All your horror stories and encouragement last week has done the trick, and today at 3:30 I’ll be going to the dentist for the first time in many years. I am not looking forward to this, and a stiff wind will make me change my mind about going such is my reluctance to face the issue. I know I must, though, so I will try very hard to suck up my fear and get on with it. If you see me tweeting past 3:30 and it’s NOT about how I’m strapped in a chair with needles and pointy things shoved in my mouth, please feel free to call me names and imply that my mother is a whore. That won’t necessarily make me do the right thing, but it will be entertaining for me.

Yesterday I mentioned being on a Death Watch, and as nothing traumatic has happened, I suppose I can give details. When I awoke yesterday morning, I blurrily sat on the edge of the bed checking my email and petting a cat. I glanced at Ed’s night stand table to eyeball the time, and noticed what looked like feta cheese on top. Since I don’t recall eating Greek in bed, I inspected the substance – it turned out to be the remains of a crumbled Extra Strength Advil. Ed has a habit of carrying pills around Josh-style and emptying his pockets onto random surfaces, and over time a small collection of OTC headache medicine collected beside the bed. I assumed one of the three cats had tried to eat the Advil, found it horrible, and spit the rest out – no big deal.

Except it kinda was. I asked Ed to clean up the pills on his table, after which he went online to see if ibuprofen was toxic to cats – only a little, if by “little” you mean “instantaneous poisoning and death”. We immediately freaked out and started watching the cats for signs of poisoning while Ed called an emergency vet to see what, if anything, we could do. The news was grim: by the time they start showing symptoms, it’s already too late. We had no way of knowing WHEN the pill was eaten, and symptoms could appear 4 to 12 hours after digestion. It was a hellish couple of hours – we had resigned ourselves to losing one of our cats for a stupid, stupid mistake and there was not very much we could do about it other than take all three cats in and have a barrage of testing done because we couldn’t be sure WHO had eaten the pill.

As we forced all three cats to interact with us so we could check for symptoms, Ed went back into the bedroom to get dressed. He came running out of the room seconds later – he found the other half of the pill. It hadn’t been eaten by anyone! With a flashlight, he searched the carpet until all crumbs were accounted for as I let the whiny cats back into the bedroom (they hate it when doors are closed). We kept an eye on the cats for much of the day, but the coast was clear – no one had been poisoned, and the Death Watch was officially over.

I’m sticking with the original theory I came up with when I didn’t want to believe our cats had eaten something they’d been ignoring for months: I routinely put drinks on Ed’s night stand while I’m climbing into bed to play video games, and all my drinks suffer from the heartbreak of condensation. I opine that my drinks leaked onto the pills, getting them wet – and when they dried again, the structural integrity suffered. Throw some stuff and a cat or three on top of the weakened pill, and you get a soggy, crumbly mess that looks an awful lot like someone tried to eat the pill then spit it out as though it were poison.

Whatever the reason, Ed has learned his lesson – no pills tossed both willy AND nilly onto any surfaces. Our cats are fine and stupid, and all is good – just a little Sunday morning terror to put everything into perspective.