More Trivia Stuff, Cat Problems

I have updated this blog as much as I liked to. I have been focusing a lot of my energy on getting The Trivia Exchange off the ground. Right now it isn't generating very much traffic.

I woke up yesterday morning to find that my poor cat's right eye had swollen up and was leaking this milky discharge. I made a vet appointment and took him over during a late lunch break. I now have to administer both oral antibiotics and eyedrops. As sweet as he is, my cat does not like being forced to take medication. I have some puncture wounds on my hand to prove it. I get slightly mad, but then I realize that he doesn't know what I'm doing to him.

I have to take him again on Thursday to make sure the sure the eyedrops are working.

Paying for these vet visits made me think of how much it costs to take care of my cat. I don't think of him as a financial burden. I was just wondering in case something happened to me. For instance, in my hypothetical will I bequeath my cat to someone, say my brother. How much extra should I bequeath my brother to cover Joey's expenses?

He eats a very expensive diet food which costs $33 for 10 pounds. It is literally called the "CATkins diet." The vet even called it that. I was flabbergasted by this. I hate trend diets. But I later read that since cats are carnivores, a diet like this works realistically. Still, the name makes the diet sound really lame.

I usually buy a 10 pound bag at a time. That amount lasts him for exactly 100 days. So his food budget is somewhere in the vicinity of $106 per year. His litter costs $10 a month, or about $120 dollars a year. Vet visits (regular checkups and sickness visits) average around $200 per year. A scratching post, catnip and toys don't add up to more than 50 bucks a year. So I spend around 500 bucks a year to fully care for my cat.

That seems like a lot, but people pay the same for gym memberships that they never use. A two pack a day smoker spends 4 times that amount per annum on cigarettes. Raising a child is 55 times more expensive.

While the yearly expenses are minimal when spread out, sometimes they can all pile-up at once. I save some money every month just in case of such a pile-up.

I am still working on my New York City photo essay. It's going to be so long; I'm not quite sure if this blog can handle it. I might have a site that supports photo essays, if only for this one time. I would love to be able to do something that looks like Slate's Interactive Essays. I'm sure there is something like that out there. Hopefully it will be free.