Allergies

Ack, have been experiencing allergies for about 2 months now and have no idea where they are coming from. The pattern is that from the minute I wake up in the morning, my nose is draining clear fluid, actually dripping from my nose, and I am sneezing, big body temperature raising, loud sneezes. My whole face itches as well, on the inside. After a few hours my stuffy nose clears out and I am okay for the rest of the day, decidedly better outside the apartment than in, with a little periodic sneezing. Other days the allergies seem to go on all day and I feel exhausted by the sneezing.

Was talking to my friend Amy this morning, on a lovely walk around the Stanford Dish, what a great view of the bay and lots of houses and trees and buildings, and she said that she had allergies going on 4 months and when she went to see a respiration specialist, his first question was whether or not she had cats and whether or not they slept in the room with her. Then his advice was to not allow them in the room anymore and to use the nasal rinse stuff for a month and see how things became.

She found herself dramatically better.

How I hate to admit allergies to my dear little kitty, whom I love, with all of her "I don't really like you that much" ways.

When we are about to fall asleep kitty walks up on the bed and looks for the crook of my left arm and then first puts each of her feet chilly on my arm, and then, Fred says, like a truck making the back up beeping sound, backs her butt up into my face. I usually try to adjust her body so that her side is in my face instead of her butt, but usually wake up with her butt in my face.

COULD THIS BE THE PROBLEM???

Will try to ban her for a while and see if there is an improvement. Will feel immensely guilty and sad as her plaintive mewing self sits outside of the door. Alas.

Cat

I think we found out what heritage our cat is.

We were watching CATS 101 on the animal planet and we saw a cat called the Egyptian Mau (Mau is egyptian for cat). It has green eyes, spotted fur (kitty's fur is not spotted), large ears, and moon shaped eyes, and a tuft of fur near the lower stomach that helps them stretch further and run really fast (which kitty does not get the opportunity to do as she is always in a one bedroom apartment), their body is small and their back legs longer than the front, socially they are not very comfortable around other animals or loud humans and are very aware of noises or movement, which help them not get hurt outside, but indoors make them very skittish and quick to get up and leave when they hear anything, they also have a M shape on their forehead and what looks like eyeliner around the eyes.

Kitty has all of these things, so she must be at least part Egyptian Mau. She is more striped than spotted but everything else fits so well and it is comforting that her craziness is not all our fault and our choice not to get another kitty because she would completely freak out is just because her kind does not like other animals, and when she runs away from any loud noises it is just because that is what she does. Because of her crazy Egyptian Mau genes!

We feel special to have figured her out a little.