Chatter

I've been in a slide lately.  Well, not a slide really, been trying to rest my back as much as I can, to heal it.   It's quite boring to mostly confine myself to bed or doing nothing.  I'm not very good at it.  Sometimes it is necessary so I'm not in pain all summer though.

That's what I've been doing.  So I spent the day before yesterday mostly reading, catching up and sleeping.  But that resulted in a long night, night before last, where I woke at 11:00 p.m. after sleeping 7 hours and that was plenty of sleep, combined with other sleep and I just couldn't make myself sleep more, not until 6 a.m. at least, when I slept another couple hours.

Before that, while I was up in the night, a Lebanon woman, who is almost always up all night, contacted me.  She'd found another kitten and wanted me to take him.

She had found five before and I told her no, when she wanted me to take those kittens, to call KATA but now I don't even know if KATA will continue with Vicki dead, and they are overloaded anyhow, and still have the first five they took from her, whom she claimed she found in a backpack at Cheadle Lake, but we found them also advertised free on craigslist, so we don't know where they came from or how she got them.

I got all the cats fixed at and around what is now a homeless camp where she lives two years ago, before her grandma died.  Who knows though.  Maybe there is an unfixed female some other camper has there.

I went over at 10:00 and got him from her and handed her a bag of wet cat food for her cats whom I got fixed when I was getting the rest done there.  He cried the entire ride home.  He was so tired out.   After he finally slept for hours, he wanted to be boss kitten, see the house, sniff out every tiny place I hadn't properly cleaned.  A kitten will do that.

I couldn't get anything done at all he was so busy and cried if I left him alone.  He's six or seven weeks old.  I named him Chatter because he likes to have conversations.

He likes his KMR half and half with wet food.  He likes his carrier kitten den and he likes it with a heat frisbee in it he can knead on like its mom.

But when I was ready for bed early, due to the night before's odd sleep schedule, he was not to be alone and began to cry from the bathroom.  He can't free roam with my old cats.  They're not so nice to kittens sometimes.   But I can't leave a tiny kitten alone in the bathroom, I thought.  It's like leaving a little kid who has lost everything, including mom, alone.

So I laid out an old sleeping bag, now just used as a blanket, as a pad, and my two pillows and slept the night in there with him.

Where we spent the night

He's so adorable and has such personality.  Heartland Humane is taking him in today.   Boy.  Someone who adopts him will be really lucky.

I think about the Friday two weeks ago, when Vicki called me, the last time I'd ever hear her voice.  She was on her way back from Springfield, where she'd picked up kittens at the Petco who had not gotten homes, or something, to offer me spay neuter reservations for the next Monday that they couldn't use.  She told me she was feeling very sick, in that call, but used it in the context that she would be unable to trap for Monday appointments.

I wish I'd asked her exactly how she was feeling sick.  I'm so gosh darn OCD, I would have pried into it, and then maybe could have convinced her to see a doctor.   Probably not though.  She was stubborn.   I wonder if the volunteers at the dinner she went to with them that evening feel guilt too, since she vomited there, and they tried to get her to let them take her to the doctor.  She refused.

It's hard to process a sudden death.   When a person dies slowly over months, like with cancer, friends, family can process the upcoming loss.  But its sure a better way to go, just sudden like she did.  I don't want time to think about it.  What's the point of that?  Torture of a sort. 

I thought to myself, a few days after she died, I've got your back, Vicki, on your legacy and wrote a letter to the editor to say goodbye and tell everyone what she'd done with her life.  I thought people should know what kind of a person had been among them.  After doing it almost her entire life, she was still at it, at near 70, when other people are all messed up with radical political ranting or spending their senior years basically in doctors offices or on expensive exotic vacations.  She dropped dead helping out unwanted cats.   How many cats did she get fixed in her life and find homes for, the number would be astounding.  She was not a record keeper like I am so nobody can even guess. 

 I don't have any regrets in my life.  I made peace with regrets long time ago.   I like life and I don't want to die but we all do and when I go, I'd like it to be slam bang fast like how Vicki went.