Today is a sick day. Yesterday was a sad day.

Pink got really sick this week. He has a history of bladder infections and kidney problems. This means a lot of trips to the vet for the poor guy. This time, the vet informed us that his bladder had swollen up the size of a grapefruit, his kidney's were calcifying and they didn't know what real underlying cause of it was, but that we would need to leave Pink with the vet for 3 or 4 days so they could stabilize him and then get to work on understanding what the underlying problem was.

The vet outlined a prognosis that wasn't that great. Even if we did stabilize him and get him "well" again, it would still mean possible surgery, weekly trips to the vet and quite likely, a regular repeat of the whole 3-4 day process every six months to a year. The vet figures that a chronic inflammation of his bladder has lead to some serious long term problems that would take quite a bit of time to understand better - and that treatment wasn't necesarily the best option.

Pink has never been what I would call "a good cat". He's always been a challenge for us. Very antisocial, very poorly housetrained and quite prone to biting and generally not being very nice. Hearing about his medical challenges from the vet, I suspect that his poor health was a considerable contributor to his poor behavior.

Our vet is very kind. He laid out all the options for us, and when asked, let us know that euthanising the cat was likely the best option. We had discussed this beforehand, but hearing it from the vet put it into a different light for us. Knowing what lay ahead for Pink, we decided to have him put down. It was a tough decision, but I really think it was the right one.

Why was he called Pink? Amanda says its because he had a cute little pink nose when he was a kitten. I say its because at one point, I thought it was appropriate to name animals after psychadelic rock bands (which if you know your rock history, is marvelously recursive, because it is rumored that the band itself was named after someone's cats - Pink and Floyd).

Today is pretty quiet. I've got a wicked cold in full bloom, so I've spent most of the day sitting at the dining room table watching the birds in the backyard, reading feeds and getting minimal amounts of work done.

The birds were quite active earlier today, until about five minutes ago when they all disappeared, seemingly at the same time.

Then the snow started to come down - big fluffy flakes just like the ones you see in the movies.