Curtis! :(

Last night he was definitely sick. He kept yowling and mrraooowing and then staring at his butt. Then running away from his butt. I felt so bad for him, but it was funny as hell too.

I decided he wasn't going to die overnight and went to bed.

This morning, I wondered if he had died overnight - he didn't come out for a good five minutes after the rest of us woke up. Jerome batted at my nose and pulled on my hair til I woke up, then I petted him and Cersei til she woke up. I took Cersei out, worrying about Curtis the whole time, and when I came back in he had emerged, looking like utter hell. He had that sick-cat rumpled fur thing, and his entire butt area was soaked because he'd been licking it all night. And he couldn't walk more than four steps before he had to sit down and lick his butt again. Poor dude!

But I had to go to class, so I left everybody alone til I got back at 1. I boxed up Curtis, grabbed Cersei, and we headed to the vet. Cersei got to visit while the poor cat was thoroughly examined. He was slightly dehydrated, full of poo bacteria, and feverish. The vet thought he might as well give Curtis some sub-q fluids, until Curtis sank every one of his claws as deep as possible in the vet tech. Then we decided that he wasn't that dehydrated. I headed home with 5 days of cat-dose Panacur and a whole bunch of cat antibiotics.

We stopped off at the barn. I let Curtis out of the box to roam around the truck while Cersei and I dealt with the horses. It was a fabulous day - 60s and cloudy - so I grabbed Champ and took him and Cersei across the street to the soybean field. We walked over to the field, then trotted and cantered up the length of it. Then we turned around and gaited back a bit, then had a nice hand gallop and a really wonderful collected canter down the field. It was barely a workout for Champ but plenty of exercise for Cersei!

Champ got to hang out near the barn grazing while I set everybody up. Then I let Champ in the paddock and shooed the other horses off the gate so my other three could come in. Poppy charged right past Megan's hateful herd, but I had to whack Megan's paint pony with the leadrope to move her out of the way so Quinn could come in. Then I had to yell and run and wave my arms to make Megan's evil palomino mare stop hassling Silky. Silky kept me in between her and the palomino and walked right up to the gate with me. No ropes - ropes are for people whose horses don't like them :P

Other than that, it's been school work feed animals go to sleep and repeat. Ugh.