Wedding tomorrow!

I've been working hard on the card I want to give my nephew Mike and his bride Katie from us. Our gifts have already arrived, shipped from Macy's wedding site. But I wanted to give them a creation to match their wedding. The color for the wedding is purple. They're getting married in Carmel-by-the-sea where the western US monarch butterflies hibernate during the winter. I'm sure the monarchs are arriving.

Mike & Katie's wedding card

Inside the card will say:

You've already felt you're married
In your hearts and in your souls.
Today is a formality if all the truth be told.

Your vows you'll make,
You'll cut the cake.
We'll dance until we're blue.
It's all a celebration of our happiness for you!

We wish you health and happiness,
Abundance in all you need, and
Long lives filled with memories
Of happy times like these.

Congratulations!

I feel like a very bad mommy

Loki has had fishy breath for a couple of weeks. Eric noticed his gums looked inflamed. We hoped it would go away and if it didn't, we hoped it wouldn't get any worse until after Mike & Katie's wedding because then I'll be back at school and able to take him to the vet in the morning without missing work.

He's been yelling at us for the last three days at mealtimes. It wasn't until he started to eat dinner last night and yanked his head back that I realized we had a problem. He walked away without eating. Later he went back to eat a bit but he didn't clean the plates like he had been.

We looked at his upper lip and it's swollen. There's a small sore inside his mouth.

This morning, he passed on breakfast. I took him to vet to drop him for the day.

He's either allergic to something we're feeding him or he has a condition called eosinophilic granuloma complex. I just read about it. It's a disorder of the anti-parasite system. It can be triggered by allergies to food, environment or fleas. He's starting a second course of prednisone.

Our vet suggests we change to Innova Evo because the foods we were and are feeding are not different enough to make a difference. I asked her what she thought about a raw diet. She says she has serious concerns about household health with raw diets. Salmonella could be passed from the cat to us if he ate infected chicken.

She said the Z/D diet would be best but it's horribly expensive and she knows our finances are tight.

If he gets symptoms again and if we get him in before he's too sore to eat, they'll do a biopsy to test for the condition.

I felt awful when I found out he's lost nearly two pounds since his last checkup.

I'm a bad mommy. He should have gone in when we first noticed the bad breath and inflamed gums.