ghosts
(for those of you reading via RSS or facebook: please note: this item from February is being reposted as it was accidentally deleted during a server backup).
the other day the power went out at home. it was afternoon and i had no lights on, no stereo, i was just sitting on the couch reading email on my laptop, so there was nothing obvious to go off. but still, suddenly there was a loss of energy in the air, a lack of vibration, a sudden silence deeper than the silence that was already there.
it’s been a week now since Piggles has been gone and i still automatically look for her, sitting by the window or curled up on her stool or running for food when we fill the bowls. cats don’t generally make a lot of noise, so it’s rather surprising how much more silence there is now to get used to.
pigglespants
(for those of you reading via RSS or facebook: please note: this item from February is being reposted as it was accidentally deleted during a server backup).
Piggles was spunky and curious and liked to play with toys. but she was also a difficult cat from the day we brought her home from the humane society. she didn’t show affection in normal ways. she had issues with litterboxes. she ate things she wasn’t supposed to. she would make a lot of noise in the middle of the night and then use her claws to wake you up early in the morning wanting food. she fought with other cats, including her adopted sister. and i admit that sometimes i was so frustrated i cursed her. still, i loved her and i did not treat her any differently than the other cat, but as with children, i think they know when you have a favorite.
and so a huge amount of guilt washed over me when, after several days of deteriorating health that eventually led to her becoming weak and lethargic and dehydrated from not eating or drinking anything at all, we took her to the vet at 8:00am this morning and after many tests learned this evening that Piggles hadn’t just eaten something funny (last time it was yarn). she was very, very sick. the words you never want to hear: cancer. the ultrasound revealed that despite her relatively young age, our cat had what looked like both an aggressive lymphoma as well as feline pancreatitis. the prognosis for treatment was not good at all and the vet said that even if we did everything we could she would probably still end up being sick and in pain and uncomfortable for a long time.
i could barely face her when the time came to say good-bye. it wasn’t just that she was so, so sick and i was putting her to sleep, like the last time when we put our beloved cat Sahar to sleep. that is hard, but logical. it was the guilt. i will always feel guilty about this. about whether somehow, those curses under my breath had some role in her demise. or the other side of the same coin, that maybe it isn’t just superstition that one of the ways the universe works is that love protects; that maybe loving her more would have kept her from getting sick. please don’t try to convince me otherwise. i will carry guilt for the rest of my life that i should have loved her more. i will. always.
there’s also a huge amount of dissonance as a 10+ year vegetarian who believes that all animals have a right to healthy, happy lives to decide to end a life, even when you know it’s the most humane thing to do. the only comfort i have right now is that the vet agreed completely that it was a correct response, and obviously she was the one who had to actually do the deed. so i only have what was her objective, medical opinion to comfort me in not feeling like i acted selfishly, rashly.
i wanted to scream when the injections where made but instead we whispered our love to her and petted her and held her close until her body relaxed and her heart stopped beating. 6:34 pm.
i did not expect when we walked into the vet this morning that i would never walk out with her again, and to walk out of that room and leave her body there was almost impossible.
embedded in this is the nightmare that everyone fears: you think you have the flu, or maybe an infection. you go to the doctor thinking you’ll walk out with some pills and a “drink lots of fluids and get lots of rest” Rx. and instead the doctor comes back and looks at you gravely and tells you that you are not going to live. and in fact, you are probably never going to leave this hospital again alive and it’s best if we just get it over with now. the kitty, i do not think, realized this. we lived this nightmare for her, in fast forward speed, less than 10 hours. we walked out in a hysterical daze. did that really just happen? did we really just have to do that? is she really just gone? just like that? it was a dream. a nightmare. and on top of everything else that i something that is going to take me a long while to get over.
thanks to everyone for your well wishes and support.
love the ones you’re with.
Filed in autobiographical | Tagged with cats | Comment (0)sleeping beauty
i’ve been reading and linking to a lot so there’s a lot going on over here @GoogleReader and here@twitter, but no so much here. because, well, not to go on again about exhaustion, but oh man am i so tired, and it takes energy to write. so many nights without good sleep. lying in bed. twisting. turning. thinking.
first, last week my (now) chronic shoulder/neck pain spiked again, to the point that on last friday morning i was shriveled and exhausted and crying on the couch and jay made me to to the ER. what for? they won’t tell me anything new. DRUGS, that’s what for. but it turns out, the drugs, they don’t work miracles, and in fact, somehow, vicodin keeps me AWAKE. WHO KNEW. as it has been for the past 6 months, the pain comes in waves, and now today, is subsiding back down to a point where it’s only slightly aggravating. i’m just more mentally frustrated than anything else.
then, just as i was feeling better, the boy half went and crashed on his mount bike something fierce, and so now HE’s the one taking all the drugs and rolling around in bed all uncomfortable from pain, and i have not had a good night’s sleep in over a week. and yet, somehow, even if i crawl in bed at 9:00pm, i still can’t go to sleep. sometimes for hours and hours. insomnia sucks.
so while i intended to write something this week about, i don’t know, all the other crap going on in the world, right now all i want to do is go home and crawl in bed with my cat. which, by the way, i recently learned on This American Life, people from other cultures find weird, that americans sleep with their cats. huh.
Filed in me myself and i | Tagged with boring, cats, NPR, pain management | Comment (0)photos of the kids aka The Uggles
top: snuggles (pronounced “snOO-gulls”)
bottom: piggles (pronounced “pEE-gulls”)
(adopted december 2005)
Filed in photos | Tagged with cats | Comment (1)blockage
while we were at burning man, one of our cats started throwing up most of her food. we figured it was either a) stress of having a strange human in the house (housesitter) or b) hairball. she was still acting normal and had an appetite and despite throwing up a lot, still passing food through her system. on thursday, though, we noted she had developed some kind of rash or infection around her backside that was pretty nasty, so we took her in to the vet. the vet determined she probably had some kind of obstruction, and gave her some fiber and a laxative, which promptly made her start gagging and dry heaving in a most horrendous way. because of her response, we left her at the vet overnight, and he took some x-rays, which revealed a larger solid obstruction than we thought in her upper intestine – could be an abnormally large hairball, or could be that she ate something she shouldn’t have, which is possible since lately she’s taken to licking envelopes and also has a history of eating (and passing) yarn.
we are giving her an antibiotic (for the infection on her hind quarters, which may or may not be related to the bowel obstruction), a laxative, and fiber pills, hoping to bulk up her system and move the mass through. if she doesn’t pass it soon, it will have to be surgically removed some time next week, and we won’t be able to go to yosemite for my birthday as planned. she isn’t acting odd and she doesn’t seem to be suffering or experiencing much discomfort, which is good, but it’s still unnerving and making me sort of anxious, and taking my cat in for surgery isn’t exactly how i planned to spend my birthday weekend either. :/
Filed in autobiographical | Tagged with cats | Comment (1)kitties!
look who’s coming home with us on saturday!
“Rain”, a beautiful grey tabby with a lot of spunk
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and another absolutely adorable ball of fur temporarily named “Lynette”, a long-haired calico – mostly grey and orange, with gorgeous green eyes.
going through the cat selection process was one of the hardest things i’ve ever done in my life – they ALL deserve warm loving homes and they were all so incredibly adorable, mewing from their cages, their paws sticking out to pat you as you walk by, big eyes staring at you hopefully. we went to three shelters and spent more than 6 hours playing with cats before we finally narrowed it down to two to bring home with us. they need to have their little surgeries on friday, and saturday morning they are ours!
we’re going to have a cat warming party sometime later this month, or perhaps in january.
Filed in things you can do | Tagged with cats | Comments (8)rest in peace
when i was young we lived on a small little farm (chickens goats geese pigs), and when animals got sick or injured, one of two things happened. some, like the cats, would just disappear when they felt like dying, slinking off to the woods to die alone, often before you even realized they were sick. for others, my poor dad would have to work up the heart to shoot the animals quickly and painlessly if they were suffering, as was the case for a couple of deer hit by our cars and at least one kitten that i can remember. living in the city with a housecat it’s all very different, and there was no easy way out.
i was sure Sahar would die in her sleep last night. she was barely able to walk and so weak even meowing was difficult, but she still lightly purred when petted and caressed and seemed to just be content with lying still. we snuggled her into some sheets in one of her favorite sleeping places, underneath a table where it was dark and cool, and i assumed that when i woke this morning she would be still. instead, we woke to find her in her litter box in the kitchen. it hurt me so bad to think that she had crawled her way across the floor and somehow found the strength to pull herself up and into the enclosed box. i don’t know if she was still in there because she couldn’t get out, or if for some reason that was where she wanted to be. her little nose was covered in litter gravel and she barely squeaked out a sound when we approached her. a cat almost 20 years of age and she was still hanging on to her life, stubborn and seemingly unwilling to fade away.
for the past few days, one of the things that has been a very difficult part of this process for me is that i kept thinking of my grandmother and how much she didn’t want to be in the hospital and how she cried when they would try to put tubes or needles in her and she begged to be left alone. this was part of the reason we kept kitty at home, because it was so terrifying for her to leave the house, and i didn’t want her last moments to be spent in fright. as long as she didn’t seem uncomfortable i was willing to let her be.
this morning it was apparent that she was no longer just weak and feeble; she was suffering, and my heart wrenched to think that she might have been better off if we had taken her to the vet yesterday, or the day before, or the day before, or that we had held on to her for our own sakes instead of doing what was best for her. at 9:00 this morning we wrapped her in a pink towel and made the walk to the vet, both of us in tears. me, not so much because i was going to miss her, but because i so wished i could have known better what was best to do up to that point and i was in agony. jay i think was having a very hard time accepting that she was going, and that we would be leaving her frail body behind.
they quickly put us into a treatment room, and the doctor was very straightforward but compassionate. one shot of anesthetic to numb her pain and put her to sleep; one to stop her heart. after the first shot she slowly sank into a limp pile, and we sat for several minutes caressing her and preparing ourselves for the second shot. we had the option of leaving before the final euthanasia, but neither of us could leave the room while her little heart was still beating. it would have felt like we abandoned her, and we wanted to be by her side until she was fully gone, even though she was entirely unaware that we were there.
the second shot was to be administered into a vein, and he shaved the fur off her tiny front right leg. the veins weren’t strong enough, however, and he instead had to inject into what was left of her abdomen fat, leaving her front paw bleeding where the needle had been. seconds after the injection, her rib cage stopped moving and she lay quiet. we stayed for a few minutes, wrapped up her bleeding paw, told her we loved her, covered her thin frame and face with the towel, and walked out, sobbing.
bless her little soul. she lived a long and beautiful life, and i will miss her very much.
