Still just grieving

It will happen some day - of this I am certain, but at present I can't stop crying over Booker - and for Jake in a small way, too.  My beautiful first lads - gone far too soon.

When we rescued Jakey, it was a spur of the moment decision which I will never regret.  Never.  He deserved so much more time to enjoy life - a better life than the one he'd been dealt, and there's just no shaking that thought.  Going into it we knew he had FIV, and it was apparent that the insidious disease had taken quite a toll on Jake's body from whiskers to toes - but it didn't matter.  

He was barely making it when someone blessedly decided to save this skeletal frame of a cat from the meager existence he'd come to know.  I am grateful it happened, but that feeling of gratitude is fundamentally tied to another feeling I almost can't put my finger on.  It's a feeling of incredulity, I think.  At least, it's the closest thing I can identify that makes sense. 

Why did it take so long for another person to recognize his loveliness (despite the grime and missing fur, the sunken eyes, and the nonstop drooling; the frightening countenance he couldn't help)?  

His character was sweet and trusting, and he was loving beyond comprehension for everything he endured.  That was the way he presented himself if you stopped to really experience him, but you would have to make yourself look beyond (or behind) the outward appearance to do so.  Not many people did, but for me it was something about his eyes that drew me in and and held my heart. 

As cheated as I feel for Karl and myself, I can't help crying for Jake's sake that we couldn't have given him more - more time for love, warmth, clean surroundings, plentiful food and water, companionship...a family.  Simply put: just more time.

I fell in love with Jake in a fleeting glance.  Karl was a little reticent after having just lost Flop (and just before her, Cleo), but he became smitten once we met Jake face-to-face.  This scrawny, scarred, lack-of-fur, toothless and drooling thing charged out of his kennel and into our arms, as though we were long-lost family members - and that sealed the deal.  We were his family as much as he would be our boy.  He was the missing link in our clan, and there was no denying it was the right thing to do.

Sadly, his days were numbered; we knew it was a matter of maybe a year, but it was a year we would commit to wholeheartedly and unreservedly.  

As it turned out, the end was not to be that far off.  His poor body had endured all it could of the ravages of FIV, and despite multiple vet trips and doses of antibiotics to kill off the recurring respiratory infections, he let us know he was tired and ready to move on to a less painful place. 

Five and one-half months passed so quickly.  Too quickly.

Oh, Jake... I love and miss you, so, so much.

Booker was the young man Dottie brought to our care not long thereafter, and he was quite a change from Jake.  Pounds and pounds of difference.  We went from emaciated drooling happiness (and mostly white all over) to hissing orange pounds of fear.  Whenever I slipped into a teary mode thinking of Jake, Booker would find me and peal off a fearful face of teeth and a horrifying hiss.  Had it not been for the fact that he had once been someone's cat (this was clear because he had been neutered and front declawed), I would have feared Booker's behavior more.  For me, he presented as a feral cat, but with Dottie he was a mushy lad.  Even with Karl he was calm and accepting of some attention, so I hoped it would be just a matter of time.

Over time, Booker and I developed a love and companionship, and he became my shadow.  If I left a room, he followed immediately.  We talked and shared chairs, and he would ask to be held from time to time!  He loved my stitching, and anticipated those hours in the day when I would sit and stitch, and he would watch excitedly as the needle would rise and fall, dragging the tempting string through the material.  Oh, how he trembled at the thought of catching the threads and silk pieces, and every once in a great while would leave his comfy corner of the bed to climb onto a small perch on the chair just to be closer to the action!  His silly joy with being given a go at my threads brings a smile to my aching heart. 

Book wasn't to be here as long as we anticipated.  A small lump was detected on his lower jaw, which grew quickly through the late summer.  He was taken in for dental work in August and the x-rays showed the mass was actually an out of control, inoperable cancer.  The doctor was very kind and asked how we wanted to proceed. 

We spoke of letting him return home with doses of heavy medication to keep him comfortable for a number of weeks, but that would only give us time to say goodbye - it would not be the decent thing to do to Booker.  The other choice was to have them end the procedure and put him down while he was still groggy.  Neither option was ideal, and to choose between the only two presented was heartbreaking. 

Well, from here you know the rest of the story.  I suppose this is why/how I lost my stitching mojo, and why I am not feeling capable of producing any handwork at present.  Perhaps soon the fog will lift, but until that happens I am surviving only on getting up each day and just going back and forth to work, looking for opportunities for Karl to find employment, and performing the least of the mundane daily routine items.  Well, mundane, save for one additional little occupant in the house.

We have a new friend for Odin, who was most sorely missing Booker.  Book's departure left Odin lost and confused; spending hours every day crying out for his big buddy, endlessly searching the house from one end to the other.  Karl couldn't think on replacing Book, and would not entertain looking at faces online to find another needy prospect to fill out our family, so one weekend I took matters into my own hands, and that is how Simon came to be.  He is helping to replace some of the grief with his silly antics, but everything about this is going to take time.  More on our new family member another time.

See you on the other side.

Endings and beginnings - and all of the stuff that happens in between

Simply Simon

It's been two weeks of Simon already - two weeks today.  Odin adores him, and is having infinite fun in the romping and chasing category, although deep in the recesses of his brain I am certain there are remnant thoughts of Booker;  traces of affection and respect, and an unidentifiable longing for his big brother...gone but never forgotten.

It took two months for Simon to come into our lives.  No, there wasn't a lot of searching that happened, but Karl couldn't let himself open up completely to making a choice and bringing home a companion for Odin.  I understood that, and I empathized, but I also saw a need to move forward during our collective period of grief.

Besides all of that, Odin was extremely miserable - lonely and alone, and mourning the loss of his buddy.  He still jumped at the odd noise around the house, and called incessantly for our large orange sweetie, and truth be told it was getting  harder to deal with on a daily basis.

I was determined to fill the void left by Booker's departure, but also felt pangs of guilt in ways I am sure many pet owners will understand.  What felt like disloyalty to Book was understandable, but not insurmountable.  Karl and I could have gone on a while without inviting a new cat into our lives, but Odin was inconsolable.  That became the impetus on my part - it made Karl miserable in other ways, but it gave me a reason to keep my heart open to the perfect opportunity.

My mind was set on an older female (for reasons I won't bore you with here and now), but Simon was the one who presented himself a couple of Saturdays ago, and the rest is history.  As you can see from the photo, he is a scrawny kitten of approximately 18 weeks of age - so that makes him about 4 months old.  He's tiny, and as it turned out (despite vet papers provided by the rescue agency), he had fleas; we found this out the hard way.  Both boys are wearing flea collars now (yes, Odin ended up with them, too).  But this wasn't the worst of it, either.

Last Saturday became a very expensive run to the vet clinic which the rescue bunch had taken Simon's litter to.  Ended up with two vaccinations and an oral treatment, plus the rather expensive flea collars.  And I won't even make you guess that one of the treatments was for tapeworm.  Yup, tapeworm!  So, here we are, $155 poorer, but Simon is that much better for it.  Hopefully his robust appetite will help to put some meat on his little bones over the next few months.  Right now he's curious, playful, loving, and excellent company for Odin.

The splendid Booker - rest in peace

Farewell, Booker...you are much loved and will be forever missed.

It's been a wild week, in more ways than one

It was as though I could feel the biological clock ticking for Click - "Click" being the name we gave our drowsy, confused, nocturnal upstairs-turned-downstairs drop-in house guest. Not knowing whether it was male or female, "Click" seemed the safest moniker to bestow, and, as there were no objections, "Click" it was... er, um... IS.
Oh, yeah, and it's a girl, everybody!
As I was droning:
...every hour labored by, and I grew concerned over how much time was passing, hurting Click's chances for returning successfully to her torpor. Let's face it, a bucket in a cold laundry closet versus wedging oneself between layers of insulation and a warm ceiling in an attic are hardly matching states of temperatures and conditions. Plus, she's now no longer able to self-regulate her own physical condition successfully, so that stress was taking a toll on her fat reserves and chances of survival.
You see, you don't feed or water a bat - or any animal - in that somewhat awakened state of hibernation, you let them be. But this was an exception to the rule of wildlife happenstance. Click had managed to self-regulate herself in torpor from her cozy attic digs into our living space, complete with much warmer temperatures - and cats! Her odds had changed drastically for the worse in the twitch of a wing. I knew it was critical to keep her safe, and to also keep her cool - but how much cooler was cool enough?

Now you understand why that biological clock wasn't just ticking away - it was pounding like the inner workings of Big Ben. The window of opportunity for her making it through the week, let alone the winter, were slipping away.
This all began Tuesday, late in the day, as best we can narrow down the timeline. 'The twins' (Odin and Booker, for those of you not as familiar with our furry family) had probably followed the scratching noises of Click's movements above their heads most of the day, until she squoze herself through a recessed light fixture into our area.
Karl noticed Booker was fixated on something in the window (probably) much later in the day, and eventually Karl let me know that "something odd [was] hanging on the curtains - and it's clicking at me!"
Was it a moth or some other bug? I asked him. No, no. Perhaps a frog? No, and that's when he mentioned the noise; I told him it sounds like he was describing a bat. He said it didn't look like a bat, so I told him to look behind the drape panel (I still could not visualize how it was hanging from the drapes through our phone call) - and then he shrieked like a man. There was a lot of noise from his end of the phone, some his, some furniture he was crashing into, and some was the terror of the twins as they reacted to Karl's surprise.
The poor little thing was moving to conceal itself from approaching danger - things that would eat it. Confusion and noise (lots of both), and I was missing out; I can only imagine what it all looked like. [hilarity ensued]
I won't bore you with the ins and outs of the capture procedure - suffice to say you would have thought it an episode of I Love Lucy and not some random house on a quiet neighborhood street, with a loose bat evading two grown humans and two vigilant cats.
We made as many calls to numbers we could quickly locate that evening, just in hopes of getting some fast explanations on how to proceed, or where to take it for a safe return to the wild once warmer weather arrived - MONTHS from now. There's a Bat Conservancy organization in MI, for crying out loud - I know because I had planned to attend a huge presentation only the year before. How come I wasn't getting any of this info from anyone? Better still, why weren't any of the three advertised 24-hour 'call us any time' numbers taking calls at 8:45PM?
Internet wisdom suggested securing it without hurting it, or putting pets or humans at risk, and keeping the critter cool (but in a house?). We couldn't manage the 35*-40* (and we were not going to place the bat-in-a-bucket in the 'frig), but we could get a mid-fifty range to help a little towards the metabolic requirement. So, off to the lower level laundry closet it went.
Wednesday passed with a lot of web searching and phone calls. Hand-wringing was also a key part of the goings-on, but there wasn't much more we could do for the diminutive cutie except pray and continue to beat the bushes. With no access to my fb account while at work, suggestions stacked up and anything I could find online dried up with each phone call. I grew more concerned that there was no good plan coming to fruition in favor of our at-risk intruder. All the answers I received were either, "no, wrong number," "kill it, it has rabies," or "you've reached a non-working number." Infinitely frustrating.
One suggestion was to throw it outdoors, with the theory being it would quickly find a warm place - but I just couldn't bring myself to that end. Oh, maybe, had it been over forty degrees and no nighttime temps in the twenties, perhaps I would have had a less guilty attitude (and fewer thoughts of committing murder) and done that. But it wasn't and they weren't....so another night in the can ensued - along with the guilt and helpless feeling of this little bats' fate balancing precariously in my hands.
Knowing full well it was most likely now not in full torpor, and that it now most likely required water - if not food - I reasoned I would go to the local pet shop for some insect take-out on Thursday...no matter what.
Lest you think/ask why I didn't simply return the sweetie back to the attic, let me explain my thought process. If Click did manage to return to torpor and then back to more of a successful hibernation state, I had my doubts that due to the past 2 days of calorie-burning full heart rate and breathing (and warm temps), she didn't physically have what would have been necessary to sustain her through the rest of winter any longer. At least, that was how I felt.
I am a worrier - there, I said it.
If I did return her to the attic, would she succumb to the combination of what had transpired; would we find her remains later? Would she be barely alright through all of winter only to be too weak to make it out in the spring and die then? I just couldn't take that chance with her life. It wasn't my life to toy with, but it *was* my responsibility to help her.
__Fast forward to Thursday, because I fell asleep reading Wed night.__
On the drive to work, I dialed the one number I saw any quick hope in, and left a voice message. The person I called returned my message with a fantastic response, and I cheered several times as I parked the car and ran inside.
Buoyed for the rest of the day, I had a tough time making eight hours not seem like eighty, and I called Karl periodically to have him spot-check Click's condition. Now that I knew there was a huge positive chance, I had Karl put a container of water in the bucket. Click was going to be alright - I hoped.
Managing to peel myself away from work one hour later than I wanted to, I flew home to gather up Karl and Click to make the nearly one hour trip to the land of bat salvation. And, yes, I am going to continue being somewhat cryptic throughout this explanation, for reasons which will become obvious (to the smarter ones out there). Just kidding, because all my friends are pretty doggone brilliant.
There are only two trained/qualified/licensed/approved caretakers of wildlife creatures, such as Click, in the state of chaos (a.k.a. MI), and fortunately this person resides not too horribly far from me. Let that sink in - one of only two! There are way more needful creatures than can be cared for by two people. There's something wrong with these odds, people.
Lemme see if I can correctly describe the rehabbing dilemma in the state of Michigan. If I get it wrong, in part or in whole, a knowledgeable person can feel free to correct me. While bats are a protected species because of population decline - for many MAN-MADE reasons, it is illegal to care for them when an issue has been identified and care is required. The state will require training and licensing and reviews and fees, and all of that hoo-ha and folderol and more, but makes it illegal to actually perform the deed. Bureaucracy and hypocrites are kissing cousins!
Anyway, the long and the short of it is (I know, it's far too late for "the short of it") that our new friend - AND HERO - has taken Click into her care (no, I will not say 'under her wing'), adding to a fantastic community of rescued bats, who are over-wintering in a fabulous bat resort. I am now a small part of the bat underground, and will proudly help their cause in any way I can. Our rescuer gave Click a complete physical and sexed her, telling us she is a MI Large Brown Bat, I would have figure a small variety, but nope...Large Brown Bats are small, and Small Brown Bats are smaller, yet.. LOL
Click ate 15 mealy worms, which is good! She is a yearling, and was on the emaciated side of the scale, but will rebound nicely, and will be returned to the world in the spring once the weather mellows enough for the bugs to become plentiful and life-sustaining for beautiful little creatures like Click.
God bless the rehabbers of the world - they are few and far between, but they make such a huge difference in their own ways; their compassion has no bounds for those with no voice. I am blessed to know six, and number them among my friends. I am proud to be a batty subversive!

Catnapping our way to the end of the year

As I stretch out and relax a little, background noise droning quietly and the sound of the twins softly breathing around me, I can't help but finally enjoy the day.  The wind pummeling the windows sounds unforgiving, so I give thanks for this little house and the heat and the lights; not to mention the food in the kitchen, and the clothes, soft bed, running water, washer and dryer...

Thank you, God, for the blessings you've provided, and for the future you have in store for me.  Thank You also for the furry blessings in our lives.

The twins' rhythmic breathing has given way to little grunts and snoring - always a smile-maker.  Their catnaps have been contagious over the past several days, and since I have been home on vacation days (LOVING not being 'you know where'), I have been 'purr-suaded' on more than one occasion to let the drowsiness carry me away.  This decadent lifestyle will be missed when the holidays are over and my vacation time runs out.

Until then, please pardon me while put my head down & close my eyes for just a moment. > ^ _ _ ^ <

Not a day late, just the day after

Yup, yesterday was Christmas, and I managed to keep from uttering 'the phrase" to all but two people, - so, I feel as though I've achieved almost complete hermit status.

All of my cards made it out of my hands and to their recipients (at least I hope they made it to their destinations), but Karl dragged his feet and missed getting one of his (I say three, he says one) out the door and on the way.  Not a bad average

Karl and I each took a turn speaking with mom, but I truly wish she were here - or, at the very least, much closer. it would make visiting easier.  I am aware she doesn't want to leave her beloved northern tundra, her moose and deer, and that icy lake, but I think it's time to get her south of the bridge.  Much as she dislikes living in the land of the trolls, she should be moving into closer proximity to the bulk of her sibs and kinder - sooner rather than later.

We had dinner at the kids' new home in Holly on Christmas eve; it was fairly low-key, and the meal was delicious. 

Just in case you are behind the eight ball, Brian and Angels bought a condo - not too far from their old apartment - and it's a world of difference in size and sounds and smells.  Needless to say, the honeymooners are happy in their new digs, and the pets are settled in, too.  Bud will need to look a little harder to find work with a decent income in that direction, just to keep from having to drive great distances in his old car, but that was the decision they made.

No complaint here, but an observation: it's been a 'warm' season so far - between Thanksgiving and Christmas - and the weather peeps are calling for more of the same... and warmer!  With the bulk of winter ahead of us, I wouldn't mind a bit of this sort of thing lasting the next month or two.  Yes, I do prefer cooler temps to warmer ones, but you take what you can get, right?

The twins are doing well: Booker is far more playful again, so hopefully I can get Karl to play along when I am at work and keep Book moving more to rid him of some chunky monkey pounds.  Even a Maine Coon can be too large.  And Odin is doing better intestinal-ly speaking.  He remains rambunctious and Odin-rific, keeping Booker jumping with his spastic antics; and the FiV is well off in the background for the time being.

OK, so I've covered all of the bases for the time being.  I was trying to be informative and still keep from being too verbose; practice makes perfect, or so they say.  For now, I am going to tidy up a bit, then plunk myself in a chair and sort through some old papers and balance the bank account against the statement!  In the background I will binge on The Great British Baking Show, starting at the first episode.  Yes, I've seen them all before, but it's enjoyable (tasty) viewing, and well worth a second screening.  From there, goodness knows what I'll do, but it will be in the house and not out and about with throngs of people or crazy 'me first' drivers.

Oh, there is one item of note which I didn't go into, but it will keep for the time being.

Blessings to one and all, and safe travels to those on the roads or in the air ~