We Interrupt This Program...

Who would have thought that it would take almost eight months to get another blog entry posted? Certainly not me! Unfortunately, the trials of life came at me full force when I least expected, and I now find myself at a point where I am unable to move forward for the time being.

Things started to get difficult in September, but I had no idea that things were building to a crescendo for me at that time. My cat, whom I mentioned in my post “Overextending,” started to lose weight rapidly, and was having accidents all over the house, especially in my husband’s and my room, where he preferred to stay at because of our dog. Jobie never liked RJ from the day she came into the house, and he had decided then that he preferred to camp out in the bedroom rather than deal with her. He started to show signs of his medical problem worsening, so we started taking him to the vet more frequently.

Just a month after my cat’s ordeal began, we noticed that two adorable kittens had decided to take up residence in our garage, using it for shelter from the elements. One was very desirous of human attention, although she was afraid to come close enough to be touched at first, while the other preferred to keep her distance. Our next door neighbors took pity on them and began to feed them, but all the other neighborhood cats started “sharing” their food. We had been considering feeding them as well, but they beat us to it. We started helping with their feeding when we saw that the kittens were not getting enough from the “community trough,” and put some food in the garage for them. Unfortunately, the neighborhood cats found their way into the garage with the kittens, and of course helped themselves to that food as well.

Lovey, around the time she first appeared in our garage

We started calling them Lovey and Spooks, and started trying to coax them to interact more with us when we left the house or came home. We thought that it would be easier to take care of their basic needs if they were at least socialized enough to let people hold them. Neither we, nor our neighbors were willing at that time to claim ownership of either kitten, in our case because we had so much on our hands with Jobie.

He was declining rapidly. It was apparent by December that he would not be with us for much longer. I could not bear to lose him, and did everything I could to keep him alive. I was hoping he would make it through just one more Christmas, but he passed away on December 18^th. We weren’t able to bury him until two weeks later because of the heavy rains we were having, and we had to get the hole cleared of water so that we could put his little makeshift casket in it.

I took some time to mourn the loss of the cat I had always considered my “furry child,” and barely had time to breathe when my husband was told by his doctor that he should have a stent put in his arm to prepare for dialysis (he is not diabetic, but we will leave his story for some other time). He was scheduled for surgery at the start of the second week of February, and had to go in a second time a week later to clear clots out of the tube.

As he was recovering from his surgery, we noticed that Spooks was looking a bit round in the belly, and we knew something was going to be happening soon. It was time to find a way to get both kittens off the street and away from the toms, before Lovey ended up like her sister, if she wasn’t already. We discussed arrangements for the two cats with our neighbors, agreeing no one would be considered either cat’s owners, and that we would share the expenses of getting them taken care of before they populated the entire neighborhood. It was decided that Lovey would go in first, to make sure she wasn’t in a family way like her sister, and start her on the road to a neutered, healthy life.

Once at the vet, we were advised that both kittens had to come indoors until after Spooks had her kittens, and Lovey had to go on an antibiotic for an infection before she could be spayed. Since we knew this meant we would get attached to Lovey and therefore want to keep her, we decided we may as well just consider her ours now and adopt her into the family. This posed a problem with Spooks however, because she was barely socialized enough to let us touch her while she was eating. Even that was at a very extended arm’s length, because she just did not trust humans enough for anything else yet.

We were still trying to figure out how to get Spooks into our neighbor’s house for the duration of her pregnancy and nursing period, when my husband and I stopped for lunch near one of the pet stores in the area. It dawned on me then, that I hadn’t checked with any rescues to see if they could help. We stopped at the one running adoptions in the pet store nearby, and they said they’d be more than happy to take Spooks. All we had to do was get her to the pet store by 3. We finished our errands and went home to find Spooks in the garage, eating. After obtaining a few battle scars (me, not the hubby), we had her in a cat carrier and on her way to the pet store, yowling the entire trip.

Just after this, at the beginning of March, we finished giving Lovey her antibiotic, then discovered she had worms. Unfortunately, this meant every animal in the house needed worming medicine, so we had to take the cats who hadn’t seen the vet in a while to be examined, and that took care of the vet budget for the month. It was about the middle of March when we noticed that Lovey was looking a little round in the belly. Apparently she had only just gotten pregnant when we took her in. So, Spooks gave birth on March 23^rd while in foster care, to four kittens. Lovey gave birth here, on April 18^th, but only had two kittens. They will be ready for adoption around June 13^th.

Lovey with her kittens, Bullet and Ditto.

So, life has been rather busy, mostly with animals. There have been other things going on as well, but nothing quite as involved as all I’ve posted here. I haven’t been able to do as much research on fibromyalgia as I have wanted to, but hopefully my next blog post will be more about what I have learned so far, rather than what is keeping me from staying on track with this.

Overextending

The end of this week has been a little busy for me. It's a long story, which many of my readers already know, but a pit bull mix pup found its way into our garage, and now we're trying to find someone (home or a shelter) to rescue her from the pound before she meets their time line max for holding pits. I am sure, because of her breed, that she doesn't have as much time with them as other dogs, so I've been doing what I can to reach out to the different rescues. But that's only part of what this is about. I mention it because it is part of what I was doing yesterday.

We had quite a list of things to do, and I was feeling really good, so I was up early to get started. After breakfast, I emptied the dish machine, reloaded, and cleaned the sink. I have an older cat, a male Maine Coon named Jobie, who needs to be bathed regularly because of his medical problems, and I needed to get him cleaned up before taking him in for his regularly scheduled lab work. He got his bath in the freshly cleaned sink, which I of course, cleaned again when we were finished.

My husband and I then headed off to the grocery store for a few things, came home, put them up, then took the cat to the vet. We waited to hear about his thyroid levels, which turned out to be on the high end of normal. We took him home, then headed out for lunch and to shop for a Bunco gift for Monday night. When we got home, I wrapped the gift and pulled meat out to defrost for cooking this evening. That may have to wait for my husband to do tomorrow, because it's still not defrosted.

I spent some time online trying to contact different rescues about the dog I mentioned above, even speaking with one of them over the phone at length. I also spent quite a bit of time on the phone with our vet, when she called to discuss the results of the lab work and the future course of treatment for this cat, as well as how to discourage and eliminate some bad behaviors he has developed. By now it was dinner time, and I was a bit tired, so my husband went out and picked up dinner from a place we like to go when we are in the mood to get out of the house. Since I've been on a diet for some time, we made sure I had a healthy, low calorie selection. It was filling enough that I put some away to eat today. At the end of the evening, I went to bed feeling good and planning to take care of some things today, that I just didn't have time for yesterday.

Today, the alarm went off at 6 am, as usual to help me get up and ready for church. I was having trouble waking up, so I allowed myself another 30 minutes to try to sleep off the tired, and added another 30 when I realized that church service was scheduled to be later than normal. When my timer went off, I still was having trouble waking up, and fell asleep again as I was trying to get up! Twenty five minutes later, I woke up on my own, but still felt very fatigued. I forced myself to get up, and went into the kitchen to make breakfast. I barely got my own breakfast together, and was cleaning up from eating it, when my husband came in the kitchen, and announced he didn't want to go to church because he was still recovering from some medical problems of his own that he had to deal with the day before. Have I mentioned that he has Crohn's Disease and is in stage 5 renal failure from lifelong kidney problems?

I was doubting my ability to get ready in time anyway, so he got no argument from me. At least I was able to do my daily bible reading.

I went to the computer to work on more contacts for the dog, but just couldn't seem to get started. I just sort of stared at the list of web addresses in front of me, and realized I couldn't think straight. Instead, I started playing a game to try to get the cobwebs out of my brain and get ready to work. Not happening, even after an hour. I realized it was because I was still tired, so I went to take a nap. Yes, more sleep. I woke up again about an hour and a half later, got up and shook off the cobwebs slowly. By then my husband had got ready for work, and left for his day at 1pm. I realized later that it had been 5 hours since I had eaten, so I warmed up my leftovers and ate. It is now after 2pm, and nothing I had planned to do for today has been done.

Some of you may think I'm wasting time or procrastinating by taking the time to write about this, but I felt it would be important to share just how the fatigue, which I believe is from the fibromyalgia, can hit someone suffering from the condition. It's not that I don't want to do more today, it's that I can't seem to get myself going to do the things I want to do. It's hard to describe just how this feeling stops you from doing even those things considered to be simple tasks. Writing is not normally a difficult thing for me, so I can struggle with the feeling long enough to get a single blog post done.

And now, I'm off to take some medicine, as my neck, left shoulder and elbow are starting to complain at me, and I want to be ready for a phone call I'm expecting this afternoon.