Missing

I come in from the garage, after being gone, and expect Miss Daisy to come running.

She always came running to greet me, often meowing loudly in happiness.  She woke me mornings, early too, because she wanted her treats.  Nobody sleeps on my bed nights now.  It's like the others were not on the bed to be with me, but to be with her.

It's been hard for me, these last few days.  My beloved best friend is gone.

My heart is sad.

Sometimes though I feel a peace, that we got through it all, to the end of her days, before some calamity strikes.  My life is always on the brink, my finances are so slim and my housing my entire life has been difficult to maintain, being so poor.  I'm always aware I could be on the streets suddenly once again and I never wanted her to be hurt by my own poverty in that way. 

So the relief is there too, that she never suffered such a fate, as is always hovering overhead for me and the others left here. 

I should update on cats, for my records, five were fixed Monday, before I left Tuesday with Miss Daisy.   All five came from in and around one Lebanon trailer  There were three black kittens, one girl and two boys.  I named them January, Jacob and Jimmy, for the records.  Then there were two teens outside, that they first saw unexpectedly in their garage.  They don't know where they came from.   The black one they call Tiny and he quickly tamed.  The mackerel tabby we named Marble for the records and he had to be trapped.

They have a fourth kitten, all gray, who will be fixed next Monday and had given away a fifth, to someone else, but the woman was distressed when she told me, the people who took that kitten were now telling her they gave her to a farm.  She felt horrible and believed they had dumped the kitten.

As I drove Tuesday, to the coast, I thought of her and how she must feel, to give a kitten to someone that might have dumped it out somewhere to certain horrible death.   Then my thoughts drifted to the gray girl kitten, Bloosy.   The woman who turned Bloosy over to me had picked her up from relatives in Lebanon and she was the same weight exactly as the three who were fixed Monday.  Wednesday I texted the kitten woman and asked her what color the kitten was she gave away.  "Gray", she said, "but dark gray"   I said, "I don't think you need to worry about her anymore."  Then I told her about Bloosy and directed her to my facebook Happy Cat Club page to see a video I made of her before I turned her over to KATA.   She was so relieved to see it was her kitten and that she was safe.  She cried.

This made me happy to give someone relief from the horrible guilt, which I know well, of giving a kitten to someone who later may have harmed the kitten.

Marble, a boy teen, was fixed Monday

Tiny, a black boy teen, fixed Monday

One of the three black kittens fixed Monday.  I believe this is Jimmy, but they all looked alike.

And another of the three.

I realized I'd hurt my back on the drive home Tuesday.  It hurt, on the left side, but I hoped it was just from driving.  It wasn't.   By that night, I couldn't walk without screaming.   Sacro illiac sprain again, I think and it was directly caused by the same old thing that causes me pain and suffering every fall.  Leaves!  Specifically, leaves accumulating atop the cat yard wire from the maple towering above it.

I have to whack at them from below the wire, usually with a broom, to move them toward an edge or a hole in the wire to get them off the top of the cat yard wire.  Otherwise, they get drenched and heavy with rain and weight the wire down so badly it sags and threatens to tear.  The heavy coating of leaves atop the wire can turn the cat yard black as night, as they block all light.

Why I haven't rigged a fix in all these years, I don't know.  My brothers workers built the cat yard fence and installed the wire and told me to leave it to the builder guys when I objected to not being able to lower one side of the wire, to remove leaves and to get to the gutters.  They figured, I think, I'd have the necessary equipment to blow them off from underneath.  I didn't.

  I've built cat enclosures at other places and always attached the wire on one end of the yard to a long pvc pipe or dowel, that then attached to the side of the fence or house by hooks.  I could quickly unhook it and lower an entire side.  This made leaf removal or repair simple. 

Why have I never remodeled the cat yard wire for ease of leaf removal?  I suppose because of my problem working arms over my head due to metal neck hardware.  When I work arms overhead I suffer along my entire spine.  Sometimes my neck is inflamed for weeks and sometimes its my sacro illiac joint.   Fall is the worst season of the year for me.  I suffer pain until after the leaves are gone.

I should have changed it up this summer though, a bit at a time.  I have no one to blame but myself again, for not doing that.  I've fried two leaf blowers I got to blow the leaves off from underneath.  The last one lasted only for about three or four uses, one use the end of fall one year and by the next fall, it literally caught fire, the motor.  Home Depot would not replace it, since it was a week or so beyond the year warranty, even though I hadn't used it for the entire year, except one time the fall before.  I was disgusted and won't buy another.  A video of its electric motor smoldering didn't help.

So I've screamed in pain a lot the last couple nights, if I try to move in bed, or get out of bed.  I take Aleve and pack my butt in ice and prop myself this way and that way on pillows.

And I've cried a lot too, missing my Miss D, wishing to feel her across my face, where she often slept, waiting for the light padding of her feet up my legs nights to curl with her back against the side of my head, as she did every night.

I have lots of wonderful cats.  Why does the place seem empty without her?