Lily and Mischief

I just mentioned these guys on the Briar Patch Facebook page, and then I knew I had to say a few words about them.  Lily, I have written about.  She has had a reoccurrence of her cancer, and has had a 2nd surgery to remove a tumor that formed right on the incision site from her amputation.  But, she is still an absolute wonder, joyously announces every arrival to "her" office at Hands On Physical Therapy, and makes certain that everyone feels welcome.  She really is capable of more joy that any other dog I have known.  We are all just holding our collective breaths that she will beat the odds and be with us for several more years.

Her brother Mischief is a great cat, mellow and sweet and was certain, right from the moment of his adoption, that he was sent there to be Lily's friend.  It took Lily a little while to accept that idea perfectly comfortably, but as you can see from the photo, they have evolved into a mutually trusting little yin/yang understanding.

Y'know, the world is a frightening place out there.   I can't even listen to the news anymore because I am afraid the whole country is being taken over by rejects from the old Jerry Springer show.  And then I reflect on the innocent creatures I know, the ones who are so wise, the ones who cushion my heart in their own goodness and I can sally forth into battle once more.

Go hug a pet tonight, everybody.

Heart lifting, heart breaking...

This week has been a monumentally emotional week.  I admit that I am weary as I write this, mostly because our own cat, Minuet, is missing and we are just heartbroken about it.  I've been making phone calls and posters today, so her sweet face is on my mind.  Here she is, being helpful as is her wont.  We have called her "The Assistant" since she was a kitten when she would pin her siblings down to wash them just like her Mama did.  Since then, she's helped the humans with every task--paperwork, laundry, house cleaning, plumbing, decorating.  Oh, and salad preparation.  She loves lettuce and will pilfer salad bowls and even bags of lettuce from the store.  She was just a baby when I joined Carolyn, so she is special for so many reasons.

There were 3 other pets who touched my heart in a big way this week; I'll only mention one here right now as she has already been dubbed a pirate.  Lily, the wonder dog, underwent surgery again as another tumor appeared on the incision site for her leg amputation.  I was so hoping that she would be done with big surgeries after the last one.  Heartbreaking to see her shaved and cut again, bandaged afterward just like she was after the amputation.  But heart lifting to see her two days later, on the job at the physical therapy office, joyfully greeting clients, wearing a pretty pink sweater instead of a bandage.  This may be the happiest, most fulfilled dog I have ever known.

Keep them all in your hearts and send out good thoughts for all of the pirates.

correction

okay, i stand (or sit) corrected.  there weren't any dogs or cats lost at PETCO.  there were guinea pigs, hamsters, birds, fish and reptiles.  and i have read that the 20 employees are "pretty devastated".  i have to admit that i will probably sleep better without pictures of drowned kittens and puppies in my head, but if i were an owner of rodents or the other victims, i would not feel any real relief.  i just feel so strongly our responsibility to all of these creatures.  it's like going to a really bad zoo.  how can you be unaffected by that?

so, my apologies for any undue distress i might have caused, and my condolences to all lovers of littler animals than my dog.  okay, some guinea pigs are bigger, so my condolences to you guys, too.

Boycotting Petco

Okay, pretty radical for this blog about loving animals, hey?  (That, by the way is Sheboyganese, although I should have said "once hey" at the end.  Don't ask why.)

For those of you who live too far away for local news let me explain.  In the recent flooding here, some towns really did get slammed.  Johnson City, near Binghamton, about 40 miles south of us was one of them.  People evacuated.  So did many businesses, Petco amongst the ones where employees left, and therefore no one was hurt.  Except for the 100 animals who were left locked in their cages to drown.  Now, I admit that I am a dog and cat bigot, and it is those that break my heart when I think of them, terrified and trapped, as the flood waters move slowly in.  But there were others, just as worthy of life, depending on the kindness of humans to keep them safe--hamsters and mice and reptiles and, I believe, birds.  And all of them died.  Is this the fault of the entire company? Yes.  The CEO made a statement that the local managers were not familiar with local flooding and so did not know that it would be so bad.  They didn't stay in the store, though, and they didn't make any plans to evacuate the animals should it become necessary.  If they would have asked any of the locals who were around for the floods of 1972, those locals could have told them just how deadly it could be.  And if they were not trained well enough to show compassion in a crisis, how much true compassion is a part of their everyday dealings with the creatures in their care?

And that's why I'm not buying from Petco anymore.  I know it was a tragic accident, but even accidents have consequences, just ask the pirates. 

jack and other things

i cannot believe how long it has been since i wrote last.  so, the most important thing, blogwise, is that my favorite pirate has found a home.  jack has a human dad and a feline sibling named "morgan".  i have not seen him since he was adopted, but i had one progress report and i choose to believe that he is riotously happy.  the odds are good that i am not just delusional.

the other important fact is that i had hand surgery last week and am stuck operating with one hand.  more time available, less dexterity.  hand surgery was because i have a lot of arthritis and no cartilege in some joints,especially in my left thumb joints.  so, no massage work for a couple of months and a limited number of upper case letters when i write.  i could get used to that.  sort of e e cummings-ish.

they removed a bone in my hand, drilled holes in a couple of more bones in the back of my hand, threaded a "harvested" tendon thru the bones and attached the other end to the front of my hand.  both creepy and cool, simultaniously.  oh yeah, they harvested the tendon from me; no cadaverous parts involved.  just for the record-- always demand the really good drugs.  mine were sorely lacking the first couple of days and i was willing to gnaw my arm off.  much better now, i can even use my fingers a little.  they did not give me a purple cast, but my doctor did give me the purple marker they used to write on me.  they also injected cortisone into my right hand while i was out.  (its the only way to have your fingers injected-completely painless)

so here i am with a lot more time on my hand(s), and very little ambition.  i do, however, have lots of reading.  i want to suggest a book that my friend sharon gave me: unsaid, by neil abramson.  it is so well written and so very real in the world in which i find myself.  i have been doing a lot of mcreading, and this very serious book raised the bar for me, but also validated the time and care i give to all the furry people in my life.  i am so proud of the work that carolyn does at briar patch, and i am aware that one of the things that i think she does well is how she handles the death of her patients.  the euthanasias are never easy, but she makes the experience one that is gentle and sweet and, while i would never say that it was good, exactly, i would also not say it was bad.  painful, yes, but profound.  healing.  the book looks at this, as well as looking at the quality of life for all of us living and breathing on this earth, and offers a sort of benediction.

and on that note, i'm going to take my wounded self and go to bed.

Lily

Lily should be "Lily the Wonder Dog", or something that shows her indomitable spirit.  Lily is my best friend's dog.  (And that's a whole other blog, defining "best friend" in middle age".)  Just like Zuza goes to work with me, Lily goes to work with her Mom, with whom I share the office.  Lily has a job there, she is the doorbell, the official greeter, the keep clients happy in the waiting room person.  She absolutely, fluffy head over heels, there is no one as wonderful as you, loves her Mom. She's bouncy and egalitarian and came to her mom  at about age 6, as a previously loved little dog.  She's 10 now, looks--I don't know--young, the picture of health.

I started writing this at two months ago.  It is, unabashedly, a happy ending.  First, Lily was a a rescue dog.  She was a dog that belonged first to a woman who suffered, and then died, from cancer.  The husband was not so happy with a this left-over dog from his wife, and found someone who could take over--first a concerned citizen, and then, a dog person who needed a new dog.

So there she was, Lily, an incredibly happy dog who became the love-at-first-sight dog of a woman--and family--who needed a dog to take the place of a couple of other dogs who died from different cancers a few years earlier.   She looks like a Bichon Frise.  She isn't; she's an unlikely mix of a Schnauzer, a Cocker and a Llasa Apso.  And she's happy...especially all the time that Beth is near, but also when she can be at her job, greeting everyone at work.

Then she had a weird growth on her elbow that turned out to be malignant.  Agony for the humans who love her and an itchy annoyance to her. That resulted in an amputation of her right foreleg, including her shoulder blade.  It was hard to watch her go through it all.  We took her home with us the night after her surgery.  She was so miserable without Beth  and so vocal about it.  However, she made a lasting friend in Lukas who was terribly concerned about her.  He stayed by the side of her crate, poking his nose in through the bars to kiss her face, or wash her ears or otherwise comfort her.  When he was eating his dinner and she began whimpering again, he left it half-finished to sit by her, and we had to move a bed next to her crate so that he could stay there to nurse her. (Zuza and the cats finished off his food when we weren't watching.) 

During the night we got up to give her medication and take her out, and then in the morning, after another trip outside--yes, she was walking 3-legged--we took turns lying on the floor with her while the other one of us could shower and get ready for work.  I was stretched out next to her with my arm around her when Luke came running up, trying lick all of the places that were shaved.  When I convinced him that licking the pain patch was a bad idea, he snuggled down between us, pressed up against her side.  I'm not even sure she noticed, but I certainly felt comforted.

She went home that night, running eagerly to Beth at the hospital, and did have some rough moments in the following week.  But she wanted to run up and down the stairs in the house, and she wanted to be with her beloved friends.  One funny thing that happened as a result of all of this is that she isn't nearly so anxious when she comes to Briar Patch.  You'd think waking up without a leg would make you feel kinda iffy about a place, but it seems that she focuses on the bright side.  Hmmmm.  Life lesson alert.

We had one more scare about a month after her surgery when Beth discovered a suspicious lump at her incision site.  They aspirated it, and after looking at in-house Carolyn was pretty sure that it was just a lymph node that had sort of migrated.  We sent it to an outside lab, and the good news is that she was right. Lily got a clean bill of health.

So, things are unabashedly gleeful.  Lily has returned to her incredibly happy self.  She's even managed to hop up on people's laps again when they are in the waiting room at the office.  She thinks about it a little more than before, but she does it.

And this time, I have visual aids!  Go to YouTube and search for Lilly.dv.  Beth's son Rowan made a wonderful video about her.  (One of my clients said, "Hey, isn't he too young to know that music?"  You'll see what I mean.  Apparently he is a master of the classics, as well as a youthful videographer.)

Rock on, Lily!

George, Parts 2 and 4

George was a hunter from the day he decided not to be afraid.  He was also LOUD.  "I want to go oooooouut!  Nooooowwwww!"  We began answering him very quietly, and soon we were having whispering conversations with him.  He would reply, matching volume to volume until he, too, was whispering.  To this day he has the strangest little meow that is more of a creaking sound than anything else.

His first "kill" was a mouse that Path brought into the bedroom in the middle of the night.  Little baby George was sleeping on my pillow with me and looked over the edge of the bed when I turned the light on.  Path, of course, dropped the very alive little mouse and Speedy Gonzales shot out the bedroom door and into the dining room.  Kindra, Path and little George followed, but the kitten zoomed past the two older cats and nailed that mouse before it reached the far wall.  And then we all chased him into the kitchen, where he stood growling with his mouth full warning us all that it was his mouse and no one could take it from him. 

I believe that he killed it completely accidentally while trying to keep a good grip on it.  How to keep him from eating it?  I grabbed a can of cat food and opened it in front of him.  He sniffed...and thought...and sniffed again.  (Hmmmmm.  Fur and crunchy things or nice ground meat inna can?)  PTTTUE! He spit the mouse on to the floor and leaned in for the cat food.  After that, anytime he caught something I could just show him a can and he'd spit out the prey in favor of a little civilization.

I will share some more of the details of George's life with you all.  And pictures.  I'll look for pictures.  He was, except for the rodents whose lives he cut short, a gentle soul who never once hurt anyone with intention.  Never.  Not one bite, not even a scratch.  In the years that I lived alone with him and his feline family, he always sat cuddled up to me on my left side.  At night, his assigned seat was at my left hip--I kid you not, in 18years, it never changed.  He was overjoyed that I let him go outside--he didn't know that it was because he always came when I called him; because he always was willing to hang out with me; because he seemed to understand what I was thinking and when something threatened us--like a malevolent dachshund, or a wild Tom cat or even your neighborhood toddler--he trusted me to make sure that he was safe. 

Tonight, I just miss him.  I lost my sweet boy last night when we realized that his body was really giving up.  He was developing infections and cancers and things that neither he nor we could combat. Oh my God, I miss him.  For 18 years he was my child, my gardening partner, my friend.  I love him.  Forever.

George, Parts 3 and 1

No kidding, I have a cat named George.  And I'm going to tell his story backwards, I guess.  He will be 18 in a couple of months, which means that he is the one family member who met my Mom when she was still...herself.  He has survived three of my most recent lives, two of his own major illnesses, and being stuck with sharing the name of the stupidest U.S. president in history.  (I tried later to change it to Jordi, after the guy in Star Trek, Next Generation, but I couldn't make it stick, not even in my own mind.)

He's quite ill now.  He has had inflammatory bowel disease for a few years and we have treated it successfully, but now he has pancreatitis, hurts, can't eat and feels pretty ugly.  We put in an esophageal feeding tube yesterday and took x-rays to check the placement, finding that he also has a completely disintegrated disk in his low back--taking after his other mother, Carolyn--which explains some of his strange gait.  And he only weighs 6 and 1/2 pounds.  And I love him, calling this little old man "my boy, my sweet boy", remembering him as the tiny, tiny kitten he was when he entered my life, not ready to eat from a bowl so we had to run out and get a bottle and some formula for him.

I always worry that I am holding on to them too tightly, not being willing to give them the freedom to leave this life when they need to leave, but both Carolyn and Leni--his doctor--assure me that he is so not ready.  George, himself, tells me, too, when I stop being all emotional about it.  He purrs whenever I come into the room, checks out anything that looks like potential food and wants to go out whenever the damn snow stops, so I realize that it's all about my fear, not his.

So, I have to go to the beginning of the story.  This was a couple of relationships ago and we had bought a house in Danby.  We had three cats, one hers and two mine, and now had room for an "ours".  Off to the SPCA!  I had always wanted a gray cat, so that was the mission.  Now this wasn't the new, shiny, no-kill shelter we now have.  This was the old, bunch of cages in one room, "we'll kill ya if you're here too long" shelter of the past.  Eek.  Sad.  Really sad.  No gray cats.  Few kittens, and the ones that were there seemed a little too quiet for healthy kittens.  And all of those incarcerated older cats reaching through the bars of the cages at you.  I left crying and had nightmares for the next few nights.

And then I went back, on a whim, by myself.  Two litters of kittens had come in.  One litter was a robust clump of long-haired soccer players scampering around in their cage playing with a ball.  And in the cage below was a litter of tiny kittens all meowing at the top of their lungs and looking at the ceiling of the cage, obviously concerned that the elephants upstairs were going to come crashing down on them. I reached in and snagged the only one that was not currently yelling.  There were five black kittens who were all male and three tigers, all female.  I wondered if it was like "Lady and the Tramp".  Remember when Lady had puppies and all the girls looked exactly like her, little Cockers, and all the boys looked like their questionably pedigreed Dad?  Any way, I called my partner at work and said, "I found a kitten for us.  He's not exactly gray....he's sort of very dark gray."  Her response was along the lines of "If I say no does that mean you'll be crying and having nightmares again?  Well okay then".  And we had our new "ours".

They bathed him, blow dried him, treated him for ear mites--all of which he protested, loudly, and he was mine.  

When we got home, my partner declared that she got to name him and we were going to have one cat whose name needed no explanation--I tend to give my animals rather fanciful names with tons of meaning, some would say, baggage.  His name was George.  Well, okay then.

George did a lot of clinging to us and crying.  Everything scared him.  After a couple of days, we got the bottle and started feeding him KMR and it was much better.  I woke one morning to find him standing on me, playing with his first toy, fiercely battling a tiny scrap of back material that had fallen on the floor of our sewing room.  It was about two inches long and maybe three quarters of an inch thick.  It was the same color as he was and he knew he could conquer it.  From then on he was a new man.  He didn't win the other cats over for about a week.  My big boy, Path, didn't speak to me for about three days and was shockingly frightened of this little mite.  And Kindra, Path's mother, thought she was done bringing up babies, thank you, and mostly ignored him.  Then one day, Kindra was sleeping on the couch and George got up there and curled into a little ball about two inches away.  She looked at him.  She put her head back down.  He moved a little closer.  She looked at him.  Put her head back down.  He moved so that he was touching her.  She looked at him, looked at me, sighed a huge sigh and reached over to wash his head. "Well, all right, if I have to..." He snuggled just a little closer and they both fell asleep.  As soon as she accepted him, Path gave him grudging acceptance as well.  My partner's cat never did like him, but she lived her life praying for the abduction of my cats by someone who lived very, very far away, so it was okay.

So there you have the beginning of his tale.  Keep my sweet boy in your prayers or good thoughts or whatever, that the end of his story isn't going to happen in the foreseeable future, and I'll be back with his exciting, swashbuckling story soon.