Maurine Dodge

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and then there were three....

This year has been a rather hard one on this household, having gone from 8 cats and a dog to three remaining cats surviving.

The first losses were Trixie the wonder cat and her only calico daughter Calamity. Then Lucky went missing and did not return home. This was followed some months later with the Great Galway becoming terminally ill and being infested with maggots to the point he had to be put down.

Perhaps saddest for me was Chewie, my wolf/chow mix who even in the end seemed to be saying she was not ready to leave my side. I just could not bear to watch her suffer just to be with me. There is a hubpage dedicated to her dying by my hand at http://hubpages.com/hub/My-Best-Friend-Died-Today-By-My-Hand

Sometime between 8am and 9am this morning Brigadier Boots died. Being an insulin dependent deaf cat with few teeth left and his kidneys and liver failing, it was only a matter of time before he succumbed. All that is left now is to give my father the news of his favorite cat passing on.

So now there are three. Cat Mandu, Tyger and Rascal. The last vestiges of our furry family. Cat Mandu looks for Boots, and probably will for some weeks since he always sought out his older brother to curl up next to. Tyger is working on becoming far less feral and likes to spend more time in the house than she ever did before. Rascal will probably not miss Boots since Boots had taken over her place on my bed over the last few months of his life and she is convinced she should be an only cat.

None of these deaths are really a surprise, considering the youngest animals are over 17 years now, and most who passed were between that and 18 years old. It does not make it any easier to let go of those family members.

Holiday Updates

After months of fighting an infection in his leg, Dad now sees some progress in the healing process. We took him to a cardiovascular specialist, and an infectious disease specialist. This brings the doctor count for Dad to 10.

It is still an ongoing battle, but there is visual signs of improvement in the wound itself, and the cardiovascular guy could find no reason for the edema (this is actually a good thing since it means he does not need any stints in the legs) The doctor is working on getting him some kind of device with a pump on it to try to help with taking the swelling down. We are looking forward to Morgan and Kara coming for Christmas, and have managed to get the Christmas cards the folks wanted sent out, as well as the presents to relatives that won't be here with us for the holidays.

Dad insisted on my going out with Mom to find my dog Chewie not one but two rugs... I felt this was excessive, and decided it would be better to get one and see if she took to it at all. When showed this prize present from Grandpa she acted like she was being punished and did not want anything to do with it. I swapped it out for the bathmat she had been using to sleep on, where upon she avoided it just until every cat in the house wanted to use it to sleep on. Now she has claimed it as her own, at least when no cats are using it.

The FDA in their usual illogical manner, have pulled all the products with quinine in them from the store shelves, leaving me looking for another solution to Mother's nightly leg cramps. (they cite sever side effects that they attribute to drug interactions in slightly over 2 percent of the population of the US. (which is over 3 million) It seems to me that warning labels would be a better way to go rather than taking away what has worked for over a year with no bad effects... I suppose it is the American Way, if it works take it away, restrict it or make it too expensive to obtain.

We are down to 7 cats now, as Lucky vanished. As she usually stuck pretty close to home when she was gone a week we figured she was not coming back. Boots still gets insulin shots twice a day for his diabetes. Dad has managed to feed my dog Chewie too many goodies so once again, the vet says she must be on a much stricter diet.

Dad had me go out and get something for the 17 month old child of the nurse who comes daily to dress his wound, which apparently the girl loves and got early when she was in the car the day we gave it to them for her from Santa. Since we did not want anything that would have parts that could come off and be swallowed, I found something called a puffalump, which resembles a blue dog with a dress on, is machine washable and had nothing on it that could be a problems as far as choking hazards.

I guess we are about as ready for the holidays as we are going to get and expect it to be a relatively uncomplicated time.

Falling Down

After careful consideration, I determined that it would be far easier to just do a blog to let family and friends know what is happening on the home front. I had tried to do a sort of newsletter via e-mail, but it was rather cumbersome and it did not seem there was enough often enough to actually fill up a newsletter. I have therefore started this blog for family and friends to keep them up to date on what is happening with the family.

Chewie (my dog) usually is pretty good about not getting into the cat food in the mornings when I feed the cats and give Boots (the deaf, diabetic, insulin dependant cat) his shot. This morning I even decided she had been good enough lately that I gave her a dog biscuit and laid back down to await one or both of the folks getting up and requiring my attention.

I heard Chewie's nails clicking on the tile and decided I would go see what she was up to. Low and behold, she was pushing cats out of their dishes to get to their food. When I walked up behind her and touched her backside (just one finger touching, no swat.. ) she took off like I had lit her tail on fire. I followed and she had taken shelter next to Grandma (Mom) hoping at the very least I would not want to wake her, and at best that if I pursued, she would be defended by Grandma.

A bit later in the day, Grandpa (Dad) needed his car washed as we are taking it in for it's pre smoging check up, and smog check in the morning. Dad has a specific car wash he has been going to for years, but lately he has not been doing a lot of driving. I told him I could take the car and get it done, but he likes to go along.

When we got out of the car, and I was getting the ticket to pay for the wash, Dad was busy taking dollar bills out of his money clip to tip everybody who was doing anything to clean the car. He dropped a dollar on the ground and in the process of bending over to retrieve it, lost his balance and fell on his backside. Three chaps were all over the place ready and able to help him up, as was I. He says "wait, wait" and we all backed off thinking maybe we were hurting him, but he pointed at the still free dollar bill laying by his foot and said "hand me that" .. One of the guys handed him the bill, which he promptly handed back to the guy as a tip..

They got him on his feet, he said he was not hurt, and one of the guys walked part of the way with us to make sure he stayed in an upright position with his walker. He obviously recognized Dad as he said " He's engineer yes?" I said yes. He said, "how old is he?" I said he will be 81 nest month. He said " he is very proud man" (which I think meant.. he is a stubborn old coot.. ) to which I agreed.

I got him sat down and watched the car go through the wash.. they put it through twice which I am not sure was owing to it being really dirty, or that they wanted to do a superior job since they figured landing on his keester might have been cause for some kind of legal action.. (of course if they thought that they really don't know the old guy. )

The next time someone asks him if he has fallen down lately (which the medicare doctors tend to do pretty often) he won't remember this episode at all. Once it was conveyed that Dad was alright, Mom found the story to be amusing, but I suspect it was my inflection that made it so.