the money to us not to have to carry the thousands of books ourselves. Just toting one 18-pound cat from the car into the vet's office today almost killed my arm, because I am very weak.)

Weird, I just heard a Pogues song in a Cadillac commercial.

In other car news, we got our Corolla back from the shop and it really does seem fixed now. Even after the second "repair," it didn't feel quite right when accelerating, but finally it feels back to normal. Let's hope it holds.

With that worry out of the way, I am free to obsess about something else, which is that Wallace has this weird balding, bulgy spot on his nose. ( Pictures within. )

Naturally I assume it must be cancer, because I'm optimistic that way. Also another of my family's cats has had skin cancer on his face (although his tumor didn't look much like this). wallacecat has put forth the hypothesis that Wally just got a bump on his nose from trying to open doors. It's true that he has been trying to nudge doors open with his head a lot lately (we've been closing him out of the bedroom at night, which means he tries to bust in in the morning to demand his breakfast), so I hope that's actually the true explanation, but I will be taking him to the vet soon. We needed to get him a checkup anyway and also get some advice on how to help him deal with the move (yes, he's coming in the car with us to California. It's going to be a long, noisy trip). Here's hoping he checks out all okay.