Picture of George

Here is a current picture of George, well, current as of July. He doesn't look unhealthy or underweight in this picture. The main area that he looks or feels thin is the rear part of his back or whatever you want to call that on a cat.





I didn't get to go through older pictures this weekend. I had a longer hockey practice on Sunday than I was expecting (2 hours with lots of scrimmaging). After hockey Heather and I went with her sister, husband and kids to the new Bass Pro Shops here to see Santa arrive. We then had dinner, so by the time I got home it was a little late and I had to finish up my literature homework. Some of the real old pictures that we have of the cats are physical prints with no digital version, so I'll need to see if I can scan them in to post.

Another brief update

Yet again nothing very exciting. The agency put out a region update lately (they do this weekly). For our region, it seems that the person in the region that is in charge of referrals was on vacation and, after just coming back, has decided to stay on vacation a little longer. No referrals while they are away, so more waiting for us. still not a big deal as we were expecting to wait anyway. In a way, maybe it is good, as we know we weren't getting a referral as nobody was.

On a different subject, I wanted to get out an update on George. At his original appointments, the vet confirmed that blood test results showed an increase in waste products in the blood. These waste products are normally filtered out by the kidneys and removed from the system. If the kidneys don't function well, the waste products are not removed from the blood, hence the numbers from the blood test being higher. This is why we were giving him fluids, as his kidneys won't heal back to normal, so we need to do things to help limit these waste products.

Giving him fluids was the first step. It basically means using an IV to inject a water solution into the area beneath his skin. It sounds worse than it is, as you get some extra skin on his back and it doesn't necessarily bother them much. This helps to dilute the fluids in his system, meaning a lower level of toxins and helping his kidneys flush them out.

Wednesday I took George in for a follow-up blood test. The results show that the numbers have gotten lower, but still not to a normal level. He also lost a little weight, but this is probably due at least in part to us changing his food. Normal cat food has some things in it that we need to limit, so he gets special food. We tried dry food first (as he already ate dry food), but maybe he doesn't like it so much. I brought home a can of a different brand of similar 'diet' food and he seemed to like it better. Hopefully he will eat it and gain some weight.

We are also starting him with some pills that contain bacteria to help break down these toxins, allowing them to go out through his GI tract. This can help lower the numbers and won't hurt him. We are also trying to give him some Pepcid AC as cats with renal failure can have stomach issues.

George is doing ok with it, I just wish he could understand everything and that we need to be able to do these things for him. Please think good thoughts as we try and help George's medical situation get better. I promise to get pictures this weekend of him and our mystery cat, Lily. She is a mystery as people rarely (if ever) see her. I will try to do it tonight after soccer, but I can't promise anything.

Sorry for the long post, just wanted to get that out. Let me know about any questions or anything.

We are registered in Krasnoyarsk!

Sorry for the lack of posts but nothing much has been going on, but that is part of the process. I emailed the agency to see if we are on 'The List' yet in Krasnoyarsk, and she let me know that we are and are waiting for a referral! Yay! Keep in mind that with us requesting siblings, and not knowing who might be 'in front' of us, the wait time is not something that we can guess at. We are hoping for something quicker, but we realize that we might be waiting for some time.

On a not so happy note, we found out last week that one of our cats (George) looks to have kidney failure. Way back in April we took George and Lily to the vet to get updated shots as part of the adoption process. George was overweight so we needed to try and cut back his food to help him lose weight. He had been losing weight gradually, but we took him in for a check-up for an non-weight thing and we also realized that he seemed thinner than he should be. The gradual weight loss hid the fact that he lost lots. The vets ran some tests including blood work as George seemed ok except for the 30% or so weight loss.

Friday we get the word that it looks like kidney failure. I was worried already and then I'm told that. Fortunately, treatment and a change in diet will allow George to be fine and live a long life which is so great. I was surprised when the vet told me that we could opt for a kidney transplant or do dialysis, I didn't realize those were things done for cats. What we are doing is giving George some fluids through an IV/needle setup to get him the fluids that he needs. He has a net loss of fluids due to the kidney issue, among other things.

So, please think some good thoughts for George. I'll get some pics of both George and Lily so you can see how pretty they both are (but don't tell George I called him pretty).

We got the CIS approval today!

We got the approval, really a pre-approval, for the CIS paperwork that we sent in. It is more of a pre-approval to say that we can bring in the children, as long as other conditions are met. These conditions will surely be met, so we shouldn't have any issues with that. The next step in the immigration part is that this info is sent to Moscow for when we travel there after leaving Krasnoyarsk with the children. At that time we fill a form out to request that the children are to be made our immediate family, something along those lines.

The fingerprinting that we had actually went very smooth. The building was just off of I-64 and there weren't many people in there. We each got fingerprinted quickly and we out in about 15 minutes. The fingerprinting went much better than when we had it done at the local police station for the early paperwork. Locally, they had the familiar steps of putting the ink on your fingers and rolling them on a piece of paper. The USCIS process was computerized and your fingers were placed onto a glass scanner type of equipment. You could see the lines of the fingerprints on the monitor as the finger w as rolled around to get a good 'print'. The best part was no ink on the hands to clean off.

So, hopefully we will be registered in Krasnoyarsk soon and the countdown will really begin. Keep your fingers crossed!

Say Hello To My Lil' Friend

Ok, so Tony isn't here but I wanted to give a quick update. I had emailed the agency asking if we would be told when we were at each stage of the process. Well, one of the responses I got informed us that our dossier was on it's way to Russia!!! It will be processed/translated by the agency staff there, then sent to the agency staff in Krasnoyarsk. They will then register it with the Ministry of Education and we will get on the list, supposedly happening in 2-3 weeks. Yay!

So, now that we have a few moments of free time while waiting, I will post a few wildlife pics that I have to hold you over until we get more information.
The first pic is of my friend Tony, hence the reference to Scarface. He was sitting outside in the yard, of course far from the house. He is a black racer a little over 3' in length. Heather made fun of me because I took after my father when I got on the ground close to the snake to get this shot (not that close, though). I need to see if I can post some of his pics here, better than mine are.


Ok, now a nice friend. I have a bird feeder pole behind the house. There are several types of feeders that hang on it, along with hummingbird feeders outside the screen porch. They attract lots of birds, too many to name (but I will if you ask). Here is a shot of a pine warbler, sitting on a basic plastic feeder (not a good shot of it) that can hold various types of food. A good generic feeder (the same one stolen by the bear!).

Scheduled to get fingerprints for CIS Approval

A little late in posting this, but we recently got a letter giving us the appointment times for the fingerprinting needed for CIS approval. We weren't expecting this so soon, relatively speaking. I guess it is good to not have much in the way of timeline expectations so everything can be sooner than expected. We get our fingerprints done next week in Norfolk, although we had thought we would need to go to Alexandria for them.
Once they are done, we don't know how long the rest of the CIS process takes but hopefully not too much longer. We aren't in a rush with it as we don't need the approval letter until we are preparing for dossier #2.
Not much else other than waiting, but we will update as soon as we hear anything about the dossier progress.

Elvis has left the building!

Well, maybe not Elvis but a four pound (really) stack of papers left today for the agency. Heather sent off the dossier from work and they should arrive at the agency on Tuesday. Wow! The next step is for the staff there to make sure that all the documents are there and that we didn't screw anything up or forget something.

The dossier is then sent to Moscow so that the agency staff there can translate all of the papers. This is then sent to Krasnoyarsk to be registered with the Ministry of Education. This takes approximately 3-4 weeks. Once we are registered at the MOE they can then begin looking for a referral for us. This may take some time since we are asking for siblings, but our fingers are crossed.

Some countries allow you to be open to more than one child and you get a referral of however many children based on your choice. So, if we were open to siblings we might get a referral for a single child or siblings, whatever happened to come first. In Russia, you have to specify whether you are ready for a single child or siblings and you get that choice. We can always switch to a single child easily, but we don't want to.

We also don't know how many families that are already on the list are looking for siblings or only single children, so we don't know where we are in the line, so to speak.

The agency sends out country-specific email newsletters each month, here are some tidbits from this month's newsletter for Russia...
They have placed 45 children so far this year from Russia.
25 families are waiting for court or preparing to travel for the first trip.
18 families are waiting for referrals or considering the ones they have gotten.
38 families are preparing their dossiers or doing their homestudies.

I almost forgot about the other paperwork that Heather sent off today, the paperwork for the immigration approval. This approval is needed to bring the children into the country, allowing them to become citizens when the plane lands. We had to wait for the homestudy to be complete before applying for this approval, but it is not needed until the second dossier piece and second trip.

We now mostly wait. We can do a few things for the second dossier used for the second trip, but mostly just waiting for now. Think good thoughts while we wait, please.