Time Shaving, Prickly Business

I shaved 20 minutes off my fasted cat spay time -- I'm down to a record of ~23 minutes now. The weird thing is, I'm not conscious of doing anything materially different than before. Sure, the three spays I did today were straightforward without any strange anomalies (like the cat uterus that had one "normal" horn without any attachment to the other horn, which was fluid-filled and not patent caudally), but still they were faster than before and I don't know why. Maybe I'm less stressed, familiar with the suture material, better rested, who knows.

Porcupines are alive and well in Oregon. I used to think porcupines were an east coast phenomenon, thought they didn't live around here. I've still never seen one in the wild, but today I again saw the proof that they roam our woods. A dog came in, having fought a battle and presumably lost. It looked bad, yeah, quills sticking out of the muzzle, the skin a veritable pin cushion. But it wasn't until I gave an IV tranquilizer and saw the inside of the mouth that I knew the extent of the damage. There were numerous quills stuck in the palate, making the mouth a forest of upside down quill trees. Thankfully, there were no quills around the larynx, no evidence of any in the cranial trachea. The extraction process went quickly. There's nothing quite like the satisfaction to be gained from pulling quills, especially the really deep ones when you still get the whole thing out.