Zoë Moonshadow (Feline) Settles In

It's been a while since we've had a new cat in the household. As I've mentioned in one spot or another, Oliver Littlechap's death in 2019 ended a feline era stretching back to 1997 when Christine and I adopted Daisy and her brother, Cleo.

All of our cats lived out their lives with us, and in later years, they craved warm laps and companionship. Mostly warm laps. 

Zoë Moonshadow is about five and still has those bursts of energy that send her streaking across the living room up the stairs, around the second floor and back again in a heartbeat, with a thunder of footfalls that sound like a herd of wildebeest. She sits on laps but briefly before she's off on other business.

She's settling in with us and seems to like us. There is a bit of unwinding yet to do, though. One two many strokes of her head and coat results in a warning bite. Not too hard, but not a play bite either.

The humane society noted she'd been terrified of large dogs in her second household. Christine likens her situation now to PTSD. I've noticed Zoë's muscles tense as she cocks an ear to an unrecognized sound, as if a dog's approach might be imminent. 

Daisy never knew that kind of fear, but she had her own agenda early on, cuddling was a small part of it. You took affection when it came your way and let her move on when she announced the time for new business.

I'm reminded now of that time. 

I suspect in time we'll get longer, lazy lap sits, but there's no need to rush that. We can spend time in play and hijinks.

Christine read somewhere that Russian Blues like feathered toys, so we grabbed a card of those when we bought her a bed and scratching post. They proved so popular they quickly disappeared. Tucked away in a summer shoe or some other hiding place found and forgotten. 

I bought a few more and a feathered toy on a stick that proves a joy. She chases, nabs if lobbed in the air and if a toy misbehaves enough it gets a pummeling with the hind feet.

In the absence of toys, she likes to hop on the bed and paw wrinkles in the blanket. They seem alive to her and in needed of subduing. 

 "I'm so glad we got her," Christine said one Saturday morning as wrinkles were trapped beneath paws. 

I was reminded that cat ownership often involves sharing the world as much as immediate bonding, watching habits and instincts at work. Coping with a fearful moment if a dog strays too close to a window. Supplying food of course. Seeking to mute some instincts, of course.

With the world made small by pandemic, limited to the walls of home more than ever, having a friend sharing the space expands the universe. 

New Resident - Miss Zoë Moonshadow - Russian blue mix

My wife Christine began studying the Heritage Humane Society's website a short time back, feeling possibly ready to adopt a cat again. 

Oliver Littlechap passed away a year ago. Some of the pain of loss remains, and his absence has been apparent during quarantine. The empty spot, where he sat at our back door looking out, has been a regular and the most-obvious reminder. 

But we've reached a point of mostly thinking back fondly, warmed by his memory and the joy he brought. He was a gentle, good natured soul even though he was a fierce hunter when we lived at the edge of a wooded area in Texas.

We've always been happy too for the time he got to be the center of attention after cats older than he and higher in the pecking order of cat society crossed the rainbow bridge. 

As she perused cats, seeking the temperament that might match our own--and be right for our furniture--Christine realized it was proving a bit difficult and that Oliver and Ashley, the last two arrivals in our household found us. 

Oliver ambled about with other neighborhood cats until he discovered our back patio might be a spot for an occasional treat and Ashley was blown into our yard in Texas by the outer bands of Hurricane Rita. He was hungry and plagued by earmites, blind in one eye, and easily a good fit in our household once he decided he'd make us his own.

Christine weighs decisions with extraordinary care anyway, so candidates in search of a forever home required deep contemplation.

SEE ALSO: DIAL M FOR MONTY

In a field of much need, with many deserving, something about a small Russian blue mix kept drawing her attention. Wide-eyed and a bit nervous in photos, reports indicated the 5-year-old dubbed Keesu was sweet natured but reeling from her experiences and life in a kennel.

She'd belonged to one service member who'd re-homed her when a deployment notice demanded it. Keesu wound up with the humane society because her new owner was deployed as well without the time for finding yet another home.

Keesu had done well with other pets though she had been terrified by larger dogs. 

Christine and I donned our masks and went for a visit. The kitty was in a cat bed inside her cage, draped with a comforting curtain. The staff had been doing all they could to keep her calm and comfortable.

She emerged slowly but greeted us pleasantly and rubbed her head against her bed much the way our tom Monty greeted us on a pound visit in Central Louisiana. 

She won our hearts in an instant, but we had learned on the way in someone previously had expressed an interest. Protocol dictated 24 hours for a decision. I hesitated to get too attached to her on our visit, given our relationship might be brief.

We went back home, and I felt more anxiety than I had expected. A few minutes with her had been all it took to confirm Christine's instincts in reading about her and studying her website pictures. 

Happily the call came early the next morning, a Sunday, and we made arrangements to pick her up that afternoon.

She spent time under our bed once we brought her home, a little longer not venturing from the bedroom, taking her meals in the master bathroom. 

But gradually she began to spend more time with us and travel a little further and a little further outward until she made a trip downstairs to visit Christine at her makeshift, quarantine-time office on our dining room table.

SEE ALSO: MONTY MEETS BIGFOOT

In a little more time, her name emerged. We suspected Keesu might have come from a figure in Elder Scrolls, a visual match for her grey features. But she wasn't responding to it. Not always an indication in cat life, but a fresh start seemed warranted and the humane society staff had thought a new name should be fine.

Something elegant and maybe Jazz Age, Christine suggested, but Zelda Fitzgerald's tragic end dissuaded that first notion. Zoë--"life" in Greek--slowly processed as a possibility. 

Life seemed a good and appropriately ironic fit for a cat of ash color in the midst of a pandemic, a burst of new energy in our world, a more permanent home for the new feline friend. 

And Cat Stevens tunes hit the soundtrack of our lives, triggered by a cover version of "The Wind" on the Netflix series Grace and Frankie. 

Moonshadow followed and became an earworm, and obviously the surname of a grey "leapin' and hoppin'" new resident, a new wind for the soul. 

Miss Zoë Moonshadow.

 

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RIP Oliver Littlechap AKA Oliver Orange Cat AKA Sad Orange Kitty

I wasn't the biggest Game of Thrones fan, but I was engaged enough to keep up with it and certainly to feel the elation in Arya Stark's great moment as she restated the caveat from her childhood in a final episode.

What do we say to the God of Death?  

"There is only one thing we say to death. Not today."

For the past several months, that's been on my mind as Oliver Littlechap showed signs of decline. 

He was the third of four cats who came into our lives beginning in the late nineties. He arrived in 2005, was hanging out with some other neighborhood cats.  I was on my back porch slipping a treat to a neighbor's cat I had a bit of a relationship with and feared wasn't well cared for. 

When Oliver saw a treat, he wandered my way and looked at me hopefully. My first thought was to shoo him away, but he had a look that later earned him the nickname Sad Orange Kitty, and I'm a softy. Over a period of weeks after that, he worked his way into our lives without trying. He was an outdoor cat a while. Then an indoor-outdoor then...

He became the last feline standing a couple of years ago when Ash aka Ashley passed away following the deaths of our original cats Monty and Daisy. "It's his time to be the only cat," we said. "His time." He'd earned his spot at the center of our attention and our world. 

We'd long battled allergies with Ollie. He was FIV positive and we struggled most to control rhinitis, but when antibiotics did their work, even as recently as January, he'd sprint around the house and bounce from windowsill to furniture. 

More recently, other signs of decline had arisen, most notably weight loss. We'd had discussion. The day will come...

Yet we managed his symptoms and saw great days for him. He climbed into moving boxes and supervised as I prepared for our furniture for a move from Orlando to Williamsburg.

When he joined Christine in our new apartment, he was doing so well she feared he'd draw the ire of neighbors as he strolled through the place caterwauling.

That energy faded a bit, but he remained affectionate and close.

A while back, he climbed onto the sofa with me and I realized his pupils were unnaturally large. I knew from our other cats that meant a blood pressure spike. As with all things of that nature, something's causing it.

But what do we say to the God of Death? 

I took him to the vet and got him started on blood pressure medicine, and we got retinal reattachment that restored a good bit of vision for him in spite of those strained pupils. 

Then there was weight loss. The vet okayed Fancy Feast a couple of months back, and he ate joyously and we fed him freely. 

He also regularly took his place on my desk, my lap or at my side waiting to have his fur brushed, and all in all, he felt good. He slept occasionally on Christine's pillow. 

Last Christmas.

But nature will have its way in spite of all the management you do, and in spite of all the "not today" admonishments.

I went downstairs yesterday to find him lying on his side. He'd sleep that way sometimes, but I sensed something wasn't quite right. He didn't rise to wait at the edge of the kitchen for his breakfast.

At first I thought he wouldn't awake at all, but then I realized he was experiencing some distress, that he was weak. I thought it might be low blood pressure, so I fixed some Fancy Feast and helped him sit up. He devoured it. I remembered with a bit of guilt the time I considered shooing him. At least now, one of the last things I could do for him was give him food, food he enjoyed.

But he couldn't manage to keep himself upright. Christine and I got him on a cushion between us and kept him comfortable. I answered messages and emails, waiting until I could call the vet. Who knew Facebook battles could  be a bromide?

It kept my mind busy and off the inevitable. In a way I didn't want the vet's phones to kick over from the answering service to the receptionist, but the time had to come. I asked to bring him in. They said come on. Back of your mind, you think, maybe there's a shot, an IV drip, a pill.

And eventually the vet--a very sweet lady who'd traded off on his care with his primary veterinarian--eventually the vet--though not in so many words, though not wanting to step in for the God of Death said--Today.

He was fading by then, but she gave us a blanket, and we sat across from a statue of St. Francis of Assisi, the Brother Sun, Sister Moon saint. The Brother Dog, Sister Cat guy. The patron saint of nature and animals and little cats.

We sat with Oliver on both our laps and stroked his fur like we did on a thousand nights as we read or watched TV. 

Then he quietly left us. But we sat for a while.

Stroking his fur. Touching his head, remembering. Feeling sad but also thankful that he had been in our lives and part of lives for such a long, long time.

An early Oliver memory

Slow Glass, Ash and Me

Christine had said often as our cat Ashley showed signs of age and decline that he might not be with us much longer. I didn't argue, but I compartmentalized the concern and focused on taking care of him and just sharing the world with him.

Ash was not given to reach out with a paw and grab your arm for attention as our other cat, Oliver, is wont to do. He'd sit on your lap quietly in the evenings, facing away. Or he'd call out from the edge of the bathtub in the morning a minute before the alarm went off, hoping to have the tap turned on to a trickle so he could drink fresh, directly from the faucet.

In the days after his passing, I've found myself racking my brain, dredging for memories, specifics, wanting to hold on and realizing so much of life is day-to-day routine, and it's sometimes hard to pull moments from that. 

As mentioned in an earlier post, Ash showed up just after Hurricane Rita sent wind and rain into Northeast Texas in 2005, so he was with us 12 years. At first he was not adopted. At first we ran a newspaper ad seeking his owners. He'd been neutered and cared for at some point but later neglected it seemed. 

While we waited for someone to turn up, he stayed outside, and feeling vulnerable since he was blind in one eye; he'd sequester himself in the woods just on the outside of our wooden fence. If we stepped out the back door, he'd slither under the fence and charge to greet us. 

Those little mad runs are etched in my mind as are other moments, but I guess in grief in the desire to find all of 12 years immediately, I was hit with frustration and a lot of things including Rod McKuen poems resurfaced.

"The mind is such a junkyard," McKuen wrote in one poem, and I can confirm that. Sometimes I can watch a show I saw in the '60s and recite next lines. 

For other things, like a cool autumn evening sitting on a patio in Texas with Ash at my side, the mind's a little harder to access without things to jog it. 

Of leaves and memory

"I remembered today, that among the silly things you saved was a brown-and-yellow leaf. I shook out every book I owned to find it. Still it's lost..." - Another McKuen poem.

I read McKuen as a teen, disregarding teachers who dismissed him and longed for me to read Shelly, Browning or T.S. Eliot. Perhaps the lines were maudlin and purple, but the introvert I was, struggling to wrangle the depths of my feelings and contemplations, found resonance.

And that line came back to me. I've felt like that, doing the same seeking of intangible moments. I had to comb my office for a disk of photos. I had tucked it into my backpack during Hurricane Irma in case we had to evacuate here in Orlando. I took it out again before heading to Vegas, again to keep it safe, but I failed to tuck it back into the CD file box again with useless game disks that no longer work.

Finally I turned it up and fired up an old laptop and looked through snapshots and video clips.

I was reminded of a Marvel comic magazine I read for a while as a kid, Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction. It adapted Bob Shaw's "The Light of Other Days" then used the concept from that story, slow glass, as a framing device for future issues of the anthology comic.

With slow glass, instead of looking straight through a pane, light passes through slowly. A piece of glass exposed to a brook where deer come to sip and birds flutter, would reveal the scene much later when it emerged. 

Put a glass by a brook, then take it home and weeks later the scene would play again before you.

I pulled up images and video clips, pursing something similar, a return to moments when Ash was young and spry, always in what Christine referred to as His Own Ashley World but ever sweet-natured, affectionate, of course curious.

In Unknown Worlds, a gangster who sought to preserve his wife's memory, used slow glass to capture a day of her on the beach before murdering her in envy then wept when learning the emerging image would last only as long as she was originally exposed to the glass. 

What we have

Photos last a little longer, but I was struck by the sense of futility. Photos last longer, but they are still imperfect in their way.

Yet wonderful. 

I found video of Christine opening a present one Christmas, and Ash came bounding into the periphery, chasing a toy, flicking it under a china cabinet then following it as far under as his size allowed.

A snapshot of Ash sitting on a cat tree, his ever-quizzical expression aimed at me and directly into the camera lens.

Another snap of Ash standing on an afghan, frozen in the midst of a ritualistic stomp he did, mixed with a periodic miaou.

Video Ash in the yard, not doing much.

It was not enough of course. Nothing is enough in the loss of a pet or a loved one, but bittersweet is what we have. 

Nothing fully calls back all the memories you're chasing. As McKuen noted, the mind recalls "candy bars but not the Gettysburg address, Frank Sinatra's middle name but not the day your best friend died..."

But memory helps and images and video do their best to bring back the light of other days even if sometimes things are just a little blurry.

RIP Ashley

I found an email from 2014 or so. I was letting Christine know our cat Ashley or Ash had been sluggish and was still sleeping on the bed in our second floor guest room. I was planning to take him to the vet to get him checked out.

That had become kind of routine the last few years. Ashley came to us blind in one eye, plagued by ear mites and suffering tooth decay that would later require one of his canine teeth be removed.

Once we had him clean and well fed again, he prospered and quickly graduated from an outside cat we were feeding to full companion animal status.

Chronic health problems developed two or three years ago including kidney disease, often a problem for cats as we learned with our beloved Miss Daisy. Sadly later came thyroid issues.

Friday morning seemed like one of those days. He was a little sluggish, so we decided Christine, who'd taken a day off, would take him to the vet while I taught my class.

The day turned out a little different. The vet said he looked anemic and did blood work. Anemia also goes with the kidney disease territory and I thought we might be buying Procrit, which is expensive, and trying to pump him back up.

But a short while after Christine brought him home, a short while after he'd played a bit with his longtime friend and companion, Oliver, he lay down on his side, limp and unmoving and breathing in quick, shallow breaths.

Home by then, I gave him a little while, thinking he needed to rest from the vet visit. He didn't improve, so I snatched him up and took him back to the vet.

The anemia was worse than expected and not to be corrected with a few shots of Procrit. The vet mentioned ultrasounds and blood transfusions at a specialist's office, and I knew we weren't going to put him through that.

The techs brought him from where he was being treated back into the exam room where Christine and I waited. They had him next to a hot bag of fluids that was acting to warm him, a brown blanket pulled to his shoulder. He lay on the blanket he'd come in on, a green polar fleece that I've warmed for him in the dryer regularly for the last couple of years. Kidney disease means a low threshold to the tolerance of cold as well. Sometimes I'd warm it as a substitute for my lap so that I could get some grading done with my laptop.

We petted him Friday afternoon, spoke to him, I kissed his head, and he blinked and moved his eyes, more of an acknowledgement than we'd been able to elicit at home. The vet had been giving him oxygen to compensate for what his blood couldn't do.

Then we let the vet administer the injections that bring suffering to an end, and in a few seconds he was gone. He lived with us twelve years, sweet natured, ever close, ever loving. Happy with any meal and never demanding of much in the way of flavor except once when we bought him health food.

He'd been starving when he blew up on our patio in Texas, and it always seemed he remained fearful of going hungry again. Once, when he still stayed outside in those early weeks of this relationship, I looked out the back window to see him in a standoff with a much larger raccoon who'd wanted to sample his dry food.

I'd have gladly refilled it, but he didn't know that.

Ash when he first arrived at our house. 

We knew him first as Gray Kitty and tried

 to find owners who never turned up.

Once we realized he was blind in one eye, he saw a specialist and received pressure-reducing drops to avoid headaches. On that first visit to the kitty eye doctor in Dallas, the physician wanted to show the other doctors the once-damaged and long-healed eye. She picked him up and took him to her colleagues then returned saying: "That is the best cat..." She saw too how sweet and calm he was.

Christine always had a special bond with him, always loved him best, and when we moved into our two-story home in Florida, she loved to watch him come trotting down the stairs from an upstairs nap, his motion fluid, his tail hiked high, his heart open and warm to her greeting.

So the good bye was difficult, and Friday night was sad.

As I mentioned to friends on Facebook, Christine and I went out early Saturday morning and looked up at the stars, checking for what we could see of the Orionid Meteor Shower since we'd waked early.

We didn't see any meteors but with an iPhone app, I located Orion, Tauras, the Twins, then more specifically Betelgeuse, Bellatrix and Adhara.

I realized how vast and abiding the heavens and how small we are in comparison.

We seize the moments and the love we can as we pass through life.

Ash was a bright, bright spot in our lives and will be a bright, bright spot in our hearts and memories forever.

Early posts on Ash:

Four on the Floor

Ashley's Eyes

Ashley's Eyes II

Ollie Dressed Up

We all get ties for Christmas. My cat, Oliver Littlechap, is no exception. 

Oliver Littlechap Right Now

My spry, youngest cat, Oliver Littlechap, has begun receiving subcutaneous fluids for elevated kidney values. He's at least 11 years old and possibly a little older, and it was sad news.

It didn't hit in the devastating fashion Daisy's diagnosis did in 2008 because we've learned a lot about care over the years. She survived seven years and did well most of that time. Lung tumors and not her kidneys caused her death.

Happily, Ollie, who came into our world as Sad Orange Kitty in 2005, is doing well. After a weekend on an IV and now two weeks of Sub Q fluids administered at home, his levels were "perfect" according to the vet.

We're going to try every-other-day Sub Q fluids for him and re-check in a couple of weeks.

He looks sad in the photo from yesterday more because the vet cleaned his ears than because of feeling bad. He just came through for a morning stroll across my keyboard.

I have to be careful not to leave manuscripts open on my desktop or he'll attempt to collaborate, but sometimes I don't like what he does with characterization.

Monty is gone

Monty is gone. It's hard to believe. He'd been with us around six years when I started this blog in 2005 or so. I thought he'd go on forever, but that's not the way of the world.

Our last day together was a good one, peaceful and friendly, with him at my side much of the morning as I graded.

I dreaded the afternoon, but I petted him and talked to him and fed him whenever he wanted to eat.

He passed peacefully in his own bed with a blanket that had often served as curtains for him underneath a toadstool at the bottom of our cat fort.

He was between Christine and me, petted, whispered to and comforted. It came three weeks to the day after Daisy passed away.

We had no idea Monty had a brain tumor when she was diagnosed with lung tumors. In her final week, he seemed as strong and vibrant as ever, especially for a cat with diabetes.

I'm numb at the moment, but contemplating what it means. Daisy and Monty were a part of our married life so long it's difficult to remember life without them.

Pets occupy a special place. They are just there, filling a piece of our worlds.

I'll miss Mon and Dee forever.

And Now for the Bad News

Rain held up a semi-annual inspection of my roof on Saturday. The guy called and asked if he could come by Sunday morning.

I said "sure" and watched for him so I could avoid a ringing of the doorbell which disturbs Monty, my eldest male cat. It's been a bad week for Monty, around 18 or 19, who seemed fine, even robust leading up to Daisy's death a couple of weeks ago. He'd even spend time with her in the closet where she liked to rest those last few days.

His behavior changed a bit after she was gone, which we attributed to the loss of a longtime companion, even though they weren't always on the best of terms. Then other signs took me to the vet with him for some tests on Wednesday.

They determined his blood sugar was low and suggested we step back the insulin he's received for two years. Before that step back could happen, Thursday afternoon, he crashed.

I tried to get some food into him but wound up rushing him back to the vet after he lay prone on my living room floor, unable to move.

An IV drip got him perked up at our vet, and he spent the night at an all-night emergency vet where he could be monitored. He had a seizure around midnight. Then another the next morning as I drove him back to our vet for a follow up.

The seizures shouldn't be happening after drips that restored his blood sugar levels, our vet said. She said the symptoms aligned with a brain tumor. That also would help explain why he suddenly no longer needed insulin.

Christine and I talked and decided to bring him home for the weekend and evaluate our decisions.

It seemed unreal,  not because I didn't trust our vet but just because. Monty and Daisy have been with us since the late '90s. That's the newspaper clipping in the upper left that brought Mon and us together. Daisy had been with us about a year then.

To have both Monty and Daisy decline so quickly within a few weeks has staggered Christine and me.

So I meet the guy from the roofer's Sunday, and I tell him I'm trying to avoid ringing the bell. He tells me he understands. He had a cat who had a brain tumor, he volunteered. This is without me saying what was wrong with Monty. Then he proceeded to describe what are also Monty's symptoms and the experience he had in letting his cat go.

And I understood better what had seemed unreal.

Monty's eating, sitting beside me as I grade, sticking close and being himself. He's a little wobbly at times, but he's hanging in.

We will stick close to him the next few days and decide. And at least we have this time and some clarity to celebrate his life and our lives with him.

Miss Daisy has passed

(I switched the video to a clip from six months after her CRF diagnosis.)

My cat, Miss Daisy, who I've written of often on this blog, passed away this morning. She'd developed tumors in her lungs following her other health problems which had intensified in the last several months.

After a week of antibiotics and asthma treatment to see if recent labored breathing might improve, the vet felt she was doing as well as she could.

Though she was compensating for her issues, Christine and I felt we'd just be prolonging things if we held on any longer.

She passes almost at age 18. She was diagnosed with chronic renal failure at age 10 but responded well to subcutaneous fluid treatment, so she had quite a long and happy life.

In human terms she was in her 80s. The video above was shot shortly after the CRF diagnosis when we thought she'd be passing soon.

Seven years later we have to say adieu.

Chat er Cat life

I do weekly, optional chats with students in my horror, mystery and suspense class. Just as he sometimes joins me while I'm writing in the mornings, my cat, Oliver Littlechap, occasionally sits in. Sometimes he walks in front of the camera as well, offering close-up views of his fur.

He seems to have picked up the job from Ash who used to join me for chats but has kind of lost interest.

Miss Daisy's Eyes

Facebook served up a memory recently. Miss Daisy Kittycat rested in a spot we call the Crow's Nest on the cat fort. The photo was posted shortly after we purchased the cat condo in 2009.

That was about a year after her diagnosis with chronic renal failure. We'd thought the end was near for her at age 10. But I learned to administer subcutaneous fluids from our vet, a bit like kitty dialysis, and she stayed around.

She's done well for much of the time since.

Years catch up, however. This year we've seen a bit more decline with perhaps some hyperthyroidism that's cost her a few pounds.

Related or not, recently she showed some signs of not feeling well. I feared a urinary tract infection and took her to vet. Vital signs seemed generally OK at that point, and an antibiotic was prescribed.

A couple of weeks after that, Christine thought her pupils looked enlarged.

I realized that night she wasn't seeing things like cat treats or my fingers. At least she refused to say how many fingers I was holding up. Cats can be stubborn.

Another visit to the vet determined her blood pressure had spiked, causing a retinal detachment in the right eye and probably damaging the left.

We've added a blood pressure medication and a downward BP trend seems to have developed.

I pretty much need a jeweler's glass to cut the pill down for a tiny cat dosage, but treatment seems to have perked her up. She navigates our house with ease. It's hard to tell there's a vision issue.

Time marches on. "Days dwindle down" as the September Song puts it, but for the moment, we abide.

Monty Update

Monty is home and has had his first dose of insulin. He's eaten well today, but his back legs are wobbly. Apparently that's a common problem in cats with diabetes.

Hopefully regulating his glucose will help on that front in time.

At the moment, he's sleeping in his favorite spot, a spot that actually became a favorite perhaps at a time that his diabetes was developing. It represented a move from the sofa, long his domain.

We weren't sure what brought the change. At the time, he could still hop up onto it as he chose, so I'm not sure what the move meant. At any rate, he's comfortable.

It's good to have him home, good to be able to brush his coat and offer comfort. I'm hopeful medication and care will give him a little more time.

I've always been cognizant of the fact that the pets don't live forever, but even if you are aware of the passage of time, you can't slow it down.

Vacations pass too quickly, even though you will each day to last longer, to stretch and be all it can.

It's not just vacations. All of life ticks by faster than we'd like.

What can you do but try to stay alert to that and keep moving?

Monty's Illness

I haven't mentioned my cats much on the blog in a while. Monty, seen above looking up as a flight carrying people to DisneyWorld passes over, has been a bit sluggish of late. I took him to the vet on Tuesday, and they've determined he's developed diabetes.

He's sixteen, which, in cat years, is the same as pretty old to you and me. I was able to win his release from the pound around 1998 where he was incarcerated over what he describes as a big misunderstanding.

He remained quite robust until a couple of months ago, but then he began to slow down a little.

We had his teeth cleaned and his blood checked, wanting to make sure there were no issues with his eating. They shaved some patches on his legs looking for a vein for the IV at the time. He did not find it amusing when we called him Boots or made poodle references.

The cleaning and a round of antibiotics seemed to help for a while, but earlier this week his heart just didn't seem to be in it when he tried to steal my dinner.

This time the blood test along with some calculations by the vet of some past readings confirmed he's going to need insulin injections.

I learned to give Miss Daisy, who still abides,  sub-q fluid treatments, so I guess I'll be learning give shots as well.

He'll love me for it, I'm sure, and I know I can count on his cooperation.

Update - 8-2-13
Here's a pic of Mon at the vet. He should get to come home after one more day. The IV's really helped his coat, and he issued verbal complaints when I visited today.

Miss D Abides

I haven't done an update on my cat, Miss Daisy, for a while now. She was diagnosed with kidney disease a few years back. Hard to believe how long its been.

Happily she's still hanging in and going strong. We do subcutaneous fluid treatments every night. Just takes a few minutes with an IV drip. She forgives that and sits on my lap afterwards. 

She's less forgiving of Oliver, the first rescue cat from the woods behind our home. Him, she keeps on a short leash. Infractions draw hisses. 

She's done far better than we expected when we first received the diagnosis. As I write this, she's strolling past me, headed back to help Christine work on the household budget. 

She has opinions about everything, and she's happy to express them.

The Night Oliver Littlechap Spent in Jail

My indoor-outdoor cat, Oliver Littlechap, wandered onto our doorstep five years ago, a thin Oliver Twist for whom we couldn't find an adoptive home. If he wasn't wild, he was close to it.

He lived on our patio for a while and was eventually granted inside privileges around the time Hurricane Rita's inland bluster reached our neighborhood.

Domestic dispute
Oliver's domesticity has always been a little in question. For ages he's liked to prowl the wooded area behind our house and has on occasion been given to staying out all night.

Cats are just not that into doing what they're told.

He disappeared once around 8 p.m., didn't return the next morning and remained missing until Christine and I stood in the back yard calling him diligently in the early afternoon. The vocals finally disturbed him, and he came staggering, blinking and half-asleep, out of a flower bed.

With a little effort, Christine's curtailed some of his roaming, letting him out at night before mealtime. Usually he's been back in an hour, though more recently he's taken to going out the front door when we get home in the evenings.

Bolts out actually, allowing no time for greeting or discourse.

Tuesday was no different when we came home from the gym. An orange streak shot past us, and we went inside to shower and fix dinner.

The front mat remained empty a while later when I looked out. Usually Ollie plops down there after his rounds, waiting to be let in for dinner. Or perhaps for him its supper, the later meal, usually enjoyed after The Theater.

Call back
When he still hadn't shown up in another little while, I called for him. Front first. Then back yard. Nothing. I waited a few minutes and called again.

Still no sign. Shaking the Pounce bag didn't do any good either. Reluctantly, I went to bed without Ollie inside, though I took consolation in remembering he'd done this sort of thing before.

The next morning he still wasn't on the stoop. Christine and I walked up the street calling until we had to go to work, and we toured the neighborhood by car before driving in.

I was worried, but I kept consoling myself that he'd be OK. Maybe he had wandered into the woods again.

After a couple of hours at work, I realized I wasn't concentrating and decided to make a quick swing home.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Ollie in one of those cat huddles on the front lawn. He'd finally decided to come home.

We pause now for a message from our jailer
But when I got out of my car, I noticed something on his collar. It's murder to keep a collar on Ollie. He's lost two dozen in five years. We had one of those chips implanted so that if he ever wandered too far there'd be a chance of getting called, but recently I found one I could keep on him without being too constricting.

I went over to him and rubbed his head, thinking, "My god has someone had him tied up?"

It wasn't a cord but a note secured by a twist tie.

"Your cat spent the night in my armadillo trap," an anonymous neighbor had written. Threats began after that. If he--though the note writer said she--returned to his/her property Ollie would be turned over to animal control.

Neighborly.

Five years I've worried about him, but Ollie's done fine in our quiet little cul-de-sac, 'till what I suspect is a newish neighbor with a landscaping fetish shows up.

It took Ollie a day to get back to being himself. His nose was red and his face seemed a little swollen, probably from trying to push the trap door open to free himself. Luckily it was chilly but not that cold the other night.

He's adapting to being indoor only fairly well so far, though there have been a few requests for a word with the management this a.m.


More Ollie

• Cat's on the Baker's Rack
• A visit to the Cat Condo

Upsy Daisy

We're well over a year past the chronic renal failure diagnosis for my cat Daisy. The initial news was devastating, as you know if you drop by here often.

Daisy's been our pet since she was only weeks old.

Weeks following the diagnosis were trying as we struggled with our vet's help to stabelize her condition. Subcutaneous fluid treatments and appetite stimulants helped restore her to a better state.

I wrote a year ago about her first post-diagnosis holiday season. This season's beginngs brought a reminder of her condition. She threw up last Saturday. Apparently renal failure produces stomach chemicals that lead to nausea and vomiting.

She'd been doing so well that I'd become complacent, the knowledge of her condition pushed to a back room in my mind. Then, a while after dinner, she sat up on my lap with an odd look in her eyes. Never let it be said cats don't have expressions.

A few minutes after the odd look, she hopped to the floor and tossed up her dinner. She kept throwing up through the night, turning to dry heaves and continuing on Sunday, making me fear she'd begun some kind of drastic decline.

We pulled out some anti-nausea medication she hadn't needed in a while and began to give her doses. On Monday morning she began to eat again, and was perky when I checked on her on a break from work. The vet suggested keeping up the nausea medication a while before deciding if we needed to bring her in.

By evening she had resumed her usual behavior. She curled onto my legs when I went to bed, then after a while she began to trot out all of the acts in her repertoire.

Around 11, she got in a fight with our oldest tom, Monty.

Around 11:30 there was the cold nose on the face. It's her way of asking for fresh food.

A couple hours later she was crying out in a shrill voice. I thought it was the prelude to getting sick again and jumped up to discover her walking around with her favorite toy in her mouth. It's a Beanie Baby knockoff of a mouse, and she's known to walk up the hall with it, whining softly.

Now she'd chosen to do it at 3 a.m. or so.

If she could play a musical instrument, that would probably have been her next feat, but she let things i.e. me rest after that.

She's on Christine's lap now, a week later, dozing as I peck keys, though moments ago she was pacing back and forth across my keyboard.

That's another act of hers. I'm happy to have her for each show.

Song Title? Cat's On the Baker's Rack

My cat, Oliver Littlechap, makes himself at home on the baker's rack just off our kitchen.

Secret Messages from My Cat

I'm not sure what my cat, Miss Daisy, is trying to tell me, but she typed a cryptic message into MS Word a little while ago:

"8999999999999999999 89999999999999999 8999999999999"

Maybe cats have some secret knowledge to impart, kind of like those looms they had in Wanted, only with more benevolent messages.

Or maybe it's something simpler.

"The laptop is warm. Go do something else. I'm sitting here."