Babbling

I wrote this at Mom's last night, had no internet there for my laptop, so am just now posting it to my blog where I meant it to go.

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I have been rather depressed the last few days, as I’m sure won’t surprise you if you’ve read the last few posts to my blog. Every time I go into my bedroom for anything, I am shocked to see my bed empty. I am so used to having Shadow laying on my bed much of the time, unless he’s outside or with me in the other room, or eating and using the litter box. Now he’s not any of those places and I miss him so much. 17 years together is a long time. I knew he was loosing a bit of ground this winter, but still, the actual death came suddenly and was a shock.

Due to financial challenges in my life, I called the Animal Care Society. As soon as I told her what was happening with Shadow, she said they work with two vets in town, and she’d call to see which one could fit Shadow in the soonest. It was only minutes later when she called me back and told me which one to take him to. When I got to the vet hospital, the receptionist took Shadow from me and said she’d put him in the back and the vet would look at him whenever she had time, call back tomorrow and see what’s happening. I was stunned and nearly started to cry right then. I couldn’t let her just whisk my little man away from me like that! I asked if I could at least stay with him until the vet saw him, and said I wanted to go in with him. She informed me, right there in front of other people, that because I wasn’t paying for the visit, the Animal Care Society was paying, I couldn’t go in with him because the vets just fit these cases in between appointments. (She may as well have said ‘welfare cases’ between ‘paying customers’, and that we ‘welfare bums’ don’t have the same rights as the others). Now I was crying. It turned out that the vet could see my Shadow right away, so I sat in the waiting room until she came out to see me. She told me that he was badly dehydrated and something about his kidneys being shrivelled up, or something like that, and she would be putting him on IV fluids over night and see how that went. I told her that I wasn’t impressed with being treated like the receptionist had treated me, and she said that’s the way it’s done with cases where Animal Care Society is paying the bill. I can tell you, after this, if I won $10 million next week, one thing I would do is take Reba to a vet and get her shots and get them to cut her toe nails (she really hates her feet touched), and generally check out her health… and I would never go to this vet’s place again. Anyway, she at least brought him back to me and let us sit in one of the exam rooms while she waited to hear back if the ACS would pay for the treatment, which they agreed to do. He lay quietly and contently in my arms as we waited. He had gotten weaker since earlier in the day. When the vet came back and told me the ACS would pay, she again took him from me into the back somewhere, presumably to hook him up to the IV. Next morning, around 8:30, the vet called and said Shadow didn’t make it through the night. I told her I would be in to pick him up and bring him back home.

I was given a box that apparently has Shadow’s body in it. I went back and forth, should I open it and look at him, or not. Would it be more comforting, or tear me apart even more? I haven’t opened the box and I doubt that I will now, as it’s in the freezer. Yup, in the freezer. That day I kept the box close to me, even took it to bed with me for a nap, and almost again that night for the night, but convinced myself that it would be some kind of ‘sick’ to take a box with a dead cat in it to bed with me for the night. After the nap, I went out to dig a grave, but couldn’t do so. Some of my yard is thawed enough for easy digging, but that area not only still has snow but is also still frozen solid. I don’t want to plant him in the flower bed along the driveway where the ground is already soft. I want to bury him in the Pet Cemetery with his birth mother, Smoothedge, as well as D-O-G and Bronx. (More stories I may tell you later). The Pet Cemetery is still frozen solid. It’s one of the few spots where the snow is still laying on the ground, shaded from the sun for too much of the day. With the temperatures we are having in the day time it shouldn’t be long until everything is thawed, though it still gets very cold at night. Last night, Don (my tenant) said he’ll help me dig the grave, so hopefully he can do that right away rather than having to wait for the ground to thaw.

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