u/OvernightSiren

During the first week of May my 16.5 year old cat was lying on me and I just felt like she looked...off. She looked a little gaunt or tired. I cried that night because she just looked older, but ultimately thought just that--that she's getting older.

A week later her breathing looked labored. It wasn't open mouthed, but she was taking deep inhales and sharp exhales and not sleeping in bed with me anymore. Her appetite had also decreased, but only a little. She was 2 weeks late for her monthly arthritis shot, so I thought maybe it was just that.

May 11 I took her to a new vet (long story). The vet at first said she seemed to have a fine heartbeat. Then I showed him videos I took of her sleeping and the odd breathing. He felt around her stomach and then asked to take x-rays. He came back and told me in a very somber tone that she had pleural effusion. He said it was likely terminal given her age and that it was most likely heart failure or a cancer. He said she'd need a chest tap to get a diagnosis but his office wasn't equipped for that.

May 13 I took her to a vet hospital to see about the tap. They quoted me $4500 which was not in my budget. I got them to bring it down to $2700 which I couldn't afford either.

May 14 I reached out to the vet who made the diagnosis and he agreed to prescribe some diuretics to help get out of some of the fluid.

Over the next two weeks she first seemed to get a little better, but then slowly worse. She started avoiding me more (which I assumed was because I was giving her pills she didn't like). She started hiding behind an armchair. I took her for a walk outside (on a leash) one night and she tried to run under the deck, presumably to hide.

She got pickier and pickier with her food. She ignored churu entirely. All I could reliably convince her to eat was the occasional dental treat and she would enjoy licking a cement tablet from time to time. She'd have a lick or two of gravy here and there.

On about May 24 or 25 she got an upper respiratory infection (I think). Lots of sneezing and runny nose.

After that her condition got very bad quickly. I was force-feeding her liquid food using a monojet I took from the dentist office I work at. She would not eat at all, but she'd get up to sniff whatever food was served to her maybe 50% of the time.

She started getting skinny FAST. Her back legs got wobbly. She started sleeping exclusively next to her water fountain, and when she'd drink water she wouldn't dry off her chin. So her chin was constantly soaked with water. Her eyes started to look more sunken in. Her purring sounded more like growling (for all I know maybe it WAS growling) and strained.

On June 4th I made the extremely hard choice to help her cross over...but what sticks with me is that when the vet and the aide knelt down to get her ready, my kitty stood up and greeted them. Lifted her head and gave them a sniff. She was a very social cat and always came to greet new people.

Ever since that day I've been so afraid that I made the call too soon after I saw her act like "herself" again when she saw the strangers. She was still peeing at her litter box (not in it, but she never peed IN it to begin with). She wasn't pooping, but she had nothing to poop. She wasn't eating, but she was drinking.

I just don't know if I made the choice too soon and it has been absolutely killing me. I know that given the path she was going she probably only had another two weeks AT MOST but I can't help but feel like I gave up on my girl sooner than I should have. After she gave her whole life to me I feel like I should have let her try a little longer...I need advice.

During the first week of May my 16.5 year old cat was lying on me and I just felt like she looked...off. She looked a little gaunt or tired. I cried that night because she just looked older, but ultimately thought just that--that she's getting older.

A week later her breathing looked labored. It wasn't open mouthed, but she was taking deep inhales and sharp exhales and not sleeping in bed with me anymore. Her appetite had also decreased, but only a little. She was 2 weeks late for her monthly arthritis shot, so I thought maybe it was just that.

May 11 I took her to a new vet (long story). The vet at first said she seemed to have a fine heartbeat. Then I showed him videos I took of her sleeping and the odd breathing. He felt around her stomach and then asked to take x-rays. He came back and told me in a very somber tone that she had pleural effusion. He said it was likely terminal given her age and that it was most likely heart failure or a cancer. He said she'd need a chest tap to get a diagnosis but his office wasn't equipped for that.

May 13 I took her to a vet hospital to see about the tap. They quoted me $4500 which was not in my budget. I got them to bring it down to $2700 which I couldn't afford either.

May 14 I reached out to the vet who made the diagnosis and he agreed to prescribe some diuretics to help get out of some of the fluid.

Over the next two weeks she first seemed to get a little better, but then slowly worse. She started avoiding me more (which I assumed was because I was giving her pills she didn't like). She started hiding behind an armchair. I took her for a walk outside (on a leash) one night and she tried to run under the deck, presumably to hide.

She got pickier and pickier with her food. She ignored churu entirely. All I could reliably convince her to eat was the occasional dental treat and she would enjoy licking a cement tablet from time to time. She'd have a lick or two of gravy here and there.

On about May 24 or 25 she got an upper respiratory infection (I think). Lots of sneezing and runny nose.

After that her condition got very bad quickly. I was force-feeding her liquid food using a monojet I took from the dentist office I work at. She would not eat at all, but she'd get up to sniff whatever food was served to her maybe 50% of the time.

She started getting skinny FAST. Her back legs got wobbly. She started sleeping exclusively next to her water fountain, and when she'd drink water she wouldn't dry off her chin. So her chin was constantly soaked with water. Her eyes started to look more sunken in. Her purring sounded more like growling (for all I know maybe it WAS growling) and strained.

On June 4th I made the extremely hard choice to help her cross over...but what sticks with me is that when the vet and the aide knelt down to get her ready, my kitty stood up and greeted them. Lifted her head and gave them a sniff. She was a very social cat and always came to greet new people.

Ever since that day I've been so afraid that I made the call too soon after I saw her act like "herself" again when she saw the strangers. She was still peeing at her litter box (not in it, but she never peed IN it to begin with). She wasn't pooping, but she had nothing to poop. She wasn't eating, but she was drinking.

I just don't know if I made the choice too soon and it has been absolutely killing me. I know that given the path she was going she probably only had another two weeks AT MOST but I can't help but feel like I gave up on my girl sooner than I should have. After she gave her whole life to me I feel like I should have let her try a little longer...I need advice.

I just finished my first watch of Fiji and I really enjoyed it!

The updated idol rules were a huge improvement, the elimination order had a lot of blindsides and unpredictability, a ton of likable characters made it very very far, the “right” person won, the merge didn’t come down to “original tribe lines” like so many of the early seasons do

But then when I went on Wikipedia I saw that in the reception category it’s not only ranked low, but often ranked in the bottom 3 or 4 seasons ever. I’m really surprised! So far it’s in my top 3 or 4 seasons (mind you I’ve only seen seasons Borneo through Fiji and I saw Gabon when it first aired).

If he gave up his Idol, he was out. If he kept it and went back on his word to Yau, the jury wouldn’t give him any votes at FTC.

I feel like Yau needed to do more to make it clear to Dreamz that he’d still take him to FTC if he gave up the idol, but instead he basically tanked Dreamz’s chances of winning the second he so publicly made that offer with the car.

I guess the right move for Dreamz was to decline the car from the start, but that also kinda puts a target on his back because it could send a signal to Yau’s alliance that Dreamz can’t be trusted and they were already on the fence about him.

Tomorrow is officially one month without my dear Minnie. She was my 16.5 year old soul cat.

I have a lot of regrets over her death, but the one hitting me today is that I just feel like I didn't make her last day special. I had decided that Thursday June 4th would be "the day" the night before. I slept on the ground that night in case she wanted to come cuddle up with me, since she'd stopped jumping up on the bed weeks prior. There were a few times I slept on the floor during the last few weeks.

The morning of her last day I woke up and spent the morning trying to find offices to do an at-home euthenasia. it was very last minute. By the time I found someone it was 12PM and they said they'd be over between 2 and 3.

I only had 2-3 hours left to process that my girl was leaving. A few days before I tried coaxing her to take a walk outside on her harness and leash (though in her weakness, I doubt I'd have needed her on a leash) but she wasn't interested.

I should have picked her up and brought her outside on her last day. She loved it out there. I should have sat talking with her nonstop for those last few hours. But I just wanted to turn my brain off and I didn't want to annoy her. She seemed so grumpy with me in the last few days so instead I sat in the same room as her but several feet away, not even with her in my clear view. And I just sat there...and scrolled on my phone talking to her here and there. Treating it like any old day...I should have made it special.

I had told her I loved her a thousand times in the weeks leading up to her death, but that last day I should have said it a million times more. I should have sat there petting her even if she didn't want it.

I was with her all through her last moments, petting her and telling her I loved her but I just wish I'd done more in the whole day leading up to it. I have so much pain and regret.

I knew it would be final but part me of was living in a cloud not realizing that YES, THIS IS FINAL, YOU WILL NOT GET ANOTHER CHANCE.

i just to hold her so bad.

One of my girl’s favorite things to do was lay on me when I wear damp towels after getting out of the shower, sometimes for up to an hour. When she started to get sick she stopped doing this.

A week before she passed I came out of the shower in my towels and she was standing up looking at me. I immediately sat on the floor and she climbed onto my lap and laid on me. I cried and talked to her and pet her for 15-20 minutes.

But I was running late and I’d already missed so much work from her being sick, so I had to eventually move her.

She passed a week later and never sat on me again. I have so much regret that I didn’t just let her sit on me for as long as she wanted.

I love her so much and I wish she could lay on me forever. I just didn’t know she’d be gone so soon after that.

We need to talk about the music. I love the MSQ, but sometimes what makes it such a chore is that scenes have been using the exact same background music for 10 years. Now, I don't dislike the music *in general* but those few specific songs which are used **far too often** in MSQ cutscenes.

These are great songs, as is the entire OST, but we've heard some of these songs done to death over the last several years. The game has such a wide catalog of music and the talented Soken behind it that it's almost frustrating to dive into new content only to hear the same song that you've heard in similar scenes over the last 10 years.

Nothing makes me roll my eyes and want to tune out of a cutscene faster than hearing any of these songs (among others I'm probably forgetting) as soon as the cutscene starts:

- Forever Lost

- Imperial Will

- Daring Dalliances

- Tranquility

- Canticle

And the [B]worst[/B] offenders:

- Fracture

- Damnation

- Return of the Hero

- Machinations

Again, I'm not critiquing the quality of these songs but just critiquing their overwhelming use. They make the game occasionally feel very stale when the story itself is continually fresh.

I don't think it's too much to ask for each expansion to have a change in "generic/stock cutscene music" since each expansion is so aesthetically different, or even too much to ask to have these songs just change **once** now that it's been 15 years. Even remixes or rearrangements could do wonders, but as it stands hearing these same songs over and over again just makes it feel like the game hasn't evolved much since launch though so many other elements of the game show us that it has.

These songs are so done to death that I can immediately tell what the tone of a cutscene is the second they start, which is effective but also makes it feel forced and lazy.

I’m a 36 year old man. My metabolism/digestion has been slowing in recent years, but my bowel movements are becoming increasingly irregular.

I probably have 2 MAYBE 3 full bowel movements a week, with incredibly sparse smaller movements sprinkled throughout (and those smaller ones require a lot of pushing to get maybe one tiny pellet out).

I take fiber gummies every day and try to drink lots of water (but there’s probably room to drink a little more water if I’m being honest). It’s becoming a problem though because some days I’ll feel so bloated and like there’s a rock in my stomach and all I want is to poop but I just “don’t need to” so I end up taking some OTC miralax to hope for some relief.

I know I’m getting older but this just doesn’t feel normal. Is this something I should address with a primary care doctor or some type of specialist?

I just don’t know how to overcome this. I see her everywhere. I can’t believe she’s gone. She was my most amazing companion. She was my touchstone. Her absence is louder than anything.

I feel like no one truly gets how much I’m hurting. I know other people say they have soulpets. I know other people have had cats last even older than mine (she was 16 and a half). And it know it’s rude and selfish and irrational but I just can’t fathom anyone loving theirs as much as I loved my angel. People offer me condolences and try to relate to my experience and I just want to scream. My girl was so special to me and I just wish I could’ve done so much more for her. I’m crushed.

It’s been a week now without my baby boop, my miss moop, my Domino Marie, my Min.

The hardest parts of each day are the brief moments where my subconscious allows me to forget that she’s gone. The moments where, without thinking, I’ll feel something brush against my leg and look down with the fleeting thought that it’ll be Min. Or the instances where I’ll be turning a corner towards her favorite chair and for a second I’ll, without thinking, expect to see her there. Having those thoughts and then to be slapped with the cold realization that “duh, she’s gone” stings each time, but I also don’t want those moments to go away.

It still doesn’t even feel real, which is silly, that a nearly 17 year old kitty has passed on but it’s true…it really *doesn’t* feel real at times. I just got so used to her being a mainstay in my life, my touchstone through all the major moments in my life but perhaps more importantly, the touchstone through all the mundane moments. She was the one guarantee. “I’ll have a bad day at work and Min will be napping at home. I’ll take a weekend trip to the city and when I come back Min will sleep in my suitcase”. Those moments that were so regular and predictable are the ones that linger the most and the ones that mattered the most.

She really was my soulcat and the best companion that I’ll ever have.

I've started doing community theater but it's become a bit disheartening. I hear people in the dressing room saying things like "oh I hit a C4" and I'm like...how do you know that? Like I can hear a note and replicate it a little, but the thought of knowing the 'name' of a note just by hearing it seems like knowledge I'm sooo far away from.

Then reading the sheet music is like a totally different beast.

I've been taking vocal classes for a few months now, but I feel like there are "core" things I just don't "get".

For starters, I'm still struggling with how to use the air in my "tank" when I pull air down into my gut during breaths. I've got the breathing IN fine, I get the air into my lower gut and I can feel all the muscles down there expand, and not my lungs/chest...but I don't know how to actually USE it. I always feel like I'm doing it right but voice teachers have told me that the sound I'm producing isn't indicative of correct airflow.

My more frustrating issue though is that I don't understand some concepts like "key" and "tone". When I sing and post here, people will tell me I'm "not in the right key" but I guess I just don't 100% know what they mean by that or how to fix it. I bought a pitch pipe and was advised that a good exercise is to play the first note of a song before singing...but am I playing the first note that's SUNG or the key that the song is in? And what even is a "key" that a song is in? Do all notes exist in each "key"? Like would it be something like "an A note in the key of G" or something like that?

It's disheartening to see people with so much excessive knowledge of each individual note like "omg I hit a C4 today" and I'm like...how do you know the name of a note just by hearing that? If I don't have that specific knowledge am I ever going to be /able/ to sing?

I feel like I have a good voice I just don't know how to use it correctly because of the two voice teachers I've had, I've never gotten past the breathing part for the most part. I want to get into things like learning about key and intonation but it just feels like the sentiment is "if you can't get the breathing down, we're not moving forward".

I will be losing my precious pet soon, possibly this afternoon.

I was talking to my friend about cremation and he said "make sure you specify that you want her cremated as an individual". He went on to say that a lot of crematoriums will do "batch" cremations of pets and that the ashes I get will likely end up as a mix of all different pets from that "batch".

Even typing this makes me want to cry, the thought that once her body leaves me I might never have any part of it again. Is this true? How would I even request them to do her as an individual? Kind of freaking out here.

I recently got back into community theater. My favorite local theater has two rotating directors. One does more classic shows, the other does riskier and more contemporary material. The latter of the two also used to be a drama teacher at a local high school, and frequently casts his former students. Sometimes he also reaches out to them directly asking them to come audition for his shows. We'll call him Director.

This past weekend I auditioned for a role in another show with him (this role has a romantic partner in the show--this is relevant later). The audition went okay. It definitely could have gone better, but I could tell that he and the rest of the casting panel liked me overall.

I'm currently doing a show with the other director. There's a guy in this show that we'll call R. R is auditioning for this next show too, and unfortunately he's auditioning for the same part as me...and unfortunately he's one of Director's former students. When R and I spoke about auditions about a week ago, he said "oh S is also auditioning. He and I both did a show as a couple before and we had GREAT chemistry; Director directed it! I wonder if we'll get the couple in this show".

Then I found out that Director had actually reached out to this "S" and specifically ASKED him to audition. So already I started to see the writing on the wall; it feels like a foregone conclusion that R and S will get the romantic couple and if I get a part at all it'll be whatever is left over.

Last night I went to rehearsal for the show I'm currently in with R. R asked me how the audition for the next show went went (he's auditioning for it later today). I told R that "oh the casting panel was 5 people seated at a table and one girl on a laptop screen via zoom"--R immediately said "oh that's Katie! She's my best friend". Later in the night R was practicing the audition monologue more and said "ugh I'm going to tell Director he better stunt cast me as this!"

He said it as a joke, but it felt very tone-deaf considering what he'd already said about his best friend being part of the casting, about his previous work with Director playing a romantic couple with S, etc. It felt like he was flexing his connections and privilege at me whether he meant it or not, and like he should have been a little more considerate of how he was coming across.

I think he caught himself and tried to course correct later he saw me, because later he started "venting to himself" aloud, saying "ugh I'm going to have to work SO hard at this audition because they're going to be so much harder on me since my best friend is on the casting panel!" which felt like a total eyeroll.

I've had a pretty good relationship with R so far, but this all felt like it was in really poor taste given that he knows that we're going for the same exact role. So I'm frustrated by him and also by this director.

TO BE CLEAR since a few people have left similar comments: My issue isn't that people are being asked to audition. I get that. It's annoying, absolutely, and it makes me feel less invested in trying to audition for this director in the future but it's not my main issue here.

My issue is my current castmate who is so flippant about the obvious favoritism that he's bound to receive. He could have easily not said "oh that's my best friend!" when I was going over the casting panel (knowing that we're going for the same part) and then cringe-ly trying to save face by acting like his best friend being on the panel isn't a benefit to him later. It was sort of condescending?

My cat is a 16.5 year old spayed female.

Two weeks ago my cat was taken to the vet and X-rays were taken. It was determined that she had pleural effusion.

We were told the most likely cause was cancer or heart failure. We looked into a tap, but were told that it could cause a lung tear and that she may have to be kept overnight. The cost was $2700-4600 which was not feasible.

Her appetite had also slowly started decreasing. Instead we got the vet to agree to place her on diuretics. That caused her breathing to become a lot less strained.

Her appetite continued to decrease. I am at the point now where she actively turns her head AWAY from all food including Churu. She still drinks quite a bit. In the last day or two she started sneezing a lot more and sniffling more especially after she drinks water.

My questions:

1. If this is heart failure, could a fight with our other cat about 2 months ago have caused it or accelerated it?

2. Is it at all possible that the pleural effusion could be caused by an infection from that fight? (She had a mostly superficial cut across her nose from that)

3. Could it be caused from a surgery she had 8 years ago?

4. Would a blood test be advised at this point?

Not sure if anyone has experience with this semi-viral tool for singing, but I’ve see some old threads on here about it full of people saying they like the tool a lot but the weren’t really explaining how to use it, so I have some questions:

1. How do I know what number to set it to while doing warmups?

2. How do I know which number to set it to before performing?

3. How long should I use it for for warmups?

4. When warming up should I sing into it with closed lips or just hum?

The directions are extremely unclear.