Oh my goodness, where DOES the time go? I have been too busy (not as a badge of honor, more of a running around screaming sort of thing) but the semester is almost over! I should probably sit down and reevaluate my life choices but I simply don’t have the time.

I did have the time to get a new cat though, on March 31. We named her Muriel and she is about 1 year old. She’s a sweetie, and she is such a stereotypical cat: she gets into everything, she climbs on stuff, she knocks some stuff down, she sits in boxes, all that jazz. She is soft and smells wonderful and I’m happy to welcome her to my home. It turns out that like 50 percent of my current students are allergic, so maybe this cat will scare everybody away and then I’ll be less busy She does tend to get overly excited by the violin so I keep her in the other part of the house while teaching.

I took her to the vet the other day, the same vet I’d taken the Fatness to. It is amazing that even though over two years have passed, when I walked in that door I felt so much sadness, because the last time we were there was putting her down. 

When I was a child, I remember deciding that older people didn’t get sad when people they knew and loved died, because if they did, and all those people died, why, they would be sad all the time, and how could anybody live like that? And as I’ve gotten older, I realize that I was both right and wrong as a child, that you aren’t sad all the time, but you do just live with your loss. And while this is a post about a dear cat, and my new cat, and how one is replacing but not exactly replacing the other, it applies to human loss as well, in many ways.  Sadness and grief are part of life, along with joy and happiness.

So I shed a few tears in the waiting room, and then I got her checked out by the same vet, and he said she looked really healthy, and we talked about what she needed in a future appointment, and then he said “have fun with her!” which at first I thought was odd, but then realized, oh right, why even have a cat otherwise?

So my feelings are mixed, but Muriel is her own self, and she is likely to become a natural part of life here. At first, it seemed so weird, you can just go get a cat and take it home and keep it, without signing papers or applying for licenses or anything?

Mackenzie seems to like her well enough—they are getting more used to each other, but there hasn’t been any fighting or growling or hissing, so that’s been really good. Muriel had lived with a dog already so we’d hoped that would be okay.

She’s getting used to being here. And no, that’s not peanut butter on her face. That’s just her face!

We now have a cat again, and it’s been really fun. I’m glad to be back into the cat world.

I’m back. I was in Phoenix and went to the Grand Canyon and Sedona and I’ll tell you all about it soon.

Before that though. Sad yet not unexpected news. When I last posted I was telling you all how our cat, Chloe, the one with Cushing’s Disease, had been having a really hard time. She did get a little better, and started eating again, lots and lots, and we felt better leaving her for the week.

But right after we returned, right after we landed, we found out that she’d somehow gotten a new wound. Her skin had torn on her side (this is a very rare side effect of her disease) and Louie’s brother Julian, who was watching her while we were gone, had taken her in to the vet at Webster Groves Animal Hospital, which is a 24 hour place. We headed there as soon as we could. The vet had never seen a condition like hers before, but didn’t think that she could repair the wound. They had made her comfortable, given her some painkillers for her wound and cleaned her up as best as they could, and Louie made the inevitable, but very wise decision, to have  her put down. We spent some time sitting in a room with her, petting her, and we took off her cone, after we realized there wasn’t anything it was protecting her against anymore.

The people at the Animal Hospital were really nice. We had some paperwork to fill out, but after awhile we decided it was time. The vet gave her a few shots, and then she was gone. We spent more time there with her, and then we had to leave her.

I only knew Chloe for a few years, just as long as I’ve known Louie. He’d had her for many years longer, so this was all harder on him.

She was a sweet kitty, even though she liked to put her claws out a bit more than I liked when cuddling. She went through a lot after getting diabetes, and she peed on a lot of things and ruined some furniture, but she was still very sweet.

The last few months were extremely difficult for us, at times, but worthwhile to give her a little more life. I think that overall, she was still enjoying hanging out and eating, and even went outside again a few weeks ago, and seemed to enjoy that. I think we did what we could for her, even when it was hard, and expensive, and time-consuming, and I hope that it was all for the best. She was tough, she was a fighter, and she mostly seemed to keep a really good attitude.

I figured you’d seen enough photos of her recently, so those are all from before she got sick.

We don’t know when she was born, or even exactly how old she was (estimation 13-14 years) but we know that she died on May 24, 2016, and she was surrounded by people who loved her and who did their best to make her life as nice as possible. She will be missed.

I am no longer a cat owner. I have lived with a cat since Christmas of 2001, and I don’t anymore. It will take some time.

There’s never a good time for your cat to become sick (er) but certainly not a few days before you are going on a trip for a week.

Maybe I’ve been noticing the past few days that Chloe (follow that link for some background if you don’t remember) has been deteriorating, but yesterday morning she barely ate, and then by last night she was simply hanging out in her litter box. (This is the one with a puppy pad in it, so arguably she thinks it a bed she gets to pee in.) She was still responsive, but very stumbly and wobbly, and she did eat some treats from Louie’s hand. We were worried that we’d been giving her too much insulin and maybe she hadn’t eaten enough…I don’t know. Since she’s already old and sick even on her best days, we went to bed hoping that maybe things would be better in the morning, but we decided we’d call the vet first thing.

She was perhaps a little better. She seemed to still be in her litter box and had maybe been there much of the night, but she managed to climb up to her food perch. I fed her some wet canned food and she ate that with apparent hunger. Then she returned to her box, where she’s mostly been all morning. She looks at me when I stop by and enjoys being petted on her head.

Louie’s brother is going to be taking care of her next week while we’re gone. We just don’t want him to be stuck with a hard decision or be put in a really tough spot, but yet…you can’t put your cat down before her time just because you’re going on vacation. I was supposed to go to a luncheon/concert this morning for the music association, but I needed to help with this, and by the time we got things settled it was too late. I feel like I’ve missed a lot of things for the animals, but maybe that’s okay. And I feel better knowing that I’m here for the morning, and then I’m teaching, and we are still waiting on a call back from the vet in regards to her insulin dosage. What I know is that she is still responsive, and she’s not my cat, she’s Louie’s. Ultimately he has to do the decision making, and this is a really hard thing.

The internet gives hope and information, and tells me that some people would have put her down long ago, and other people would make her comfortable, and other people would argue that we are only making ourselves comfortable. The best I can tell is that there is no wrong answer right now, but there’s also no right answer. We’ll see what the vet says (and he’ll see her tomorrow—they could have done a drop off appointment today but we didn’t want her to wait around in a strange place) and maybe then we’ll have a better idea if this is something that can be treated. Or not. We don’t want to run a bunch of tests. We’ve already done that. We don’t want to add a regimen of medicines, or make her life more complicated. We just want to make her comfortable. And it is just terrible timing, since we are flying out in about 50 hours…but when it is a good time for your cat to be sick?

A few weeks ago I would have been a little annoyed at her for sitting too close to me on the couch while I typed this. Heck, even a few days ago! This picture is from May 2…

I’m trying not to be too sad. I’ve been sad, off and on, for months. It’s hard to see her suffering. And I worry about what the end will bring. I’d worried it would be her skin…but that’s been okay, and no new issues. Maybe this is it, or maybe it’s just that her diabetes can be handled a little better. I guess time will tell.

So yesterday I woke up to several inches of snow on the ground. They had predicted this (“they”) but I didn’t actually think it would happen. I didn’t get a snow day though, because by mid-afternoon most of it was cleared enough that most students were able to make it to lessons.

I did however, have to take Chloe in to the vet for her eye. This added some stress because our regular vet wasn’t at his usual office but was at another one further away, which I was at first apprehensive about driving to. I was also worried about dropping her off rather than having an appointment, so that I can advocate for her and make sure everybody who comes into contact with her knows she has to be treated VERY gently or her skin might break. Things that normal cats can handle she can’t.

Anyway, her eye had been oozing quite a bit and she was keeping it shut a lot and we didn’t want to wait until her regular appointment on Tuesday, so I took her in. Luckily the vet was able to squeeze us right in and it wasn’t a big deal. He cleaned her eye out a bit and put some things in it and gave us some antibiotic ointment to put on it at home. (ON the eyeball…but I’m a contact lens wearer so I’m somewhat used to that, I guess?) He said she had three little eye ulcers and he also mentioned keratitis. In any case, her eye started looking better right away and today it is definitely a bit more improved, so I am hopeful that this will go away.

We realized the new, softer cone might have actually caused the problem because she was able to rub her eyes through it, and that might have gotten some debris in her eye. So we switched cones again, to the original, but by evening her ears were chafing already, so we tried cone three. Cone three had originally been discarded for being too small, but Louie modified it and now it seems okay. Third cone’s a charm?

But…she peed on the front couch today. This is the second time in less than a week, and while it’s an old couch (with a slipcover) it is the couch in my teaching studio. And what’s next then? Maybe we didn’t clean it well enough after the last time and it still smelled? I’m worry she is also peeing other places we just haven’t noticed yet.

It is possible, however, that Mackenzie is starting to grow a little hair back. It’s also possible I’m just imagining things.

Oh! And this came yesterday. I thought I’d be sad, but it actually made me really happy.

Isn’t that great? It might not look exactly like the Fatness because it’s not a photo, it’s an artist’s rendering, but I love it. I’m really glad I had it made (from Etsy, here’ s the shop—Susan Altenau Pottery) and I will treasure it for years to come.