Balloon String

What can I say about my sweet Ellie girl. She was my true first girl.

She was one itty bitty kitten in a litter of five, born in the high temperatures of August. Ellie was a barn kitty. Her feral mother, young and inexperienced, kept her kittens tucked between bales of hay in the barn loft, away from human contact. Little did she know, her poor babies couldn't handle the heat or the fleas. On several occasions I moved the litter away from the tightly stacked bails of hay to a location in the loft where the air could flow, hoping Mama would adjust to the new location. No such luck, she always carried them back. Slowly but surely the kittens were dying, and left hopeless to nature I could merely watch. One by one, three kittens died, and I could no longer sit back and allow nature to run its course. I pleaded with my father to allow me to rescue the last two kittens from imminent death. On our farm cats were meant to stay outside, but I made my case anyway. I begged him to allow me to keep the kittens in my room. I reasoned, it would only be a month and then I would take them with me when I moved out. I left him little choice.

I became the proud new owner of two feral kittens, Ellie and Moo. Not at all appreciative, they wanted nothing to do with me. They lived under my bed, in the very center where my arms could not reach. As they grew, still very fearful of humans, they woud occasionally dart after my feet as I walked past the bed or as I dangled my legs over the edge. That was all the contact they wanted.

As time past, they came to accept me as their own. They grew to love me. One more than the other. There was just something about Ellie I was drawn to. I'm quite positive if she had been a person, we would have been great friends. The kind of friend you can share anything with and know you won't be judged. We would have drank tequila together. But instead, she was a cat. She had this aloof quality I always admired, as opposed to her brother who is and always has been so in your face needy. Ellie was best friends with my childhood dog, a black lab. They spent many hours of life together curled up on the dog bed, cleaning each other. It was the type of friendship cheesy Hollywood movies with talking animals are made of. They followed each other around the apartment and genuinely played together.

I sit here and think about the life Ellie lived, she was dealt a rough hand but you never would have known it. She was tough. She lived through a lot with me. In my current life, those two kittens were here before anything else. Before I was a wife or a mom or a homeowner. They were there before college, before responsibilities, when life was so simple. Together, Ellie and Moo began this journey of adulthood with me. We grew together. They were crazy kittens, destroying my apartment, while I was partying without a care in the world. Their wildness settled down right in line with my own. And now the duo has been split up.

Ellie had a fondness for balloon string and anything in that same family of string. I think fondness is an understatement, addiction is more accurate. She was hooked, she could sense its presence, she could smell it. She ate so much balloon string I was convinced it would be the death of her. Obviously I was wrong. Like most kids, Alice loves balloons. The placement of balloons was a constant concern in our house. The weighted string couldn't be on the coffee table or a side table, oh no, they had to be way up high. More occasions than I can recall we'd awake in the morning to a balloon floating on the ceiling with only a few inches of string attached. One day she discovered Alice's bike streamers and went to town. After that the bike was added to our list of things not to be left in Ellie's reach. This past Saturday we arrived home from brunch, Alice carrying a balloon in honor of my mother's birthday. And that sad moment occurred...I will never have to worry about balloons and their strings again. Ellie is missed dearly by every member of my house. But on the bright side, if there is one, my mom gained one more pet in heaven.

The Oath

I haven't been writing. More accurately I've been avoiding writing. Even more honest, I've been avoiding processing and dealing with difficult events in my life. If I don't write about them, I am only forced to address them as much as life requires. If I don't write, I don't have to swim in my feelings. I can just go on.

The problem with this logic, I can't seem to go on. I can't just skip over them and write as if they didn't occur. To do so feels as if I'm lying.

Do you solemnly swear that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

I will tell the whole truth. On the 8th, I had to take Ellie to the vet to be euthanized. My mother's birthday was this past Saturday. I haven't had the words or the energy to write about either. But both deserve a proper post. I will give them this much. I will tell their story in their own separate posts. I do solemnly swear.

Defining Moments

There are certain moments in life, after them things are changed. Defining moments, I suppose. The thing that makes these moments unique is the way you feel after them, stunned and stupefied. I can only describe it is an out of body experience where you are in utter disbelief, for one moment you forget what has happened and then like an anvil it comes crashing down on you with a weight like no other, never to be forgotten again.

I think back to high school, I remember this feeling vividly the day I got caught with alcohol at my grandparents house having a pseudo party. Try as hard as I might, I could never go back to the day before. Things had changed permanently because of one little moment in time. And in that moment I was stressed and frazzled, clueless as to how to proceed with the recent discovery.

There's one specific second, literally a second, that changed everything concerning my mom and her illness. In that defining moment I could never go back to the other side. I had learned too much, and in my head my brain was stuck repeating "Oh my God." A day spent in shock.

And again the day I found out I was pregnant with Alice. Not all life changing moments are bad, there are just as many good ones. They still have the same affect on a person. Alice was planned, we tried for months to conceive. Yet, the moment the test showed a positive, I lost all breath. It could not be undone. And that is earth shattering. The idea that the world would never again be the same sent me into a frenzy of thought that stayed with me until my head hit the pillow that night.

The thing about these moments is you go on. You can not live in a state of shock forever. The next day you wake up. And the recent change infiltrates itself into your life. The mind blowingness of it all gradually lessens. Day after day you shower and eat lunch and feed the dog, all the while it becomes just another part of life again.

A few days ago, I woke with much hope for Ellie girl. She was scheduled for a simple surgery that should have made life better for quite awhile. I spent the day thinking of Ellie, eager to hear good news from the doctor, instead I was told the previous days diagnosis was in fact wrong. Instead of a simple, removable polyp in her ear, I was told it was a very large inoperable cancerous tumor. She had weeks left at best. Words were said about quality of life and having to make a decision in the near future. I was in disbelief. How could it be possible? I dropped her off at the vets that morning happy. And now my poor Ellie cat is home no better than before. The tumor, in the side of her head, is making eating extremely difficult. At this point, her breathing is barely affected, but we've been told that will change. So, for as many days as she wants I will syringe feed her five times a day. Every day I will watch her a little different than before. Every day I will watch to see if it's time.

Ellie Belly

I don't talk much about my pets. Which, in and of itself, is horrible. Before Alice, they were my children. Now they are the reason I vacuum. I have two cats and a dog. The cats I've had since I was 18 and the dog I acquired jointly with Hatta. I suppose it would be proper to say they are our pets, but in reality the dog goes where I go and the cats listen best when I call them.

Today I would like to talk about Ellie Belly. Some of you may remember a story I told back on the darkside of blogging. In said story, Ellie was stuck walking in circles, forced to walk to the left (or was it the right?) regardless of what was in her path, never able to rest. It turned out to be an ear infection, something that has plagued Ellie since as long as I can remember. If she was a toddler for sure the pediatrician would be mentioning tubes. But in Ellie's case it runs a little deeper.

Early on in Ellie's life, after many rounds of antibiotics and inacurate diagnoses, it was determined she had polyps deep in her ear. Two surgeries and thousands of dollars later, she was a happy cat. Finally for the first time in her life she wasn't on antibiotics. She was living the good life, until 2001 when she had her first seizure, followed by a few more in the weeks to come. We had her checked out by our vet and carried on. Not much thought was given to those seizures. They were merely another roadblock for Ellie to overcome, another bullet point in the list of reasons Ellie was my special needs cat.

Until last Sunday.

In one twenty four hour period Ellie had six seizures, four of them in two hours. The months leading up to Sunday Ellie had two serious ear infections and it seemed she never fully recovered from them. And, then the seizures started. One followed by four days seizure free, and then another with a few days without seizures, and then another. We knew it wasn't as simple as it was in 2001. Her appearance had changed and so had her demeanor. We knew it was finally time to visit the vet.

You may be thinking to yourself, "Seriously? Your cat had several seizures and you didn't take her to the vet?" Don't judge. We'd been there, done that...vet bills and seizure pamphlets to prove it. They discovered nothing in 2001. Speculated as likely to be a brain tumor. We've already invested hundreds and thousands of dollars attempting to give Ellie a good life. In all honesty, we knew we weren't going to pay this time to run the gauntlet of tests the vet would suggest to determine why Ellie was seizing. We just wanted Ellie to enjoy life or not have to suffer another moment. Putting a price tag on your pets well being is a difficult situation to be in, and frankly we weren't looking forward to it.

And then, there was Sunday.

I don't know if you've ever been unfortunate enough to witness an animal having a seizure, but it has to be the most helpless feeling. There is literally nothing you can do and it breaks your heart every agonizing second of it. You just want to pick up the flailing body and try to comfort the seizure away, knowing you can't you just watch...helpless and sad. And when the poor body is done twitching and shaking and spinning, it's still not over. There are after affects that last and linger for many minutes, where you sit trying to comfort an animal that's still not in this realm, still gone to this world. Try experiencing that four times in two hours. And during the last three seizures Ellie urinated, spinning and shaking her body throughout her urine. Poor Alice was there to witness a few of the seizures, her feelings of fear neglected in the moment when the safety of Ellie was more pressing. It has been a very difficult time.

Sweet Ellie was taken Sunday night to the animal ER where they allowed her to rest comfortably on Valium. She spent several nights at the vets, they ran extensive blood tests and determined she's blind (hopefully temporary) but healthy. Again, most likely a brain tumor. She's now permanently on daily anti seizure medication and hasn't had a seizure since. It seems, after a few rocky days at home adjusting to the narcotics, she's resembling her old happy self again. In fact, just today I found her on the dining table attempting to wreak havoc on my Valentine's flowers.