I am still working through photos of China. Don’t worry, I’ll post some… eventually.
In other news…
I’ve once again started stalking the local humane society website. If you weren’t aware I did this for 2 year prior to us getting Busy, the dog… gah! We all really wanted a dog, the trusty husband wanted to rescue one, we ended up getting one as a gift. Funny how that works out.
If you are friends with the trusty husband on Facebook you will know that our other cat died while I was in China. Please recall I had to put my baby girl to sleep on June 28th. On July 19th Julius unexpectedly died in the hallway of our house. The trusty husband was supposed to be taking him to the vet later that morning.
We suspect he may have had some sort of cancer. He had lost a ton of weight, constantly threw up, but we weren’t in time to diagnose the problem. Odds are we couldn’t have afforded the treatment anyway.
The crappy part about the whole thing is that I was gone when it happened. The trusty husband was out of town when Kitty died. One for me and one for him I guess. Since the moment is past I don’t have a sappy post to write about this particular cat. I had him longer than I’ve been married to the trusty husband. If that doesn’t say something about our relationship I’m not sure what else will. He had a stupid purr and loved bacon.
With both of my cats gone there is this giant hole in our house. I haven’t been without a cat in 15 years. Before that I had my previous cat for 16 or 17. Only 2 or 3 years out of 34 of my life have I been cat-less. When Kitty died we said we wouldn’t get another one until Julius died. We just didn’t expect him to die 3 weeks later. I think he just didn’t want to live without his partner.
The problem with us getting new cats is Busy. She’s slightly high strung. We’re afraid of her mauling two baby kitties. Now before you go and say, “well, adopt older cats,” you have to realize how much I love baby kitties. LUUURRRVVE them. The snuggly and meww and cute and GAH! I’m not sure how long I can wait before I say screw it and go pick up a kitten or 12.
Today I did one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. Pretty much second only to losing Alexander. I had to make the choice to put my sweet kitty to sleep.
By myself.
You see… Derek is out of town. He won’t be home until tomorrow night and odds were kitty wouldn’t make it that long. When I woke up this morning she wasn’t walking, force feeding her wasn’t helping and her face and head started swelling. I took her to the vet before work and they said they would look after her. Later in the afternoon I spoke with the vet and she said that at this point no amount of diagnostics and treatment were going to help her. She was done.
I was able to take time from work to drive back to the vet’s office to say goodbye. She was miserable. I held her and told her it was going to be ok and then the vet allowed me to hold her until she fell asleep. They took her away to euthanize her. I didn’t want to be there for that. I opted for a communal cremation and they dispose of the ashes in Puget Sound, one of my favorite places on Earth.
I left the vet’s office feeling like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I ran some errands for the store and it just so happened that there was a liquor store in the same strip mall as the two other stores I had to go to. I stopped in for a bottle of gin.
My boss is so awesome that he had a drink with me this afternoon.
So here’s to you Kitty, Keeska, Kiki, Titi, Fat Kitty, Jelly Belly, Smelly Belly, Isi girl, Kitty Girl, Baby Girl…Isis.
Warning: as of this writing I am on my 3rd shot of gin.
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If you come to my house you will be greeted with a few things. The first is my crazy dog. Once you get past her (if this is your first time visiting) you will be offered a drink and then shown how to get your own from then on. The third thing that will greet you are my cats. Julius will be the first to greet and then maybe, if her royal highness deems you worthy, Isis will show her presence. Your first reaction at the sight of this cat is, “damn, what are you feeding her?” Kitty (what we normally call her) is fat. We all know she is fat. She always has been. She’s a tiny little cat, but is so blubber you can’t help but squish her.
Lately, Kitty has gotten slightly more blubbery. She started to get fat rolls over her elbows. Then she started laying down in random places. Then, last week, as I was trimming her nails I noticed that her skin was red. That last one caused me to call the vet. In 14 years this cat has only been to the vet a handful of times. She never gets sick.
The doctor asked us if she was always blubbery like that. She is fat and rather squishy rather than thick and fat. We said, yes. Well come to find out, the blubber (that we thought was just fat) is fluid. There may be fat in there somewhere, but what she’s put on in the past few weeks is fluid. They kept the cats (we took both for senior wellness checks) for the day on Friday and when we picked them up the Vet filled us in on her condition. It’s pretty serious.
There is no clear diagnosis, but the office sent out for labs. That is what we knew at the end of the day yesterday. Fluid, not good, blah blah blah. This morning we woke up and Derek noticed that Kitty’s whole neck and chest were all wet. Her front legs were also wet. What is happening is that everywhere they poked her to try to get a blood sample is like popping a hole in a water balloon. She is leaking. It is pretty constant and 24 hours later it is still happening.
I called the vet’s office this morning and the vet called back. The leaking is fine. It won’t hurt her. However, what the vet told Derek is that it is possible that she might have cancer. She isn’t to that diagnosis yet, but she wants to run more tests and do an ultrasound. All to the tune of much more money than we have.
I found all of this out about 10 minutes before I was supposed to walk out the door to go to work. So I pretty much moped around the store while the boys did everything they could to cheer me up. They are good boys (boys at the store, not my boys, but my boys are good too).
I’m very worried about my baby girl. Imagine your most treasured pet. That is Kitty. I love both of my cats very much, but Kitty is my little sidekick. The thought of something being wrong with her is slowly killing me. So much so that I just sent Derek out to purchase frozen dinners.
Last weekend we were able to get out and enjoy the sunny weather. We took Busy for a walk at Chambers Bay and the sun was just starting to set (at all of 3:30 in the afternoon). By the time we got to the half way point of our 2 1/2 mile walk we stopped and I snapped a few photos of Busy. Thought I’d share my pretty girl with you.
Life with a gigantic puppy is going along rather well. She now sleeps in her kennel all night long with little troubles and no accidents. The last straw to the kennel training was the 6 nights in a row waking up to let her out at 2 a.m. and finding poop everywhere or letting her out at 2 a.m. for her to not really do anything then come back into the house, let us get almost asleep and then having her come back in our room to indicate that she had indeed pooped all over the house. Kennel training was like ripping off a bandaid. We threw her in there (with a few toys and a blanket) shut the kennel door, shut the family room door and ignored her. The first night I got up and put her out at 3 a.m., but after that she’s gone the whole night without much of a fuss. Now she still has a tendency to pee on the boy’s carpet. The dog is basically not allowed anywhere near carpet anymore.
One cat has pretty much adjusted to the dog. The other cat can’t leave well enough alone and the dog has yet to learn. If Busy comes within 10 feet of Julius (aka dumb) he growls at the dog. No amount of growling, claws out swatting or cat dying screeching will deter this dog or the cat. The cat is now taking his frustrations out on us and scratched the trusty husband this evening. He is old and we are cutting him major slack, but if he does it again I’m throwing him out in the rain. That’ll learn em.
The boy-dog relationship is also improving, but there is still the cycle of hyper and screeching that drives me batshit crazy.
And now I’ve gone from the crazy cat lady to the crazy dog lady. Hey, I was just here to show you photos. YOU’RE the one that kept reading.
I run the risk of jumping the shark and being dubbed the crazy cat lady with this one, but I couldn’t resist.
She always seems to find the way to squeeze her fat ass into any little spot. Especially if there is paper involved.
Her coy look.
Smiling with her eyes. Watch out Tyra Banks.
