I got a call from a client stuck in traffic, a constitutionally disorganized cat lover whose adeptness at forgetting appointments or running late is somewhat compensated by her fondness for my kitties; she made a special visit to my new boy in his laundry room headquarters almost as soon as he arrived.
“It’s OK,” I said, “I was sitting half asleep with a poultice on my hand. The cat bit it.”
“What?” she said. “Torvald,” I clarified. “It’s getting better, but I’m poulticing till it clears up. I’ll just leave it on a little longer.”
“You hurt your hand pole vaulting???” she asked over the crackly connection.
“Watch the traffic,” I said. “I’ll tell you all about it when you get here.”
Sixteen Tons 
I have one of those phone lines as well – – –
Is yours an iPhone too? 😉
Not me, I was talking on my landline. Hers may be.
How are you massaging with that hand?
Hasn’t been a problem, thanks for asking. It was at its worst on my day off, and experience (with Apricat) taught me that using the hand makes the swelling go down. I cranked out five and a half hours today, including a steam facial. The veins and tendons are coming into view again and the only sore bits are right where the teeth went in, if I accidentally whack the hand against a doorjamb (something I’m good at). The salted tea bag is a great poultice, or pole vault or whatever.
Interesting fact: I looked up cat bite antibiotics on Google to see if I ought to consider something other than the Tetracycline I was using. Cipro was mentioned, and I checked to see if there was any reason not to let the two drugs overlap in your system. Damn if I didn’t find a paper explaining that Cipro accelerates ribosome production in bacteria (depleting their cellular energy) while Tetracycline retards it (slowing their reproduction), but the combination puts you back where you started… Stuff like this fascinates me. I’d just as soon have a reason not to use Cipro anyway, the stuff messes up tendons. The only wrong thing about Tetracycline is that it binds to calcium and iron, so you can’t have cheese and red wine for an hour after taking it…