I was hoping that I would be able to tell the amazing story of an amazing adventure. Unfortunately, the adventure got canceled. Since it was canceled, the story is not particularly interesting, so I will just summarize.

A woman who lives about 10 miles from me was selling 30+ knitting machines for $5000, which is an amazing price. There were not only knitting machines but also ribbers and garter carriages and color changers and an assortment of accessories. I had considered buying them all, keeping a few to use, and then storing the rest in my sheds + garage until I could sell them, but that was ridiculous.

As will surprise no one at all who knows me, my solution to there being too many knitting machines for me to handle was to cold-email someone who I’d encountered on the internet to see if we could go in together on the knitting machines. This turned out remarkably well until yesterday. Shortly before we were supposed to go and get the knitting machines someone else picked up the knitting machines! My plans were thwarted, and I did not get to have an amazing adventure with vintage machines and nice strangers from the internet.

We’ve also had a sadder and much more troublesome $5000 adventure around here. Last week I heard the cat-throwing-up-noise, but since the cat was in the bathroom on the tile floor, I just let her be.

I’m not very good at building up the narrative arc of this story; based on the past two sentences you know that the emergency vet is involved. I will also summarize this adventure. Spoiler alert: Gwen is still alive.

We went to the emergency vet, which was having a multi-hour wait for pets to be seen, and Gwen was triaged to the front of the line because she was having trouble breathing. Based on her breathing trouble, her slow heart rate, and her low body temperature, they assumed that she was experiencing heart failure.

As will suprise no one at all who knows Gwen, she has pretty much willed herself back into some semblance of health. Her heart seems fine. After a few days she was discharged from the hospital. They did a bunch of blood tests, an x-ray, and an ultrasound. The current thought is that she has pancreatitis and that made her barf and the process of barfing made her faint and the fainting is what made her seem so sick.

She’s not feeling great, but there still is a chance that this 17-year-old cat will outlive us all. And I continue to wonder who thought that it was a good idea for cat anti-nausea medication to be a pill.