Lessons from Pets In the Midst of a Pandemic

I saved a frog from certain death today.  Our oldest boy cat, Adagio, really has a thing for catching frogs and bringing them into the garage.  I heard him singing the song of his people--that, "I am victorious with a mouthful of prey" song for which they are famous--and managed to scoop the poor thing up and return him to our pond.  

I am supposed to have been writing wildly for a month now.  Isn't that just what I have been whining about for years--time to write?  Now, there are other important things to do every day, and they have a lot to do with the other residents of our home--the whole thing, not the just in the house.  There are the chickens, of course, all four of them, who must be let out and in, who must be fed and watered, and who try to mob me to shake me down for treats.  Bread.  Little Debbie Snack Cakes.  French fries.  One of them--Foghorn--likes greens a lot, so she gets lettuce and spinach and whatever we have that the cats and dogs haven't snatched up, which means that peas, beans and squash never make it out there.  
Carolyn feeds the wild birds; sometimes I help with that, but she doesn't really need me there.  

Inside, there are five cats, three of whom eat in the garage and two of whom eat everything in the house.  And I mean everything.  Salads, pasta, cooked vegetables, cookies, and anything that counts as an entree. Dog food--lots of dog food. Twice a day all of the cats get a quarter cup of special dental diet food.  They LOVE this stuff which comes in big round crunchies that are designed to scrape the tartar off their teeth as they chew.  

The two little dogs are now 14 years old.  Lukas is deaf and perhaps a little senile, with terrible arthritis and not a lot of teeth in spite of three dental  procedures.  He has kidney disease and is medicated so that he will eat and so that his pain is under control.  Zuza is blind, which makes her much more crippled inside the house than she has ever been.  No more stairs, no happy wandering around the house.  There is a pee pad in the kitchen, just a few steps from their favorite bed and a water bowl to which she will go and use very consistently and efficiently. But then she needs help getting back into the bed, under the blankie and curled on to a warm snuggly--and if it is not warm enough, then there is more heartrending whimpering until she hears the microwave ding.  

Neither have ever been low maintenance about dinner time.  The canned food for Lukas must be cut into teeny, tiny bits and separated from each other.  Kibble is fed one at a time, from my fingers to his little mouth and if the piece is unacceptable for some reason, he spits it out.  Actually, sometimes the canned food has to be fed to him the same way.  Do you know how icky that is?  When they were younger we played Meals on Wheels every night where I would toss the kibble--sort of like the way you skip stones--and they would chase it down.  Of course, the cats would join in with this particular game.  Now the two youngest, Horatio and Calleigh, are right there; Horatio can grab kibble out of the air while Calleigh fields the grounders.  Sadako, with her head tilt and dealing with a world that is also tilted, no longer plays outfield, but insists on her own non-moving portion.  I do this, flinging pieces over my shoulder, while I am crouched feeding the dogs.  I must admit, however, the cats do help stir both dogs into eating.  They crowd around, trying to push their big heads into the little bowls of dog food.  Zuza always eats better if she has been able to say something nasty to any of the cats.

There is chicken coop cleaning...and litter box cleaning...and required sitting in the living room time, providing laps to little dogs with an occasional cat draped across my throat.  There are times that I feel that I have been overtaken by Tribbles.

But...most of the time, they can help keep the anxiety down to an almost manageable level and for that I'm really grateful.  The chickens are honestly really funny, and since we are not yet sowing seeds outside, they follow us as we prepare garden beds and do all of the thankless raking and pruning and soil testing around the yard.  They will jump into piles of leaves to scatter everything again, annoying, but funny-looking.  They will also dig up anything you plant, so we are going to be putting up more fencing as soon as it stops freaking snowing.

We have careful conversations with the cats, especially Horatio, about being gentle and patient and always putting all of their pee into the box.  (We were taught to do this by a animal communicator, and I swear to God it really works.  Horatio really makes eye contact, appears to listen  and occasionally comments.  And we haven't had any more litter box aversion problems which nearly forced us to give him up for adoption last Fall.  Okay, that's another story.)

About an hour after Luke gets his pills he turns into a much younger version of himself, complete with Nathan Lane-esque shrieking, bouncing up and down, playing with Foxy or any other available squeaky toy and demanding food.  Inconvenient, but it helps get me out of my head.  And Zuza...is Zuza, still alerting me when my blood sugar gets too low, still letting us know when she isn't warm enough, full enough, held enough and when it's time to go to bed, damn it.  

And she is still tucking her head up under my chin, cuddling close and letting me know that some things remain unchanged. 

Love is still here. Laughter is still possible.