Monday, December 31, 2018

Another Year

I don't really pay much attention to time.  It's a counting thing.

Counting days and years seems silly to me.  Like the world, humanity throughout time, is OCD.

On New Year's Eve I try to get in the spirit, work myself up, but I really can't.  Just like I cannot for the life of me become a big fan of a sports team or a political mindset or any other sort of like minded group.

But in the last year if I should count only the days and months like that, I have said goodbye to some very good friends.

Chessie died.   A stroke knocked her off her feet and she'd been going through kidney failure and would not survive this latest.  And she didn't.

She was just a little torbi girl from a horrid Albany apartment complex, outside of which she tried to survive after being thrown out by this or that drug user or other loser of unknown issues.  When neighbors threatened to shoot her with a crossbow to rid their human sight of her suffering, I took her away from there.  She was so happy here.   Goodbye my little cherished mischievous clown.  She grew old here happy and with so many friends.



Lucy also died.  She was a very ancient kitty I trapped two and half years ago, accidentally at one of the notorious Sweet Home trailer parks, full of human drama, drugs, and horrors for children and animals and others.   She had been eating food scraps thrown out behind one trailer, as had been other old kitties, struggling to eat as they also tried to avoid human anger and hate often misplaced to small innocents like Lucy.  Lucy was already fixed and so skinny when she came here, and already very old.

Lucy loved life and loved to be hugged and ride on my shoulder.  The arthritis that caused her back to be rounded in the end she couldn't control her bladder or bowels anymore and she left this world, probably purring.

I lost little Honey, who loved everyone.  She'd lost weight and when I took her to the vet, she had just about everything wrong with her blood that could be wrong and the vet said I should let her go.  I came home without her and images floated through my dreams that night, of that dead black summer night, when I grabbed her from the bushes, while the drunks noisily slept and presented no threat, on tip toe in that homeless camp.   My little Honey.  Who loved everyone.

And my two old sick torti girls passed from us here too.  Gretal and Poppy.  Both with long time health problems.  Poppy had chronic sinus troubles from a hole that never filled in, from a bad tooth whose root extended into her sinus cavity.  She snuffled through her days in last years, also got fluids routinely, but loved life and followed me like a puppy during the day.  She was never a lap cat however, Never quite completely tame.  She came from the apartment complex across from the Circle K.

Gretal was always feral.  Took me days to catch her and her brother, after I saw them in a freezing windstorm, along the shoulder of highway 34.   They were holding each other up they were both so weak from starvation and sickness and now this freezing weather.   I pulled alongside the orange teen, Gretal's brother, Hansel, in my car.  He was in the grass along the shoulder of the highway, maybe ten feet from my car.  It was dark, wind was howling and cold.  I didn't know where the torti he'd been with had gotten to.  As I rolled down the window, and called to him, he moved.   And there was Gretal, beneath him.  He'd been laying atop his sister to keep her warm.

I trapped them both in three days I spent curled up in my car, smothered in blankets to stay warm, watching traps, hoping they would soon close and we could all go home and get warm.   A Salem woman took them in, to tame them and find them homes.  I was having terrible troubles where I lived, which was just a shack with many troubles but the worst trouble was the landlady herself.  I was evicted just before Christmas and that's when I moved here, where I live now.  Early that February of 2007.  And that's when the Salem woman returned Gretal. It was a hard time then, with the move and what it cost me in health and pain, but she's been here ever since, to live her life as she desired.  She had many many friends.


I met many many kitties in the last year also, and got many cats and kittens in horrible binds out of trouble and off to caring shelters and rescues who could find them homes. 

I love to give cats like Lucy and the others still here a happy, well-fed well-loved life for the time they have left.  I don't know really how old many of them are.  I don't know all they've been through.  I know Miss Daisy had nightmares most of her life.  She'd be running in her nightmares, and cry out, and I would wake her with a hand on her head and she'd make a happy noise when she realized where she was and go back to sleep.

Before I began to help cats I didn't think much about how animals suffer.  I relegated them to inferior without souls or feelings or pain or the ability to love their families and experience happiness, so I could live my life focused on my own problems and suffering.  I found redemption and happiness for myself by helping them.

We're all organic, whatever form we're in, whatever we are called, cat, dog, human, bird, humpback whale.  Wherever we are born.  Us humans, some of us are born in places where its easier to survive, like in the US compared to many other places.  Same with animals and birds.  But once we are born we start the decay process, we start to die.  And we all will die, every human, every creature.  It's nice when we can create joy and love and some easy times along the way I think.

My brain is slightly blank currently but maybe I will add to this post later.   I don't give end of year tabulations much credence as time doesn't mean maybe what it should to me. 

Time gives us tabulation points for various evaluations.  I know that is important.

10 comments:

  1. Heartfelt hugs. And thanks.

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  2. Anonymous5:23 PM

    People who work like you to make a better world should be rewarded. Thanks for another year.

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  3. What a beautiful memorial to your feline friends. I hope the new year brings you happiness and contentment.

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    1. I've been happy for a long time now. thank you, Kathy. I love my kitties.

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  4. Oh, shoot. I'm not sure if I hit publish or not before accidentally clicking on something else. Anyway, thank you thank you thank you for all your wonderful works. And I think I may have seen "The Falcon and the Snowman" back in the day, maybe a rental with the family. I appreciate the reminder.

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    1. It's an old movie all right. I've seen it again within the last year on an old movie channel.

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  5. I like your idea of not counting days and years. I reflect too much on those kinds of things. There has to be a certain amount of calendar watching to coordinate with others, but I'm going to try to change my thought process about the rest of passing time.

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    1. I feel time means very little other than a method of counting things. I don't think its healthy to use it as anything but a tool, like its useful for lining up appointments, knowing how long something takes to get done, etc, but other bigger things, hmmm. Not so sure.

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