Leo transitions

Monday: Woke around 8. Email. Tried to get back to sleep, but did not find it, no thanks to Gus, who wouldn't settle down, and repeatedly poked me in the face. Lazing. Up around 10:30. Gave Leo some food, but he really wasn't doing well. Tsunma-la called and said Geshela could see Leo around 2 PM. Shower. Some breakfast. Down basement. Sitting, and drums. The vet called and said that Leo's cultures came back negative. Bad news in this case, since the alternative diagnoses was cancer. Played some guitar. At 1:30, took Leo over to KKC, driving with him wrapped in a blanket in my lap "Britney Spears Style." Tsunma-la, Ngawang-la, Helen-la and Geshe-la were all very kind to him and me. Geshe Tsulga gave me instructions about how to handle his body after death, and forbade me from having him put down. "As long as no shot, no problem" he said. Back home. The clinic was freakishly not able to make outgoing calls, and so, they couldn't get the prescription faxed to Porter Sq. I found this out on my way to Porter Sq to pick it up. Back home, called the clinic. Called Apple and tried to get my laptop deal straightened out. Finally realized I wasn't going to be able to pick up the meds today. Headed to work, stopping for an egg sandwich, which I ate while driving.

B wasn't in today. It was quiet in the office. I continued refining my vari-speed implementation. Completely scrapped the old damping logic, and used a much simpler scheme. Called Apple again, and finally got put through to someone that could help me. The situation turned out to be much more reasonable than it had seemed before, but the previous guy I had talked to hadn't known where to look for the tech's notes on the matter, and had just gone into defensive mode. My hard drive probably had been damaged in shipping, as it wouldn't mount when it arrived at the repair facility. The mistake the tech made when replacing the drive was that he didn't check its size. Since the drive was installed after my purchase, this was pretty understandable.

Back home, and Leo was much worse. He was trying to get to the litter-box, and walked headlong into the wall. MB and I decided to make the downstairs bathroom his sick room. We moved the little box out of it, and I put a pillow the the heating pad down for him. He crawled over to me and nuzzled my leg, stayed there for a couple minutes, then crawled back to the pillow. MB pet him for a long time. His breathing was growing shallow. She went to bed, and I went to write my diary. Around 2 AM I had a feeling that he had passed, but I didn't want to disturb him if I was wrong. Down basement and practice, meditating on my long friendship with this creature. Then to bed.