$34.00 [Pillow Ten Ways]

Kyler and I like to watch cooking shows together.  They combine his love of the culinary arts and my love of reality television.  On these shows, the chefs will often serve something like "Pork Three Ways" or "Duck Two Ways" -- I'm thinking right now specifically of Tre Wilcox from Top Chef, who seemingly in every challenge would serve the protein two or three ways.  And it always made me laugh.

So in honor of Mr. Wilcox and every chef who cannot commit to one preparation of a protein, on this installation of (over)budget pet, I bring you Pintuck Pillow* Ten Ways.

The pillow:

The featured dishes:

Glazed Icarus with a Side of Steamed Pintuck Pillow

$150.00 [Coagulation Profiles]

Lola the cat and Betelgeuse the dog went to the vet last week 48 hours after their last doses of Vitamin K and got the ALL CLEAR from the vet: There are no lasting negative health effects from their rat poison ingestion event last August. In fact, after a month of twice-daily Vitamin K supplements, Betelgeuse's blood is clotting even better than before. Net benefit to Betel's health, net loss to my wallet.

The veterinarian measured each creature's prothrombin time (at $75.00 a pop), which is a measure of the extrinsic pathway of coagulation. The prothrombin time is used to determine the clotting tendency of blood. As we discussed previously (in the post criticized for containing too many big words), Vitamin K plays a crucial role in blood clotting.

A normal range of prothrombin times for a cat is 13-22 seconds. Lola's prothrombin time was 18 seconds. Good job, Lola.

A normal range of prothrombin times for a dog is 11-14 seconds. Betel's prothrombin time was 10 seconds. Super clotting dog! Captain Vitamin K!

So thankfully life is back to normal with the clan. The animals are happy for treats to be treats again, rather than the pill-smuggling devices they had become over the last month, and the humans are happy everyone is okay.