Like Sands Through the Hourglass

Last Monday and Tuesday I had all this energy and so many ideas for what I was going to do with my "5-day weekend." Now it's Sunday and, other than a couple loads of laundry, paying some bills, getting Calvin groomed, and hanging out with the cats, I appear to have done essentially nothing. I have no idea where the time went --or the energy I had in anticipation of this vacation.

It's not exactly that I regret sitting around doing nothing for the last 4 days. I think I'm just having a really hard time having an "adult summer" this year. For one thing, I'm keenly feeling the loss of my childhood summers this time. Summers when I was a kid meant sleeping in and playing all day. It meant running through the sprinkler and the feel of wet grass and mud in between my toes; the occasional popsicle; climbing trees; riding bikes; running around in the "fog" behind the mosquito spray trucks; drying off in front of the box fan after a bath; hours spent working on jigsaw puzzles; trips to the public library and staying up into the wee hours of the morning reading --I read SO many books every summer! I often stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Cory for the 4th of July, playing with good sparklers at their neighbor's house (not these crappy sparklers they make now), and watching the Springfield city fireworks from lawn chairs in the parking lot of Gabatoni's with the neighbors. Heck, I think my heathen atheist soul even misses Vacation Bible School.

I've never completely gotten over the disappointment of losing week after week after week of freedom each summer, but it's usually not this hard.

I don't think it's just the desire for a full-summer vacation, though. My lack of interest in going to work has been there most of the spring, too, I think. I just want to do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it. Especially since I never know when the energy and the desire are going to hit at the same time. Like this weekend: the weather is absolutely perfect for working outside, going on a picnic, hiking, painting the house. But I don't feel like doing any of those things. Which should be okay, because I also have a list of "quiet" things I need/want to do. Heck, some of them are piled next to me right now, waiting until I finish writing this.

So why do I feel like I'm doing it all wrong? Why am I feeling an increasing amount of sadness, regret, and longing? Is it because our summers are so short, so perfect, and so precious? Is it because I feel like I'm getting older every day? That my life gets shorter every day? Is it because I'm worried that I'm wasting my time on the wrong priorities? Is it because I want more out of life than I have a right to expect?

All I can say at this moment is that I do NOT want to go back to work tomorrow. I'm supposed to be covering a bunch of items at a meeting tomorrow, and I could care less. I haven't been keeping a list of them as they've come up; I've actually been brushing them aside until I have to deal with them. Which might actually be a good thing in that I haven't been obsessing over work things. But, it also means I'm going to have to go back through weeks' worth of emails tomorrow morning to prep for the meeting since I haven't been prepping all along. Which is fine, too. I just don't want to do it.

I suspect that I need my job in order to keep my life structured and my brain stable. One of the downsides of those long summer vacations was that the longer I did nothing, the lazier I got. And the more moody, dissatisfied, listless, and/or depressed I got. I realized this in my college years, and it's the main reason I'm not sure I would completely quit working even if I could afford to do so.

But I don't think that's what is happening today. This feels more like, dare I say it, some sort of mini mid-life crisis. I'm tired of every day being devoured by the "have to" so there's no time or energy left for the "want to." I'm tired of feeling like the hourglass of my life is emptying faster and faster while I'm being sucked down into the merciless sand. This summer feels different. I feel a little more alive, a little more motivated, a little more aware, a little more appreciative. And I want desperately to relish it. More than I can remember wanting it before, I want to have all the time in the world to do whatever I want until I've sated that need and am ready to go back to the old daily routine.

Instead I'm going to post this and then move on to working on my "quiet" projects, like typing up my "affirmations" I created for my counseling work. (I can't use my tools if I'm not carrying my toolbox. I might have to add more tools to my box now, but...) And adding information to my gardening spreadsheets so I can actually find the information I need when I need it instead of having to flip back through my garden journals trying to find what I planted where. I'm going to drink my coffee and watch the chipmunk and squirrels on the bird feeders, and maybe refill the bird bath. Hopefully by the end of the day I will feel like I did enough productive things and relaxing things that my vacation wasn't completely wasted.

Learning to Love Stella?

First of all, I can't believe it has been two years since I posted anything. Second, I can't believe it has been almost two years to the day. Weird. But that's beside the point, which is that this spring I realized I had a mystery daylily growing in the "foster home" bed where some of my plants live until I can find them a more permanent spot. I had some issues with people driving over my plant tags last year, so I wasn't sure if they all ended up back in the right places and I was short a tag. All I could do was wait to see what kind of flowers it produced. Today I noticed a little tiny fading gold flower and Aha!: last year a friend at work gave me a little potted daylily that she didn't want to keep. I had never recorded it in my Master Planting List or my Where Are My Daylilies spreadsheet, and I had forgotten all about it, poor thing.

Except I'm pretty sure it's a Stella d'Oro daylily, and I have strong mixed feelings about them.

On the one hand, they are plants. Any hardcore gardener has a certain kind of love for all plants just for being plants. Even plants I hate, like ragweed, tug at my conscience when I attempt to destroy them. Except maybe the weeds competing with my plants. But even as I'm trying to pull them out by the roots, I sometimes grudgingly admire plants like quackgrass for their resilience and ability to thrive. I am also aware that my hatred is completely subjective and based on the interference of these plants with my selfish desires.

Besides being plants, Stellas are daylilies, which are Nature's gift to crappy gardeners. Okay, they are Nature's gift to all gardeners. Okay, to everyone. They come in a truly astonishing number of colors, patterns, forms, sizes, and bloom times, and most of them will grow just about anywhere. The ever-present orange fulvas apparently cannot be eradicated. For a while I dismissed fulvas as common "ditch lilies," looking at them with disdain and thinking of them as not worthy of being included in a "real" garden. But I've learned to appreciate their vigor and their contribution to making the world a better place. There's a clump I'm looking at through the window right now that is glowing in the sunlight and it's absolutely beautiful. Just because they are common doesn't mean they aren't valuable.

Which I'm thinking is an important thing for me to keep in mind with Stellas seeing as how they've become sickeningly common. They are Professional Plant Breeding's gift to lazy, uncreative landscaping. Because they are daylilies they are easy to grow anywhere and everywhere, and they bloom early and continuously all summer. And so thousands of landscapers have planted millions of these damn things as islands in seas of orange mulch outside nearly every business in America that uses landscaping services.

I hate this. Passionately, deeply hate this with almost every inch of my gardener's soul. This may have to do with the fact that I think most professional landscaping is completely devoid of any aesthetic or environmental value. It is almost always more of an affront to the eye and to Nature than it is an enhancement. It's all show and no soul, and it's not even a good show.

Folks, I'm going to tell you some hard truths.

• Orange ("red") mulch is an abomination. It is not a natural color for mulch, and I have no idea why anyone decided to dye mulch this color. It doesn't "go with" anything --not the houses and buildings it surrounds nor the plants stranded in it. It isn't even cheaper than other colors (at least not based on homeowner prices for the stuff you get at Lowe's or Home Depot). 
• Mulch's value is not as a substitute for groundcover plants. You are not supposed to cover vast swaths of ground with it and then plop a few flowers here and there in the middle of it. Especially since...
• Mulch does not eliminate weeds. It may help reduce them, but they still make it through. If you think weeds look bad in general, notice how much crappier it looks when you've got random weeds growing up through swaths of mulch. You might as well just have planted a nice grass in all that space. 
• Mulch should not be used because people are too lazy and/or cheap to plant and/or maintain a more appropriate groundcover. This is the only reason I can think of for all that damn mulch. It's easier to blow a bunch of mulch down every spring than it is to plant a nice, low-growing variety of grass that might require an occasional trimming. (Which is, of course, nonsense because there are all kinds of ornamental grasses that require little to no mowing or maintenance. And that's not even considering the various other groundcover options besides grass.)
• Mulch should not be orange. I've said it before and this won't be the last time either. This may not even be my first diatribe against it. There is no argument you can offer that will make me accept orange mulch as having any value, and I will judge you all the more harshly for defending it. If you use it, just never let me know or you might be dead to me. I hate it that much. 

I'm realizing that it might not be fair to blame the landscapers if they are just responding to the wants of their customers. Perhaps they are ready and willing to do something different, but none of their customers want to make the initial investment to plant a more permanent solution. Of course, a more permanent solution also removes the need for repeat business, so maybe the landscapers are perfectly happy to keep mulching away. I really have no idea. I know nothing about the costs of professional landscaping options. 

What I do know is that Stella d'Oro daylilies are EVERYWHERE. I sort of hate them because of their ubiquity. I sort of hate them because of how they are planted --one plant per square yard of mulch. I sort of hate them because to me they represent the laziness, the complete lack of creativity, and the pretension that masquerades as landscaping. 

But talk about pretension, oh black pot. Do you think people who dabble in easy gardening shouldn't even bother? No. Isn't it better that they at least try? Yes, I think it generally is. Dabbling can evolve into a passion or kindle a desire to learn more and to grow as a gardener.* Is there no beauty or value to be found in something because it is common? I should know better. True, Stella d'Oro flowers are one of my least favorite colors, but so were fulva daylilies at one point. I "hate" magenta flowers, too, and yet I've found exceptions that I like. Perhaps a bit of warm gold is just what I need. One resilient and thriving specimen plant saved from the trash can certainly find a home somewhere in the rainbow that is my yard, especially nestled between such a wide and interesting variety of other (naturally- and limitedly-mulched) plants.

*The individual dabbler, like the individual plant, may deserve encouragement, but the companies perpetrating bad landscaping judgment still ought to be taken to task. It's better to have no trees than one tiny, sad, suffering tree suffering in the middle of a giant parking lot. That's like having a bear in a tiny cage at a gas station because people like the idea of seeing "nature up close." People like the idea of flowers outside their McDonalds, but that's not an excuse to plant a row of Stellas spaced feet away from each other with orange mulch for miles on every side. The thing I have to remember is that I feel sorry for the tree and I feel sorry for the bear, so I ought to feel sorry for the flowers. The best thing I can do is to give a better life than that to this plant that ended up in my hands. 

Something is Going to Kill Me & It Might as Well be Cheesecake

As a general rule, I try to plan ahead for everything and prepare myself for the worst. Okay, I don't always succeed. But at least my less-than-perfect choices create a perpetual state of guilt, so I have that going for me. (And when all my thinking ahead pays off, it's worth it. If you want to make sure you are often right and seldom disappointed, I highly recommend a life of anxiety and pessimism.)

So where do the dying and the cheesecake fit in? In this part right here where I point out that:
a) You can't prevent everything. (Believe me, I've tried.)
b) Everyone dies. Even healthy people.
c) There is no perfect path, not even the healthiest ones. There is only an infinite realm of possible choices.
d) One person's set of choices is not the right path for everyone else.
e) If your path includes eating lots of cheesecake and dying due to complications from cheesecake consumption, your path is not "wrong," your death is not some sort of failure.

This is not the first time I've realized this. It might not even be the first time I've discussed it. But it's something I have obviously not internalized to the point that it is my default thought process. So if I'm repeating myself, I'm sorry-not-sorry. I need to repeat this until it's all that I hear, and until it's all that everyone else hears in their heads.

Being thin is not a virtue. It doesn't make you a good person. It doesn't even make you a better person than someone else just because they happen to be fatter. It's not a sign of psychological and/or cognitive superiority. It's not an indicator of moral superiority. Being thin doesn't stop you from dying.

Being fat is not a crime. It's not a sin. It's not a moral failure. It's not a psychological failure. It's not a cognitive weakness. Being fat is not an actual cause of death. 

Body fat levels and body size are not simply results of individual control. They are not simply the result of calories in vs. calories out. There are genetic factors. There are metabolic, hormonal, and other biological factors. There are gut biome factors. There are nutritional factors. There are the biological set points, levels, and default processes that are the accumulation of a person's lifetime of choices. There is the individualized interaction of all factors for each person. And there's the fact that science keeps changing what it "knows" about all these factors.

When you put that all together you find there is no magic formula. There is no right answer.

Which is why runners have heart attacks, vegetarians get cancer, people in the "healthy" BMI category commit suicide, and fat people die of diseases that they could never have prevented with a "better" diet and more exercise.  

I could go on ad nauseam with examples of how "health" and death are not direct results of any given body weight or any designated measurement of body fat or any particular diet. I could write millions of words to explore what being "healthy" really means. But I'm tired of participating in a society-wide obsession with the subject. Life is already hard enough. I'm a bit of a hedonist, and I find enjoyment in relatively unhealthy food. If you don't like that, bite me. There's plenty of me to go around.

Too Old For This, Not Old Enough to Escape

There is a set of thoughts that has been weighing on my mind with increasing heaviness over the past few years, a tangle of thoughts regarding money, happiness, purpose, value, worth, sacrifice, fulfillment, responsibility.

What do I really need to make me happy?
What makes life worth living besides happiness?
Do I have a right to be happy? Does anyone have a right to happiness? Do I have a right to try to make myself happy?
Should I feel guilty for taking what I want if I'm not actively harming people to get it?
How much sacrifice is enough?
How much contentment is enough? How much responsibility do I have for creating my own sense of contentment, fulfillment, and acceptance no matter what the circumstances?
How much do I owe to other people? How much responsibility do I have to the rest of the world?
Am I a good person? Am I a good enough person? How much do I care about becoming a better person?
How much responsibility do I have to change? To fight against myself when what I want is at odds with what I should be?
Would I be happier or at least more at peace with myself if I forced myself to do and be what I'm told is right?
What are the consequences of rejecting moral standards adhered to by my friends and family? Is maintaining social cohesion its own moral imperative? Will I be content with accepting the consequences for failing to adhere?
Would I be happier if I stopped caring so much about what other people think?

These questions have weighed upon my mind even more so in the last 6 months as I've become increasingly frustrated with being unable to find a solution to the one overriding problem that has emerged: I don't want to work full time anymore, but I can't accept the consequences of not doing so.

Money and time. It's all about money and time.

It's probably also about aging, being at least a partial introvert, dealing with the circumstances of my own particular life experience, and how my personality and brain are responding to the world at large as it changes.

I believe I was born to be a housewife, but I was also born to have some sort of career. I want to have some work to do and to be able to put my brain to good use. And I want a paycheck. But I am sick of not having the time or energy to connect with the things that fulfill me and give life some meaning. I am sick of trying to cram everything that isn't work into the two days between work weeks. And I'm sick of these things being robbed of their restorative value when they end up being forced efforts.

I am literally sick from these things. Over the last 6 months I have made myself sick from the stress and anxiety of not having the time to do the things that I need to do beyond work. I was sick from being up at night with a sick cat and but still having to get up at 4 in the morning to start my 12-hour work day routine. I was sick from trying to figure out how to squeeze vet appointments around my work schedule. I was sick from taking days off to take care of my dying cat and grieving her loss, and knowing that those "vacation" days were being traded off for actual relaxing days off later. I was even sick from trying to squeeze otherwise-relaxing social events into an already-too-tight schedule.

In the last couple of months, the stress of all work and no play has brought me as close to either some sort of clinical depression or some sort of anxiety disorder as I've been in years. It's brought me as close to being suicidal as I ever want to be again. (Not as close as I've been in the past, but that was far too close than anyone should have gone without getting help.) It gets better --much better-- after I have a work day off, and then starts to creep back over me until I have another work day off. Which makes it seem all the more obvious that having more days at home is definitely one answer.

I just don't know how to make it a viable answer. I can't quit work. I doubt I could get another job that was even remotely as flexible and fulfilling as the one I have. And that wouldn't really help because the problem isn't my job; it's working full time. But, I can't afford to switch to part-time, regardless of whether it was at my current job or a new job. The one hope I had --working from home one or two days a week-- seemed to be just over the horizon, but has stalled indefinitely.

I'm starting a four-day weekend thanks to having the rest of the windows installed today and tomorrow. And despite the fact that I'm writing this downer of an entry I already feel better for having these days off. Despite the fact that I have to deal with the phone guy tomorrow and yet another bill for having them try to fix a problem they can't seem to find. Despite the fact that I am expecting the vet to tell me that Gordon has cancer. Despite the fact that a cancer diagnosis will mean being forced to make extremely hard decisions. Despite the fact that choosing treatment would mean I could very well have to deplete my entire reserves of both emotional strength and vacation time to deal with vet visits and cat care. Despite the fact that it could mean that I might not have any time left to take off when Mom is here in September or that Mom might never get to meet Gordon. I don't see Life making anything any easier in the near future. But dealing with it all would be exponentially more difficult if I hadn't been able to take a couple of sick days in the last few weeks and to take these two days off.

Mental Health Day

When I was in grad school, I was treated for depression. The doctor prescribed Prozac and suggested counseling. Even though I knew the counseling part would probably help even more than drugs, I never went. I was working two part time jobs, doing graduate course work, and spending almost every other waking moment with my friends. When did I have time to deal with counseling? Besides, my work and my social interactions were their own form of "counseling" which helped keep me from spiraling too far down.

I think the Prozac helped. I'm not really sure. I don't even remember how long I was on it. If I remember correctly, the doctor ran out of coupons and, faced with the increased cost, I decided it was time to stop taking it.

I did finally get some counseling a few years ago. As winter wore on into early spring I found myself wondering more and more seriously whether it would be possible to suffocate myself to death by shutting myself in one of the closets in the attic. I wondered how long it would take Tim to find me and I felt sad for what it would do to him. And then one day I realized my wish to be gone was so overwhelming that I didn't care about hurting anyone else. It was like a slap in the face, and I immediately got the ball rolling on starting counseling.

Just doing something proactive made me instantly feel better. I had my allotted 10 counseling sessions, and every time I went I felt practically giddy with relief. Even though my counselor didn't do anything except listen. No advice, no exercises to try, no suggestions, no interpretations. She just listened. Which meant that on the way home from each session I ended up thinking, "But wait, I never really talked about my hard core problems." I had all these thoughts, fears, problems, questions that I'd been contemplating my whole life and what came out of my mouth at my counseling sessions was banal crap. And my counselor was just a kind, gentle listener who never helped me get deeper, who never guided me into discussing anything that would make a long-term difference in how my brain functioned.

When my 10 sessions were up and the insurance wasn't going to pay for further sessions without proof that I needed more help, I used that as an excuse to stop seeing her. I had fully realized by that point that, despite enjoying having someone to talk to, our sessions weren't accomplishing anything substantial. Plus, it was fully spring by that point and the influence of my Seasonal Affective Disorder symptoms was gone. I was somewhat giddy simply from that change in the seasons, and didn't feel like I needed to pay someone to listen to me anymore.

Since then, I've done a lot of thinking (and worrying and soul searching and debating with myself) about depression. And the two-prong conclusion I always come to is that a) I don't know whether what I suffer from is really depression and b) whether it is or not, I feel guilty for not being happy.

Is it depression or is it self-indulgence?
Is it depression or is it just a bad attitude that I ought to be able to fix if I tried hard enough?
Is it depression or is it just a negative personality that I was born with and should learn to accept?
Do I even have a responsibility to myself or to other people to change?
Does that potential responsibility depend upon whether the cause of my problems is biological or not?
Do we even have a right to expect to be happy?
Do we have a responsibility to the rest of the world to be happy?
Is it my own fault that I expect too much?
Is it my own fault I can't deal with change?
Is it my own fault I worry constantly about bad things happening?
Is it my own fault for not being able to prepare for every bad thing that could happen?
Is it my own fault for being fat, which creates some of the physical problems I'm dealing with and has a biological effect on my brain?
Is it my own fault for retreating inside myself instead of reaching out to other people?
Is it my own fault that I'm making it worse by feeling sorry for myself?
How can I feel sorry for myself when people I care about are grieving lost husbands and fathers?
How can I feel sorry for myself when other people I know are dealing with real depression issues?
Why have the feelings I've been fighting with for at least 6 months finally come to some sort of head now when I should be worried about other people instead of myself?
Why doesn't everyone understand how awful I feel all the time and feel the same way?
Why can't I be like everyone else and not feel awful all the time?
Am I just a bad person?

Now I remember that part of the problem I had with talking to my counselor was that all the evil, dark, angry, empty, painful, negative, lost, alienated, frustrated, worried, fearful thoughts that fill my head all the time sound silly and/or stupid when I try to say them aloud. They're especially hard to discuss when I'm not feeling bad at the moment of trying to discuss them. The relief of being in the counselor's office was always so great that I suddenly couldn't really talk about all those problematic thoughts in a serious way.

But when I don't have anyone to talk to, when relief isn't lifting the pall of darkness from my soul, when I have a quiet few hours to myself away from everything else, I can write some of those thoughts. It's like talking to myself, which is what I do all day every day anyway. But writing relieves some of the pressure of having it all locked inside my head. Writing allows me to transcribe all that damaging rumination and gives me a chance to organize all the thoughts a little better. And being able to express these kinds of thoughts while their pain is still upon me allows me to say them without feeling like my feelings are silly or stupid. I can't control how anyone else who reads them interprets them. But I don't actually care at this point. I'm not doing this for anyone else right now.

Right now I'm worried about the fact that I've felt stressed for months on end. Right now I'm worried about work and I'm worried about the fact that I've been worried about work for months. Right now I'm worried about money and the house, and I'm also worried that I shouldn't be worried about money and the house. Right now I'm worried that I'm making life harder than it needs to be. Right now I'm worried about why I can't seem to cheer up and find meaning in my life, and I'm worried about the fact that this has been a problem for months and months at this point. Right now I'm worried because my body is giving me all sorts of grief and I'm not sure what, if anything, I can or should do about it. Right now I'm worried that I can't seem to find any time or energy to be passionate about anything --not even my garden. Right now I'm debating whether this is really depression this time. And right now I'm deciding I'm not going to do anything about it yet, at least not medically.

I allowed my physical problems to give me an excuse to take the day off, and I've used some of this day to at least take some of the pressure off my brain by writing this. I'm already feeling more positive, and I'm going to use the rest of the day to do what I want. I'm going to go putter around outside for a bit, and I'm going to try to make myself go for a walk. I really think getting in some daily walking might make a big difference. Then maybe I'll go read outside later on. And if I can find someplace to work on jigsaw puzzles, I might start one. A little exercise, a little relaxation, and maybe a little "order & method" for my "little grey cells." And then we'll see where I need to go from here.

New Cat Files #1: The First Caturday

When I got home from work on Friday, I backed the car into the turnaround spot by the porch and started collecting my things. When I turned back to open the door, Tim was looming outside my window. I was like, "What are we doing?" And he was like, "The shelter closes in an hour so if we hurry we can at least meet the cats tonight and get things started."

Have I mentioned how much I love this man? I hadn't even thought about doing that since I was completely focused on finishing the house reorganization and cleaning that we needed to do that night. I thought maybe he was just in a hurry to grab some dinner so we could get back and get working. I'd also gotten the call from the vet that Gytha's ashes were ready to be picked up, and I'd messaged him about that. So, I was also thinking he might be in hurry since we had to do that as well as get some food.

But no, this man wanted to go meet the cats. And he wasn't just doing it for me. I mean, going to great lengths to make Cat-Mom Wife happy is one thing. Going to greater lengths because he's just as eager to be Cat-Dad Husband is an even better thing. These will be the first cats to truly be completely "ours" and that makes me a little verklempt.

When we arrived at the shelter we told them what we were looking for, and they took us in to meet Snoopy (Robert) and Yoshi (Gordon), the bonded pair of 2-year-old males we wanted. We also met a couple of the older female cats, but nothing really gelled with the ladies. The boys didn't suddenly come out of their shells or warm up to us immediately or anything, which was fine. We weren't expecting them to. So we went back to the desk, got the application, and told them we'd be back in the morning.

We got Gytha's ashes after that, which somehow seemed right to me --that she was back home before any new guys moved in, maintaining her status in a way.

Fast forward through McDonald's for dinner; running to Petco to try to grab now-immediate necessities like dry food, litter, and replacement scratcher pads; moving the rest of the furniture to complete the 'we completely rearranged half our house' project; scrubbing the old litterboxes; washing the old cat scratcher wheels, cat carriers, and other durable cat items; vacuuming the entire house one more time; and making sure everything was cat-proofed enough and/or welcoming enough to bring new cats home.

Yadda yadda exhausted; yadda yadda didn't sleep much; yadda yadda Dunkins. Within 10 minutes of the shelter opening Saturday morning, me and Achey-Semi-Zombie Husband were signing in again and handing over our application. An hour and a half after we got there we were loading their carriers into the car and heading home.

We let them out in the back hallway, with the sunroom on one side and a bathroom with a litter box on the other. Perhaps it isn't the "ideal" exclusionary situation which is recommended for new cats, but it's close. And it's as close as we were able to come in the time we gave ourselves. Yoshi-Gordon immediately slunk around behind the sunroom couch. Snoopy-Robert hid behind the blanket we use as a curtain to insulate the back door in the winter. But within a few minutes, he'd discovered the back of the couch, too. We have a king-size cotton blanket that we use as a couch cover, and it hangs down to the floor in the back. They tucked themselves between the bottom flap of the couch upholstery and the blanket, so you can't see them at all when they are back there. But, you can see where the blanket is pulled taut over them. We moved a water bowl, a couple of food bowls, a few toys, and a scratcher wheel in there and left them alone.

We left them alone most of the day. I sat on their couch while I talked to Mom on the phone for awhile. We went in and talked to them periodically throughout the day. Then at about 8 last night we decided to go hang out on the couch in there for a bit before going to bed. Tim worked on his computer, and I played Solitaire on my iPod. I was exhausted and was about to go to bed when we heard little noises from behind the couch. Then we realized we could hear purring. That woke me up a bit, so I stayed a little longer. I was about to fall asleep sitting up when I heard more noises from behind the couch. A black head peeked up over the back and looked around, then disappeared. Of course, that woke me up again, so I waited a bit longer to see if there would be any further developments. But, there weren't any before we finally decided to haul our weary butts to bed.

I actually slept really well, confident that they would be fine and hoping they would come out and explore while we slept. I got up this morning, and was washing my face in the upstairs bathroom when I realized it looked like the litter box in that bathroom had been used. I put on my glasses and was so excited to find it was true I almost woke Tim up just to tell him. I'm not sure I've ever been so happy to clean a pee clump out of a litter box. That means at least one of them came upstairs!!

That made me even more eager to get downstairs to look for evidence of exploration. The first thing I saw was a broken food bowl on the dining room floor, and I actually laughed because I was so happy to see that they'd been out doing things. I don't know why I even left the extra empty food bowls out. I'd set them up on the old feeding spot on top of the radiator cover even though we hadn't put out any wet food for them. My first thought was actually, "Well, it's a good thing I went ahead and ordered more last night!"

The second thing I noticed was that there were toy mice in places I hadn't left them. I'm not even sure yet if they are all new ones or if they managed to find ones under furniture that I missed. That would be impressive!

I checked the sunroom and both food bowls had been obviously gobbled from. The downstairs litter box had also been used.

For now they are back behind the couch, but at least I know they are eating, peeing, playing, and exploring, and that's actually more than I'd allowed myself to expect the first night.

A Week Without Cats

I finally threw out the Honey Nut Cheerios at the end of last week. They've been sitting on top of the refrigerator in the Tupperware cereal keeper for at least five years. Despite the capabilities of Tupperware, the Cheerios have been somewhat stale for many of those years, but we held onto them because we had discovered Gytha liked them. Every once in awhile we would drop a couple on the floor and she would gobble them up. We had also discovered recently that she had a thing for Wheat Chex. What she really loved, though, were Wendy's french fries. She stole one right out of Tim's hand a few years ago, and since then we've always made sure that if we went to Wendy's she got a fry of her own. The best part was that she wouldn't eat it if you just set it in front of her; she had to "steal" it. We'd set it off to the side somewhere and wait for her to find it, swipe it onto the floor, and then enjoy her prey. There were other foods that inspired a lot of interest, but I don't know that she would have eaten them. She was intensely attracted to black olives, at least on pizza. But we never gave her one. And the smell of strawberries drove her crazy, although she never actually ate them when I offered them to her. 

She was also in love with the freezer. I have no idea why. Our refrigerator has the freezer on the bottom, and every time we opened it when she was around she ran up and stood in front of the opening. She didn't try to steal any food, or climb inside. It didn't matter what season it was, either. She just loved Freezer. 

Gytha was the most adorable cat. Yes, I'm biased, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. When we called last Monday afternoon, the woman who answered the phone was one of our regular vet techs and she knew Gytha as soon as I said her name. When we came in she came over to see her and commented that she had the most beautiful eyes and she'd always loved her beautiful eyes. It's kind of ironic, because the fact that we were so well known at the vet's office means we had been there an awful lot. But it was also a comfort to have such a connection with the people taking care of us, especially at the end. 

I don't think I've ever felt a softer cat than Gytha. Not really sleek, not fluffy, but a perfect medium between the two. I loved petting her when she'd recently given herself a bath because that's when her fur was the absolute softest. I never had to give her a bath, which is good because I don't think that would have gone well for anyone involved. After the ultrasound, she came home with the hair around her poor shaved tummy wet and caked with, presumably, the ultrasound gel. I took a warm wash cloth and tried to remove as much of it as I could. She was already having tummy trouble and I couldn't imagine that letting her try to clean that all off herself was a good idea. I was actually pretty annoyed with the hospital for leaving her like that. It had been about 4 hours since her procedure by the time I picked her up; they had plenty of time to get rid of that mess. That was the second time she had to go to that animal hospital (which was NOT her regular doctor's office) and both times I was not particularly happy about how they treated her. But in both cases, they were the only choice that wasn't hours away. 

Perhaps they didn't appreciate her personality. She had plenty of it. Her first experience at the alternate hospital was for her radioiodine treatment for her thyroid condition. She was there for something like three days, and when I went to pick her up they made sure to tell me how vocal she had been. There were webcams in the cages of that particular unit, so I'd been able to see her online, and I'd seen her talking at people a few times. But given how sad she looked the rest of the time, I couldn't blame her if she didn't have anything nice to say. She wasn't quiet when they had to do things to her at our regular vet's office. They would take her into the back to do blood draws, urine sampling, x-rays, or whatever, and I would sit in the exam room listening to her complaining and laughing to myself, thinking, "Yep, that's my baby making all that fuss." It wasn't an angry cry; it wasn't a mournful cry exactly, either.  It was more like a cat version of whining "I don't want to!" repeated throughout the entire ordeal. But no one at our vet's office ever complained about her, or even gave any hint that her complaining was a problem. It was always clear that while she was a less than ideal patient, they liked her. 

Most people never saw the best of Gytha. She was fine with kids when she was younger. I used to bring the kids I nannied over to my apartment and Gytha had no problem with them. But when I moved her out here, she decided she did not like my nephews at all. And she never really liked any other children she encountered after that point. There were a few of our human friends that she liked, but many of the others she ignored. Usually the ones who wanted her to like them the most were the ones she ignored the most. Ah, cats. She saved her best antics, her cutest moments, her sweetest side for Tim and I alone. We, at least, knew how much of a blessing she was for us. 

I was also impressed by how long she remained so young in mind and body. It was only in the last few years that she gradually stopped jumping straight up onto the kitchen counter. But then in the last year she started leaping across the 3 foot gap between the sideboard and the dining room table. If she saw an opportunity to go for something interesting, she took it. It was only in her last few days that she started slowing down, and that's how we knew it was almost over. I had hoped we would have a few weeks more, at least. But, it was like she knew the results of her own ultrasound and it depressed her. Even then, she was still fighting to be herself when she could. She would spend half the day doing nothing but sleeping in her cave, and I would cry and cry thinking this was it. But then she would jump up on the radiator cover in the sunroom and watch out the window, follow me upstairs, jump up onto my lap, sit for awhile then climb up onto the radiator cover in the tv room where her cushion was, then follow me to bed and cuddle. She didn't eat at all on Sunday, or Monday morning. But she wanted to be in the bathroom while I showered that morning, like she usually did. She jumped up on the edge of the tub and licked water off the shower wall, which she also usually did. She even made a brief comment when I got the hair dryer out, which was another "usual" think she had started doing in the last month or so. She followed me downstairs, and even though she didn't eat, she stayed downstairs until I left. And as I pulled out of the driveway I saw her looking out the sunroom window, which she often did but hadn't done in awhile. I dared to hope that maybe she was somehow feeling better. 

But that afternoon when I got home I found Tim sitting with her on the couch in the sunroom, and he told me he thought it was time. She had tried to climb up the back of the couch and couldn't, and had started hiding behind the couch and in the closet in our bedroom. So, I made the call to the vet. We tried to spend the last hour or so with her, and she put up with it for awhile but then went into the closet to hide. I had such mixed feelings. She had made it up the stairs on her own, and I thought maybe she wasn't as bad as Tim thought. But then she hid in the closet. Then we put her in her carrier and she was crying and moving around in her carrier. Gink was so far gone by the time we had to take him in, I don't think he moved at all. Gytha was restless and back to acting like normal the entire time we were waiting in the vet's office. And they had to deal with a couple of emergency appointments, so we had to wait over half an hour. I finally opened her carrier and put my arm inside, petting her for awhile and then just to be there for her after she seemed to relax. We sat her in a windowsill so she at least got to watch the birds and the outdoors while we waited. When we finally got into the exam room, she kept trying to jump down from the table. I already wanted to just take her back home, and that was almost too much. The vet was kind of surprised to see her so soon; he also had thought she would last longer. I waited for him to talk us out of it or to tell us to take her home, but he didn't. They had to sedate her, which was both unnerving and calming at the same time. Unnerving because it made it look like she was already gone even though she was still conscious; calming because it meant she wasn't trying to fight it anymore. It also meant that it took longer for her heart to stop. We just kept petting her and petting her until the doctor finally confirmed she was gone. 

I know that if we hadn't gone at all or had told them we'd changed our minds and were going back home, it probably only would have delayed the inevitable by a few days, possibly only by a single day. At the time I was angry at myself for not waiting, devastated that she was gone, and yet relieved that the anxiety of watching and waiting was over. But over the last week I think I've made my peace with our decision.

I have a significant degree of self blame for the loss of all four of the cats I've been significantly responsible for. For each case there was a period of time when I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to think about my responsibility for what went wrong without intense guilt stabbing through my heart and gut. Now I find that, while there is still at least some sense of regret for each, I can forgive myself for what I think I did wrong. That doesn't mean I wouldn't go back and change things. If I had a time machine and could only use it once, I would go back and take Knight and Grimm to the shelter instead of leaving them in a goddamn barn. I have no idea why I thought they would be better off and more likely to find a home that way than through the shelter. But I was naively optimistic and incredibly stressed at that point in my life. And so they presumably died alone and scared after being essentially abandoned outside after having lived their entire lives indoors and being mostly terrified of the outdoors. Yes, I would abso-fucking-lutely go back and do that differently even if it was the only thing in my entire life I could change. 

At least I don't hate myself the way I used to for that choice, and I can finally think about it without being filled with horror and feeling completely sick inside. And I never really hated myself for not saving Gink in time. Nor do I hate myself now for not saving Gytha. But, I am trying to learn from my mistakes so I don't repeat them. I've learned a lot about cat health from my experiences with Gink and Gytha. Gink taught me to get the damn blood work done. Every year. Find the money. And when they are older get it done twice a year. Pay attention to the litter box; pay attention to how much pee is in there. Gytha taught me that frequent vomiting --true vomiting, not regurgitating food-- should not be ignored. Don't assume it's "just hairballs" or a reaction to new medication. I hope that together the two of them have finally taught me not to take the easy way out first to try to avoid having the more expensive testing done. They taught me to set aside money out of every paycheck to save up for the more expensive vet visits that are inevitable. I would like to think that everything I learned --Gink's kidney disease discovered too late; Gytha's needle eating, recurrent constipation problems, thyroid disease, caught-early kidney disease, high blood pressure, vomiting, nausea, and stomach tumor-- would guarantee that I'll be able to make sure my next cats live longer than 14 or 15 years. Instead, the next cats will probably end up with something completely different that I'll blame myself for not having paid attention to earlier after it kills them. 

It didn't take long for us to decide we were ready to take on the adventure of adopting new cat loves. We've had a week of cat-less life, and there are certain conveniences we've allowed ourselves to enjoy. Plates of food can be left unattended! But, both Tim and I had the thought that it would probably be better if we don't get too used to a cat-free lifestyle. Besides, I miss all the sounds of sharing a house with cats. I miss having that non-human presence to make the house feel complete. It's another potentially trite but true thing I've realized: a house without cats doesn't feel like a complete home for me. No other cats will ever replace the special spots in my heart that belong to Gink or Gytha, but I have other spots aching for new furbabies. 

Before we can bring any new babies home we have to finish cleaning and rearranging the house. And there are two cats at the local shelter who are already bonded and need to be adopted together --EXACTLY what we're looking for. Which is why I've been pushing myself (and Tim) to get everything done as quickly as possible. Not an easy thing for us to do with the other things on our schedules, but I've made some major progress in the past two days. I'm trying to be realistic and accept that everything will work out eventually even if it isn't exactly the way I'm imagining it right now. Patience is not my strong suit, though. So, I'm doing everything I can to help move things along. I just can't wait until the house is all rearranged and we're starting the adventure of being "new" cat parents again!

Mourning Gytha

When I was working at the law library during my grad school years, my coworker and dear friend Jane went through a phase of adopting cats, then getting in trouble with her husband for bringing another cat home, and having to find new homes for them. It was September of 2000, I was living alone in a 3-room apartment, and when she needed a new home for a 3-month-old tuxedo kitten, I decided it was time to have a cat of my own. Another woman we worked with had found a tiny kitten on the side of the road and had taken it home, but her other cats were bullying it. We convinced her that it would be happier with me. So, on the same day, from two different coworkers, I brought home two kittens. Gink was the 3-month-old tuxedo cat, and Gytha was the roadside rescue. 

The woman who found Gytha had taken her to the vet, and their estimate was that she was maybe 6 weeks old. She shouldn't even have been separated from her mother yet, and she was so tiny I could have put her in a coffee mug. I actually did once, and to this day I have wanted to smack myself dozens of times for not taking a picture of it. It would have been one of the best pictures ever. I fed her kitten formula out of jar lids since they were the only thing in the house shallow enough for her to eat out of. Her first litter box was a Tretorn shoebox lid that was about an inch deep. I had a regular litter box, which Gink could use. But the sides were too high for tiny Gytha. She was so short and Gink had such long legs that she sometimes walked right under him, much to his annoyance. I had to create a ramp of pillows on the side of the bed so that she could climb up to sleep with me. Once she was up, she often went straight for my face where she wanted to curl up between my chin and my neck. It was pretty uncomfortable for me, and I didn't let her stay there very often. But it was just the most adorable thing ever, so sometimes I would let her stay until she decided to move to another part of the bed. 

In 2003, when I prepared to move halfway across the country from Illinois to New Hampshire, I had to leave a number of other pets behind in the care of someone who would try to find them new homes. I knew the parakeets would be fine, but I thought having to leave our old family cats Knight and Grimm (who I had inherited when my Mom moved to Minnesota) in a barn was one of the hardest things I'd ever had to do. It still haunts me. But I was moving into an apartment with my Dad, and he couldn't allow the entire menagerie. I was able to just get through it at the time by being in a semi-numb state of shutting down my emotions and focusing entirely on the practical problems of the move. There were so many heart-wrenching endings and goodbyes during that time, it was my only defense. But Gink and Gytha were my babies and they were coming with me. So, I found hotels to stay at during the trip that allowed pets, figured out how to deal with the need for temporary overnight litter boxes, got some medication from the vet to help calm the cats during the long car trip, and ended up listening to Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits almost the entire way because the only time the cats weren't howling was when that cd was playing. 

In December of 2005 I met Tim. This was potentially going to be the most life-changing event of my…well, life. But, I had certain requirements. Did he like cats in general? Yes. Was he good to my cats? Definitely. Did they like him? Yes. We're good to go! A little less than a year later we moved into our first apartment with "my" cats. In some ways they remained "my" cats for a long time, but as the years went by I realized they really had become our cats. They'd only spent the first 5 years of their lives without Tim. He was there for 8 1/2 of Gink's almost 14 years, and he was there for over 10 of Gytha's 15 1/2 years. And during that time he was a damn good cat daddy. Gytha was his baby girl. At some point after we'd bought our house, he went through a phase of carrying Gytha upstairs at bedtime every night. No reason, other than being silly and cute. She started waiting for it, looking up at him at the bottom of the stairs. It was amusing and heartwarmingly adorable. I imagined him doing that someday when she was old and too tired to be comfortable doing it for herself. I don't know whether to consider her lucky or not that she never got that old and tired. 

A year ago Gytha was diagnosed as being in the early stages of Chronic Kidney Disease. We started her on a couple of medications and made some modifications to her diet to slow the progression. I wasn't sure if we were looking at a year or two or four or what, but I assumed we'd have at least a couple of years with everything we were doing. Later we added blood pressure medication, and I continued finding ways to get these medicines in her so I'd have as many years as possible. I knew she was fairly old in cat years, but she still acted more like a young cat. She was still leaping onto the dining room table and trying to get a share of our food. She was still chattering at the squirrels and birds, watching them intensely from either the bedroom window or her radiator shelf in the sunroom. She was still trying to sneak a taste of my plants when she had the chance. She was still following me around the house, hanging out in the bathroom with me when I took a shower, cuddling up next to my face for a little while every night when we went to bed. She was doing most of these things until just a few days before the end. 

Last Wednesday she had an ultrasound to find out why she had recently started throwing up a lot more and was always nauseous. The diagnosis was an inoperable stomach tumor. The doctor prescribed a new medicine to help protect her stomach from the damage the tumor was causing and I picked up more of her nausea medicine. I thought maybe with the drugs she would be comfortable for a few more weeks. She was still eating and acting normal, other than being traumatized by the hospital visit. For a couple of days things looked okay. She hated the new medicine, and I hated having to force it on her. But I had bought her new treats in an effort to get her to eat more and she was gobbling those up.

Saturday she refused the treats and barely ate anything, but she was still jumping up in my lap and eagerly accepting all the petting. She got excited when I got the catnip out and seemed to enjoy rolling around in it. She came to bed with us and we had one of our "family snuggles" where all 3 of us spooned together under the covers. She spent a good chunk of the night sleeping around my legs as usual. By the time I got up Sunday, she was downstairs in her blanket cave, which isn't necessarily unusual. She didn't come upstairs when she heard me get up. She didn't come out of the cave when I came downstairs. She didn't come out of her cave when I prepared her a fresh dish of her wet food. She did come out and sit on my lap for a little bit while I talked to Dad on the phone. She spent most of the rest of the day just resting or sleeping, but at least she was doing it near us. She came to bed with us Sunday, and snuggled next to my face for awhile like she usually did before deciding to move somewhere else to really settle down for the night. 

But by the time I got home from work on Monday, it had been two days since she'd eaten anything and she had started hiding. She might have had one or two days left before she got so bad she would have been hiding all the time, but I was worried about leaving her alone all day anymore. So we made the call and tried to appreciate the last hour at home with her. She didn't make it easy, rallying some energy to act normal in her carrier on the way to the vet's office. She even tried to jump down from the table in the consultation room. Which, of course, made me doubt whether we had made the right choice. And that's the absolute worst of it: no matter how much I try to convince myself that we were right, I still don't 100% believe it. With Gink it was so obvious; there was no doubt at all. I try to tell myself that waiting until she was 100% miserable and there was absolutely no sign of normal behavior left would have been the crueler thing to do. That she had so much personality, maybe she just couldn't stop being Gytha even at the very end. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it doesn't. It was always going to involve hard decisions, and the end was always going to be the same. And it was always going to hurt. 

For 15 1/2 years my entire life has been shaped to some degree by being a cat mom. Every home I've lived in during that time has been furnished and decorated with the cats and their accoutrements in mind, and with each move what would work best for them gained in importance. When we bought our house I liked the radiator covers that would give them warm places to sit and watch the outdoors; 3 floors and stairs that would give them more exercise and more places to explore; good locations for their food, water, and litter boxes; a sunroom which was THE perfect place for Gytha's cat tree. Every time we rearranged furniture or started spending most of our time in a different part of the house, I made sure the cats always had somewhere to sit comfortably with us or near us. They might have been bratty to many of our visitors, but they were our children and they were embedded in every part of our lives. 

She was even part of our answering machine message. After we got home last night, someone called and the answering machine picked up: "Hello, you've reached the home of Angela, Tim, and Gytha Morgan. Angela and Tim aren't home right now, and Gytha can't answer the phone because she's a cat..." I spun around and said, "Oh god, no!" Tim immediately stopped it, but that's something I have to change today. 

When Gink died, my sense of loss was deep. But, we still had another cat to focus our love on. It was painful for a little while to be putting out only one bowl of food instead of two, but at least I was still using the food dishes. We went through food more slowly, but someone was still eating the food we already had. I didn't have to clean the litter boxes as vigilantly or empty the litter trash cans as often, but we were still using them. I didn't have to negotiate two cats pinning my legs to the bed, but I still had the reassuring weight of one of them on cold winter nights. And with Gink gone, Gytha stepped up and filled in with enough personality for two cats; she loved not having to share us anymore. Losing Gink also made us more aware of the precariousness of our time left with Gytha. And so the three of us grew even closer. 

Which all makes things so much harder this time. We have lost a truly unique personality who was only surpassed by Tim in terms of importance in my daily life. She was my baby and my buddy. She cannot be replaced, and she's going to be a hard act to follow. Right now it feels like no other cat will ever be worthy. And so in the meantime, what do I do with all the empty spaces? So, so many empty spaces. Everywhere I look I see a place where she once was, I hear a silence she once filled, I have a need to do something for her that no longer needs to be done, I have a need for interaction with a part of my heart that isn't here in the physical world anymore.

So many "little" parts of our lives gone. No more playing Q-tip Fetch. No more paws racing up and down the stairs. No more fake conversations with one of us pretending to talk for her using our Gytha voices. No more love attacks when I put on chapstick with peppermint in it. 

I debated whether to wait awhile before dismantling the cat parts of our lives. Should I go to work today for the distraction or should I take the day to give myself the space to keep crying when I need to and to start tackling all the physical changes around the house? Should I slowly get rid of things or do as much as I can at once? Will it be harder to look at the physical reminders of what used to be or to look at the spaces where they once were? Will it give me any sense of peace to throw out all the partially used medicines, empty the litter boxes and throw them in the basement for now, start a box for the unused food cans and anything else I can donate to the shelter? 

I think it will help. If for no other reason than because doing something feels better than sitting around drowning in my grief. Leaving everything the way it was will accomplish nothing and it will be like pouring salt on the wounds. I don't need reminders of what I've lost. I need to do whatever I can to keep moving forward, holding Gytha (and Gink) in my heart always, but allowing the rest of my heart to still keep loving everyone and everything else in my life that makes it so worthwhile. I know it will eventually get easier. It sounds kind of trite, but when you're face to face with the reality of it, you realize that it's true that sometimes you just have to take things not only day by day, but hour by hour and maybe even minute by minute. 

Garden Woes/Whoas Revisited

This isn't the first time I've had to face the woes of what I call natural gardening. As I was going back through my blog to see if I'd posted about this before, I was totally surprised to find that three years ago (almost to the day) I'd already written a post with the exact same title I had come up with for this one! But after skimming the previous entry, I can happily say that I have a somewhat different take on it this time. 

Natural gardening means three main things for me: 1) I don't use serious toxic chemicals to either kill or enhance plant health, in part because 2) I'm attempting to provide habitat and food for beneficial insects and birds, but 3) I won't spend a lot of time and effort in general on babying plants to keep them thriving or even alive. Natural gardening means trying to establish an appealing and useful habitat, but only if it can adapt enough to take care of itself. I try to find the right place for each plant, and will try moving them if they don't seem happy. I only make an effort to water plants their first year (or after moving them) and then they are on their own. I occasionally try to build up my crappy soil with a little bit of compost, fish fertilizer, or other forms of organic fertilizer, but I don't do it regularly. Three years ago I had just started using Neem, and I still do. But I don't apply it regularly, and I'm not sure it even works against any of the problem bugs. 

Part of the bug problem is that I don't even know which bugs are responsible. Not that knowing would help, I suppose; I'm still not going to start using serious pesticides. But I'm awfully tempted by this point in the year, because apparently this is when diggers and bugs start significantly threatening my plants. Certain plants have been victim to leaf biters all summer: the calendulas I started from seed, most of the dahlias I started from seed, a number of my QIS Orange gomphrenas, and my second try at physostegia plants are all virtually non-existent now thanks to leaf munchers.  But suddenly all kinds of other plants are being chomped to within an inch of their lives.

The disappointment of going through all the work and expense of starting those seeds or buying those plants only to have them destroyed prompts me to pull the reins on myself a bit. (Whoa!) For a start, maybe I should stop trying to grow plants that haven't been successful after multiple attempts. 

I've tried three different kinds of geraniums (real geraniums, not annual pelargoniums). I planted a Dragon Heart geranium in 2011, but it completely disappeared within a few weeks. I planted a Samobor geranium last year, and it was doing very nicely this spring until something devoured it in a few days. It has poked up a few tiny leaves since then which have also disappeared within a few days. This year I planted two Biokovos, and they have managed to hang on until this week. Suddenly all the leaves have disappeared, tiny forlorn stems sticking up with just a few itty bitty shreds left on one of them. 

Or what about plants that haven't completely failed but aren't doing well, even after being moved? I see tall, thick stands of bee balm in other people's yards, but for the last two years my two pathetic Jacob Clines have only put up a few meager stems with a few tiny leaves. The leaves get nibbled a bit, but not enough to be the real cause of their failure to thrive. I planted some species variety from seeds years ago, and they're doing pretty well. Have I not found the right spot for the Jacob Clines? Do they just need longer to get themselves established? Is it some other aspect of that cultivar that makes them unsuitable for my garden? Do I try moving them again or do I give up?

But how do you know which species or cultivars to give up on? I've tried four different kinds of coreopsis with varying results. My three surviving Jethro Tull coreopsis, which I originally planted in 2011, have been going pretty well for 4 years. They've never gotten as big as the original plants that I divided them from, but they do all right for themselves and I like the way they grow where they are now. In 2013 I got an unidentified cultivar (possibly Route 66) as a rogue cohabitant in one of the Jacob Cline plants which I picked up at a local nursery. (I love "bonus" plants!) I slapped it into a spot on one of my front slopes, crossed my fingers, and figured if it died at least I wasn't losing a carefully chosen plant that I'd paid for. It has quickly established itself and is putting on a lovely, healthy show for the second year in a row. It has turned out to be a really great plant so far, and its red-spotted centers go great with the red daylilies in front of it (which I hadn't even planned when I stuck it there)! My Creme Brulee coreopsis were planted in 2012 and did okay for the first two years. Last year, though, the leaves ended up being devoured and it produced far fewer flowers than the year before. This year it was also quickly stripped of leaves and short on flowers. I had chosen Creme Brulee because it sounded like a better alternative to the Moonbeam cultivar I'd been wanting for awhile, but after last year's disappointment I decided that this year I would go ahead and get myself some Moonbeams. So far so good on those. But I'm keeping my fingers double crossed that these don't go the way of the Creme Brulees. 

You just never know which ones are going to be winners. Sometimes the ones you choose prove to be worth every penny, turning out just like you'd hoped (if not better) and holding their own beautifully no matter what New Hampshire's weather and wildlife put them through. Once I'd found the right spot for my Dark Towers penstemons, they proved themselves gloriously. My Carradonna salvias start being de-leafed by insects this time of year, but they've already finished blooming and it doesn't seem to harm them at all. Sometimes, like the mystery coreopsis, you just luck into great plants. Select Seeds always sends a packet of free seeds with each seed order, and in 2013 they sent me something I wasn't familiar with called Calamintha nepeta 'August Clouds.' I started some seedlings, plopped them in various spots around the yard, and wondered if they would do anything or even survive our winters. By this time that year I had these wonderfully minty fronds of attractive foliage with tiny yet attractive pale purple flowers. And they've just gotten better each year. 

It's disheartening to look around and see spots where nothing I've tried seems to do well or where once-happy plants are suffering. Those are the moments that tempt the ethics of a natural gardener. Maybe if I tried Miracle Gro and endangered the bees with toxic insecticides my plants would look like something out of a gardening magazine. Maybe if I spent all my time and money on mulching and weeding and drip irrigating and building the perfect compost pile my garden would look like everyone else's who can afford professional, conventional landscaping services. But my reason for gardening isn't because I want my yard to look like a magazine landscaper created it. And I don't make my gardening decisions based on what would be the quickest shortcut to impressing other people. I prefer to think of myself as sort of a combination of an amateur environmental scientist and a developing artist who lacks a good sense of artistic vision: I keep experimenting, trying to use what I've learned to make better choices each year and figuring out what looks good by trial and error. There are some dilemmas that never get any easier: should I give up and tear out all the stupid irises that haven't bloomed in years no matter what I try or should I let them have yet another chance to prove themselves until I've run out of room everywhere else? But with every wrong choice, setback, disappointment, or failure, there is not only the chance to learn but the chance to try again. And when you finally get something right, it's amazing how much one success can make up for an awful lot of Not-So-Great Moments in Gardening.

Monsters, Babies, & Stone Courtyards

I had a number of dreams last night, each one brought to an end by my waking up at various wee hours of the morning. I thought they were all interesting until they were completely obliterated by the last one: 

I was in a very large, busy city. Everyone had woken up to discover huge cracks in the streets, and word was spreading like lightning that horrible things were coming out of these gashes in the pavement. I was standing outside looking at one of these cracks when an enormous suckered tentacle came over the top of a multistory building, grabbed some guy and dragged him away. Monsters were breaking out of the earth.

The dangerous cracks and monster sightings seemed to be concentrated in one area of the city, and suddenly there was a mother trying to get her three children out of that area. In a matter of a few minutes I went from being this mother, to being an observing bystander of this group, to being one of the children. We were trying to cross a street when my memory starts getting wonky. 

I think maybe we saw and/or talked to some guy who had some idea how to find out what was going on. He believed the answer was in a huge building which everyone thought was a museum, and he was going to try to get inside. Which he managed to do, and then realized he needed to get out before he got caught. He did manage to get out and was running away from the building, I think, when he was grabbed by a pterodactyl-like creature and I don't know what happened to him after that.

The next thing I remember was "me" being inside the building, sneaking around trying to figure out what was going on here. There were rooms full of babies and other things, including candy, something makes me want to say. My brain keeps saying babies and candy, so I'm going to assume there is a reason and that candy was involved. There were people taking care of the babies and working on other projects. Some of these workers were people who had been snatched by the monsters, although many of the people who had been taken had been turned into the babies. Somehow I knew that a small number of the missing had been killed. Monsters gotta eat, I guess. But I had discovered that it was all a giant operation run by some Great Leader, and that this Great Leader was reincarnated or simply replaced by a new Chosen One periodically.

I say it was "me" in the building partly because I was sometimes seeing this as the main character and sometimes observing it like the audience watching a movie, and partly because even when I was experiencing it firsthand I wasn't Angela Morgan, Laconia resident and YBP Profiler. The person I was supposed to be had been a cute young barmaid in a strange little Italian restaurant/tavern. The tavern area was like a cave with stone walls, a stone roof, and a number of huge curving entrances that led into various cobblestone streets. It was a bustling place with lots of people passing through and lots of regulars sitting around at tall tables visiting. One of these regulars was a young writer or artist or something who was in love with this waitress. Everyone knew except her. 

Now the naive barmaid had gone off to find out what was in the nefarious building and was trapped there. She had been found sneaking around, but was told They weren't going to kill her because she had been chosen to be the next Great Leader. She didn't want to be at first, but she had come to realize that what they were doing was odd and arcane, but not really evil, and that this was her destiny. Once They knew she would come back, they told her she could leave for short periods to return to the streets of the city. They had pointed out to her that the writer/artist had been in love with her, so now she wanted to go back to the Italian tavern to try to find him. 

She/I went running down a hillside behind the building, running through rows of shrubs. As I ran past, the plants stood up in waves; each shrub was actually being held by a person. The shrub people, led by Ed Begley, Jr., were all singing about how the new Great Leader was leaving but would always return to her people. The sloping ground ended abruptly at the edge of a cliff over a river that divided part of the city, and as I ran toward the edge of the cliff some giant bird monster caught me and carried me out over the river where I could look back on the weird plant chorus. 

The bird thing put me down in the city on a street near the restaurant. But, it had been many months since she/I had left, and no one was there except the bartender. He told me the writer/artist had kept coming back to look for her/me, with longer and longer intervals between his searching visits, and then had eventually stopped coming in at all. 

Then it was years later, and the ex-barmaid-now-Great Leader had left her building again because she wanted to see part of her old neighborhood. It was a sort of semi-enclosed courtyard with stone-paved streets surrounded by old stone buildings (noticing a theme here?). When she had lived there it was just an open area where young people used to hang out, sometimes getting into trouble but usually just whiling away their time. Now many of the people who lived in the surrounding buildings spent most evenings there visiting, playing music, and dancing. On this evening a famous musician was going to be there as a special guest. As his entourage was setting up to play, he looked at the now-middle aged ex-barmaid and recognized her as the leader of the group responsible for unleashing monsters on the city and stealing people to turn them into babies. 

Things really start fading at this point. There was something about four tiny dimes revealing something about her role in the group, or revealing the truth about evil, or something. So she had to leave before they decided she was evil and had to be stopped.

Then we were back in the building and I was still the Great Leader, only now I was a guy instead of the ex-barmaid. I think more time had passed. I'm pretty sure he/I was either black or hispanic/latino, and I'm pretty sure I had a mustache. And that's where it all fades away beyond my memory. I know there were a number of other images, events, and conversations that happened throughout the rest of the dream, but they are also lost. I think what I was left remembering vividly was plenty! 

Some Days Are Dark

I didn't think I would write again today, but it turns out I need to. I also need to go to bed, but I sort of don't give a shit at the moment.

I like the word grief. I prefer it to "mourning." Grief sounds more visceral, and that fits better with how I feel.

Grief is strange. I'm finding that going through the motions of just continuing a normal life without Gink is essentially easy. And that makes me sort of mad, because part of me doesn't want a single thing about this to be easy. It also makes me feel a strange sort of guilt, like I should be noticing his absence every time I turn around. But at the same time, I'm not completely mad or strongly guilty because even when I'm not "noticing" his absence I'm feeling it. For the first couple of days the feeling came and went in waves. I really didn't think of him when I was busy, because I wouldn't have been thinking about him if he'd still been here. He would have spent most of that time sitting in the windows or sleeping somewhere while I worked. But today, even though I was busy, I just felt an unhappy undercurrent all day long. Heart starting to race a little, my throat getting tight. That could have been in part because some of what I was doing was either generally related to the cats or more directly related to Gink being gone: changing the set up for the food bowls, finally washing his dry food bowl, taking the litter trash out, removing the protective strips I'd put on the door frames to keep him from destroying them even more than he already had, throwing out old cat supplies and ones they never used.

But, even when I wasn't working on cat-related things my brain seemed stuck on feeling guilty, regretting decisions, and trying to reason with myself.

I should have noticed that he was peeing more than normal for a cat?
    How was I supposed to know that was too much? Was it really?
Now I know why he was peeing outside of the box again.
    But you didn't know that was a bad sign. He'd done it before.
Yeah, but maybe if we'd had blood work done before we could have caught it in time to do something about it.
    We have to have had some blood work done at some point and no one gave you the idea anything serious was going on.
I just checked; we didn't get a full blood test done in January because you didn't want to have to pay for it.
    But the doctor didn't stress that it was important, and the antibiotic shot appeared to have worked. Besides, he was always a cranky boy, and he was getting older. How was I supposed to know what was abnormal until it was too late?
You could have had the full blood test done in January, or at last year's physical.
    And then again maybe that wouldn't have found anything. Or maybe it would have found enough to know that he was already dying and probably only had a few months to live, and then we would have been suffering for months knowing this was coming. We wouldn't have been less upset in the end, would we?

It also could have just been a general vibe around the house today. Gytha didn't even touch her wet food today, and only nibbled at her dry food. Tim didn't seem to have much enthusiasm or energy. Everyone in our house just seemed kind of subdued.

I don't want to go back to work tomorrow, but I don't know just what I would do if I was home all day. I still have work to do, but it's supposed to be cloudy and rainy, and at least if I'm at work where I can't really see outside much it might not affect me. I'm a little worried about having to tell people and deal with people tomorrow and having to keep my shit together while I'm at work, but I'm also worried that if I was at home it would be like today again. Maybe work will be a good distraction and change of atmosphere. But maybe I'll be worried about Gytha so much that I'll be struggling not to cry or have a panic attack. It's probably not going to come to that, but I know myself and it's not impossible. Plus I ate more today than I have since Friday, and what I've eaten seems to be upsetting my stomach. So it feels like I'm going right back to work with the same physical problems that caused me to take Friday off in the first place. Four days off and I'm in even worse shape mentally and physically. Joy. I'm just so damn looking forward to tomorrow now.

Grief Triggers and Another Day of Living

I'm not very good at sleeping in anymore. Waking up around 4 a.m. on weekdays seems to have reset my clock. It's probably partly a side effect of gardening and/or of becoming more of a "responsible adult": once it starts to get light outside, I don't want to go back to sleep because there are things I could be/need to be doing. It is also often forced upon me by Gytha doing naughty things to wake me up, presumably so I will go ahead and get up to do the morning feeding "since I'm already up." Both cats' appetites tended to decrease as the weather gets warmer, so I had noticed in recent weeks that they weren't pestering me on those early weekend mornings, and I was really rather happy to be able to just stay in bed and fall back to sleep.

Gink was never really one to pester me to get up for feeding time, though. He was often sleeping at my feet and took my predawn stirring as a sign that it was time for him to come snuggle. I would roll over on my back, and that was when he would move up to drape himself over my chest, or to snuggle between my arm and my body, or sometimes get up in my face and rub his chin against mine.

These early morning hours are one of the hard times for me right now.

I figured there would be certain times that would trigger the grieving pains, and I was right. Yesterday afternoon when I realized I hadn't fed Gytha her wet food yet, my heart started beating a little faster and my stomach tightened a little. I was trying to be very casual and matter-of-fact about it as I apologized to her for not realizing it was late, but when I took a single bowl from the dish drainer my chest squeezed a bit more and as I measured out the laxative powder that gets mixed with the wet food my hand shook just a tiny bit as I realized I was doing just the one dose now.

My physical reaction wasn't as strong when I did Gytha's evening dry food feeding, but that doesn't involve any prep time, so it was over much faster. I still haven't removed Gink's dry food bowl, and I saw her eating out of it yesterday afternoon. That gave me a little pang, but also made me kind of happy at the same time. They both often ate out of all four bowls interchangeably, and I had forgotten about that in my morose concerns about "his" bowls. Her not seeing it as "his" food bowl was reassuring in a way.

Still, I do think I need to change how their...her feeding area is set up. It was designed to fit four different bowls for two cats. Now the empty side will be a constant reminder of what's missing, and I don't want to have to deal with that. I want to reduce any triggers that I can, because there are many that I cannot.

Like bedtime, which is (so far) thankfully not as bad as the early mornings. Last night I was tired out from working in the garden all afternoon (and not having slept well the night before), so I had a brief moment when I looked at the edge of the bed where he sometimes laid by my side while I read or did crossword puzzles. I was relieved to not feel any pain at the thought. Gytha also settled in between the pillows more easily last night, which I realize now was a great help. Friday night she was very, very demanding of attention when we went to bed and kept sitting up and looking at the bedroom doorway as if she was expecting Gink to come in for their nightly routine of negotiating sleeping spots. Even after I'd turned out the lights I could see her checking the door and waiting in the dark. Very, very hard for me.

One of the most distressing triggers is the spare bedroom. For at least the last six months, if not more like a year, Gink had taken to sleeping on the twin bed in that room. I joked when my Dad came to visit recently that he was stealing "Gink's bed." In a way, this makes bedtime easier in general, because it wasn't unusual for Gink to go back to his own bed after a little cuddle time or during the night. Him not being in the bed with me when I go to sleep or when I wake up during the night is not a completely foreign feeling. But walking past that room and seeing the empty bed has been causing my insides to clench. It is ten times worse right now because we hurriedly shoved half of the contents of another room into the spare bedroom Monday night and Tuesday afternoon to make room for "new" chairs we're babysitting for some friends. That kind of clutter gnaws at me to begin with, and with all that mess and the painful Gink associations all rammed into one tiny place in such a short time, the room exudes unhappiness, especially in the dark. And you can't go anywhere on the second floor without walking by that door. I can deal with it if it is day time, the lights are on, and I'm working on getting rid of the mess. Focused, purposeful energy cancels out the negative stuff. So that's part of what I want to get taken care of this weekend. I thought about closing the door, but that just bottles up the bad aura and makes it seem even more menacing.

Night and darkness in general have become harder for me. I suddenly find it hard to be in any dark room at all, and even dim lighting depresses me. I was so relieved that the sun ended up being at least partially out for much of the day yesterday. But as night fell, I realized my relative calm was starting to dissipate. And today and tomorrow are supposed to be mostly cloudy. So far this morning has been the kind of dull, gray morning I dislike anyway. If the sun doesn't come out at all, today may be a struggle.

Then there are the noises and the visual misperceptions. Ours is an old house, and wood creaking isn't anything strange. But the attic steps creaked yesterday while I was in the spare bedroom (where the door to the attic is) and they keep creaking today, and it reminds me of cats going up and down those stairs. At night I'll hear a random noise from one of the other bedrooms and, though it isn't even the kind of noise the cats would make, it reminds me of Gink. At least two or three times yesterday I caught something out of the corner of my eye and thought it looked like a black and white cat shape. Each time everything clenched inside for a split second. Actually, I almost had a mini panic attack at one point because I was seeing something at a distance that was triggering a mental image of Gink, and it took me a few seconds to figure out what I was actually seeing. For those few seconds I was getting incredibly upset that I couldn't figure out what it was, and I was struggling to stay calm so I could see the real thing instead and stop seeing Gink. That was a tiny bit intense.

I also can't get away from the litterboxes. The upstairs one in particular is a trigger for me, since it has a lot of Gink associations of all types. He had been rather lackadaisical about peeing for a couple of years, just jumping in the box and going without looking, which was often right up against the edge and sometimes over it. Because of his "outside the box" issues, I had to move the upstairs box out of the closet and into the bathroom and get a new super large box with high sides. That's the one Gink used most and had used the day he died. I seriously didn't want to clean up his last pee clumps. I avoided cleaning it all day yesterday until right before bedtime, and even then I almost couldn't finish it. I'm not sure Gytha needs such a large box, and the old smaller ones are still in the basement. But just thinking about all of this is making my chest hurt. Just cleaning the litter box is going to be difficult for awhile no matter what I do, and I don't want to make too many changes in Gytha's environment too fast.

Dealing with Gytha has been slightly distressing. She doesn't seem to miss Gink exactly, but she's been needing more attention and cuddling. Having to pay attention to her is a consolation that I still have my little girl and that she needs me even more right now. She needs me to reassure her of my love for her, and I need to focus on taking care of what I still have, of reminding myself that the rest of my heart is still there and needs attention. But she's also a constant reminder of what I've lost. We didn't have two separate cats. Regardless of whether or not they cared about one another, in my mind they were a pair. The dynamic has suddenly changed significantly. We are now cat parents of an "only cat." I've never had an "only cat." Gytha has never been an "only cat." This will take some getting used to for all of us.

Part of the reason I kind of wish she didn't need me so much right now is that my instinct is to draw away from interaction with others when I'm upset. This is not necessarily the best thing for me to do, since I know that being alone often makes any mental or emotional problem I'm dealing with worse for me. It allows me to ruminate and dwell, which is another reason why those early morning hours are so tough. Those were already times when I would lie in bed and think until I either fell asleep again or gave in and got up. Yesterday morning I woke up around 4 and had to get up and play on the computer for awhile before I could get back to sleep for another hour or so. At least this morning I slept in until about 5:30. But I needed to have another good cry, and it's even harder to breathe with a crying snot nose when you're lying down. So I decided it was a better idea to get up and write all those thoughts down instead. There aren't many people in my daily life that I can really "do" things with, and much of my social interaction is online. But even if no one reads this, I've always used writing as a way of trying to move things from inside to outside of my own head in order to give both the thoughts and my brain more open space. It serves as both a way for me to communicate with my own self, and maybe to share those thoughts with other people.

The one person I do have in my daily life (besides Gytha) is Tim, and he's the ultimate comfort. I'm definitely happier and calmer when Tim & I are together than when I'm sitting alone. We're both grieving for Gink, but together we can carry on our normal routines and that helps me feel more like things are "normal." Even though our version of "normal" tends to be sitting in the same room working on separate laptops, it's nothing like sitting alone in a room working on a laptop.

So, what's helping me so far is to keep busy and to stick to doing things I know I like to do. I'm happier and calmer when I'm working outside in the garden, which is an immense relief. Friday night I was looking outside at all my plants and didn't really care. The idea that the loss of Gink would steal happiness from other areas of my life was even more heartbreaking. But as soon as the sun peeked out Saturday morning I felt compelled to go outside, and as I walked around looking at all my plants my energy level started rising and my heart started feeling lighter.

Presumably I'll be fine when I'm back at work, although I'm wondering if I'll end up needing to take a half day or two off. I'm a little worried about Gytha. Being completely alone all day every day is different than doing your own thing in a house where another living being is doing its own thing. It occurred to me that Gink had the house to himself for a few days when Radioactive Gytha was in the hospital having her thyroid treatment, and I don't remember him behaving all that differently. Maybe some of Gytha's reactions right now are to our grief more than her own. But we're making sure she knows that when we leave we're coming back. We're probably going to go see a movie today or tomorrow, and we're going to make sure we both leave the house at some point on both days to try to prepare her for being alone all day after that. We're supposed to go to Dad's for Father's Day weekend, and I don't want to leave her. Even though we'd be gone for less than a day and a half, at this point I can't bear the thought of leaving her alone overnight.

I'm really glad the windows can be open now, partly because it gives Gytha something to do (birdwatching, nature study, etc.) and partly because I feel sort of claustrophobic being in the house. I also don't want to go up to the 3rd floor, probably because of that sense of oppression. It is where I found Gink hiding Friday morning, laying in the dirty, hidden space behind the door that separates the finished part of the attic from the unfinished room. But that's not really why it bothers me. He spent most of his time up there this winter when he was sick, so the couch up there is half covered in his fur. Which is part of why I really need to clean up there, but also not really why I don't want to go up there. It's rather dark, but there are lights. It's kind of small, but not terribly so. And I need to start taking crap up there to clear out the spare bedroom. But I don't want to go up there.

Maybe I will once I get done with this, get dressed, eat a little bit, get myself started on working through another day. Throwing things away and cleaning seems to be vital to my healing process as well as a good way to stay busy and something I wanted to be doing with my weekends anyway. So I really need to get myself working up on the third floor. Maybe music will help. There isn't much for me to do in the garden today. Not much on the internet or the rest of the world is of much interest to me right now. I have ingredients for a recipe that I was going to make on the grill, but I don't really care all that much about food right now, and I'm not sure the rain will make grilling feasible this weekend. I feel like maybe going for a walk even though it's still looking utterly dreary outside. Anything would be better than sitting around worrying that the tightness in my chest and gut will return. Crying again this morning felt helpful for my insides (not so much the "outside" with the puffy eyes, aching face, gums, jaw, ...), but a certain kind of numbness seems preferable as a general rule. I don't know if this is a form of the "denial stage" you hear so much about. I don't care about stages. I'm just going to deal with whatever I have to however I can.

Grieving for Gink

I'm the kind of person who tries to pre-deal with difficult experiences, as if somehow imagining what you'll do when your spouse dies or your parents die or your pets die will somehow make it easier. My creative abilities only seem to work when my anxieties manage to take over and induce imaginary trauma. It doesn't work: pre-crying doesn't reduce the amount of crying that comes with the actual event. Now that I've lost my boy furbaby, I can verify that for sure.

And, man, is my face sore. My eyes are almost swollen shut. I've been crying on and off for about 9 hours now. I'm glad I had about 5 hours between getting the call from the vet and the appointment. I was able to cycle through crying jags to calm periods that allowed me to still do mundane things like go pick up my prescription refill that I'd called in and fill up the car's gas tank. It also allowed me to just cry whenever I needed to and as much as I needed to.

I'm glad we decided to be with him when they gave him the injection. It was so fast and so peaceful, so there was nothing to cause me any concern, and he got to fall asleep forever with my hand on him. Seeing it happen, so calmly and easily, is a comfort to me.

Now I can really let myself think about the things that kept crossing my mind during the hours I was waiting for the appointment but were making his impending death more painful. I tried to force myself to wait until he was actually gone to let myself grieve for what we've lost.

We're never going to hear the kthunk-kthunk-kthunk of him carrying his wand toys up and down the stairs again. If there were any special toys or things that were his, it was the wands. Should I even keep them? Probably not, but I'll have to wait until it feels right to throw them away. Now I understand how "too soon" feels.

We now have eight food bowls for one cat. How long is it going to be before feeding time stops making my heart ache as I feed just one baby? I don't want to touch his dry food bowl. I don't want to remove it and leave an empty space or to wash away the traces of his face.

I'm never going to see Gink & Gytha together in the two sunroom windows, as they watch the birds or stare out into the night seeing things I can't see. It already seemed weird to see just Gytha up there when Gink was sick. They were not true siblings and were never close. But one of the few things they did "together" was to sit in those open windows for hours sometimes.

He's never going to startle me again as he leaps and scrabbles at the front window, trying to catch dead leaves as they whip around outside.

I've even thought of a few "positive" things about Gink being gone: no more scratching up the door frames, no more having to keep all plastic and tape where he can't get to it, no more pissing on the front porch, half the cat food bill, less cat litter and hair to clean up. But then I find myself thinking, "I'd give anything to keep dealing with those things if I could have him back."

But that's just not the way life works. And I'm sometimes okay with that. Yet, there's this ache in my chest and now that he's really gone I'm getting a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach thinking about these things. I'm starting to feel the hole in my life, and the hole feels bigger than the cat whose death has created it.

I've dreaded this day. I've found myself trying to plan for it as I laid in bed at night trying to sleep and tearing up instead. I've forced myself not to dwell on it. And that's what I'm going to have to do now. Keep busy, let life keep moving. It was probably the best possible experience we could have had for what it was. And I'm deeply, so deeply, grateful for that. But it still hurts like hell.

Gink would have been 14 next month, and for all but a few months of that time I was his Cat Mommy. I was closely bonded with both of my cat babies --they both usually slept with us, liked laps, followed me around the house when I was home. Gink would always follow me upstairs when I got home from work, jump up on the bed, roll over on his back, and yell at me until I paid attention to him. He was the one who would lay across my back if I was laying on my stomach, or snuggle up under my arm when I was laying on my back. Sometimes he would rub his face on my face. He was Sexy Cat, Ginky Boy, Whiny Butt. There will never be another cat like him, and I will always love him.