Carol of the Woods

I ordered a grab bag of yarn from Herrschner’s (herrschners.com) and was a little disappointed at what I got. There were several bright blue skeins that I’m not sure I’ll ever use, but there were two balls of a pretty fuzzy-mostly-yellow yarn that I did like a little. I’m working the yellow yarn into a crocheted cat bed pattern I’ve had in my head for a while. Even though I knew the bed would turn out pretty small, one of our cats (Molly) happens to be a small little fairy of a cat who can squeeze into tiny places.

When this is done, I’ll post complete instructions. (They are really simple.) Here’s what I have so far

Crocheted Cat Bed

Side Folded Down

Side View

I’ve written about Rusty a few times before. He’s peed outside the box for years and I’ve been desperately trying to find ways to deal with that. The best way so far has been to give him anti-anxiety drugs. You can find a whole page devoted to my efforts here. Anywho, I started to feel guilty about keeping the poor cat drugged for several years, so I took him off it for a while. Boy oh boy, was that ever a mistake! He’s actually more crazy now than he’s ever been. The first few days off his med he acted kind of sweet and funny, but he gradually became more obsessive and aggressive.

At the end of the experiment, right before I put him back on his med, he paced from window to window using the same route every time, and he got very frustrated if anyone interfered with that route. He was absolutely driven to walk the same path over and over again, and part of that path took him up over my body, from feet to head, as I was laying in bed at night. When he wasn’t pacing, he licked and pulled out tufts of his hair. I suffer from some obsessions myself and felt that he was probably in a painful emotional place, but what really convinced me to give him his medicine again was his aggressiveness. Billy is a very docile and submissive cat and when I saw him approach Rusty with his head bowed, asking to have his head licked, and Rusty attacked him, that was the end of the experiment.

Rusty has calmed down now, and I don’t feel guilty anymore when I chase him down to give him his medicine. And, by the way, he peed all over the place when he was off his med too, so that’s under control again. Thank the Goddess.

The St. John’s Wort worked for my depression. It really did. I haven’t been depressed since I started taking it about six weeks ago, but my anxiety came back and came back strong. On a scale of 1 to 10, my anxiety was ranging from 5 to 9 daily and without relief. I couldn’t get to sleep and I slept poorly when I did finally drift off, I felt phobic about driving, and my old obsessive compulsive problem with locking the front door came back full force. (When that old friend visits, I have to touch the lock a few times to convince myself it’s really locked.)

So, off to the doctor I went and I’ve been taking Celexa for the last seven days. This was the first stuff I took the last time I tired meds for my anxiety, and it worked well but had one side effect that was hard to live with - “libido problems.” (”Libido problems” is a nice way of saying “close but no cookie” … if you get my drift.) Anyway, I tried at least eight other medications that year, one each month, and each one affected my moods differently and had a combination of side effects that were worse than Celexa. Another reason to give Celexa a second chance is that it’s available as a very low cost generic, so I’ll be able to afford it even if we don’t have health insurance. (We do have insurance now, but who knows what the future will bring.) I’ve gone through menopause since the last time I tired it, so maybe it won’t effect my “libido” as badly this time. So far, so good.  ;)