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!