Before you go on vacation...

When my husband and I go on vacation, we can be sure that some kind of cat-driven hi jinks will happen in our absence. We can always count on the oldest cat greeting us with a very loud, hateful meow, followed by ignoring us for the next several days. Her style of ignoring includes sitting with her back toward us and sleeping by herself instead of next to my left shoulder. I guess this is just how she chooses to express her disdain for being left behind.

The ignoring I can handle. The random crazy shit caused by one of the other cats (I'm looking at you Kelso) is what I dread. For example, when we went to Mexico for four days last year, we came home to find Kelso locked in the spare bathroom. To accomplish this, he went into the bathroom, shut the bathroom door and then opened a drawer in front of the door. This open drawer prevented the door from opening more than an inch. When we finally managed to get the door open and free him, we found surprise #2; piles of shit. I should also mention that before he shut himself in the bathroom, he also shut himself in the spare bedroom (which you must travel through to get to the spare bathroom). So, the sequence of events went something like this: (1) go into spare bedroom, (2) shut the door from inside, (3) go into bathroom, (4) shut the door from inside, (5) open drawer, (6) take a shit and then (7), repeat step 6 as needed.

The Hawaii vacation would be no different, except the hi jinks occurred before the vacation. A few days before our departure from the mainland, my husband and I noticed the aroma of cat shit, but we could NOT figure out where it was coming from. The litter boxes were clean and empty and a thorough search of the house did not reveal a rogue pile of crap. We couldn't find the origin. As it turns out, we were too limiting in our search. This is what my husband found:

Don't see what I am talking about? Try this one:

Yes, that is the culprit sticking to the door. A smear of cat doo doo.

My husband and I spent about 5 minutes bent over laughing our asses off upon finding this gem. How the hell did one of our cats manage to wipe their ass on the door, in an upward motion starting two inches from the ground? Keep in mind that the cats ass is at least 6-10 inches from the ground, depending on the cat in question. WTF cats?

Pet Spending

As many of you know, one of my cats (pictured left), my favorite cat, has hyperthyroidism. Fortunately, there are several treatments for the disease and one in particular is very effective. Unfortunately, it's also pretty expensive, ranging from $1000-$2000. Ouch.

It doesn't bother me to pay this much to fix my cats condition because (1) I can afford it, (2) she is otherwise healthy and (3) once treated, her thyroid will function normally. In fact, she won't even need medication.
Having said that, there is a limit to how much I will spend on my cat(s). I thought a lot about this yesterday because while I was waiting my turn for the vet, I could overhear the entire conversation going on between a woman and another vet in the next room.
Apparently, her dog has a tumor on its leg. Before the tumor became apparent, she noticed her dog was favoring one leg over the other and proceeded to take the dog to multiple vets, trying to figure out what was wrong with his leg. I don't know what all the diagnoses were, but it sounded as if she filled quite a few prescriptions and visited just as many vets. The current vet, a specialist, was trying to go through the steps for treatment of the dog, including diagnostic procedures since the vet was not 100% sure what was wrong in the first place. At this point the woman bursts into tears and tries explaining to the vet that she cannot afford to spend a lot of money. She can't even afford all the diagnostic tests, especially after all the money she spent at previous appointments and medications. This vet responds with, "Well, you can apply for a pet credit (card?) and we can see how much you qualify for and then make some decisions about treatment." The vet leaves the room and I hear the woman continue to cry for another 10 minutes.
I felt horrible for this woman and then I started to get a little irritated. It's bad enough to think your pet is going to die or that you might need to euthanize them without factoring in what you can and cannot afford. No one wants to put their beloved pet down because they can't afford treatments, but really, what is the alternative?
Say this mass in the dog's leg is a malignant tumor and it's spread. Not including the cost just to diagnose the cancer, she now must pay for surgery and chemotherapy. What if her pet credit thing only covers enough for half of that? Does she go further into debt to pay for the rest? This woman clearly cares for her dog, she's taken it to multiple vets trying to help it, and I don't think she should be made to feel like a horrible person if she decides that she can't afford these procedures. I'm not even sure I think it was right to bring up the pet credit once she has stated she couldn't afford the procedures. To me, this is sending a negative message to this woman who is clearly distressed. If she can't afford it, I don't think she should be made to feel badly about that or am I too, just a horrible pet owner?

What's new pussycat?

Unfortunately, not too much, but for some reason that song is stuck in my head like crazy. Even an hour of Radiohead couldn't get rid of it.

I finally finished reviewing that paper. (Thanks to everyone for suggestions.) We are recommending that the journal reject it. As it turns out the authors make a lot of statements about a particular protein (I'll call it protein 1) mediating a certain function, but showed no direct evidence for this. In fact, all the conclusions were drawn by comparing strain 1, which contains the gene encoding protein 1, with strain 2, a strain that does not contain protein 1. Unfortunately, the strains were not parent and isogenic mutant, they were just two unsequenced isolates. Aside from the presence or absence of this particular gene, there is no telling what other factors contributed to the differences in these strains abilities to function in this way. (One strain was awesome at it, the other was just OK.) Also, the authors made no attempt to show that protein 1 was even expressed in the conditions they were using, nor did they assess the ability of protein 1 to perform this function in vitro.
The worst part is that protein 1 is well-studied, there are parent and isogenic mutant strains lacking this gene, recombinant protein and monoclonal antibodies readily available. None of these tools were employed by the authors and as a result all that they demonstrated was that two different bacterial strains perform a particular function differently. Woohoo.

As far as the war with my cat goes, I think the balance is finally starting to tip in my favor.
First of all Sifo Dias, while still desperately trying to get into my closet at the ass-crack of dawn, has ceased trying to break the bedroom door down after being locked out. Now, all I have to do is get out of bed and shut the door, since he runs out of the room as soon as I sit up. As long as he doesn't start hiding in the room, I think I will make it.
Unfortunately my oldest cat, Shibba Dibba, has hyperthyroidism, so I need to take her to the cat radiologist where she gets injected with radio-labelled iodine. The worst part is that she must stay there until the level of radioactivity she is emitting fall below a specific level, which could take anywhere from 2-7 days. I hope it's only two days. I keep picturing her stuck in some lead cage all alone and it makes me sad. :(

My cats are plotting against me

I am exhausted, and it seems never ending. I wake up tired, I come home and stare into space, too tired to get on the computer, let alone come up with a blog post and then I go to bed and lay there, unable to sleep. My how I love insomnia.

Other than my inability to get to sleep, additional things contribute to my overall lack of energy.
1. Myself: The amount of non-lab related physical activity I am involved in lately amounts to almost nothing. For me, less exercise usually correlates with less energy.

2. Myself (cont.): I'm getting old. I used to sleep late on the weekends which allowed me to catch up on the sleep my insomnia deprived me of during the week, but over the last year I find that I can't sleep beyond 9:30am, no matter how late I stay up the previous night.
I could try to go to sleep at 9:30pm in hopes of a nice 12 hour slumber, but I can't bring myself to do it. I feel old enough as it is. If I start going to sleep at 9:30pm on a Friday or Saturday, I'll be eating dinner at 4:30pm while discussing the good old days before I know it. Besides, the chances of me falling asleep that early are very slim. I could try napping, but the only way I can sleep during the day is if I've been awake for over 24hrs.

3. My cat(s): One of my cats, Sifo Dias, is obsessed with getting into our bedroom closet, but only between 5:30am and 6:00am (FYI: This could be as little as 2-4hrs after I've FINALLY fallen asleep.) He scratches at the doors, making horrible high pitched scratching sounds (think claws on metal). When that doesn't make the closet open, he resorts to howling in front of the door. This cat is freaking loud, so loud that if I want to merely muffle his meows, I must put him in a bathroom with the door shut, which is inside another room where a door can be shut, then I go down the hall to my room and shut my door. Mind you, I can still hear him, but the volume is low enough to sleep through. I rarely lock him up like this, because I have to chase him around the house and catch him first.
Personally, I think this whole closet thing is some sort of cat conspiracy because as soon as I get Sifo Dias to quit making noise, another cat finds something irritating to do. Specifically, walk over me repeatedly, while making the most pathetic little sounds I've ever heard.
I've tried nipping this problem in the bud by putting sticky tape all over the door where Sifo Dias uses his claws. While this does (somewhat) prevent Sifo Dias from scratching the door, it creates another noise issue. Another one of our cats (there are four total) likes to lick tape. I have no idea why, but it is pretty noisey and he goes at it for a long, long time. It is less annoying then the scratching, but I can't sleep through the tape-licking any better than the scratching and I don't like my closet doors covered in tape.

Sure, I could just let Sifo Dias get in the closet, but I am tired of all my clothes being coated in cat hair so thick that a lent roller won't get it off. So, the battle wages on.
I'm thinking ear plugs are the next step.

Four sick cats and one tired microbiologist

It all started with Sifo Dias. He started sneezing a lot and then spent an hour laying in my lap, something he never does. That night (Saturday), Furio started sneezing too and by the next morning Furio was accompanied by a three inch string of shot everywhere he went. Unfortunately, that included the furniture and anything he could get underneath. There is just no telling how much of my house is coated in cat snot...

Obviously, it was time for the vet and we took them to the next available appointment. I love my vet. She is awesome at her job, she looks like an old hippie and her office is usually crawling with weird looking cat breeds. I DO NOT love her office staff. In fact, my ability to look beyond her horrendous staff and continue to take my cats to her is a testament to how great she is because these people make me homicidal. It is impossible for them to ring you up and let you pay in less than 20 minutes. The problem is that they cannot talk and work at the same time and unfortunately for every customer, they talk constantly. Every time I go in there I just want to grab them by the collars of their cat-themed sweaters pull them over the counter and scream, "MOVE YOUR FUCKING ASS. I TOOK TIME OFF OF WORK TO TAKE CARE OF MY PET. STOP TELLING ME ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS, TYPE MY INFORMATION INTO THE FORM (that's already half filled in from the last visit) AND PRESS PRINT." AHHHHHHHHHH. It's not just me either. Everyone I see waiting to pay looks ready to kill.

As it turns out, the cats had an upper respiratory infection and despite my best efforts, the remaining two cats in my household also contracted it. The current health stats are: 2 sick cats, 2 semi-healthy cats and 2 tired humans that are kind of grossed out.

On the lab front, things are going great and I can't wait until all this wedding business is over and I can blog about it.

My Significant Other Does Something With Computers

I recently read and commented on a post over at a Mad Tea Party. Although my comment didn't add much to the conversation, I am short on ideas this week, so I thought I might elaborate. The post was about the benefits of being married to or dating somone who does not work in your field.

My fiance is a software developer, so what I can tell you is that he develops software for the company that employees him. I do not understand anything beyond that. I don't know how to write code, build a database for an enterprise or make/use pivot tables (whatever the hell those are). He has absolutely no idea what I do either. He tells people that I am a microbiologist and when pressed, he adds that I inoculate and do PCR.

Needless to say, we don't discuss work. We do discuss the people we work with, but not the actual work that we do. This is very good for me in particular because I have a problem bringing work home with me, so Mr. software developers (SD) inability to understand what I am saying prohibits me from talking about it all evening and weekend. Conversely, my inability to understand what he does keeps him from talking about work all the time too. Ultimately, Mr. SD saves me from my neurotic, work-obsessed self and I appreciate that.

On the other hand, I envy my co-workers who are married to or dating another scientist. I would love to discuss my work with Mr. SD and have him understand. I would love to tell him my craziest hypotheses, bounce ideas off of him and bust out my awesome sense of geek humor and have him get it. I think he would like to do the same, but in reality neither of us know how to put on the breaks.

Instead of work, we have spent the last 10.5 years talking about: music (specifically how bad-ass the Beatles and Radiohead are), our cats (specifically how ours cats are the cutest* and the best), Star Wars, video games, technology, etc. I am NOT implying that couples composed of two scientists don't talk about the same types of things AND science. I just don't know how much I would talk about those subjects if I could talk about science in excruciating detail with my spouse. Hopefully, I will never find out. :)

*Proof of cuteness below.


UPDATE: Mr. SD informed me that I didn't really give accurate examples of what he does. I told him they were probably on par with the PCR and inoculate.