Compelled to Serve
I confess, I am a crazy cat lady at heart….
I packed up some of the cat paraphernalia I had all around the apartment, cat food, new litter, treats, bowls, etc…. I found a local cat shelter that will gladly take donations of any kind – the Community Cat Connection “CCC” in Webster, Massachusetts. When I dropped these items off they said that they will even take Hocus’ crate, beds & litter pan (I plan on scrubbing them clean this weekend).
I spent a considerable amount of time at the CCC. It is non-profit, completely run on private donations and totally volunteer driven. There are cats & kittens running around and sleeping everywhere in the place…. rescued kittens so young that they still need to be bottle-fed, ferrals that are being spayed/neutered and rehabilitated, abused and neglected cats & kittens, all shapes-colors and sizes. When they are at capacity they even accept cats & kittens who are then fostered in volunteers’ homes until they can be adopted…. She told me some really awful stories about the reasons behind some of their arriving at the shelter and to balance it out some amazing success stories about others who have moved on to “forever loving homes”.
I am still struggling with the emptiness of the apartment. I had yet another breakdown when I got home last night. It seems every time I walk through that damn door I lose it. The apartment is just so incredibly empty now without my friend.
Now I know what you all are thinking and NO I did not come home with a cat or a kitten.
I am still too raw. Hocus cannot just be “replaced” by another life. I need to give myself some time to grieve and adapt. I am in no position at the moment to make the huge commitment to an animal that was traumatized.
But I can still get my kitty fix….I am going to be a Volunteer for the CCC. I have a set of professional skills that can benefit the organization (grant writing, fundraising, volunteer recruitment & coordination, event planning, public speaking), I am Level I Reiki and cats especially love Reiki especially when they are not feeling well, and most importantly scooping poop does not phase me one bit.
I have a philanthropic soul and have been searching for a volunteer activity that would be not only helpful to an organization, but also be fulfilling and fun. For the past couple of years I have been doing regular volunteer work for a few different organizations, but all of them have felt like a chore or penance each time I have to go to my assignment. The other day at the CCC I felt very at home when I walked through the door and instantly knew I wanted to help them out more than just the donation of supplies. The organization benefits, the kitties benefit and I benefit. It appears to be a win-win-win situation.
<<Note, I am all proud of myself too, I embedded the link to the shelter in the photo, just click on the photo below and it will take you to their website. happy geek dance>>
I am leaving on a jet plane
I am leaving tomorrow morning for Atlanta GA until late Tuesday for a conference for work, ” The National Conference on Volunteerism and Service”. Yippee <<insert sarcasm here>>
I really am not looking forward to going, and with the week I had I am not organized at all. And for those who know me, I am NOT a southern gal at all. Georgia is not my ideal travel destination.
However the distance and distraction may be good for me right now. I have found in the past 24 hours that I have to learn to live completely alone for the first time in the apartment, how to live without a cat on the couch with me when watching TV, sleeping at the foot of the bed, fighting with me for attention when I read my book, scoot her off my suitcase because I have to pack for my trip, etc… it is very quiet here, Hocus was such a chatty little lady.
There are benefits (sadly), I can lay my clothes out and not have to worry about her sleeping on them. I don’t have to worry about her while I am away at the conference. I can stay out after work and not have to rush home to feed her. I don’t have the responsibility of having a pet.
But after 16 years of having another being living with me, giving me unconditional love, always present, never complaining, it is quite odd, eerily quiet and the adjustment is going to be an emotional challenge.
Hocus will be cremated and her ashes will be returned to me, so that she will be with her brother Pocus who was also cremated. I am trying to work out their final resting place, and have a few ideas that I will share in time.
I hope to be in better emotional space when I return from Atlanta and plan to post a little “tribute” page to Hocus and her brother Pocus. (I am not a crazy cat lady if I do a tribute page am I?)
See you all next week, all my love.
Namaste
Pretty Lady
Oh the sun is all mine today!
Here she is yesterday content soaking up the sun. She had a good day, eating some catnip, enjoying some reiki, and playing with a pipe cleaner.
I took her to the vet last week to have a second lump I found in her belly checked out. As the doc said, “yup there it is, down the chain, it will have to be removed too”. Hocus goes in for her surgery on Wednesday morning.
I am starting to feel a little guilty and selfish about putting her under the knife. But in thinking about the alternatives, putting down a happy apparently healthy cat or leaving them in – watching and allowing her get “sick”, I have to believe that I have made the right decision. The vet recommends the surgery and it is quite routine. The point is that after the lumps have been removed the surgery will give her a better quality of life after she has healed.
10% Hope is not much :-(
I am glad that I was mentally prepared and got a good chunk of my crying and worry out of the way yesterday evening.
Pathology should be back within 5-7 days. There is a 10% chance that it is not malignant. After pathology is confirmed we will run blood tests, urine samples and full body x-rays. These diagnostics should determine 1 – whether the cancer has metastasized, and 2- whether or not she is even a candidate for surgery.
I am planning on making all the decisions based on Hocus’ Quality of Life, not quantity of life. She is after all a geriatric kitty. Surgery would only be an option if the cancer has not spread and she is not in a high risk category of going under anaesthesia, or the if the tumor breaks through the skin wall and begins to cause concern (I will spare you the icky details about that). Chemotherapy is not even an option. It is my will not to cause Hocus any unnecessary stress or trauma . I keep reminding myself that every decision I make from here on out is for her, not for me.
To date, Hocus has had a full wonderfully spoiled life. I was reading in a chart in the exam room today that she is the equivalent of 82 years old. That is a good long life. I plan on making her remaining days as happy as all her previous days and as comfortable for her as I can. It is unclear at this point how much time we have left together, but from what I have read probably less than a year, likely 5-6 months. If it comes to her being in pain, suffering, not eating, not enjoying her life, then I will make the difficult decisions.
Right now Hocus is not acting sick in any way. I am unsure whether she knows that she is diseased. She seems to be really enjoying the Reiki sessions with me everyday and wants me to have my hands on her all the time (more than usual that is). She is happy, playful, affectionate and my goal is for her to remain that way for as long as she can. She is sleeping right now in the sun next to me out on the deck, absorbing all those good warm healing spring sun rays.
I am OK with this. Yes it is hard, yes it will get harder, and it is sad, but I cannot change what is. Fact -We all die someday. I just feel like I have been challenged a little too much this year in the death department. I have experienced, “suffered”, many losses this past year, some people I knew intimately and some only acquaintances, but all significant in their own way. I count seven total. I know there is a lesson in all this death somewhere, I guess I have not learned it yet because I feel like I keep getting challenged & tested by it. Either that or it might be the fact that I am inching nearly a year towards turning forty. I think I like the “lesson” scenario better.
I want to end with two quotes I found on a a Buddhist blog & website about the Buddhist perspective towards healing from grief and loss. They make sense to me and resonate some beauty for me in this challenging time.
It is best to expect to be up and down and just take each day and each experience as it comes. It is thinking that we should be feeling something other than what we are feeling that makes things so difficult. The thing is to train ourselves to be as simple as we can be – simply feeling sad, simply feeling angry, simply feeling awful or happy for that matter. That way we somehow can honour each experience and from that some inspiration naturally arises …….and we find the inspiration to somehow open up into the moment and live it in a way that feels meaningful and good. Somehow we have the power within us to do that – it is what we are – we are that openness, that awareness and that sensitivity, responsiveness and its feels good somehow. It is how it is and how we want it to be somehow.
I’m reminded of a Buddhist teaching I was given in England, by the 10 year old daughter of one of my classmates, Heather. “How do we hold on to the things we love?” her mother asked. “Like this,” she replied, with her hand outstretched, palm up, fingers open.
This is the epitome of accepting love, the gentle way we hold all that which is precious and delicate.
http://americanbuddhist.blogspot.com/2007/03/buddhism-grief.html
There is still that 10% chance on which I can hope.
I am frightened and sad.
Hocus
AKA, my elderly kitty, now around 17 years old (+/-), is going to the Vet tomorrow.
A couple weeks back I discovered a lump in her belly adjacent/under one of her nipples. Since that time the mass has increased in size and has started weeping.
In anticipation of our trip tomorrow I have done some research. I find out tomorrow if my fears are a reality.
Not being a professional trained in veterinary medicine, but being a concerned “mommy” having the resources of the Internet at my fingertips I have unofficially pre-diagnosed her with a Feline Mammary Tumor (the cats version of breast cancer).
If I am correct her prognosis is not good given her age and the size of the tumor, that is getting larger by the day.
I am bracing myself because a number of years ago I lost her twin brother Pocus very quickly to diabetes, the silent killer. Within a month of his being diagnosed he was euthanized, his liver, kidneys had shut down. It was a quite a loss to both Hocus & I, and it has just been me & her ever since.
Hocus’ personality did a 180 degree turn after Poke left us. She went from being the standoffish type, not coming up onto your lap unless invited with a pat, and kinda doing her own thing off in the other room TO being the most affectionate cat in the world. We often joke now how she molests everyone who walks through my door. She will follow you from room to room as if she were your shadow, she sleeps faithfully on the bed at your feet every night and you do not even have to actively pet her, you can just hold your had out and she will take total advantage of it.
She was always in the shadow of her brother when he was around, but her and I have really bonded the past few years. I know that she is getting old, and that it is inevitable, that like all life forms, one day she, like all of us will be gone, but I had hoped to have a little more time with her. She really is a wonderful companion.
I hope that I am wrong about my research, but I am glad that I am prepared for the “worse case scenario”. I would rather get my crying over with tonight and be strong tomorrow than be completely shocked and meltdown in the vet’s office before having to go to work.
Keep Hocus in your thoughts and send us good energy for our visit tomorrow.
For simple information about Feline Mammary Tumors see the following link, or google the term. http://www.marvistavet.com/html/mammary_cancer_in_cats.html
I will post tomorrow evening about our visit with Vet.
