Uncategorized

He was doing so much better when I left him in he oxygen tent.  They had taken 315 ml of fluid off his lungs.  He was breathing better.  He didn’t want to stay.  He wanted to come home.  He liked the spot behind his ears scritched.   He  wanted to snuggle.  He pushed his little nose against the plastic of the tent and tried to follow my hands out of there.  We didn’t let him.

I thought it was better for him.  Rest the night.  Pick him up in the morning.  He was 14.  I thought he’d come home and be spoiled for 2 days, or 2 months or 2 years.  I didn’t need to know what was wrong – it didn’t change anything.  I wouldn’t put him through treatments invasive and foreign. 

But he’d come home and be pampered and feel good for a little bit and the next time he went to the vet, I’d let him go.

Instead I left him there, by himself.  He didn’t want to stay and he was alone.  And he died.  (They tell me he was sleeping peacefully at 11 pm when I called.  And they checked him at midnight, still sleeping.  When they next looked, he was gone.)

And now his litterbox is here and his food bowls and his beds.  So many beds – he kept taking the dog beds so I had to get one for him.   He wouldn’t sleep in a little cat bed.  It had to be a big dog bed.  (But then, he was raised by Samoyeds.)

I didn’t take enough pictures.

He loved his birdfeeders (kitty action movies),  warm sunny spots,

his new front door with the glass on the bottom,

eating in the middle of the night. 

He thought he was a dog for quite a while.  I got him when he was just 8 weeks old.  He came home to two 60 pound fuzzy white dogs who were quite tickled to have a small critter.  He had ear mites and Natasha was determined to clean the ears on his little ½ pound body.  Her tongue was a bit large for the task. 

He doubled in size the first week.  And then again the next week.  He followed the dogs around.  He did what they did.  I used to tie a string to Natasha’s tail.  She was good at wagging if I talked to her and Duds would pounce on the moving string.

The dogs were gentle with him.  They kept track of where he was.  When I came home from work, the three of them would race from the house way out the back yard to the big oak tree – the dogs to bark at the squirrels who had descended in their absence.  Duds was just doing what the big dogs did.  One day, he was about 6 months old, he landed 6 feet high in the tree.  He looked down at the barking dogs, and at me, and mewed.  He was Not-Dog.

The dogs didn’t mind – they protected him from the cold.  They protected his catnip from maurading feral cats.  They guarded him while stoned out of his mind after eating the entire plant himself, in one sitting.  He went on their walks with them.  He ate dog food until I found out that not getting enough taurine would kill him.

Duds wouldn’t go outside without them.  In later years, Duds would ask Boris to sleep on the deck so that he could play outside.  Boris obligingly would rise, walk the 10 steps to the outside and go back to sleep.  Dudley was never went far from the dogs.

He brought me offerings from the wild outside world.  He had a run in with a turkey vulture.  He caught mice.   He would wake me, in the middle of the night, with his spontaneous purring. 

Everything was a toy to him (its a good motto to have).  My knitting needles.  A piece of ribbon.  A bottle cap.   He’d hang with me and let the yarn slip through his paws as I knit.  And he’d purr.

Exactly when (yesterday) did I remember that I had left the laundry on a rack outside?

Just about the time the train pulled out of the station. 

And when did it start raining on the laundry left outside?

Probably about the time I arrived at the train station to come home and bring my laundry rack inside.

I’d like to say that I feel lucky or Mother Nature was nice to me or some such thing.  But mostly I’m relieved:  its one more thing to not have to deal with.

And I’m feeling like I’ve got too much to deal with.

New Years Resolutions: 

1.  Settle on software and start a blog…   Check.

2.  Start Bob’s vest… Check.

Oh yucky photo.  But the battery on the camera gave out after one shot. 

And it looks small to me, so I checked it against the model and it is too short.  I know I measured it yesterday for starting the armholes.  It was just yesterday.  Which brings me to:

3.  Get a grip on organization.   I’m not sure what I’m specifically making as resolution, but I just plugged in the 2 phones, the camera battery, and the blackberry.  This says something.