Sad day

Well, I've posted some of our weekend activities on our therapy-pet blog, and I'm basically too lazy right now to post it again over here, so if you'd like to read/see it, click the link.

It's been a rather sad week around here thus far, and it's only tuesday. :(
The bad news is: After this friday, I'll no longer be working at my job.
The good news is: at least I still have a job.

**sigh**

I'm being transferred to a different location. Distancewise, it's closer to my house, but as I'll now be sitting in rush-hour traffic to get there, it will take me as long, if not longer to get there. I'm having more work dumped on me for the same pay. I'm losing my nice big, private (sort of) office. And here is the part that has me the most upset, I'll no longer be able to bring Olivia to work with me and then visit the nursing home afterwards.
Oh sure, I can still drive all the way out to LaGrange and visit the nursing home if I'd like, but now I'll have to work it into my schedule either in the evenings or on the weekends (in other words, on my own time). It's not that I mind doing n.h. visits on my own time, most of them I do is on my own time, but I have so little time available in the evenings or weekends to be able to drive all the way out here, that I'll most certainly have to reduce the frequency of my visits. I'm truly bummed out. It has become such an important part of my life, I feel like I'm losing a dear friend. :(
I've been fighting the tears, yesterday after I got the news, again this morning while on the treadmill, again a bit later on the drive to work. No, I'm not a happy camper. But in this economy, I just need to be thankful I have a job and that I'm not commuting across the river right now what with the Sherman Minton bridge having been shut down. **sigh**
I've been working all morning trying to get my personal files, my itunes library and photos off the work computers. I'm going to have to break down and purchase a computer for home. I don't know what kind of time I'll have at my new location to blog, so my blogs my become even fewer and farther between for a while. But I'll still check my email, so for those of you that have my address, feel free to contact me. I may be fretting for nothing. Who knows? I may have more free time on my hands than ever before. Seriously, the whole nursing home thing and the commute are the two things that are bumming me out the most.

Jump-start my heart please

I've been working my butt off for the past 6 weeks for our therapy pet group which will have a booth in an event that is hosted by the local animal shelter.
I mailed the paperwork back to them weeks ago. Fortunately, I kept a copy. They mailed a confirmation letter to our group's president. I just called them a few minutes ago to ask a question about booth set-up in the morning, and was promptly informed they had no record of us having sent in the paperwork, thus meaning they hadn't designated booth space for us.
I don't know as my heart has ever beat so hard before in my life! I felt absolute nausea come over me and I was sure I was near to having a heart attack.
As I said, I've been working my tail off, trying to round up volunteers to help work the booth, printing up fliers and raffle tickets, getting a banner made, countless trips to the store, list after list made, checked off, updated and revised...
I've been begging for donations from my employers so we'd have items to raffle off and generally spreading the word for everyone to come out and see us at the event.
Then for the event coordinator to suddenly tell me there was no record of us attending the event! I felt all my hard work going down the drain and wondered how on earth I was going to explain to all those people why we weren't there.
Sick doesn't even begin to do justice to the sinking feeling I had.
Fortunately, the woman said they would still let us in. I quickly faxed over the copies I'd made and called her back to confirm she'd gotten them.
Lesson learned: for future events, do a follow-up call to confirm that our applications are received. I mean, good grief! What would've happened if we'd just shown up in the morning and they had no record of us??

Weekend in review

It was another busy, busy weekend! First I took the girls down to Waterfront Park for the Alzheimer's Walk. We made some new friends (potential clients for our therapy pet group) and ran into some old ones too.

After the walk was over, I heard someone calling my name. It was Dan, a guy I've known since 2nd grade, but hadn't seen since graduation until that is, our 25th reunion back in June. Now here turns up again, kinda like a bad penny. Sorry Dan, not implying you're bad. ;) But I had him take this photo for me.


It's not easy trying to get the girls to both sit AND stay AND face the same direction all at the same time WHILE I'm trying to take their picture. This morning, I did hear back from one of the ladies we met, and I'm to start taking Olivia to a new facility starting next week. The lady was so nice and is just so excited to have us visit.


We also ran into another old friend, Doug and his Great Dane, Noel, and his daughter Aleah (hope I spelled that correctly). Our first dane, Smokey, and his first dane, Nip, were litter mates. We had a chance meeting at the park one day when we were there with our dogs, got to talking and discovered they were brother/sister. I've stayed in touch with the family ever since, thru their many fur-babies and ours.



Phoebe was doing a little modeling for me.
None of our other dogs have liked wearing the Doggles, but she didn't seem to mind one bit. How cute is she???

The look on her face says "Who, me?"

She was so exhausted after the Alz. walk, she passed out when we got home. It's hard work being an affectionate dog with hundreds of people wanting to pet you.

I do love it whenever I can get a group-photo of the kids together.

"If It Should Be"

If it should be that I grow weak,
And pain should keep me from my sleep,
Then you must do what must be done,
For this last battle cannot be won.
You will be sad, I understand,
Don't let your grief then stay your hand,
For this day more than all the rest,
You love for me must stand the test.
We've had so many happy years,
What is to come can hold no fears,
You'd not want me to suffer so,
The time has come, please let me go.
Take me where my need they'll tend,
And please stay with me until the end,
I know in time that you will see,
The kindness that you did for me,
Although my tail its last has waved,
From pain and suffering I've been saved.
Please do not grieve, it must be you
Who has this painful thing to do,
We've been so close, we two, these years,
Don't let your heart hold back its tears.
-Anonymous-

And then there were none

For years now, I've been looking forward to the day when my house would be cat-free. With the passing of each kitty, it brought me a little bit closer to the day when I'd no longer have to be rudely awakened in the middle of the night to a cat coughing up a fur-ball, or the mornings when I'd sleepily get out of bed and put my foot into my slipper, only to find cat vomit in it, or sort the laundry into piles on laundry day, then scoop a pile up into my arms only to discover that one of them had urinated on the pile and now that horrid scent was all over me and the clothes I was wearing. GRRRRR!!! No more litter boxes to scoop out, no more random pieces of litter found here and there on furniture where it falls from between their toes, no more... well, you get the idea. I'm not really a cat person. That's not to say I dislike cats, I'm just more of a dog-person. But since I had made the decision to take on the responsibility of their care many, many years ago when they were kittens, then I was going to see my commitment through 'til the end. I would see to their needs and when the time and they were no longer enjoying life, then I would see to it their suffering ended in a humane way.

I don't think I shed any tears when we put BJ down. I know I didn't when we lost Pudge (and she was my favorite of the three). And I was sure when Frodo's time came, that there would be a silent celebration going on in, if only in my mind. So imagine my own surprise when I actually cried when I had to drop him off at the vet this morning. Granted, I wasn't sobbing endlessly as when we've had to put down one of our dogs, but I cried none the less.
Frodo has been losing weight over the past couple of months, so I was reasonably sure he wouldn't make it 'til the end of the year. He was always the largest of our three, yet he still wasn't a very big kitty. Perhaps 9 or 10 lbs. at most. And he was always my least favorite. I know that's not a nice thing to say, but I'm just being honest.

Saturday morning, I suddenly realized I hadn't seen him all day, and that I probably hadn't seen him since perhaps earlier the day before. I started looking around but couldn't find him. I made sure he wasn't locked in any of the closests by accident, as would occasionally happen, and felt he was hiding behind a piece of furniture somewhere. I left the house and ran a few errands. When I returned around noon, I finally found him on his perch by the bedroom window. I sat on the edge of the bed and talked to him, but he continued facing towards the window. I called him repeatedly, but there was no indication he heard me. Either he was ignoring me or he'd completely lost his hearing, or else he was so weak, he didn't have the energy to turn and look at me. I picked him up and suddenly realized just how much weight he truly had lost. I sat him on the bed and he seemed unsteady on his feet. I sighed deeply with the realization that "it was time" and placed him back on his perch and went to call the vet. It was already after 12pm and they were closed for the long holiday weekend. What to do what to do?? He wasn't gasping for breath, he was having seizures, he wasn't coughing up blood, so I really didn't consider this an emergency euthanazia. I decided to wait 'til Tuesday morning.
I placed Frodo in our bathroom where his litter boxes, food and water were located and shut the door to keep him confined. If by chance he was going to pass on his own, I didn't want it to be behind a piece of furniture where we would have a hard time getting to him. I placed a folded up towel on the floor so he'd have something soft to lay on and headed to the farm.

When I returned that evening, he had peed on the towel and was hiding behind the toilet. That is where he stayed the rest of the weekend, only venturing out long enough to get a bit of water and use his litter box. He never touched his food the whole weekend. When I went to the store last night, I picked up some canned food, something I never fed my cats. I sat the opened can of food in the floor and retrieved him from behind the toilet. He didn't hesitate but started eating greedily. I was afraid he'd end up vomiting up the food he was eating so fast and after having fasted for so many days. But he managed to keep down what little he did eat. He didn't even come close to eating a 1/3 of the serving.

I didn't even call the vets office this morning as I knew they'd make me set an appointment for later today. I didn't want to leave him suffering any longer than was necessary, nor did I want to come home later today to find a dead cat in my bathroom, even though I'd been expecting to find him that way all weekend. I just showed up at the vet's carrying little Frodo wrapped in a towel. By the time I got to the counter, I was sobbing and begging them to put him down despite me not having an appointment. I was almost embarrassed to take him in in the condition that he was, as it looked like we had deliberately starved him. But he's had an endless supply of food waiting for him, he just wouldn't eat, and he literally turned skeletal in the past few days. If anyone had told me an animal could decline so rapidly in such a short time, I don't know as I would have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

So I found it somewhat disconcerting that I was so upset over the passing of our final kitty. Something that I had been almost looking forward to for quite some time now. Just not in this way.

This is(was) Frodo. He turned 19 this month, although his exact date of birth I'm not sure of, I just know it was sometime around Labor Day 1992. He came to us along with his twin brother, Billbo. I was the only one that could ever tell them apart they looked so much alike. Frodo had 1/2 of a "mustache" on the left side of his nose and Billbo had the other 1/2 on the right side of his nose. Their eyes were a different shade of green and Billbo's were slightly slanted, but other than that, their markings were identical. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of him. He disappeared a few months after we got them.

We were living at my f-i-l's place at the time and he had lost both of his cats. The mice and moles were starting to take over so we needed some new barn cats. Of course the humane society and animal care society aren't going to allow you to adopt a pet if it's only going to be living outside/in a barn. But fate stepped in at the time. I had left my name with the woman at the A.C.S. and later that day she called me and said I guy had called her about two 6-month old kittens he'd found on the side of the road as newborns (someone had dumped them!), and now he wanted to find homes for them. She gave me his number and we took the pair off his hands. He'd already named them Billbo & Frodo, so we let the names remain.

The dog we had at the time had never liked cats before, yet he seemed to accept these two little waifs. Either they were very bold kittens to stand up to a dog that didn't like them, or else very stupid. Either way, they won him over. Frodo did disappear for a few days once, only to reappear at the backdoor, battered and with a broken hip, having drug himself home from wherever he'd ventured off to. I shelled out the bucks to have the little guy put back together and while he healed, he got to live indoors. Once he was all better though, he returned to the barn with Billbo who then disappearred, never to return.

When we moved from my f-i-l's place, I brough Frodo with us and he became an indoor kitty for good. He was always at the bottom of the pecking order, the other two cats, despite being smaller, beat up on him when it came to food and toys or just because they felt like it sometimes. As Great Danes came into our lives, Frodo befriended them as he had our old dog. Again, whether it was because he was brave to stand up to such a huge animal or because he was that dumb, I'm not sure. When our Kelsey had to have two surgeries because of her Wobbler's Syndrome, Frodo was of great comfort to her both times she came home from the hospital. He would go and lay by her, nuzzling her face with his as if to say "I hope you feel better soon".

Bootsy & Eliott never were won over by his charm and I think would've relished the opportunity to rip him limb from limb. But Smokey, Kelsey and Olivia have all loved him. He even tolerated Phoebe as she pulled tufts of hair from his body and spit them out.

Farewell little Frodo. You can now once again cuddle with Kelsey and see your long lost brother, Billbo. **sniff**