8 Kittens to ARCF and Another One Bites the Dust

Been a rough week.

Seems like so long ago already that I drove to the coast clinic.  I was up by 3:00 a.m. that morning, after going to bed at 7:30 the night before.

When I got home, tired out from the driving, muscles cramping, also from the driving, I found Poppy laid out on the floor.  She's been failing for a year or two.  I'd make appointments for her end of days, only to see her rebound and put it off.   It was less than two weeks ago, I again emailed a Heartland tech and asked if I could bring her over.  I had her in a cage in the living room, so I could more easily give her fluids.   But she was unhappy and refused to even try to eat in the cage, depression had set in, so I let her out.  She bumped heads with her friends and chirped happily and I determined I would let her die here.

And she did.  That very night after I returned from the coast clinic, still reeling and questioning myself over Honey's demise.

Was it a shock or surprise?  No.  But it made me sad.  My little chirper, who refused to give up.   Now she's gone.

I trapped Poppy way back when I first moved here, early 2007, along with several other cats at a complex a few blocks away.  I was going to return her after she was fixed, but the situation wasn't good, with cats living under an apartment complex, offspring of people's unfixed house cats over there, same old.  So she stayed here.  She was between one and two years old then.  She had to have all her teeth pulled eventually and one of them had penetrated her sinus cavity, and then the bone never filled in and she got constant chronic sinus infections. 

So long Poppy my dear.  I loved you.

My younger brother's mother in law has been dying of cancer for years.  The last year has been extremely hard on her and her family.   My sister in law took two months off work thinking she would die in those two months and stayed with her but she didn't die.  Still hasn't but my sister in law texted yesterday that it looked like it might be a matter of days.  Or even hours.  But that's been said before.  Like Poppy, she hangs on.  Unlike Poppy sounds like she has not had a pleasant final year.

Its strange we  let humans suffer so long at their end, like its mandatory or something.   I think its stupid and hope I can find something to put in a vile to hang around my neck to have if I need to get out of this world and not be forced into prolonged Christian suffering at my end of days.

On Wednesday, despite exhaustion from the trip Tuesday, I took 8 of the 11 Brewster Road kittens to ARCF in Portland.

ARCF had them at the vet before I even got home.   That left me three in the bathroom--Muffy, a torbi teen, soft as silk, and two younger all black kittens. 

I didn't return the adults from the same place who had been fixed Monday until Thursday.  Then I only returned four of them.   Jack, one of the five fixed, was not an adult, just a the little orange mackerel tabby teen,  and he stayed with me.  I knew I could tame him.  I added him to the three already in my bathroom.

When I returned Sally, Sabrina, Summer and Gordy, I trapped the final kitten out there, a torbi who looks just like Sally, so I call her little Sally.  I have four of the five in my bathroom tame already, as you might have guessed I would.   And a home lined up for one of the five after Thanksgiving.

The video below is Little Sally getting flea combed.  She'd had flea treatment Revolution the day before, but it can take 24 hours to kill fleas.  It had not been 24 hours.

And this one is of the darling compact Muffy...

So long my dear little Honey.  So long my lovely Poppy.  Love you both.   I hope my end when it comes is as quick as both of yours were.   And as for the mother of my sister in law, may your end of days be peaceful and without pain and let that end mercifully come, please, so you suffer no more.