TWENTY-TWO

Visiting with cousins on Memorial Day with snow cones in the rain. 

2015 week twenty-two

Here comes the sun! (I cannot add enough exclamation points! There is no rain in the forecast!)

Even though it was drizzly it was still too bright to not wear sunglasses. 

She was so sick this week. Miserable fevery sick. She hasn't stopped whine-crying in 5 days -even though she has been feeling much better for the last 4 of those days... One slightly unsettling part of her whine-crying has included her sudden fear (obsession?) with getting lost. All day long she tells me she "doesn't want to get lost," and that it would "be so sad to get lost." And this is not about getting lost in public. This is about getting lost in our house (!) or at the table (!!). Vera, sobbing about her giraffe. Me: Go to your room and get him. Vera, still crying: I don't want to get lost! And then sometimes she will turn to me and say, "I be fine?" "Protect you?" Yes! Of course you're going to be fine! We're in our own home! Where is this coming from?!

We took a long walk to get out of the house even though she was still feeling sick. She insisted upon bringing this weird book about going to the doctor that she picked from the library. She slept almost the whole time clutching her book. 

I had to salvage some early garlic from the miserable flooding in our yard. The rain seems fairly menacing and vindictive at this point. Also about half of the potatoes I harvested last week have rotted as well. I'm no longer even going to try to be kind about the rain. Stop rotting my garden. 

We decided to take a long walk through the enormous Nebraska Furniture Mart. Guess who whine-cried the entire time? I love her so much, but it's like she has taken a very abrupt 180 degree turn from her usually calm and patient demeanor. I understand "terrible twos" are upon us. But surely they are a gradual insanity, not a sudden change in personality. Is she a changeling?!

Some of the flooding in our area. 

Gathering carrots for dinner and shredding my chamomile flowers -but super peacefully so I didn't even mention it. 

So it looks like we'll have to find a new vet. I could not face them again with another animal. I'm sure they would report me or something.

After four days of cleaning up Yzma's weeping belly wounds, squirting Pedialyte down her throat every 2-3 hours, giving her antibiotics and anti-inflammatory meds, wiping yogurt or wet cat food on her lips to try to force her to eat, I had to take her back to the vet. She hadn't had anything to eat or drink voluntarily for almost 6 days. Even with my fastidious Pedialyte squirting, she was still very dehydrated. They looked at her wounds and she had three new abscesses with more maggots that were now eating living flesh. The wound was so big they wouldn't be able to close it. So I had two options: 1) admit her to an animal hospital where they would keep her on a sedative and hooked up to an IV and clean her wound several times a day for at least a week or so before they could even close up the wound, or 2) make my peace and say goodbye. Obviously, we love her, but we are not prepared to go to such great lengths to prolong her life under miserable circumstances. So I picked up her little body in her stained-towel burial shroud and brought her home for Matt to bury. Let me clarify -the vet put her down, we did not bury her alive. I didn't think I would cry. I was exhausted from how terrible this must have been for her, but then her little white paw was sticking through the hole in the laundry basket, and I shed a little tear. The ground was so wet when Matt went to bury her among our blackberry bushes that he hit standing water after two shovelfuls. We had to go back the next day to make sure there was enough dirt on top of her. Two cats in one year. I have a hard time believing our luck. I am, of course, sad that a perfectly healthy cat got a strange injury and so suddenly died after much gruesome suffering, however, she was kind of a mean cat. What would she have been like for the next 10 years? Sadly, she wont have the chance to redeem her name. And now, we have an expanding cat graveyard for a back garden.

When Vera asks about the cat, she says that Yzma is in heaven with Jesus. Matt says "That cat is not with Jesus." Insensitive. :)