Health Issues/Cat Crap/Books in New Beginnings

I fancy myself to be in really good physical shape. I follow a reasonable diet and exercise religiously, but I have one aspect of my health I can’t get in order, my mouth. I have periodontal disease, a condition in which my gums have pockets that bacteria likes to get into and cause bone loss. Every six months, I visit my dentist, they take my gum pocket measurements, it hurts, my gums bleed, and the hygienist cautions/shames me to be diligent about taking care of my gums. Every time she gives me that speech I want to say, “Three hundred and sixty two days a year, my gums are just fine; the only time they hurt is when I come here, and you jab at them. I think you may be the cause of that.”

I do! I floss every single day. I brush twice a day, once with an electric toothbrush. I rinse with Listerine every single day. I don’t know what else to do. I’m thinking about purchasing a water flosser. I wonder if doing so would cause some improvement. I really, really don’t want to lose my teeth, especially prematurely. Having this ordeal hanging over my head haunts me.

On a more amusing note (for anyone besides me), my cats have accepted that I don’t like them bringing the spoils of their hunts into the house. The only problem is that they don’t kill them, but they still bring them back. I think Patches is the main culprit. She catches chipmunks, brings them back, and lets them go inside the house. I saw her bring one in yesterday. I presumed it was dead, and I would bury it when she finished with it. When I went looking for the body, though, I couldn’t find it. I figured she must have taken it back outside, but when I was starting my crock pot this morning, I saw a furry little animal scurry out of my kitchen, and it was too small to be one of the cats. I turned the sofa over, and it ran downstairs into my office. I closed the office door and found it in the closet with another chipmunk. I don’t know how long that other one had been living in the closet, but it had been stealing food from the cat bowls and had a good side pile of poop in the corner. I finally shoed them out of my office and through the back door, but combine those two with the two chipmunks I caught in the house a couple of days ago and a couple of weeks ago (and the dead one I just found in one of the other rooms), and I’m surprised my cats haven’t caused a rodent infestation.

Mama Cat likes to catch birds, though. This morning, I awoke to the sound of a small animal screeching. I went downstairs to find Mama Cat laying right next to a baby bird. It wasn’t a hatchling, but it was young enough to not have fully developed feathers. It was perfectly unharmed, aside from the terror I’m certain it felt. I have no idea where she caught it. I put in a basket and placed on a high spot in the back yard I’m certain my cats can’t get to. I hope it’s mother retrieved it.

A month or so ago, I went downstairs to start breakfast to hear a frantic flapping sound. Presumably, Mama Cat had caught an adult bird and released it inside the house. It was perched on one of the blades of the ceiling fan. When it tried to fly through the kitchen window, it trapped itself in the corner, and I was gratefully able to catch it and release it out the front door.

I shudder at what I may come home two when I have to leave for several days on my business trips this fall. I suppose I can’t fault them for becoming more humane with their hunting habits, can I?

I wrote about in the past how I regret not developing a joy of reading when I was younger. I read books for school and occasionally found one I didn’t mind reading. I never thoroughly enjoyed a book until I ready Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke. I had to read it as a summer assignment right before my senior year, and that was the first time I enjoyed a novel so much, that I had to keep it. I still have it, and I’ve reread it a couple of times since then. I’ll probably reread it several times before my time on this side of the grass is over. That book was the first time I felt like I was there while. I could smell the ocean breeze. I could feel the sand on my bare feet. I could see the houses the characters lived in. Sadly, when I looked into Clarke’s other books, none of them had the same impact on me. It wasn’t until ten years later when I was unemployed that I really started to learn what enjoyment I could get from books. I had a lot of down time and not much money, so checking books out of the local library was a free way to escape from reality.

Sometimes, I felt kind of silly because I was so late in discovering great stories that others were used to like the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the mysteries of Hercule Poirot, Asimov’s Fantastic Voyage that was aptly named, and Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles, a tome of which I have all the stories in single hard back copy that I will keep for the rest of my life.

I wonder if every bibliophile has a specific series, a series that they discovered on their own without anyone they know being familiar with it, so it feels almost like their own private world to explore. If such is the case, I’ve certainly found mine. It’s called The Dragon Blood Series by Lindsey Buroker, and I think I’m addicted. It’s an interesting mix of fantasy and what can best be described as steam punk, and reading it is the first time I’ve actually wanted to live in a written world and befriend the characters I feel like I already know. I started reading it late last year, and I’m currently on the fifth book. I’m envious that some people create such worlds in their own minds. How amazing must that be?