Saturday, September 26, 2009

Curbside Special

I got two stories for you today and they are both about cats. Okay, the second story is a little bit about how Whiskey Tango we are, but mainly, cats...

1. Munchy: Munchy is very spunky and yelly and loved. Seen took this picture when she was yelling at him to pet her. I think it's the most adorabley cute and pathetic picture I've ever seen of anything or anyone, ever.
Munchy is now 17.5 years old. We've been giving her sub-Q fluids, every other morning, for the past 6 months. After a few months of the fluids, Munchy's left eye got glassy and stopped responding to light.The eye thing was due to her high blood pressure, so we got a pill for that. About a month ago, Munchy started yelling for no reason. She would just sit and yell, at the water dish, at thin air. The vet said she had "ropey" intestines and they were probably ulcerated. She gets a compounded pill for that, and a 1/2 a pepcid a day. She's doing fine right now, just funnily pathetic in pictures.

***
Story #2. Curbside shopping - So our downstairs neighbors moved out. They left this fairly nice, dark cherry wood futon with a nice, rust Muslin covered mattress on it just sitting on the curb. I haven't been feeling well (vertigo from all the crappy stress) but when Seen mentioned it was on the front lawn when he'd gone downstairs about 2 hours earlier, I thought, "ok". He mildly suggested maybe we should go get it and sell it. We'd sold our own, space hogging, ugly, Ikea futon about a month ago.

I said, "I'm not proud. We're unemployed. Let's just go check it out" Something you should know; when we lived in Chicago, we was broke. Neither one of us comes from any kind of money, not even the "I'm just comfortable" kind. We furnished our apartments with couches, chairs, bookshelves, tables, etc... found on front lawns and alleys around town on the night after moving day (May 1st for the uninitiated). We actually found some well made antiques that way. A lot of our friends did it too. Of course, most of our friends were actors and musicians. Make what you want to outta that.

Moving on, we went down to check out the futon, it was very nice. The cover was top of the line, there were no scratches on it, no fur shed on it, no cigarette smell, nothin. It was Pottery Barn nice (which is $$ to our kind) So we brought it upstairs and planned to put it up on Craigslist and make $50, what the heck right? Only...

Only Ling Ling thought it was the best present we ever got her. She doesn't scratch at it, she just jumps all over it, rubs her face on it, rolls around on it and has the happiest dang look on her little multi-colored face. So we're keeping it. It has a smaller footprint than our old futon, and it is very nice. Happy Birthday Ling Ling. We got you a 2nd hand futon.



3. KoE: Kitten of Evil doesn't have a story. I just wanted to include a picture of here as equal time for all cutans.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Well Put.

Hey folks,

I follow this blog of a fellow who owns an elderly cat named Munchy. I also own an elderly cat named Munchy. Both cats figure into our blogs in different ways.

Yesterday, after I posted the bit about Dad and the answering machine, Joseph posted a poem about grief. It was spot on, so I figured I'd direct you to it. Click Here to see feeling put into a short bit of words.

Thank you Joseph of Troy Bear for your way with language.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Answering Machine


My Dad passed away one week ago today. I won't go into it, because I don't think I'm ready to just yet. I'll just tell ya, he'd been sick for over a year and had been in the hospital since mid-June. I wrote a little bit about that when I went home to visit in July.

Dad had Mom call all the kids last Monday to come home because he knew he was close to the end. We all got there Monday night, had one last night of laughter, tears and chatter with him and then he slipped into unconsciousness Monday night and passed away at 5:58 am Wednesday, August 26th. He was surrounded by all 5 of his children, his wife and one grandchild (he had 11).

I stayed at home with my family through the funeral and then flew home late Saturday night. It doesn't seem quite real when I'm this far away. I called my Mom today, just to chat, but she wasn't home. She's off shopping for groceries with one of my sisters. So the answering machine picked up the call. It's my Dad's voice. It's weird to think he's not really there.