I, too, am sorry to hear about your kittens, Melisa. I am not a dog or cat person. I am a dog AND cat person. Have always had both in my life and love them equally. Keegan came home yesterday and is greatly enjoying his life as an invalid. He has always been a strictly outside dog, so being allowed to stay in the house all the time seems like a big treat. Since too much bone was crushed to completely reconstruct the side of his face, besides all the wires and staples in his mouth and head, he has a couple of large holes that go from his mouth into his sinus cavity. This is the main concern right now (the worry of infection) so every time he eats we have to clean the main holes with saline solution and a syringe. He handles it like a trooper. Since there is so much bone missing, it's a "wait and see" situation as to if these holes will ever close up. The vet says if not, he has no clue what we'll do. I'm being optimistic and operating under the assumption they will heal somehow. We have 4 cats, 3 of them are "barn cats" and one of the barn cats, Rascals, is actually a cat my sister had for years and we adopted him when she moved to town and we moved to the country. While none of the other cats dare come out around Keegan, Rascals and Keegan are the best of buddies and actually chase each other around the place, and roll around together like 2 little kids. This is odd, since Rascals was about 10 years old and Keegan was about 1 year old when they met, so it's not like they grew up together. Anyway, Rascal hasn't left Keegan's side every time we've gone out and he spent last night sleeping on the back porch, waiting for Keegan to come out. Both things have never happened before. I am always awed at animal's natural instincts and empathy. We could learn a lot from them.
Sorry to hear you've had such a bad week, Lydia. The birthday party sounds like fun, though, and I'm sure you'll have a blast. How old is your daughter going to be? I never had birthday parties either, mainly because my birthday is 10 days before Christmas and my youngest sister's is 3 days before Christmas. We generally got a pizza and told "your Christmas and birthday presents are coming together." I did the same thing and over-compensated for all my daughter's birthdays. Now she makes birthdays a national holiday for her family and friends.
Have to quit getting up early enough to see hubby off to work. He always has CNN on and I end up hearing news reports that just totally piss me off. As I told B, I like living in my own private little cocoon, insulated from the real world.