Stumbles

Early one morning, late October 2018, I was woken up by a phone call from Bob's sister Della.  She normally is a very fast talker, but this morning she was sounding like machine gun fire.  In my groggy state, all I could make out was that did I want some cats.

First thought was no, of course not.  I already had nine cats.  Then it hit me that she was talking about her own cats.  Their home had just been completely gutted by Hurricane Michael.  They were living in an RV in the front yard with their four dogs.  Their three cats really had nowhere to live.  So of course I said I would babysit them for awhile.

By the end of the first month we had fallen in love with the little gray tabby Stumbles.

She got her name because she had cerebellar hypoplasia   - "wobbly cat" syndrome.  It gave her an adorable little prancing walk where her back end didn't always agree with where her front end was going. [now my silly little singsong is running through my head: "Stumbellina, Stumbellina, you're a prancing ballerina, you're my perfect little girl].

 But it was her personality that charmed us - I have never met such a confident and fearless little cat.  When we introduced her to the household, and my cats would hiss at her, her reaction was "whatever."

Last May, when the tornado went overhead and I learned that they do indeed sound like a freight train, all the other cats ducked under furniture.  Stumbles hung out in the hallway with me with an air of "whatcha doin?"

She was ours (and later, just mine) for seven delightful years (It was almost a year before Della and Don could move back into their house.  By then it was mutually decided that we could keep the three cats - Stumbles, Tula, and RedBug)

 Then it suddenly went downhill.

It started out innocently enough.  Monday, May 5 - I was talking to her, looking down, and said "Girl, you're getting a little skinny."  Losing a bit of weight isn't unheard of in a 12-year-old cat.  I started giving her an extra meal of wet food for lunch.  But after a few days she was just nibbling at it.

So off to the vet on the next Monday.  Her thyroid count was a little high, which can cause weight loss.  She goes on meds; I'm told it can take up to a month to balance out.  In the meantime, the meds can actually decrease appetite a little.  But her eating went down to barely nibbling her favorites.  Back to the vet (vet #2) the next Monday, who gives her the "happy shot" - cortisone and B-12 - to wake up the appetite.  It worked for that day and the next.  She wasn't gobbling, but she was at least eating some.  Then she stopped completely.  I went back to the vets to get some other meds that increase appetite.  Nothing happened.

Over the holiday weekend I resorted to force feeding her a half-dozen times a day, maybe a half-ounce at a time, a lot of which she spit out. We went back to the vet and  I requested X-rays - they showed nothing.  She's given antibiotics (she had a slight fever) and anti-nausea drugs.  I'm told to give it another 24 hours to see if that helps; if not, get an ultrasound.

Two days later -this past Thursday - she got the ultrasound: widespread lymphoma.  As a Hail Mary shot, she was put on a high dose of steroids.  If she started eating again in 24-48 hours, then she had a chance of having a good (he said not just OK, but good) 6-8 weeks.  By now she was spending all of her time under the blankets on the bed.  She used to demand a lot of attention; now she just wanted to be left alone.

This morning, 48 hours later, I had her put down.

I'm reeling.  No matter how many times I experience it, I'm always shocked at the amount of physical pain that grief causes.

Tonight, I had to remember to fix only four bowls of cat food.
After I ate my dinner, I automatically put my plate on the floor, because she had licking privileges.  Every time I walk past the bedroom, I automatically look to check in on her.

I will always be grateful for the 7 years I had with that silly little wobbly girl.  But, for a time now, I'm going to hurt.

Stumbles and RedBug

Three Trees in the Driveway

 When you have as many trees as I do out here, from time to time one falls over.  Three times in the last 10 years or so, that's been across the driveway.

The first time I was heading out to do a demo at a historic site.  I loaded my spinning wheel, wool, water and snack into the car, put on my farm dress, and headed out.  A few minutes later I walked back into the house.  Bob asked me what I had forgotten.  "Uh - I forgot to move the tree out of the driveway."

So we both laughed, and I changed clothes while he went to get the chainsaw and loppers.  He sawed, I cut and dragged, and we got the driveway cleared and I could change and be on my way.

The second time was almost exactly 5 years ago.  7 weeks after Bob died, guilt overcame caution (paranoia?) and Rob and Jeff invited me to come over for lunch.  I was desperate to go.  I still look back and wonder how I survived those times - bereavement is when you most need to be able to have your people around you, but because of Covid I had been limited to phone calls and zoom.

So when I headed out - and there was a tree down in the driveway, I cried as a wave of helplessness washed over me.  That was replaced by anger.  Because, dammit, I *deserved* to be able to see someone, and no effing tree was going to stop me.  I wasn't comfortable with the big gas chainsaw, but the tree wasn't that big (maybe 4" diameter) and I had a saw and loppers.  I got it cleared in about 45 minutes and got to my lunch.   But that was also a wake-up call for me: I realized that from now on, if there was a problem, there would be no laughing and working on it together.  I was on my own.  Scary thought.

Yesterday.  I was going in to work, and the trunk of a dead oak tree was lying across the driveway.  Only a few branches to deal with, but this trunk was big (8"-9" in diameter), and heavy oak.   I sighed.  Possibly muttered "oh, crap."  Then I went to the barn and grabbed my chainsaw (a couple of years ago I gave away the big gas one and got a smaller lighter battery one).  20 minutes later I had it in chunks of a size that I could roll out of the way, and I went to work.

No tears, no anger.  Just saw something that needed doing, and I did it.

Drunk? And Doldrums

 I've been having a weird thought lately that I wish I could get drunk.
In theory, it's of course very possible.  I have plenty of wine around, and a bottle of rum.

Think is, what I want is a drunk sort of drunk.  I want to be giggly and silly and maybe start rearranging the furniture or sending inappropriate texts, or starting some crazy project, or running outside and dancing naked in the moonlight.

What happens is that I have a couple of glasses of wine and fall asleep.

The doldrums seem to have returned.  As the saying goes - my get up and go has got up and went.   I'm feeling down.  But there's cause.

The weather has shifted - it's getting hot and humid again (we just broke the all-time record for the hottest May 17 ever at 96 degrees - yippee)

I'm very worried about Stumbles.

I noticed a couple of weeks ago that she was looking thin.  I started giving her an extra meal of wet food at lunchtime, but in a few days she was barely nibbling it.  She acted like her mouth bothered her.  I took her to the vet - she couldn't find anything wrong, but lab work showed that her thyroid was a little high, so she got medication for that, and some pain killers.  I've been spoon-feeding her 6-8 times a day but she's basically not eating.  She went back to the vet today - different vet for second opinion - who gave her some B-12 shots and cortisone to try to stimulate her appetite.  Fingers crossed.

I lost one of the opossums; little Georgia, the quiet one.  Perhaps she had sustained some injury when the car hit her mother, or perhaps she just couldn't adapt to the change of diet.  She wasn't growing as well as the others, but I kept her alive for three weeks so I thought she had a chance.  And, of course, as I went out in the dark with insects buzzing in my headlamp to bury her, I couldn't help but wish that I had a shoulder to lean on.  I get tired of being strong sometimes.

Things are sad at the museum too.  One of the deer - the one who likes getting her ears rubbed, and rubdowns in general - will be leaving us soon.  She had some medical issues, but lab tests show that everything is cleared now - but she has "failure to thrive"  She eats, but somehow the weight keeps falling off of her, and she's just skin and bones now.  It's possible that she's just old (14, which is old for a deer)

Even sadder - we had our beautiful, sweet, and friendly panther put down yesterday.  Another case of being old - 15 in his case.  Buddha is - was - just a lovely animal, who made funny little cat sounds but with a basso profundo purr.  Like any kitten, he loved playing with cardboard boxes.  And his favorite game was "hide and seek" - you'd tell him to go hide, and he'd run and get behind a tree (OK, so a 7 foot long cat is still kind of visible behind a 6" tree but we went along).  Then if you looked away he'd come bounding back to you.

We'll all miss him.  I know it's going to hurt the next time I fix diets and won't have a dish for him.

With all that going on, I guess it's understandable that I'm a little down.

But I still find my glimmers.  Tonight near dusk I took a stroll down to the stream.  I could hear barred owls, but it wasn't their normal call.  Just a few single hoots.  And there was more than one, flying from tree to tree.  I saw at least three, maybe four.  Being as it's late spring, it's most likely that I was watching a parent and fledglings.  Pretty cool.

And I got a neat addition to my cabinet of Curiousity.  I was down in my cottage, and noticed something strange on the floor against the wall, going around the corner to the bathroom.  It was the biggest, most perfect snake shed that I have ever found.  Just at seven feet long, and totally complete, even down to the eye caps.

So, major downs, but also some ups, and fingers crossed for Stumbles.

Of course, I don't know how a snake that big got into my sewing room.  I assume that he also got out because I couldn't find him.

Rambling

 10 days of nothing much, it seems.  Time for a ramble.

After all my peopling of the previous post, I've managed to pull back.  I had my chiropractor appointment followed by a visit to Gill, but that's it.

The possums finally started to eat on their own.  I had to force-feed them for 8 or 9 days, which is really unusual.  So they weren't growing much or gaining weight.  But they're taking off now.  Funny that they have different personalities.  Angelo (did I mention that Ebaida and I named them after painters? Suzie wanted to call the one that stayed hidden all day Vann - so that became Van Gogh.  The rest are Michelangelo, Frida Kahlo, and Georgia O'Keefe, collectively known as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Possums) - is a chonk, about a third bigger than the rest.  Van is the smallest but also the liveliest by far.  Georgia is very shy and tends to go limp when I pick her up.  Frida is alert and curious.

Cactus.  There is an area of the yard where prickly pear cactus keep cropping up.  Three decades now Bob (and now I) have dug them up and tried to keep them under control.  Doing that cleanup again has been on my eternal Things To Do List.  But today I looked out - and they all have pretty bright yellow flowers, so they get to live awhile longer.  Maybe they'll even put out fruit.

I managed to lock my keys in the car at work - for some reason when I got out of the car I tossed my keys and phone in my purse and started to take it - that's what I do when I go anywhere but work.  At work I just stuff my phone and keys in my pocket.  But I had that brain fart - and I grabbed my phone but left the keys.  It wasn't the first time I've ever locked the keys in the car, but it's been many many years.  Not a disaster - I called AAA and they came out within 20 minutes and opened up the car.  It wasn't until later that I realized that calling them had been my first thought.  For 48 years my first thought would have been to call Bob to come rescue me (and I did the same for him a few times).  Are automatic habits starting to fade, even a little?

I'm still hanging out in the woods and stream as much as possible before summer hits.  I've been delighted to realize that the ice storm apparently made a dent in the tick population.  I'm still getting a few - but I'm picking off one or two instead of a dozen.
Had to take an art shot looking up in the trees.

I had a blast from the past when a woman on FaceBook posted a sign from a diner that her uncle used to own (she was asking if anyone had any pictures of the diner itself.)

Oh, my.  I spent many an hour and had many a meal at the Mecca in the 80s and 90s.  It wasn't a retro diner so much as one that hadn't changed for 20+ years.  Most famous was Clyde's fried chicken sandwich.  Clyde would take a piece of toast, smear on mayonnaise, add lettuce and tomato, and then put on two pieces of fried chicken (bone in!) and balance the second piece of toast on top.  The technique for eating it was to deconstruct it, having the toast, lettuce, and tomato sandwich on the side.

So there I was, suddenly going down memory lane  - and it hit me that I was going down that lane by myself.  No one to turn to and say "remember the Mecca?"  But finally I remembered going there with our friend Warren.  He left Tallahassee 30 years ago, but we exchange a few emails a year.  So I sent him the picture, and remembered his first time eating that sandwich.  He never fully woke up until at least 3 in the afternoon, so in his sleepy state he didn't notice how lumpy the sandwich was (nor the wing poking out of the side), picked it up, and tried to take a bite.

Here's another artifact from the past.  Recently I've been using an Indian spice blend called garum masala.  It's a finishing seasoning that you sprinkle on toward the end of cooking that gives an undefinable flavor (probably because it has at least 15 different ingredients.)  I wanted to put intin a salt shaker to have on hand, so I dug one out of the cabinet.

 

I started cooking for Bob when we were both still living in the dorms.  Instead of buying a box of salt, we filched a salt shaker from the cafeteria.  When we used it up, we'd take the empty back to the cafeteria and filch a full one.  We continued the Great Salt Shaker exchange even after we got married.  When we left Tallahassee, we took the final salt shaker with us.  Which means I've had this for some 53 years now.  I get sentimental.  Remembering 19 year old me cooking for her new boyfriend.

Make Do And Mend:  saying from WWII, along with "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."  Even though I'm now financially secure, that's how I was raised, and how I'm comfortable.  Today I was washing my sheets (my much-loved linen sheets, now four years old) and noticed a few small holes.  My wobbly cat Stumbles often has what looks like (but isn't) seizures when she sleeps, and she had tiny but very sharp claws.  No problem - I got out needle and thread and sewed them up.  But I wonder how many people do that?  It's amazing how many people don't even know the basics (I see notices on FaceBook of people asking where they can get a button sewed on).  You get a hole in something, you toss it and get a new one.

I did, however, buy something new this week.  Now that's I'm spending more time in the so-called guest room (the only guests I ever have there are furry ones, currently the possums) I noticed that it was in dire need of a good cleaning.  That took a couple of days.  I took down the curtains to wash them.  I got those from Rob and Jeff one time when they were redecorating (a rather foreign concept to me; I never really get around to decorating, much less doing it more than once).  They were rather dirty and cobwebby, sun faded and had some chewed holes where they got too close to Dingo's cage.  They were inexpensive Walmart curtains to start with, and I got them as hand-me-downs at least a dozen years ago.  So at least for this one time I decided to forgo sewing up the holes and actually got some new ones (and try to remember to keep them away from Dingo's cage.)

One last random thought - am I the only person who was bird-watching at the dump?  Today was my trash day, and as I drove into the transfer station (sounds nicer than "dump") I saw at least a dozen birds flitting about.  Aerial acrobatics  - diving and twisting in the air.  The swifts have returned for the summer.  At the dump?  Well, what do you have around a big dumpster?  Flies, and plenty of them.  An all-you-can-eat buffet if you're a swift.   I enjoyed their flight; it seemed like everyone else just dumped their trash and moved on.

But that's the sort of thing I live for now - tiny wildflowers, unexpected birds.  Things that no one else seems to notice.

Peopling and Possums

 Wow.  May already.  Merry May, Happy Beltane, whatever floats your boat.

For someone who has decided to just be a quiet hermit, living in the woods with her books, spinning wheels, and cats, I've been out a lot and peopling a lot lately.

First, car adventures, which I didn't write about last post.  It's because I'm sad; there has now been a breakup of a relationship which lasted over 20 years - between me and the Honda Dealership.  They kept my (still missed) old Honda going for 21 years, and for the last 5 I've been taking the Fit in for it's annual checkup.  No problems - until last year, when they didn't put the hubcaps back on properly.  Two fell off and a third wasn't on correctly.  They replaced the two after I showed them the incorrect one - but not that one, which had broken clips (I have since then rather elegantly held it on with zip ties.

Mistakes happen.  But I had the routine maintenance done again this year.  I was told that they couldn't rotate the tires due to the damaged hubcap (which they had damaged).  Fine.  They're in alignment and can go awhile without it until I take it elsewhere.  But when I left to go visit Gill, I heard a scraping sound.  I looked under the car - and the underskirting was loose, flopping around, and scraping the ground.

(Back story: Last August I had a freak accident with a curb (apparently went over it a little, and when I pulled out it yanked the front bumper loose and ripped the underskirting, which had to be replaced.  I had it repaired at a body shop.)

So I go back to the dealership, point this out, and the shop manager shrugged and said "it happens."  I strongly suggested that he fix it because I wasn't going to drive it like that.  Which he did - sort of.  It still didn't seem right, so a few days later I took it back to the body shop.  They said it was pretty obvious that it was torn when it was driven onto the lift at the dealership - and no, it wasn't put back on properly.  Nice people - $20 cash and a quick repair job to fasten it on correctly.

Sigh - 20+ year relationship, shot.

On to peopling.  April 22 was the volunteer appreciation party.  The 24th was the library book club meeting.  The 27th was the Silent Book club - but afterwards I got into some good conversation with some other people for another hour.  After that I wanted to go check out a "Half Halloween Oddities Market."  That was . . . different.  For starters  - I get there, and it's an alternative dive bar.  There were some . . . interesting . . . vendors.  Actually I had a lovely chat with a . . person.  Genetically male, but wearing a sweet sundress, elaborate makeup, and a headdress that looked like furry ears but was made of taxidermied squirrels.  He told me about being an art instructor at FSU - and the difficulties of trying to teach sculpture remotely during the Covid lockdown.

Tuesday a couple of spinners that I met last month wanted to get together.  And that was fun as well.

But the problem with peopling is that I get engaged, like a napping part of me wakes up.  Then I come home to my usual hermitage and things just sort of echo for awhile while that part goes back to sleep and I get back to normal.

Maybe because of all this is why I had a dream of Bob.  Just a short bit, silly - we were working on the Halloween trail and he was complaining of a raw spot on his foot where his shoe had rubbed.  Ordinary.  And I'd do anything to have real moments like that again with him.  As usual after having any dream of him, I lie awake as long as possible, holding very still, trying to remember and hang onto every nuance of him.

That's people.  Now possums.  My museum boss, Suzie, did the most amazing thing.  She was coming in to work, and as one often does in Florida, she saw a dead opossum in the road.  But as no one ever does - she stopped, checked it, and four babies in the pouch were still alive.

They were trouble from the start.  All she had in her van was a Publix shopping bag, so she put them in there, but one escaped and crawled under the dash.  She checked all day, and finally found him around 10:00 that night.

Now I'm raising them.  They'e still being fussy about eating so it's a little time consuming.  And then this morning somehow three of them had escaped.  The cage was still secured - no loose spots or gaps.  I eventually found them.  The guest bed is a trundle bed - and they were between the two beds.  I was able to grab one, but the other two scrambled out of reach.  I couldn't pull the lower bed out because the loom is in the way.  So I had to move the loom as much as I could without having to shift other furniture around, and was able to pull out the lower bed enough to have about an 8" gap in between.  They were in a back corner under the other bed.  So I squeezed in the gap, crawled over and grabbed them, and then had to get back out while holding a squirming possum in each hand (I finally shoved them under my shirt)

I've got heavy books on top of the cage now.  And it's time to go see if that worked.