I've spent the last few hours taking everything out of my cupboards and drawers to build impenetrable forts on all flat surfaces in the RV. 

I have dvds sitting on oatmeal topped with a jade plant. I have guitars on sheets on bags on pillows.  There are also stairs made everywhere out of  pillows and pans and cases and bags and stools and chairs. 

For the next four weeks I cannot allow Nikolai to jump or run or play. 

He is supposed to be in an elizabethan collar in his cage but he's stretched out on a fur blanket on the bed. He's been asleep for hours, ever since he got home today, really. 

He seems a little drugged. I think there's some sort of drug patch on his right arm, being held on with blue tape. His collar is blue too and they look great on him because his fur is orange. 

But even on drugs and straight from surgery, he still wants to go outside. 

But only for a second and then he goes back to bed. 

Oh...here he comes...No... he laid back down.

I have been staring at this cat for a solid week now.

Now I have a dilemma. I have tickets with Polly Puckle, in LA, to see Dianna Ross at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday and a plane ticket to get there on Friday. But Nikolai is coming home on Thursday or Friday. So I can't go to LA. But how can't I go? Wait. I'm getting a mentally telepathical message...What's that?...What's that Nik?...you WANT me to see DIANNA ROSS?! Oh, I couldn't go and leave you...you want me to? You're just going to sleep and lay around anyway and I deserve a vacation after this traumatic week?...Oh, you're so understanding and sweet! thanks, Nik. I'm going to sleep on it and see what I think tomorrow.

This week. 

My cat, Nikolai, 

woke up Monday morning lethargic

so I took him to the vet

we think he has a urinary tract infection

but find a ring? in his stomach in the x-ray

so antibiotics at home in a syringe and hiding

oh but he may have eaten rat poison

then we're closing so take him to emergency care overnight

for a thousand dollars

but I take him home instead and Gloria tells me how to heal him with my hands

and he lives through the night

so we go back to the vet on Wed

and they know it's rat poison now

but Dr. Eric, Richanne's brother in law, says no way

and Melinda gets the carecredit card for me with $5000 credit 

to go to the specialist with Mo

where in 15 minutes we had a plan

where 2 hours later they knew what it was,

and 2 hours and 5 minutes later he was in surgery

where he awoke 2 hours later

fine

ready to come home in 48 hours 

and return to normal.

They told me he was going to die four times.

The "ring" in his stomach was a penny. A red herring.

Turns out he had a herniated diaphragm so his liver and large intestine had pushed through the diaphragm and were in his chest, pressing against his heart and lungs. 

His diaphragm was stretched and shredded when he fell out of a tree and landed on a picket fence.

They figured that out in surgery.

for $5000

but they saved the penny for me.

I think I'll send it to carecredit as my first payment.

I still can't believe he's going to live.

Last week a very good friend drowned in Waikiki while free diving, which he loved. He was a great artist. He inspired me to make films, he was the director of photography of my first film and we shared the same dream.  The Film Farm. Sergio, to you...