I went to visit Chaplin tonight during the animal hospital’s visiting hours, and I’ve come back significantly reassured about how he’s doing. Especially after what happened last night.

After I posted last night, there were complications. While they were trying to cathetrize and manually unblock him, his urethra tore (cue all the guys reading this instinctively reaching for their crotches while sharply inhaling through their teeth).

They brought in a surgeon to give him emergency surgery, and while they did get a tube in to drain his bladder, they couldn’t repair the tear itself because he wasn’t stable enough.

So of course I was finding all this out over about two hour intervals over the course of the night, and I just completely flipped out. I barely slept last night, and I was really upset all day today.

But he seemed to be doing okay when I saw him. They basically have him stuffed into an oversized tube sock with little holes for his front paws to keep him from getting at the area where he had surgery last night. They had to shave a significant portion of his belly fur for the surgery, so that’s going to look pretty funny once he’s out of the sock.

And he is high as a kite. He basically had this look going:

So he was a little out of it, but he seemed much better than he did when I’d dropped him off last night. They told me he already ate an entire can of wet food and was well on his way to finishing a second when I came by.

He will need more surgery - depending on how his urethra does on its own, they’re debating which of two surgeries to do. But having spent an hour with him and listening to the doctors talk about how much he’s improved in the last day, I’m confident that whichever they have to do, it’s going to work.

The numbers they’re throwing around for how much this is all going to cost are just ridiculous, and I’m not even going to pretend that I won’t be going to the First National Bank of Dad for an advance on my inheritance to pay for this.

I prided myself on having been able to get through the last four years without having to take any loans from him, even when I was unemployed for four months of this year. Pride is out the window right now, though, in favor of getting Chaplin home.

The good news is that apparently my aunt’s doing a lot better. I’m trying to figure out a way to get to Hartford for a few days but come back significantly earlier than I was going to, but the way the airlines work it looks like I may have to go for the whole week or not go at all.

All in all, I’m not going to be completely okay until he’s been home for a few days, but I’m at least able to pry myself off the ceiling now. And frankly, that’s a huge improvement after last night.

So Flickr has a feature wherein you can compare the statistics of all your pictures, and see which ones are the most popular, see where your hits are coming from, and things of that nature. It’s pretty interesting and a fantastic way to kill time if you’re really bored.

I have one photo that is far and away the most popular one (almost 2500 views vs. the 2nd place photo’s 1900, and 10th place’s 390). Is it well-composed? Is it of something particularly unusual? Or is it this:

That’s right, a picture I took of a grow room in the Amsterdam Hemp and Marijuana Museum is the most popular picture I’ve ever taken. It’s managed to make its way onto the first page of search results for both “hemp” and “marijuana” on Flickr, so I suppose that helps.

I’m inordinately amused by how very, very many people seem to enjoy this picture, despite how utterly craptacular it is. Piss-poorly framed, shot with a terrible resolution camera, and really kind of indistinct. But it’s weed, man, so it’s popular.

Clearly, I should start aiming more of my efforts in everything artistic at the stoner crowd, because they’re easy to please.

Ah, the dulcet tones of the Production Office when there’s a 10am call and a projected exceedingly late wrap - The fridge sadly cranking along, two keyboards clacking away as two sets of hands type bored IMs to friends lucky enough to not be stuck at work at almost 11pm on a Saturday night.

You’ll notice “the drone of the air conditioner” is not included on this list because…well, it’s not on. And the engineer who actually knows how to turn it on has gone home. And the windows don’t open here.

I’m getting a little sleepy. And I can’t leave until they wrap. This is going to be a looooong evening.

At least a) I have gotten every bit of work I possibly can out of the way, b) I did my PT exercises so I don’t have to when I get home, and c) I discovered that Netflix Watch Now has the Dragnet Blue Boy episode on it. This is the most gloriously paranoid half-hour of television ever.

After watching it with the poor PA who’s stuck here with me, he said, “You know, this was only fifteen years before Hill Street Blues. I can’t imagine how they came that far that quickly.” He’s damn right.

Don’t go for the usual scare tactics. Instead, show them true life tales of exactly how unbelievably dumb people can be when they are stoned:

Two Men Arrested After Accidentally Dialing 911 While Trying To Page Their Dealer

When Asked For Identification, Man Hands Cop His Pot Pipe

And they will not want to smoke weed, for fear of ever being perceived as this fucking stupid.

Having taken Chaplin to the vet and determined that his tendency to use me as a chew toy isn’t caused by any underlying medical issue, the vet suggested putting him on Prozac for a couple of months.

Let me repeat that: In order to get my cat to stop biting me, I have to make him take a pill every day.

Anyone who has ever owned a cat, particularly anyone who has ever tried to make a cat take a pill, please feel free to point out the problem with this idea.