My Binkie, 1996 - 2009

Binkie didn’t have an easy life. The story that I have been told is that he was taken from the streets and brought to an animal shelter. He was then adopted but soon taken back as he didn’t get along with the other pets in that family. Later he was adopted again and he then lived with his new owners for some years before he ended up with me now almost 6 years ago.

Binkie and I needed some time to get used to each other. People who didn’t have the chance to witness this; Binkie could meow quite loud (also called screaming), especially when I got home he used to be very ‘angry’. He wasn’t really angry, he was mostly screaming for attention.
He could sometimes follow me around the house until it annoyed the hell out of me, but he also enjoyed sleeping sessions on the couch or windowsill for hours and hours. When I pulled him up he would press himself against me and rub his head against my neck while purring loudly. He didn’t only purr loudly, he could also snore like a grown-up man. There have been a lot of times I woke him up in the middle of the night because he was snoring so loud that he woke me up!

Binkie and I were a team. Visitors were welcome, but he much rather had me all for himself. As far as I know we had a lot of good talks together, but not everyone will understand that.
When I had to leave Binkie home alone because of some sort of holiday or whatever there were always my dear ex-neighbours, sisters, parents, Elise or aunt Annie who didn’t only feed him but most of all gave him the attention that he always wanted more than food.

Binkie wasn’t the healthiest cat, he was on a special diet because of feline lower urinary tract disease and weighted over 7 kilo’s, which made him a big cat.
In the fall of 2007 he became ill, he ate less and less and in the end lost over 2 kilo’s of his weight. It turned out that Binkie had kidney-failure. The only remedy was giving him drips to try to clean his body of all the toxic that he couldn’t get rid of himself and it worked!
I gave him the drips at home and after a few months his blood levels were almost back to normal again. March 2008 I stopped with the drips, the only thing he got was medicine (that he liked eating, thank God) and a special diet. And it all went well…for a long time. His kidneys were damaged though so once it would go the wrong way again.

Once arrived 3 weeks ago. The vet & me had good hopes that the drips would do the trick again, and it seems to be going in the right direction at first but in the end he slowly went downhill; he didn’t eat properly, was lying on the couch apathetically, wasn’t waiting screaming behind the door when I got home… He seemed to be doing a bit better all of a sudden last week, but in the end I had to face the fact that he had more & more bad moments every day.

On Friday night I had Binkie put to sleep. He will be cremated one of these days and his ashes will be scattered on a nice green field. Binkie was almost 13 years old.

Binkie was just a cat, but he was MY cat and the sweetest cat in the whole wide world.

This was in on the frontpage of the papers on Thursday here, all the Olympic medal winners visiting the Qeen:

I love the fact that there's about 3/4 guys in this picture & the rest is all women!
Oh and the swimmer dude is so tall he's totally taking the queen's limelight :-P

Meanwhile Binkie is enjoying the box of my new laptop


Oh and today it's Beatstad Festival in the Hague, Live is closing it tonight & the mainreason for going there hehe!

More december stuff

Apart from my b-day (see blogpost below) there's been some other things keeping me busy lately.

First i decided to get myself a Christmas tree this year, quite a unique thing i can say. I also bought some extra stuff to put in it and now it's quite a pimpy thing i think.














Binkie in the mean time, seemed to do better & better. At the vet 2 weeks ago his bloodlevels had improved again and therefore i was allowed to stop the medication and cut down on the daily drip. The past 2 weeks he only needed a drip every other day. More to come though...

Winter also kicked in seriously for once...it's been bloody cold this last week and a half! Coldest temperature i've known about was -6C when i was biking home one night, brrr.
Friday morning when i arrived in Amsterdam, this is what it looked like right outside central station:














That's when i decided not to bike to work that morning but to take the tram instead.

During the little walk from the tram-stop to work i took these pictures:














(ugly white building = uni library, where i work)














In Alkmaar we didn't have snow though, but it was just as cold up here. I think all the white frozen trees on this next photo prove that. Taken saturday morning from my bedroom window.
















Now the follow up on Binkie:
In the days just before this weekend i noticed he was trying to vomit sometimes but nothing came out. Then on friday night i noticed he hadn't really eaten any food.
On saturday he was doing that vomitting thing again, this time with a lot of noice...the poor boy was definitely in pain. I called the vet who was on duty this weekend and she concluded his phosphate level had probably gone up again. Unfortunately she didn't have the medication for this available in the weekend...nice one!
Binkie was definitely feeling quite sick and he was crawling away in all the different corners at home all the time...felt so sorry for him and was so scared the whole weekend.

Luckily i already had an appointment at the vet for today. I didn't really sleep well last night and was almost convinced i'd come home again without him.

Things turned out much better than i thought though; it seems he has some sort of infection in his throat/face (noticed his right eye was a bit weird this morning and the vet felt he was swollen on that side of his face right away)...anti-biotics should hopefully do the trick for that.

His bloodlevels, including his phosphate, have improved again actually which means that his kidneys are still improving!

Still feel sorry for Binkie that he's feeling bad of course, but WHAT A RELIEF!!! Hopefully the anti-biotics will kick in fast, in that case i only have to take him back to the vet in 3 weeks! Oh and i can cut down on the drip again, to once every 3 days now.

Immidiately took some Christmassy photos this afternoon, here's Binkie enjoying the Christmas tree :)

B-day

Better late than never i think, so tonight i'm finally updating this blog again. First with pictures of my b-day party back on the 8th :-P

My big love Mr. Gijs was one of the earlier guests, he kind of hooked up with Binkie first and then ended on the couch with Minko, which makes you think...





























Later that night some very spontaneous people became a victim of my camera hehe.












































































All in all it was a great party which ended some time around 4 am sunday morning, thanks everyone for coming!!!

Binkie 2

finally an update on my binkie again. it's been almost 2 weeks since i first took him to the vet & thank god he's improved quite a bit.
yesterday it was time for bloodtest nr3 & his levels have gone down again, but one went up a slight bit and he has also lost a tiny bit of weight again since last week. so it's still not great yet, but good enough to continue with the treatment.
and that treatment is still a daily drip of about 250-300 ml of fluid and a pill for his mouth & stomach. last week i've learned how to give him the drip myself and i'm now doing it at home, which is great of course because it causes so much stress for binkie and so much time as well everytime i have to take him to the vet.
i do need someone to help me everytime though, someone to start the drip, while i put the needle in binkie's back and hold him, and keep an eye on when to stop.

just to give you an idea, here's the results of all the 3 bloodtests so far (and the levels as they should be between brackets):
UREA (5.7-12.9):
22/11: 46.4 (probably higher, but this is the max they can measure)
26/11: 40.3
03/12: 24.6
CREA (71-212):
22/11: 884
26/11: 586
03/12: 453
PHOS (1.00-2.42):
22/11: 5.19
26/11: 3.29
03/12: 3.33

here's some pix from this weekend, first me giving binkie his drip:

and binkie sound asleep under his blanket after his drip.he's always a bit cold because of the drip, so i tucked him in :)

Binkie

binkie's not been himself ever since i came back from down under.

i thought he was angry at me, for travelling so much, or that he was simply getting older and getting into other diet habits.

but as he continued to eat less and less until he just stopped eating this week i finally took him to the vet tonight....wish i'd done it before.

it turns out he has serious kidney failure (that's what it's called in english i think) and it doesn't look good at all. his blood levels are extremely high (one thing is 43 for example but it's only supposed to be 12 max, another is 880 and that's only supposed to be 200 max) and need to go down...quick.

so tonight he immediately got his first drip, a shot of anti-biotics and a pill to get rid of something that's causing blisters in his mouth. for the next 3 days i need to go back with him every day for more drips. and then on monday night they'll do another blood test to see if his blood levels have gone down enough. my vet's already happy if they went down by 50% she said...

at home sick

alive & kicking

well i am, this blog has been dead for over a month. time to change that and finally update it...a bit at least.

came back from my 3rd travelguide trip on august 19th, took a day off and then got a phonecall from the uni-library the day after...was back @ work there the day after that. so much for being unemployed!
have been working (almost) fulltime ever since and apart from that i'm trying to get my social life going again plus give as much TLC to binkie as i can, poor cat was so confused the whole last month he refused to eat and actually lost weight!

so there's lots to tell about my travelguide trips, birthday parties i've been too, my bike that got 'stolen' by the amsterdam police, my new camera phone, my debts (erhm...well rather not :P), etc. etc....won't do that now though...will just leave you with some pix from this past week. all of them are taken with this lovely new phone:

back HOME!

only 26,5 C

...in my apartment that is. lowest temperature inside the house of the last 7 days i think....it's been H-O-T!
we had some heavy rain yesterday afternoon, which was needed, but it's still really warm.

on the news they say it's probably going to be the hottest summer ever, 2 heatwaves in a row and temperatures up to 37-38 degrees on wednesday surely should make that possible now.
don't get me wrong i'm not complaining...only thinking it's a bit extreme. and i am a bit sad about the fact that on the days that i would have been able to go to the beach, thursday and this weekend, it's still (very) warm but there's too much clouds (and rain yesterday). right now for example it looks sunny outside but at the same time the sky is grey....

aniwais......i'm going to the 'cold' north on wednesday it's only around 20 degrees there right now haha! 33 guests in the group and the oldest one is only 70-something, that's what i now call a young group ;)

and now for something completely different:
- elise found a new apartment yaaaaaaaaay!!! :D
- i watched dennis bergkamp's goodbye game on TV last night :P
- found out it's not very smart to buy plants for my balcony when there's a heat wave going on
- i got myself some new purple sneakers this week
- i still need to listen to the the raconteurs album that's on my comp
- cisca came by this week for some travelguide insights on SE/stockholm :)

preparing

even if there's almost like a heat wave going on outside i'm at home...trying to prepare and organise things for my departure on wednesday
wednesday is D-day...my first official day as a travelguide...finally after all these months!

my flight to helsinki is going around 11:00, from there it's another flight up to rovaniemi where i'll officially present myself to my 39 guests. the oldest one is 84 by the way... :O
for the next 10 days we'll then travel around the upper north of scandinavia, wohaaa!

some pix i took yesterday:















binkie tightly hugging his plant















preparing