Thursday morning – that would be the same day I lugged Sebastian into the vet, in case you're keeping score – I saw Rosemary in the litter box and it looked like she was straining, followed by what looked like a little blood in what came out. Thursday night, a repeat performance, and Friday each time she went to the litter box she would strain and strain and nothing would happen.

Friday at work after finally managing to get everyone involved in this presentation that *must* be done by next week on the phone together, my boss decided the best way to finish this is to have us all in the same place. Hence, I now have tickets to Los Angeles, to spend all of Monday and possibly Tuesday at the office in Santa Monica. With that looming over my head, I knew that there was no way I'd be able to get Rosie in to the vet until the end of next week – and if this is a urinary tract infection, we really didn't want to wait that long. So this afternoon, on the way back from Apple Hill (because it was time for our yearly dose of the best caramel apples ever), Richard called the vet to see if we could squeeze her in. They very nicely agreed to give it a try, so we dashed home, tossed her in a carrier (where she expressed her displeasure most pathetically), and the verdict is that tomorrow we will have to figure out some way to collect a urine sample so Richard can take that in on Monday to have it checked so we can figure out just what it is. Oh, and best of all, in the meantime she gets a pill once a day. Have I mentioned before how much Rosie *hates* being medicated (or how next-to-impossible it is to medicate her as a result)?

So if you're keeping score at home in the game of How High is the Vet Bill Today, so far in the past three months we've had to have teeth cleaned and extracted, hyperthyroid treatment in the form of blood tests, pills, creams, and radioactive iodine, tests and treatment for a strange growth on the head, and now a possible urinary tract infection, all spread out between three of the cats. I have been eying the other four cats warily and am doing my best to convey to them the utmost importance of remaining healthy, by golly, because otherwise Richard and I are going to look in our stockings on Christmas morning, and instead of candy and presents, there will be rolls of vet bills, which are certainly not any sort of happy gift, no matter how festively one might tie them up with big velvet bows.