Nope, Not Dead Yet

Well, hello there. I bet you maybe thought I wasn’t coming back, unless you’re on Twitter and in that case you knew I was awake online again. Pffft, I always come back eventually.

This blog will be 13 years old in February and I suppose it’ll still be here 13 years from now. Or somewhere anyway.

There’s really not much to say – which is kind of ridiculous because I bet I’ve had 100 blog posts written in my head. It was a really trying summer. Things are (maybe, hopefully) getting a little better now.

We lost Little, the last of the elderlies, a couple of weeks ago. She was a very old kitty at 17 or 18 (I never can remember which year she came here), and had been very sick for a long time, so it was time. The oldest four-footed thing in my house right now is 12, which seems odd. Everybody else is fine. I’m still trying to get used to not having a dog around that is scared to death of thunderstorms (and rain) anymore, or fireworks. Instead Dobie’s niece and nephews bark at fireworks, which is certainly more annoying.

There’s more, I’m sure, I’m a bit sleepy this morning though so this will be short. I thought we were supposed to have thunderstorms today, so I stayed up through the night working, thinking today would be a good nap day. Silly me, I practically need sunglasses indoors today, it’s so bright.

Hopefully anyone who’s subscribed via feed will get this. I discovered accidentally, several weeks ago on the MMH blog, that Feedburner had been scooped up by Google (thank goodness not Yahoo which now has its hands in my AT&T mail which works like crap now), and stuff had changed and I needed to migrate the feed, so hopefully this post is showing up both on feed and in MyBlogLog.

Also, unless you’ve got the feed or never had anything but the WordPress link, you may not even know I’m still here yet since I’m having a little bit of a disagreement with my domain & web host (i.e., they suck and their account re-up tactics suck even more). I’ll straighten that out eventually, but for now you can bookmark/link @ http://thelynnsterzone.wordpress.com/ – same for the music blog except it’s lynnstersmusiczone – it’s always been here anyway and will never change.

More later, I’m yawning despite the wayyyyyyy too bright sun.

I Might Be Typing This in My Sleep, But Probably Not

Thursday was an odd day. First and foremost, it would have been my father’s 67th birthday, if he were alive.

The annual big Relay for Life event was in my hometown over the weekend, and the paper has been publishing the list of donations for luminarias as they come in for about the past month – donations made in memory of those who died from cancer or related illnesses, in honor of cancer survivors, and this year, in honor of caretakers. Well, Thursday was also the day that my father’s name appeared as one of those donated in memory of (by a relative of mine). Not so surprising, though somewhat ironic as far as what day it was.

The paper also publishes snippets of news from bygone days frequently – 25 years ago, 50 years ago, 75 years ago, and sometimes earlier. What was really kind of odd was that 50 years ago, on that same day, the paper showed him and a group of other young men from the county preparing to leave for Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon to attend that year’s Boys State session.

I don’t know. It was just kind of an odd day all around.

I want to thank everyone for the kind notes they’ve been leaving; I could never put into words how very much they are appreciated. There are several of you I have been meaning to e-mail personally for days now, but the kinds of hours I’ve been keeping, and time I’ve been spending lately scrambling around as I have trying to slow down this impending disaster – I sleep at weird times, and when I’m not asleep I’m usually snowed under, and my actual working schedule is usually overnights, so I’m usually awake when everyone else is not and vice versa. Except I also will just (when I’m not doing shift work) go for several hours, pass out for two or three or four hours, get up and go some more trying to get stuff done. But many of you will hear from me personally soon, I promise (and KathyT, I did e-mail you and hope you got it, sorry it took five days before I heard the voice mail, oops).

And thanks to many especially for the kind words about Dobie. He was here for so long, and still my “baby puppy” even when he was old and his health failing, and it’s still very hard to believe that he’s really gone. I have a very nice picture to share that my mom took at Christmas when I had to take him with me because of his failing condition, which has wound up being the last taken of so very many that were taken of him over fifteen years. But I can’t really look at it much yet, so I’ll save it for a day when I can.

I probably need to write some more about all the horrible stuff that’s going on and why things have disintegrated to the disastrous point they have, but I’m not really sure how to put it into words here because there’s really only so much I can say publicly – and for good reasons. But it sucks, because for those same reasons, I’ve sort of been stuck fighting this battle on my own almost, and with no one I could really be open with about the details other than my very closest family and friends.

But I will do all of that soon. Unfortunately a good bit of this week is going to be focused on probably selling what little I have left that is worth anything at all (not much, but a little) that is truly just mine – a few things that would have been, I guess you’d say, family heirloom-type stuff if I were leaving anything behind one day. Not that I’m likely going to have children or anything like that at this point, but you know – stuff I never dreamed I’d ever be forced to part with, not like this. I guess if I outlive my mom (doubtful), there’s still a houseful of family things – but nothing that’s just mine, except these few things it looks like I’m going to have to part with.

It’s not much – I guess that’s the worst joke of all about all this stuff, I’m not dealing with thousands upon thousands here and it’d probably be a whole lot easier to swallow if that were the case – but no, there’s only about a grand or two standing between me and complete disaster. Much less than 2K, really, more like about 1.5. That’s the part that really stinks, that in the grand scheme of things, it’s not really all that much. But the problem is now I’ve run out of time is all.

In trying to think things through – and coming to the conclusion there were really no more options anymore but the one thing I have tried for over a year now NOT to have to do – it’s occurred to me that no matter how tough things might be right now, that really doesn’t bother me nearly as much as thinking about how I’m going to feel about it all a year from now, or two years from now, or five or ten years from now – when presumably things will probably be better, but stuff that meant something to me – things bought with me in mind and given to me for very specific reasons – will be gone. And I just can’t even let myself think about all that right now.

Anyway, this week will be busy busy – and I need to get going now as it is, much to do and much to finish – but I’m going to try and keep at the blog again, even if it’s just stupid stuff. Aside from all the awfulness of late, there’s also some really funny stuff I’ve been saving up to share. And I’ll be trying to get some personal e-mailing done this week and next too, some of you I’d been meaning to touch base with anyway and either the constant need-to-do-this or constant passing out cold from exhaustion kept waylaying. So will speak to many of you soon, and will definitely be back here shortly, as soon as I wrap up one big project that has tied me up for months. ’til then…

…

Well, I hemmed and hawed and sighed a while over it, and then I decided I really couldn’t go posting over there without posting over here, too, so… here I am. Just saying hi.

Things are… well, as bad as ever, to be honest. Worse, really. I’m sort of at the end of my rope phase, though I don’t really know what that means because, you know, what’s next? Been drowning a while, just not underwater completely yet, I guess.

I haven’t been writing for a while, really, because (A) there really hasn’t been that much interesting to write about; (B) I’m depressed enough as it is without having to read the hows and whys in black & white; and (C) out of respect for some of the members of my family who do occasionally visit here, I just don’t really want to hash out the gory details of it all on the blog. No parent really wants to know their child (no matter how old they are) is hungry, or frightened, or a lot of other things that are really much worse and it’s really just all better left in the unknown. As unpleasant as the last year and a half has been for me, it’s probably been a lot harder on those who care about me, especially one.

I’ve learned that I can eat on about a dollar a day, or less – that’s just luck, though, since I’ve never been much of an eater and rarely eat more than one meal a day anyway. I’m very tired of repeatedly being in the position of having absolutely no idea how anything’s getting paid this month – where I am again right now – other than rent, which is the one thing I do manage to make every month. For now.

It’s sort of a sick twist that I’m actually in a position where I could at least regain control of monthly living expenses again – if I wasn’t already so very far behind. I got bumped up to QA reviewer for one of the services I’ve been working for for a while now, which is a little more like a “real” job and is steady work, better pay, and something I can possibly eke out a living on – maybe not a great one, but enough – along with the little bits I bring here and there from this or that.

But again, unfortunately I’m so horrifically behind (and have probably paid for a couple of years’ worth of car payments and insurance payments in late fees, overdrafts, etc. just trying to get everything paid but never able to make it on time for months and months) – yeah, that’s still good news, the new work. But it really doesn’t make much of a difference right now when I’m so behind to begin with. If I could just get ahead, or on top of it all at least, for just one month – that would probably make all the difference in the world and I would actually be able to breathe again month to month, maybe. But that’s not likely going to happen, so I just struggle on.

I’m eligible for nothing, for this reason or that reason, whatever. I’ve appreciated well-meant suggestions from well-meaning folks about this or that over the last many months, but one thing I’ve learned in all this is I think there’s some that just don’t get it, it’s beyond a lot of people’s comprehension that one might have nothing.

Like this one suggestion I got about something that was “only $25 or so a week”. Well, that’s nice and all… if you have $25 a week to spare.

Cut off the Internet? Sure, for most that’s an “extra”. For me, it would mean zero income as opposed to the little I do bring in. Though I’ve come dangerously close a few times to losing that, too.

So yeah, I wish I could say things are better, but they’re not, and now you see why I don’t write much lately. It’s crappy enough living it, much less reading about it. I kind have avoided writing much about it (here or elsewhere) too because I’ve seen more of my friends losing jobs, or already bad situations getting worse, lately – and I don’t want to be more of a downer. But most of them will be fine. Especially one – I just know whatever’s next on the horizon there is gonna be great.

Me, I’m just here. That’s about all I know to say for now. See ya again soon.

P.S. Dobie, my 15 year old dog, left us on Good Friday. Not really ready to write about that yet, either, but probably will before too long.

Merry Merry

I think this is the first time in my life I have ever been alone on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  It won’t last – my sister couldn’t leave Nebraska until after work Wednesday, so Christmas for us is pushed back a day, my Christmas Eve will technically be tonight and Christmas Day tomorrow.  In fact, I’m on my way out of town shortly today to get that ball rolling.

Several days ago, I wrote about my frustration and sadness about not really being able to “participate” in Christmas for the second year in a row.  After I’d posted that, my godmother, who I love dearly, commented that it didn’t matter how many presents we had or did not have and that we would all still have a good Christmas and enjoy being with each other and laughing and having fun like usual, and well, she’s right, that’s all true.  But I still can’t help but be frustrated and sad that I couldn’t do much, and what Newscoma wrote the other day about her own Christmas pretty much hit the nail on the head for me too when it comes to Christmas:

This year is a lean, mean Christmas but I’ve gotten into the spirit to a degree. No, there isn’t any big ticket items. People are getting small gifts that I tried to put some meaning into. I’m a gifty person. I like seeing people’s faces when they open their presents. I’m weird.

That’s always been the fun for me as well, at least ever since I was old enough to do my own Christmas shopping.  You won’t find socks and underwear under the tree in our family – well, you will, but they’re the least important – we do gifts that others would probably think silly and certainly unconventional, but everybody gets stuff they really wanted (and some stuff they didn’t but are resigned to getting every year, like my brother-in-law getting sheep in various forms – a family in-joke) and we have a blast.  I like getting just the perfect things for people and seeing their faces when they open their presents, that’s the big thing for me.

And ever since my parents got divorced, my main priority has always been making sure my Mom gets the stuff she wanted.  And I couldn’t do much of either this year, and it depressed me.

As it turned out, I actually was a little better off than I thought I was.  I thought I only had one thing to give one person, and as I was getting things together getting ready to go out of town and kept finding things I’d forgotten about – including something my mother was supposed to have gotten for Christmas probably two or three years ago – I actually wound up with one gift for each person that will be at our family Christmas.  So I guess that’s better, but I’m still pretty frustrated and depressed about it all.

Really when it comes down to it, I’m about at the end of my rope in general.  Last week I spent three days in such depression, fear, and panic about just everything in general that when things improved just a little bit and I felt a little bit better, it was really concerning to me just how bad it had gotten.  It’s a little bit scary to get that far down.  A lot of those things that people will say things like, “I don’t know how he/she could have done that”, things I used to be able to say – I know why people do those things now.  I can tell you for a fact that if you get knocked down and desperate enough, things that may cross your mind, if only for a fleeting moment, are the kinds of things you never would have thought would do so.

But I don’t know, for some reason I’m still here, although sometimes I wonder if the only reason I haven’t just thrown up my hands and given up yet is because somebody’s got to take care of the pets, and if I weren’t here… well, the cats would probably be taken care of, but I know what would happen to my dogs, and it wouldn’t be what I would want.

So I just keep going, but I’m so tired of all the panic and anxiety and not knowing anything every month – how is this going to get paid, how is that going to get paid, how am I going to be able to eat next week, etc.  The car insurance and phone/Internet miraculously got paid this month – which the latter, you know, I’d probably do without too, but without Internet, then there’s NO income at all.

I still don’t know how the car payment’s getting made this month or catching up on the utility bill, and then January will come and all the panic just starts all over again.  Right now I only have one for sure, every month, monthly check coming in and it will only cover either rent, car insurance, or car payment, so that’s what I consider my rent check.  The rest is pretty much all up in the air every month right now, which is just… yeah, panic-inducing, frustrating, and depressing.

But for a couple of days anyway, I’m just going to attempt to enjoy what there is of Christmas this year and put the rest behind me for a little while.  There will be plenty of time after Saturday for the panic and worrying again, so I’m going to see what little bit of Christmas spirit I can muster up and go with it.

Dobie is not doing very well at all and just had a bath today – which just made him all the more furious with me – my Mom doesn’t know it yet, but he’s coming to visit for Christmas too (thus the bath).  I’m hoping hanging out in a warm house with carpet and a bed to sleep in all by himself with me for a couple of nights, and some turkey and who knows what all else there will be, will perk him up a little bit, or at least make what I am fairly certain now are his last days a little nicer.  He hasn’t shown much interest in food lately, but I kind of expect he will be thrilled about the turkey and whatever scraps.  Sure, table scraps aren’t really good for dogs, but he’s old and he’s dying, as far as I’m concerned he can eat whatever he wants (and whatever he WILL eat).

It seems like this year has just been a never-ending cycle of bad news.  Times have been so tough lately and not just for me, seems like half of nearly everyone I know has been going through something or other – friends losing jobs recently, another recently finding out hers will be terminated at the end of the year, others losing family members here right at Christmas.  It’s just all got to get better sometime, doesn’t it?

Anyway, I hope everyone who stops by here had a really super nice Christmas.  Some of you I miss so much and hope to see in the coming months.  In the meantime, I am on my way in a couple of hours for my own Christmasing, scanty though it is this year.  See you again soon.

A Little Clarification

Heh.  I just read my last post again and I should really clarify something.

I wrote:

I’m very tired of things like having to choose between buying groceries or putting gas in the car.  Or whether to buy food to eat, or buy paper towels and toilet tissue.

Paper towels normally wouldn’t be a necessity.  In fact, I went many years hardly buying paper towels at all and could usually live without them just fine.

Paper towels, however, are a necessity when you have a 14-year-old dog that has recently developed a rather extreme incontinence problem.

Yeah, it just gets better all the time.  ’til later…

The Usual, Unfortunately

Here’s yet another example of how rotten my luck is (and notably has been for some time).  I was getting ready to work on a project a couple of days ago that I badly needed to work on and finish before Christmas got much closer, and as I sat down at the computer all motivated and ready to get productive – the power went out.  Because at the house next door, they were chopping limbs off a tree… but had to get the utility company to kill my power line to do it.

The power was out for, I don’t know, seven or eight, maybe nine hours.  Just mine.  Not the house where the tree is.

In fact, the worker chopping the tree got through about 3:45, and had made several calls, but over two hours later, the utility company had yet to come back and put the (live) line back up.  So I called them too.  They finally showed up after 7 p.m., and by then it was really too late to do anything.

There’s something else I need to get done, but I need a large shipment of (free) Priority Mail boxes from the postal service to be able to do it.  I’ve been waiting a while.  I realize it’s the Christmas season and all with the mail, but just yet another monkey wrench thrown my way.  At this point, even though I badly need to get this done, I’m thinking maybe I’m better off waiting until after Christmas anyway.  Maybe people will have more money to spend on stuff they want but don’t necessarily need (which is what this project mainly consists of) by then.

In any case, I just can’t really catch a break lately.  There’s always something somewhere throwing a monkey wrench into everything.

I applied for a couple of jobs recently.  The very next week, both organizations announced major layoffs and a hiring freeze.

I’m very tired of things like having to choose between buying groceries or putting gas in the car.  Or whether to buy food to eat, or buy paper towels and toilet tissue.

It’s too bad I have to buy groceries at all, since it seems like nearly all the things I have to buy that are necessities have gone up 75-100% practically in the last few months.  Some of them have even gone up that much – yet the packaging has gotten smaller, there’s less of whatever it is in the package.  Other stuff is the same price but now, like, 11 ounces of whatever instead of 16.

Seems like I’ve been saying for months when will this all end?  Seems like it’s not going to.

People close to me will help, but by the time I’ve gotten another round or two of groceries and other necessities or bills paid, there’s nothing left and I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to make $1.49 or so stretch out for weeks again.  I need to put gas in the car again later this week and I’m thinking, OK, now how am I going to do that?

I eat maybe three, four times a week.  I know that’s not good.  But I do things like last week when I made the mistake, after having craved it for days and being hungry as heck anyway, of spending a little extra (less than ten bucks) on a spaghetti dinner from a fave joint around here.  Now I’m wishing I hadn’t and had that ten bucks back.

I have cut back virtually everything, pretty much, until there is no more.  The utilities are almost two months behind again, as that’s pretty much stayed for months now – it’ll get paid somehow.  I wouldn’t have Internet anymore I suppose, except since that’s my sole source of income I can’t very well not have that – of course if the utilities get cut off – well, you know.

Christmas?  I don’t get to participate in Christmas for the second year in a row.  I mean, we’ll have it, and it’ll be fine and nice and all that.  But I can’t buy anything for anyone, and just be opening presents I’ll wish nobody would have bought me since I can’t do anything myself.  I do have one thing for my sister that I just happened to wind up with, but I didn’t really intentionally go out and get it as a Christmas gift.  That’ll be it.

I’ve built up some residual recurring income.  It’s small now, but it will get better.  It’s just stuff that takes some time to grow and is going to continue to.  But it’s not going to solve any big problems right away, that’s for sure.

I do some work but there are issues with that too.  Always issues.  I’m actually constantly working, almost around the clock, sleep here and there when I finally crash, get up and get to work on something else again.  It’s some income, but not enough.  Working on other things too but again, more stuff that’s going to take time for anything to come of it.

I’m just really, really tired of it all.  Sorry.  I probably wouldn’t read here anymore for all the repetitive doom and gloom there’s been either.

Dobie is in such decline that I don’t really think we have much longer.  He is so frail and skinny now, it just breaks my heart.  And that in itself – him getting so frail and thin and pitiful, as well as blind – has posed all kinds of new problems, like today when he got stuck somewhere I wasn’t sure for a while I was going to be able to get him out of.  Last week he got a foot and claw stuck in the old furnace grill and I wasn’t sure I was going to get him loose from that either.  I keep thinking what if he does something like that sometime when I’m (rarely as I am) away from home and is stuck like that for hours?

He and the only other extremely elderly pet left are really throwing me for a loop.  Neither of them are eating as much as they should, although the cat is really doing all right otherwise for her 17 or so years.  It takes her hours to eat when she does eat, though, and she spends most of her time in there talking to her food.  Which is kind of funny, yes, but she’s always had this habit of talking to inanimate objects, starting with a roll of duct tape that was on the floor once years ago.

I always was big into Christmas.  I was thinking the other day of how nice it always used to be between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We’d have the tree up and on every night, and my parents had all this Christmas music on a couple of reel-to-reel tapes that were usually playing every night, and I’d just hang out laying with my head under the Christmas tree listening to music and looking at the lights and ornaments most every night.

Back when people used to have time to enjoy stuff like that, anyway.

I’d do the same at my grandmother’s house.  I remember what all the Christmas decorations she used to pull out every year looked like – probably because I was always helping get them out and put them up – even though I haven’t seen most of them in 25 years.  I guess my aunt still has most of them, I don’t know.  I don’t think there’s really anything I wish I had of all that stuff, except for maybe the little lighted Christmas trees that probably actually originally belonged to my great-grandmother.  There were two of them – one was silver and one was green – they weren’t anything special, just aluminum or tin with a light inside, and colored cellophane or something that made them look like they had lights on them.  Probably from the Fifties or Forties, maybe earlier.  They always sat on the end tables in my grandmother’s living room which, before that, was my great-grandmother’s living room.

I’m older now than my mother was when I left home for college.  Have I already written that here before?  I can’t remember.

So, enough joy and good will to men from me for now.  Maybe sometime I’ll have something better or funny to write about, there just isn’t lately or I’m too busy anyway.

I was about to write that at least Tojo has been staying mostly out of trouble lately, but I just reached over to move him as he was standing over Maggie looking like he was about to jump on her (again), and he bit me (not hard).  So there’s that, too.

Here We Go Again

Things will get back to “normal” here soon, September has been the busiest and craziest month full of stuff and I am real annoyed about not having had time to get back to things, especially the music blog because I’ve got a couple of big announcements to make.  But hopefully next week.

My mom’s 20+ year old cat Snow – the one who took a little vacation this summer for a couple of weeks and scared us to death – died quietly in her sleep almost two weeks ago.  So it had been a rough month already.

Then this morning my fluffy white angel left us.  He was about 17 years old, so not all that unexpected, but I would have liked to have had a little more of a break after his buddy Schuyler, who hasn’t even been gone two months yet, and Miss Snow.  And of course Lulu, my Beagle-Dachshund, earlier in the summer and Rocky earlier this year.

I know I was very fortunate to have had these last eight years with him because, for one thing, he was actually almost near death when I took him in in 2000, when he had to have basically a facelift because some dog or cat had gotten hold of him outdoors and nearly torn one side of his face off.  Once his fur grew back, you never really could tell what had happened and he was all gorgeous and white and fluffy once again.

And he almost died again two or three years after that when he stopped eating and developed fatty liver disease.  For a couple of weeks he was barely conscious, and I babied him and force-fed him food, water, and medicine from the vet until he finally started getting better again and eating on his own.  I can tell you in no uncertain terms that once he started staying more conscious and alert again and improving, that whole force-feeding thing did NOT go over too well, and he probably started eating on his own again not so much out of really wanting to eat, but wanting me to cut that foolishness out and stop bothering him with it.

And we kind of just went through that again this week on a lesser level with me trying to get water in him to keep him hydrated and comfortable.  He was so sick, but not so sick that he wasn’t getting mad at me for repeatedly bothering him with that nursing kitten baby bottle full of water.

Anyway, I know we were fortunate to have had eight pretty good years together and especially considering the two other times he almost died, which were now both so long ago.

Which now leaves me with just the two elderly ones – Dobie will be 14 in November, which is really old for a bigger dog, and Little the cat at 16 or 17 (I can never remember).  Both of whom already had frightening stroke-like episodes this summer, but are basically doing fine.

Though Maggie, the black and white cat on my shoulder above, is not so young herself now at 11, and Missy’s not too far behind her in years now.  Everybody here’s old now, really, except the “puppies” and Quincy and Tojo… and Quincy is approaching middle cat age at this point too.

I feel pretty old today too.  2008′s been a pretty exhausting year, in lots of ways.

I’ll be taking Audi up to Mom’s tomorrow, and lay him to rest in her gorgeous back yard next to his buddy Schuyler, and Miss Snow.  I’m so sorry now that I didn’t take Rocky and Lulu up there too, and Audi’s old best friend my best cat ever, who was also old when he left us and has been gone several years now.

My mom saw a black cat with green eyes around the neighborhood that she had never seen before shortly after Schuyler left us.  It would be really weird if she started seeing white cats she’d never seen before too, fluffy or short-haired either one, or both.  Or all three, a black cat and two white cats.  That would be really weird.

I will miss my fluffy angel kitty.  He rested all morning curled up in my arm with his head on my shoulder while I slept, and I woke up again right when the time came, and he left just like that, curled up with his head on my shoulder.

Now Tojo’s out here this afternoon aggravating everyone else, like most days.  Life goes on.

News from the Nursing Home

Living with an elderly cat in decline has certainly become a challenge lately. Of course, there’s also the fact that I have two more elderly cats who are doing okay for now, but Schuyler, my black cat, is presenting all kinds of new challenges lately.

I previously mentioned the recent loss of normal toilet habits. That’s gotten better in some ways. We now have this routine where I think he may be about to go, so about forty times a day, I pick him up and we go to the litter box, and about three or four of those times, we’ll have success. The rest of the time he just jumps out because no, he doesn’t need to go.

Or then we’ll have an episode like we did a few minutes ago, where we made it to the litter box and had a successful pee, and then a very short time he later he started acting like he needed to go again. So off we went again, and immediately he jumped out of the box. And then about five minutes later had an accident in the living room.

I would think he’s getting senile, but he’s apparently mostly with it. In fact, most times that I’m either not paying attention or asleep and he can’t make it to the litter box in time (honestly, I don’t know whether he’s even trying to anymore), he’s picked a ceramic bowl that used to hold keys and whatnot and really hasn’t been in use in some time to go in. Which is fine. Bowls can be washed, and that’s way better than a lot of places he could be going. And he’s going there every time, so I can’t complain too much about that.

Otherwise, he really seems to be doing okay and has even put on just a little bit of weight, which is not much considering he’s so pitifully thin and he was always such a big, stocky, strapping boy. He still purrs constantly, and he still keeps busy cleaning everyone else as well as himself (I’ve always called him my “hairdresser cat”). He’s eating better and keeping it down and other things have improved.

So really, we’re doing okay, but the forty or fifty times a day trips to the litter box is about to wear me out. I’m not going to complain much though; obviously we’ve been blessed with more time than I thought we had a few weeks ago.

And speaking of elderly cats with issues, Little has improved to the point of being on the verge of getting fat again (longtime friends and family will remember she used to look like a little basketball years ago). And the very strange sweet and lovable and clingy disposition that developed after her stroke-like episode (with the vestibular disease) a month and half ago – well, that’s all gone. She’s back to her normal crabby self and hissing at everyone in her path all the time.

With all that’s gone on this year with Rocky and Lulu’s illnesses and then deaths, Dobie and Little’s episodes with the vestibular disease, and now Schuyler and his particular challenges, I don’t know what I would have done if I was not working at home these days. We wouldn’t have been able to manage all this at all.

I’m also happy to report we are finally totally flea-free (or at least almost), no thanks to Frontline Plus. I keep reading where people are concerned that the company changed the formula because so many people are having such bad luck with it now and not killing fleas as it once did, and then there’s always the possibility, I guess, that the fleas are just becoming immune to it, but it no longer works here, I can tell you that; and, I believe Frontline Top Spot works better – or at least it seemed to last I used it. We have been using all that stuff since it first started coming out, from Program to Advantage to Frontline and then Frontline Plus, and then I was able to get by for a few years with some over-the-counter stuff and only on the dogs before the dogs next door moved in. Our experience with Frontline Plus this year was a nightmare, whereas going back to Advantage a month later, we had peace within a week, if even that long. Between that and the original Dawn dish liquid flea traps (still working, I’m going to keep one down 365 days a year now whether I see a flea or not), we’ve had super success. Pooh on Frontline Plus.

And Tojo the psycho kitty’s been out here for about twenty minutes now without causing any chaos or making anybody mad. He’s getting better. Sometimes.

Yuck

“What am I stepping in?”

Definitely one of my least favorite phrases to utter while walking around the house.

(PS Yep – new music blog here.)

Dobie’s New Little Friend

Not been a real good week for animal issues, both near and not so near to me, like one particularly horrible issue of animal cruelty noted in one of my most recent posts.

This next was a little bit closer.

One afternoon last week, Dobie and the young demon spawn and I were outside on one of our usual afternoon breaks in the back yard. There was a sudden commotion at the back fence with all the dogs barking like mad, so I walked back there to see what was up.

And found a puppy, who was of course barking right back at them. I had heard him, but not seen him before. He, I’m sure, belonged to a young couple with a kid (or two, I’m not sure how many kids they have) who has lived in one section of that house for some time now. I figured he was theirs because the husband asked me if I knew anyone who had any puppies a while back.

My four younger dingbats finally got bored with barking at him and I rounded them up and sent them back inside, but Dobie wouldn’t budge from the fence. He’d bark. The puppy would bark back.

He was the cutest little thing, probably about four or five months old. Definitely was going to grow up to be a smaller dog than Dobie, but a few things about him reminded me a lot of when Dobie was a puppy, especially his head and his ears. Pretty much the same goofy looking floppy triangular ears, and a too big for his face clown nose, same as Dobie.

A little darker in color than Dobie; actually he was about the same color one of Dobie’s brothers who I called Jaws had been, who had been such an odd darker shade, more brown but kind of strange, that he was almost a dark green. The puppy was was brown and lighter, but sort of in that same odd shade zone.

I really wanted to get back inside but Dobie just wouldn’t budge, and I finally gave up trying for a while. They just stood and barked at each other for a while.

Then this game of sorts started between the two of them. The puppy would edge up closer and closer to the fence. Then Dobie would bark, and the puppy would take off running away and go zoom around the yard two or three times, then run right back up to the fence and start edging slooooowly up closer again, and the cycle would start anew.

This must have gone on for 20, 30 minutes, maybe longer. Even though I’d wanted to go in, I didn’t mind too much because Dobie was obviously having fun (though he wouldn’t want anyone to know that), and being 14 years old and having slowed down tremendously the last several years, he doesn’t get a lot of “fun” and “playtime” anymore, especially since his young nephews and niece are such attention hogs.

The ease-up-then-run-away-when-Dobie-barks-and-come-back-again game just went on and on, and I laughed and laughed. And kinda got teary-eyed too, several times. I didn’t mind staying out anymore, I was glad he was obviously having fun, my old guy.

Toward the end of our time out there the puppy had stopped the running away and was obviously no longer terribly concerned about Dobie – not surprising, because that’s usually what happens. Dobie might scare another animal for a minute or two but it doesn’t take long for them to realize he’s nowhere on the scale of being a threat. Having been the only puppy among three older dogs the first couple of years of his life and having had a mother who would only let him eat when she decided he could for the first ten years of his life – well, Dobie’s just never really gotten much respect. The four young goofballs who wound up (begrudgingly) as his charges when their mama died kind of defer to him as an elder, but they’re never frightened of him (I think I saw Petey look concerned all of once when Dobie was mad at him about something), and Dobie’s never been anywhere even remotely close to being an Alpha.

Anyway, so we hung out at the fence a little while longer and the little puppy even came closer and I petted him a little bit. He was really sweet and friendly and, you know, just full of puppy-ness.

It crossed my mind at the time that it was a little worrisome that apparently his owners were just letting him run around – that yard is not fenced in at all, other than the neighboring fences at the back. There’s no enclosure, and he was just running free.

I think the run-away-zooming-around game must have just completely worn me and Dobie both out just watching the puppy zoom around the yard over and over and OVER for as long as he did. I was getting really tired, and Dobie was either tired too or just bored with it all, so when I made a move to head back to the house, Dobie came along this time and we left our new little friend at the fence. And came in and both took a very long nap.

I had to call my mom a couple of days later and tell her about Dobie’s new friend, and we just laughed and laughed some more. We didn’t see him any more the rest of the week, really, except for one day when we were all out and the puppy was out and way off to side of their house, but Dobie and the four dingalings could see him so they all barked at each other for a little bit, and then we came back in.

Monday morning, we went out at our usual time for the first potty break of the day. There was another commotion at the back fence, so I walked over to see what was going on.

The young ones have always had a habit of barking at inanimate objects that were not previously there before, whether in our yard or in the neighbors’ yards where they can see; in fact, my next door neighbor just a few days ago started parking her car further down the drive and right next to our side fence, so they barked at the car the first night it was there. Dobie’s never really done that habitually like they do, but he will sometimes.

So I got back to the back fence to see what they were barking at. And then I saw it, though it took me a minute to figure out what I was looking at.

Just a foot or so from my fence, there was a stick, about the size of a croquet stake, sticking up out of the ground, with a small bunch of yellow plastic flowers tied to it. And a small blue plastic dog food and water bowl placed at the bottom. That bowl’s what really took me a minute to register what I was seeing.

I just burst into tears, couldn’t help it. Daisy and Buster and Bruiser and Petey finally got bored with it, as they usually do with inanimate objects that weren’t wherever they are previously, and went elsewhere.

Dobie wouldn’t budge again. Just kept standing there barking at it with his increasingly hoarse as he gets older bark.

And then it occurred to me that he apparently knew, that he wasn’t just barking because they were previously-not-there objects. So then I started crying even harder, at which point I knew without a doubt that he knew the puppy was dead and buried there.

I don’t know what happened, though I would guess he probably either got run over by a car or was killed by one or a pack of the roaming dogs I sometimes see around. It wouldn’t have taken much, he was so little. I’ve got cats bigger than he was.

And I was so heartbroken. Because of the needless loss. Because my old dog that I helped his mama birth, who probably doesn’t have all that much time left, had such a nice day the other day messing around with that silly puppy zooming all over the yard. And now here his new little friend had gotten run over or killed somehow, and probably because he’d been left to run around unattended. And I know Dobie knew, and that broke my heart too.

Dogs – and cats – know stuff. When Rocky was dying – Rocky who’d always been “Dobie’s cat” – Dobie laid down next to him and stayed there until 20 or 30 minutes after he was gone.

They don’t forget things; well, most of them. The four young’ns were really too young to remember their mama very much and I don’t know that they do. But when I mention Lucy or Dez or Batman or Dare or Molly or Satin, the young one’s mama & even though she wasn’t with us but for about eight or nine months – any of the cats and dogs we have lost since Dobie was born nearly 14 years ago – there is recognition in Dobie’s eyes.

And especially if I bring up his mama, who has been gone about four years now. I call everyone “baby” from time to time, but he knows when I’m talking about his mama, whose name really was Baby. And he looks sad, and I wind up crying enough for both of us.

But I know he knew where the puppy was. Maybe it was the scent, even buried in the ground, but I know he know he knew.

I guess otherwise I would have never known what happened, but I can hardly stand to see that tiny little grave back there, right almost up against my fence. I’ve avoided going back that way most of the week. It just makes me so sad to see it.

God, this has just been an awful year, though I guess it makes sense since I have/had so many all reaching elderly stage at the same time. Losing Rocky, losing Lulu the Beagle, Dobie and Little both having their freaky stroke-like episodes at almost the same time while Lula was still sick. Now Schuyler, my formerly big and strong black cat now just skin and bones and weighing nothing; it’s coming, it’s just a matter of when.

I’m so tired.

(PS I have to add this because it’s kind of funny in a not funny but really funny sorta way. In Schuyler’s decline, one thing that has happened is that he is not controlling his bowels very well; he just can’t make it to the litter box most of the time, though in recent days I have been able to see it coming and grab him and get him there.

Unfortunately one of the spots he goes to the most is a place where Audi is, more often than not, laying around. Can I just say of all the cats in the house, the one I would like LEAST for Schuyler to be pooping on is my VERY long-haired white cat?!?!?!

Cleanup has been excruciating. Oddly enough, Audi doesn’t seem to mind or notice – I don’t know why!!! He’s old too, 16 or 17, maybe he’s gotten senile and just doesn’t care. Ugh.

We’ve gone a few days now, though, without Schuyler pooping on Audi so, fingers crossed. Heh.)