Retrospective: Pippin and Mourning

Fair Warning: This post was painful to write and it probably is to read, too. 

Yesterday, Sept 26, was the two year anniversary of the day I woke up and found everything had changed while I slept, and I didn't even get to hold him while he went gentle into that good night. I know it was a gentle passing because of the way his body was lying when I saw him seconds after I woke up ... because I was looking for him like I did every morning.

I still remember that horrible moment. Like it just happened. The vivid realization. Seeing him and realizing it was a body and he wasn't there anymore. A pain so all encompassing I wanted to scream but it seemed too melodramatic and he wouldn't have wanted that. So I just held the pain in and it's still there.

Still hurting.

Two years later, it doesn't hurt the same. It's more like a constant dull ache. Always I think of him, in everything I see and do. When my loved and lovely boys do something, and I think, "Pippin used to do that" or "that's not something Pippin used to do." When I drive in my car, especially on interstate, I look over and I don't see Pippin sitting calmly in the passenger seat, and it hurts.

The memories of him are fading, and that hurts too, because only my mom and myself knew Pippin the way he really was, when he wasn't apprehensive or nervous. And the more the memories fade the more he's really gone, and the worse it hurts, and yet the more the memories fade the less it hurts because I don't remember the feelings as intensely.

Which is all very confusing and I don't like confusing things, especially when they're my own emotions.

I've built myself another life, with Colby and Apricot and Thimble, by sheer determination. I've tried to live in the present, to appreciate them and their relationships with me and with each other. I've tried to, in the parlance of popular therapy talk, "move on." What rational reason is there to hold on to the pain?

And still, I feel like it's all a dream. It started out a nightmare and now it's not that bad but it's still a dream. It's not real. Nothing around me is real. Nothing quite matters because one morning, I'll wake up, and everything will be back to normal. Just me and Pippin.

Again with the confusing: I don't know if I even want to wake up. I like my three boys. I like having multiple cats and all the interactions and affections and fun times we share. And that hurts and feels like I'm betraying Pippin's memory.

So if I like this life I've built ... if I love my boys and I do, far more than I realize, I think ... why do I still get this sensation sometimes that it's all a dream?

I don't remember much about my cat companion before Pippin: Pizza. I do remember that I had this same dream-like life sensation after he died, and it lasted for about five years, and I feel like I wasted those five years with Pippin because I wasn't quite here.

And now I'm not quite here again.

Emotions are very difficult and confusing and complex, and I do wish they would submit to logic and rationality.

Friday night I realized what that night was, that two years ago on that night was the last time I saw Pippin alive. I tried to put that aside. When you look at it logically, anniversaries are stupid. What makes that day any more special? Just because the planet I'm living on went around its sun twice? That doesn't make sense.

And yet somehow it does matter, and I felt all hurting and dream like and the boys noticed and didn't like it; each of them trying to draw me out and make me pay attention to them and not to whatever was making me so sad and distant. Apricot kept bumping my leg, hand, or head, whatever he could get at. Colby followed me around looking pitiful (ie, pick me up!) and Thimble kept doing minor misbehaviors because he's unfortunately discovered that I get distracted from what I was doing or thinking by having to go correct him, and sometimes he does things just to get that to happen.

I guess grief really is a process, and it takes a very long time. Maybe it'll never go away completely, the pain, I mean, and I'll just make it part of my self the way I do other, more physical, pain. And maybe that's not a bad thing. If I always miss him, just not overwhelmingly, then ... well, I don't know if I can finish that thought in a way that makes any sense.

But it feels like it can be okay. One day. In the future.

Not now.

Colby Visits the Groomer

Poor Colby.

I couldn't keep up with his mats anymore--the fur on his tummy was getting so matted and tangled it was bothering him to the point that he was asking me to try to get them out. Of course he doesn't like me picking at them and pulling at them (who does?) and so he'd leave soon after. And I'm just so tired these days, what with the inadequate breathing and all.

So I decided that I would at least call the groomer at my vet's place, and talk to her and see what I thought.

Her name is Katina, and she seemed very knowledgeable and sympathetic and willing to do just what I wanted and not insist on a full groom or nothing. She said she'd have to shave his tummy short, that you can't just trim it because you risk cutting them due to the ins and outs and delicate skin and the little nipples you have to account for. She also said that I could be there while she did it, and it would only take ten minutes or so, although she mentioned that sometimes they misbehave more when their person is there than when they're alone with her. I laughed and said, oh, like toddlers!

On Tuesday, the 15th (when this post says it was posted although I wrote it later), I took Colby to visit Katina after work.  For a few days before that, I kept telling them that on Tuesday I was going to come home and then leave again, and Colby was going with me, but I would bring him back safely in a little while.

When I told Thimble this on the Sunday before, he looked down the hallway to where Colby, happy-go-lucky, was lying on the carpet and being totally oblivious and totally innocent, and then he looked back at me, and the skeptical look on his face said it all "um, you can't even keep yourself safe; how am I supposed to trust you with my little brother?"

I'm afraid Thimble doesn't think much of my emotional abilities. Figures I'd end up with one of my "therapy" cats being aware of his position as such and being skeptical of my abilities elsewhere!

But Thimble didn't have a choice: I was taking Colby with me Tuesday afternoon. I put him (Colby) in the carrier (that Thimble sleeps in at night) and toted Colby and the carrier through the house from the pink room where Thimble sleeps to the kitchen where the door is. At that point I gave up on the idea of using the carrier. I felt like it was too big and awkward and Colby was too small inside the carrier and I was slinging him from one side to the other and was more likely to hurt him than help.

In the kitchen, then, I put on my kangaroo pouch and scooped Colby out of the carrier and into the pouch and grabbed his harness to put on him later (not my best decision but nothing bad came of it).

Colby has always been a bit odd physically. He can run, jump, and climb with the best of them, although sometimes his distance judgement is a bit off. But when I'm interacting with him, it's like he goes kind of floppy, He's very easy to knock off balance or even knock over. He also seems to be double-jointed, although I don't know if a cat even can be double-jointed. When he sits on my lap, like a human, his back legs drape over mine in such a way that makes me wonder about his hip joints.

None of this seems to bother him. In fact he seems to like being that way; he can cuddle in situations where Thimble just can't make himself fit. I thought he would be able to curl up in the pouch rather well.

He did, but only on the trip back. On the trip to the vet's office, he was not pleased and was standing in the pouch on my leg with his front paws over my shoulder and his face pressed into the side of mine. He made unhappy meow comments too. Not constantly or with any kind of pattern, so he wasn't carsick. Just not happy with the situation.

Katina works in the grooming/boarding area in the bottom floor of the vet's office. (It's against a hill, so you go around back to get to the bottom part.) She was very nice to both me and Colby. She not only let me stay in the room while she worked on Colby, but she let me help hold him.

I appreciated this because of that whole weird floppy thing. I had explained it to her on the phone but it's hard to explain unless you're actually handling him and you can feel it. I'd actually said that it wasn't so much that I was afraid she wouldn't hold him firmly enough and he'd get away from her and hurt himself; I was afraid that she would hold him too hard, expecting a normal cat's strength against hers, and end up hurting him.

Since I held the front paws, I could kind of control how much he had to be held by the back paws. She had a table that was wobbly and waist high. The wobbly part is on purpose--I didn't even have to have that explained. When a cat feels unsteady, they have much less of a tendency to leap off the surface than if they feel like they have a good launching pad underneath them.

Colby wanted to look at the shaver once she turned it on, so she let him sniff it. And then she carefully shaved his tummy from between his front legs down to his, er, "sanitary" area (love that euphemism!) and worked around the mats and against the mats until she got those, too. None of these mats were huge yet; I didn't want to let him get to that state.

About halfway through I could feel Colby start to tremble just a bit, and asked if we could pause for a moment. She did, and Colby surged up into my arms against my chest, head snuggled into my neck. In just a brief moment of this he was okay again, and we could continue. It just got a bit much there for a second for him, I guess.

Colby's a rather phlegmatic cat, for all he's a bit of a whiner. He'll put up with stuff that Thimble would definitely be questioning quite thoroughly, but he'll also complain about stuff that Thimble wouldn't even blink at. So of all the cats to need a grooming session probably twice a year (depending how fast his fur grows back and starts to mat again), Colby's the best of the three.

On the way home he sat in the kangaroo pouch, sweet as you please, and didn't rise up to investigate location until we were almost home. And we had to sit through a light at least twice, it being rush hour and all. During the red lights I gazed down at him and petted him--he likes the eye contact. He almost wiggles with pleasure during these moments.

When I got him home, the other two, Thimble included, greeted him with a brief, 'oh, you, glad you're home,' and proceeded to thoroughly investigate me! I'm not sure why I got investigated as intensely as I was expecting them to investigate Colby.

After I met muster finally, Thimble did walk to where Colby was lying on a kitchen rug and give him a brief once-over. Colby rolled onto his side to show Thimble his new hairdo, and Thimble seemed unimpressed but not upset, either.

The night after his tummy shave. 

Well, Colby seems to like his new 'do. The next day he waited until I got home to throw up a solid hairball (no food included, unusual for cats), and his fur was the nicest I've ever seen it. Apparently he'd spent all day grooming. I think maybe having all that fur was discouraging him, so when I had the most difficult part removed, he felt capable of actually taking care of the rest of it, instead of just giving up like usual.

He also curled up under the comforter one morning after that, up by my shoulder so he could see me. That was a surprise, his little black-masked face under the white comforter. Both of them like going "under" the covers but both of them get too hot too fast so they can't stay there long. I think Colby liked being cooler (because he definitely is now) and enjoyed a morning of staying under the comforter until I woke up and saw him there.

I'm very glad he didn't hold a grudge and likes his tummy shave. Pippin would have been dreadfully horrified--he'd rather I tug out the tangles than cut them off. I think Thimble would be shocked and offended, as though I'd said he couldn't do a good enough job on his own! And Apricot probably would have retreated into catatonia and never come out of it, given his personality.

When Katina did the shave she left his side fur hanging down, so while I can tell Colby isn't as "full" underneath, you really can't see that he's got short tummy fur unless he rolls over and shows you. And that's nice too--I like my cats to look "natural" like they're supposed to, with no clever designed cuts with names. He feels very plush on his tummy now, too, and very warm.

In Which Thimble Tries to Mail Colby to Australia. Again.

The box Thimble is standing on, with the word Danby on it, contains the old microwave. Yeah, that one. From way back. They like playing around and on it, but I finally decided to get rid of it because I'm getting too tired to be able to lift it onto the table every time I want to vacuum.

The box Colby is in, and getting pushed back into, is the substitute. There's another one and I plan to put them together so they're rectangular, but the three of them are having such fun with this one that I'm going to wait until they get bored with it again and then "make it new."

Apricot and the Hailstorm

A few weeks ago, the Friday evening before Labor Day weekend, we had a big storm. It rained and it thundered and Apricot, as expected, went under the sofa.

I was trying to do stuff on the desk in the guest bedroom (as my desk in the living room is also where all the books are that I'm allergic to). The boys (Thimble and Colby) were acting the way they normally do in a storm. A little concerned and checking in with me periodically to make sure I was still okay with what the outdoors was doing, and mostly just interested in the activity outside the windows.

All of a sudden there came this horrible racket, like someone had emptied multiple trays of ice over my house, only it just kept on and on. And loud ... hoo boy it was loud. Both Thimble and Colby ran into the pink room (the guest bedroom) and wanted me to come make sure this was okay too since it hadn't been doing this. Ever. 

Honestly, from the sounds I was a little alarmed myself, and came out to the living room (guided by two anxious giant kittens) to see what in the world was going on.

Oh. It really was just ice falling on the house. A lot of it. We were having a hailstorm. I can count on the fingers of one hand how often we've had hailstorms at this house since I moved in 8 years ago, and never did we have this much hail for this long. It was only a little more than pea-sized, so nothing majorly impressive as to size, but it lasted for about fifteen minutes.

During that fifteen minutes, I tried to go back to doing what I'd been doing. I kept getting interrupted by anxious kittens who were quite positive that the shenanigans going on outside should not be allowed and I should do something about it. All my attempts at reassurance fell by the wayside as Thimble, especially, tried to keep an eye on the hailstorm out of every window at the same time. 

This meant that he was running full speed from one window to the other, up and down the hallway as he went from the living room to the pink room and back out. (The other two bedrooms at the hallway end have their windows covered due to one of them being my actual bedroom and the other being the room in which I watch tv.)

At one point he collided with me as I was going through the hallway, and he'd been bounding so high in his full-tilt run that what he collided with was my knee. He's not that tall. 

About ten minutes into the hail part of the storm I heard a plaintive meowing start up. It was higher-pitched than Thimble or Colby and not really that familiar to me. I turned around in my chair at the pink room desk, and to my utter astonishment, I saw Apricot in the hallway, crying.

He had emerged from under the sofa and come out just far enough from the doorway into the hall to where he could see me. And he was meowing, asking for help.

Poor baby was so frightened by the noise of the hailstorm that he came out of his hiding spot (which normally takes care of his fear quite nicely) and wanted me to comfort him. This feral-raised cat came to a human for help with his fear.

While I was very sorry he was so frightened, and if I could have put a magic bubble around my house so the hail didn't fall on it, I certainly would have ... I was also amazed and pleased that he turned to me for help and comfort.

Moving quietly and softly, I went to him and gathered him up into my arms. I have been doing this randomly when he's not scared--sometimes I kneel down to pet him and sometimes I pick him up to pet him, so he had lost his wariness of being carried, and was I ever glad at that moment that I'd been working on that.

Carrying him, I went back into the tv room and sat down on the floor with my back against the sofa. I figured since being under the sofa was comforting to him, getting as close to being under it with him might also be helpful. I held him in my arms with my knees up so he was encased by my body as much as possible, and petted him gently and slowly the way he likes. 

After a few minutes his alarm was reduced enough that he wanted back under the sofa again, and I let him go. While he was in my arms, Thimble had come to see if he was okay. Thimble's version of seeing if you're okay is to shove his face into yours, getting as close as possible, like a half-blind doctor trying to look at your irises or something. It's not particularly comforting if you're Apricot and you're already scared. Thimble didn't appreciate being waved off (read: pushed away) but he allowed as to how it was probably okay and instead he sat a few feet away, watching us closely until Apricot hid under the sofa again. 

Then he wanted to go in and reassure Apricot, but as Thimble often gets side-tracked when he's reassuring the other cats and ends up pouncing on them to initiate play, I didn't think that was such a good idea either, so I scooped Thimble up on the way out to distract him from that particular idea.

The hailstorm stopped hailing ice soon afterwards, much to everyone's relief. It only brought down small twigs and leaves and stuff in my yard, but it brought down whole limbs and even trees in some other people's yards on my street and in my neighborhood.

The power only flickered once during the storm. The next morning around 9:30, during my breakfast at my parents' house, the power went out and stayed out till 6 pm that night. The storm ended in the middle of the night--by 9:30 the next morning it was blue skies and lovely. I still feel that the power had no business going out then when it had stayed on throughout the whole storm. 

Thimble: The Velcro Cat

A few Sundays ago I had a meltdown. The good side is that I had it at home, not out in public where people could stare and be astonished at a grown woman huddled in a heap, rocking and crying with her eyes squeezed shut and tears leaking out anyway.

It's not important why I had the meltdown. Basically everything I'm dealing with just became too much for a moment.

What's important (to me, anyway) is the cats' reactions to this. I haven't had a meltdown around them,  any of them. Which means it's been over a year since I had one--and that's good news.

So, I reached the point where crying was too exhausting to continue, and looked up.

Thimble was inches away from me, sitting and watching with a very concerned look on his face. I was in the bedroom with my back against the bed, on the floor. I could see out the bedroom door and there were Colby and Apricot in the hallway, waiting anxiously.

Poor Thimble. I believe he got deputized to go in and brave the scary noises mommy was making and find out what was going on and if I was okay. I reassured him, and praised him, and asked if I could have a hug, because I needed one. He was amenable. He loves to be hugged.

One of the reasons I love the Maine Coon breed is that they are big enough to be hugged, and most of them tolerate it and some of them enjoy it. Smaller cats feel too overwhelmed by big old you hugging them and dislike it.

Thimble is definitely a Maine Coon velcro cat. More than Colby, he has to be near me at (almost) all times. If he's not in the room with me, it's odd.

I have been spending more time in the bedroom because I'm allergic to the books in the living room and the tv room has no good lighting. I was there playing games on my phone one day and Colby was curled up against my legs.

I noticed, finally, because he'd done that cat thing where they sneak in and curl up and after a while you're all, "how long have you been there?" And when I noticed Colby's presence, I also noticed Thimble's absence.

"Colby," I said, "I love that you're right there, and you're making my foot nice and warm," (I had my feet to one side so he was only on one of them), "and not to be greedy or anything, but where is Thimble?"

At that very moment, a huge paw planted itself on the back of my head. I was on the floor, and I have a tall bed. Sitting like that, the top of the mattress is about an inch above the top of my head. Thimble had been up there the whole time, literally watching over me.

And that paw is huge! It's bad enough when he goes padding around on his paws, but when he spreads his "fingers" out to grasp something or feel something, his paw looks like and certainly felt like it was as big as the palm of my hand. Granted I have small hands, but that's huge for a cat paw!

Every so often, though, I will find myself alone with Colby or Apricot, and no Thimble anywhere. I will find him at the other end of the house at these points in time. I think, although I can't be sure, that some kind of negotiation takes place whereby Thimble gives the other cat (usually Colby) some "alone time" with me.

Which is really sweet of him.

I have made having a velcro cat sound wonderful, but sometimes it's a bit much (like when I'm on the toilet and not having a good time of it, and he wants me to explain that I'm okay and at that moment, I'm really a bit occupied for explanations!).

But I'm very rarely ever alone, and if I am and I don't want to be, all I have to do is call out kitty names and someone (usually Thimble) will come running in. And it helps.

Public Service Announcement: Air Registers are Sharp

The saga of my allergies goes on. So I'm not allergic to my cats anymore (which is wonderful) but I am allergic to mold in my books (dreadful, dreadful).

I had noticed that the air register near one of the bookshelves actually had black mold spores growing on it, and I'd taken a chlorox wipe and cleaned it.

Last Thursday I had a bit of extra energy when I got home from work (have no idea where from) and decided I should probably wipe down the other two registers in the living room as well. These are trapped between a cat tree and the piano, and between two bookshelves for the other one. So not easy to get to.

I was wiping them down with a chlorox wipe, leaning over. This meant that my fingers were at the wrong (acute) angle to the air register metal lines, whatever you call them. You know what I mean.

You know how cats don't like bleach? Well, when I first started out, all three cats were giving me a wide berth, wrinkling their noses and making faces at me. ("Stop making it all stinky!")

As I continued, however, they started crowding me. I thought maybe it was because I was practically in one of their cat trees, but they followed me away from the cat tree to the other side of the room to crowd in close while I wiped down that register too.

Now this is odd, I thought. Whatever could be so fascinating about this wipe that it's overcoming their natural aversion to bleach? I glanced down at it, not really thinking I'd be able to see what they were smelling, only to find that my white wipe was covered in large red blotches. Bright scarlet red.

Welcome to the world of autism. My first thought is not, "I hurt myself."

My first thought was, amusingly enough, "My air registers are bleeding?" Followed closely by, "no, that doesn't make any sense." And then, "could one of the cats have hurt themselves and bled on the air register and I wiped it off?"

No, that doesn't make sense either. I would have noticed that, plus it's bright red, fresh blood. Where did it come from if not the cats ... oh. Me.

So I looked down at my hand and sure enough, I was bleeding copiously from a slice across my first two fingers. Fairly deep on the middle finger. The same middle finger I nearly cut off at work fifteen years or so ago. (That scar is on the other side though--this slice was across the back, and almost at the nail bed.)

Sigh. I went and bandaged myself up. My middle finger refused to stop bleeding, so I put a waterproof bandaid on it and held it tightly and above heart level for ten minutes or so. Thimble was quite intrigued with this whole process and wanted to help. but bless him, didn't get into the actual bandaid. I had to unwrap it and lay it out on the bathroom counter with one hand while I pressed the injured finger of the other hand into a wad of paper towel, and Thimble could easily have gotten all kinds of investigatory closeness into the sticky upside down bandaid.

A week later the injury is nearly all healed. It's interesting that I never felt anything, not then, not later. My mom jokingly suggested I have no feeling in that finger, but she may be actually correct. The (much deeper) slice I gave it way back when left the tip of the finger feeling very weird ever since--not pain, but just "strange." It is entirely possible that the back of the finger above that area lacks nerves now. Which means I have one more thing I have to be careful of.

I'll tell you, though. When I went to wipe down the air registers in my bedroom two days later, I made sure to wear thick gardening gloves!