Thanks guys, but its not until tomorrow.
I just wanted to tell you all something wonderful though. I already got the best birthday present a girl like me (who really wants nothing!) could get. My little black cat of 11 years - Raven - had a mass on her chest that I found last week around wednesday. It was in a really bad spot for any sort of surgical options, and I had no idea how long it had been there so we decided to hold off on the vet. Well, two days later she had a mass pop up behind her ear, and another under her chin. It looked like her whole lymph system was involved, and I suspected lymphoma. Now if you can imagine the mass under her chin growing to be about the size of a mans thumb buried under her skin, that is pretty scary. We couldn't take her to the vet though, because like everyone else, half the family has been laid off for most of the summer. We're back to work now, but extra money for vets etc is still slow in coming back. So I had to wait until today (after the mortgage, car payment, etc had been paid... you know the routine) to take her in.
After they examined her thoroughly, looked at the cells from the lumps (which miraculously are going down), they decided it most likely wasn't cancer at all but rather an infection or reaction to something. We brought her back home after some subQ fluids and with a bottle of strong antibiotics and a GI track stimulator that makes them feel like they are starved. She ate a ton of hard food (!!!!) when she got home, and once I get her princess kitty house out of the wash, she can crawl back in and sleep the rest of the day while we're at work (matt got called back to his job!).
So thanks for the great wishes, but I'm already having a really good birthday. Cake tomorrow (I have demanded icecream cake... its sorta a tradition at our house) will just be the icing on it all.