Twister'd

 First of all, I will state that the wife and I are safe and sound after the tornadoes that rolled through the Omaha area last night. We got some rain, some light hail, and some light thunder...and that was it. We were very lucky. I went to bed after dinner and Daisy assembled and installed our new cat tree downstairs for the children -- for us, personally, it was a non-event.

However, for a lot of the Omaha surrounding area, it very much was not a non-event.

I don't really have to go into a lot of detail if you're familiar with the area or have paid attention to any of the news for the past 36 hours or so, local or national -- we had two different tornadoes hit the Omaha area. One was classified as an EF-3 that hit the Elkhorn area, northwest of the city proper, and did a lot of damage. The second was classified as an EF-2 that hit Eppley Airfield -- Omaha's airport that we've flown in and out of many times over the years -- and did some significant damage to some of the private "general aviation" hangars but nothing else.

Nobody died. Hundreds of homes were destroyed. Thousands were without power and still are, even now. Cleanup and rebuilding is underway for all of those people.

I've been within 10-15 miles of a tornado before, when I was living in the Kansas City area 15 years ago of more. As a child, on a road trip from West Virginia to Utah and back, I was a few miles away from a tornado traveling across Nebraska that summer (1991). When I lived in Kansas -- for five years -- the closest any tornadoes got to me were 20-30 miles away. Eight years ago today, a tornado wall cloud went right over the Omaha metro, dumped a lot of hard rain and hail, but never actually really touched down anywhere.

The EF-2 tornado that missed us and hit the airport is 8.1 miles from my house. The EF-3 that destroyed a large chunk of Elkhorn and the surrounding area was 11-18 miles from my house. In the grand scheme of things, the size of the country as a whole, that is a hair's width distance from where I am and everything, everyone I know and love. 

This is why I get very stressed and very anxious when bad weather is predicted or moving in. Daisy and I discussed it this afternoon so that she could attempt to understand my mindset, my anxiety, because she really doesn't have it. 

It's the loss of control. 

Almost everything that gives me stress or anxiety boils down to the fact that I can't control or prevent the triggers for those feelings. Tornadoes (or other severe, damaging storms) I can't prevent, I can't control where they go, I can't avoid them or find some way to not deal with them. I don't have superpowers or a magic wand. I am forced to accept that what's going to happen is going to happen and whether I like it or not I am going to have to deal with it, and that's what stresses and frankly angers me. I don't get stressed, anxious, or angry about things I have control of, or have control of the situation for -- because I can either fix those things or avoid them. If there's an action I can take to prevent, end, or remove myself from a situation why would I stress about it? The answer is, I don't -- I take those actions and go on with my life. 

Proponents of pharmaceuticals would likely say that I should be on some anti-anxiety medication for all of this, and I vehemently disagree. Why? Medicine doesn't fix the problem, it doesn't magically stop shit from happening. I'm not going to take a pill that makes tornadoes go away, because that pill does not exist. I don't have that sort of anxiety where I'm frozen, the "I'm so anxious I can't do anything and can't function" anxiety -- yes, those people need medication because that's a genuine issue. Like the people who need to take a pill to function in society, to get out of bed and go to their job every day and attempt to be normal, yes, they need those pills and I am not dismissing that. I do not need that sort of medication -- I function perfectly fine. I just hate not being in control of my own destiny -- I don't need a pill that dulls my senses and makes me functionally care less about it. Dulling my perception or care about it does not remove the circumstances and does not remove the danger or its effects. It would turn me into a mindless drone. It is my emotions that remind me who I am, that let me know I am alive and an individual mind amongst what appears to be very few individual minds still left out there these days.

Anyway.

The storm threat started on Thursday, with some moderate storms through the area in the overnight hours -- nothing major but enough to make Hank, Empress, and Sadie all cower under my desk with me at my feet for a while, incredibly concerned with the booming outside.

Then, there was yesterday -- when I woke up, went to the bathroom, and walked into my room, and before I could even turn on my computer for the day the sirens started going off. As soon as that happened, Daisy texted me that she was coming home from work -- which she did, very quickly. The sirens went off eight times in a two-hour span of frankly terrifying time. I counted. Each one was another warning for another part of the county, or an extension of an existing warning.

Once the threat was over yesterday, and my nerves could calm, I cooked us dinner and did all of the dishes, put away the leftovers, and told the wife that I was shot, the stress was leaving my body and I needed to crash again -- and per my FitBit, I was asleep by 8:51 PM. I'd only been awake for a little less than six hours.

Today we were under a similar threat that was set to play out with almost the exact same timing as yesterday. As predicted, it got dark and stormy around 4pm -- we got a little rain, some thunder, and a little lightning -- but as I was following everything on the news and local weather coverage this time around, I was considerably less anxious and nothing moved through that was severe (though there were some tornadoes south of us in Kansas and Missouri). Once I knew we were safe, I passed out once more in the chair in my office and slept until well after 10pm.

Tomorrow the severe threat is minimal -- so they say. Likely nothing major for our area, but the possibility is still there for something significant. There's another chance for severe weather on Tuesday too, and then off and on storm chances for the better part of the next ten days after. This is Nebraska in the spring -- this is what it's like here, especially in April and May. We've been lucky for the past few years that nothing has really hit the Omaha area directly, until this weekend. The last awful storms we had that hit here directly were the ones that took out our retaining wall in 2019. That was literally five years ago next month. 

As I told Daisy earlier -- I don't want to live here anymore. I don't know how much longer I can do it and still keep my sanity. I really like Omaha for the most part but I cannot fathom spending the rest of my life in a place where we have the hottest summers, the coldest winters, and some of the worst severe weather possible in the spring. It's torture for me to just have to deal with it and have no control when something happens.

Anniversaries

 2024 so far has been...well, not really that great in a lot of respects, as you folks know -- I had an entire series of entries here earlier this year that were titled "2024 Can Suck It, Part [number]." Aside from the new children, this has been a really rough, draining year without a lot of good to show for it. But, it is a strange year for anniversaries of many different, sometimes very odd or bad things. Life milestones and the like. And I've been thinking a lot about those as of late.

Yesterday, April 20, was the 25th anniversary of the Columbine shooting. I honestly wouldn't have thought about it if NPR had not made a point to mention it in the daily news brief I get on my Alexa, as I feel so far removed from my life 25 years ago that it feels like a different person had those experiences. I can't tell you where I was when I first heard about it, but I can tell you who I was -- I was nearing the end of my sophomore year of high school -- a school I'd only been attending for about six months as we'd just moved to the area the week of Thanksgiving the previous year. I did not fit in. I had very, very few friends. I listened to a lot of hard rock and metal, wore a lot of black, owned and wore combat boots, and my hair was long, curly, and wild (It would, ahem, relax itself a few years later). I owned multiple Marilyn Manson t-shirts and was a fan of his music, and to top it all off, I owned and wore a long, black trench coat as my primary coat in the winter/spring months. 

My life was very different after April 21, 1999 compared to April 20, 1999, when it came to how I was treated as a person in high school. As you might imagine. 

I wasn't feared -- not really. I wasn't necessarily even bullied. But I was ostracized. I was looked at differently. I was treated differently. I heard "oh, how many guns do you carry under that coat?" as a joking question more times than I could count, or "if you get mad, are you gonna kill me?" etc, followed by mocking laughter. I was referred to as "Trench Coat Mafia" I don't know how many times -- and those were by the bolder kids. Most everyone else just ignored me or avoided eye contact. 

Luckily, it was nearing the end of the school year and barely anyone really knew me, but I knew if I did not find some ways to conform, I would not get by. I put away the trench coat -- I did not wear it regularly again for a few years, until I was in college. I shaved my head almost down to the skin (but not entirely) and kept it short (or relatively short) until after I graduated high school. I put away or donated a lot of my metal band t-shirts -- as well as any other clothing that could be considered controversial at the time -- and the ones I kept, I also didn't really wear much throughout the rest of my high school years. I traded in the combat boots for Chuck Taylors, which I was not used to and gave me painful blisters on my feet until I broke them in. I spent the summer and early fall shopping for clothing that was more normal -- plain jeans, plaid or flannel button-up shirts, a hoodie here and there. I mentally detached myself from a lot of the music I had been listening to -- new as well as old. Instead, I dove into Star Trek and Star Wars, anime, the internet, the resurgence of Transformers and Robotech that was going on at the time, and started listening to the more "socially acceptable" punk rock records that were coming out in the late 90s. I buried myself in my PlayStation. We had digital cable with every channel, so I buried myself in movie channels -- obscure films or movies I'd never seen up to that point. I had a VCR and blank VHS tapes were plentiful and inexpensive at Kmart, so I began building a movie collection of films I would watch over and over. I wanted to be a writer, so I began obsessively journaling.

Looking back on it now, the Columbine shooting ended up completely changing my trajectory as a person, as a human. I would likely not be as much of an introvert or a nerd without it. My tastes in music today would be wildly different -- one band would not have led me to another, and to another, and to the other older bands those bands drew inspiration from, and so forth. My fashion sense would be wildly different today. I would not have learned to efficiently repress the person I am to fit in more with our actual society, even if at great detriment to myself at times. But, at the same time, it gave me a great deal of sympathy and empathy for the kids who had actually committed the shooting. I didn't agree with them, per se, but I certainly felt (and still feel) that I understood them a lot better than most attempted to, or the media attempted to. Because, let me tell you, heavy metal music and violent video games never made me want to pick up a gun and kill somebody -- but if I were a little more unhinged and less mentally stable in my teenage years, being ostracized and treated like an untouchable outcast may have. Being incessantly made fun of, taunted, bullied, shamed -- may have. And I don't think that me saying that, or feeling that, justifies the absolute tragedy that happened that day, because nothing can ever justify that sort of action -- but I do say that I feel for those misguided boys, those (frankly) abused boys, abused and misunderstood by the society around them.

And while we're on the subject, it is not lost on me that this October is the 25th anniversary of my suicide attempt.

I've gone into this before here, a few years ago -- and I don't really want to rehash old wounds or old trauma. I was a junior in high school and I was having a mental breakdown. My parents were fighting a lot, I was fat and hated myself, the girl I'd fallen in love with wanted to "just be friends," and I had been ripped from the life I'd known in the city where I'd lived all my life...to be deposited on top of a  redneck mountain in the middle of fucking nowhere -- which with no car, no money, no job, very few friends, and two feet of snow in every winter snowstorm meant that I was, essentially, trapped there as a prisoner. 

I took the majority of a bottle of aspirin. 

It didn't work. 

I was sick for about 36 hours or so (give or take, it's all a blur now) but, of course, I lived. My parents never knew about it. In fact, to this day, I still don't think they know about it. I tried to tell my mother about it sometime later, and she brushed it off like I was just being dramatic in the moment, and after that I never bothered to try to tell her about it again.

To this day, very few people know about that story, about that experience. A ballpark number would be less than ten, excluding (of course) anyone who's ever read about it here. I am referring to people I actually told, in person, with my mouth. 

My teenage years sucked, folks. No wonder I became an alcoholic for a few years in college. Getting drunk was the only way that I actually felt like I could be myself -- the only way, the only time, that I felt I was the real me. And I'm sure, in that time, I burned a lot of bridges too, and made a lot of people who otherwise would have been able to connect with me alienated from me, never to be seen again. 

The next big touchpoint/anniversary is that 15 years ago, in 2009, I had what ended up being the biggest turning point in my life -- I had to make one of three decisions:

1. Move to Kansas with my girlfriend at the time (referred to here, on the rare occasions I mention her, as Alley) as she'd just gotten accepted into grad school
2. Not go with her, essentially ending our relationship but remaining in St. Joseph, MO where I worked and lived at the time, basically until something else came along -- or just make a new life there permanently, which would have been possible
3. Not go with her, letting the relationship end, and find a way to move back home to West Virginia -- which was possible but would not be easy -- and essentially felt like "giving up" and returning to the aforementioned prisoner lifestyle above.

I did, of course, choose option #1. We lived in her family's old house outside of Kansas City for most of the summer and then moved to Kansas that August -- which allowed me some much needed downtime for a while, but also allowed me to get a job at the local newspaper (a job I loved) and allowed me to enter grad school the next year to get my Master's degree. Our relationship eventually ended, of course (truthfully it was mostly over before we moved to Kansas, but I don't think either of us really realized it at the time), but that allowed me to laser focus on my cats and my studies, taught me how to live alone and fend for myself -- as well as how to budget, do poor-man's car repairs/maintenance, and learn how to cook -- and eventually, three years later, led me to Daisy.

It also put me into massive student loan and credit card debt as well, because poor, and there were many times that I questioned my choices and the path I'd chosen, but in the end it was the right path. 

If I'd chosen option #2, I likely would have stayed in St. Joseph for several years -- the grocery store I worked in at the time that inspired this entire website was doing well and I was one of their most beloved, reliable, valuable employees. I likely would have become a department manager or store manager at some point if I'd stayed there, and while the pay wasn't amazing (and is but a fraction of what I make now) it was fine for the time and for where I lived. I would not have gotten my Master's, though, nor would I have the debt I have now, and I almost certainly would not have found Daisy. I would likely have been in a very poor state of health after a few years, and I likely would have gone a little nutty or stir-crazy living in the tiny apartment I had, but if I'd just dealt with it, toughed it out, and gone where that road would have taken me, by now I believe I likely would have bought a decent used car, purchased a small house, and likely would have gotten away from the grocery business one way or another. Would I be married? Eh, I don't know. I probably would've continued smoking so much that I would've either contracted lung cancer or had at least one heart attack, so...I don't know. 

If I'd chosen option #3, moving back home a few short years before my parents purchased their beach house in North Carolina, I would've had a crazily different life. I am up in the air on whether I would have pursued graduate school at that point, even though WVU was readily accessible and my parents both still worked there at the time and had not yet retired. It would have been far more difficult to obtain and pay for/insure a vehicle -- and even harder to get a job that I could live on -- but I would have had a support network of family and friends in the area. Daisy would never have been in the picture at all, but I know that within a few years I would have married and probably had children with whoever I ended up with. The downside to that is that it wouldn't have been Daisy, I wouldn't have my cats (who Alley would've either taken with her when we parted ways or they would have gone to the shelter, as I would not have been able to transport three cats across the country). But, let's say I remained single, moved back home, and got my previous job at the grocery store -- or my job in Microbiology -- back and began pulling in a small amount of income. I would have had another choice to make when the parents bought the NC house -- whether to join them as they gradually moved their entire lives down there and finally began living down there permanently...or essentially become the caretaker of the WV house and the cats my parents had there. With the former, I could have finally lived out my dream of living on a beach coastline, could have found a great job/career in North Carolina and completely started a new life there. With the latter, I would've had a giant house to myself, filled with food, entertainment, cats, and fast internet -- and I would've finally been able to write.

So, I don't know. While there are clear ups and downs to both other paths, I'm very content with the path I chose. I met the love of my life, I have five wonderful cats (two of whom are, as you know, my original cats) and I own a home in a part of the country I never thought I'd be living in, but y'know, it's fine. I still wonder at times how those other multiverse Brandons are doing, though.

Of course, I would be leaving a giant chunk of my life out of the picture if I did not mention that in a little over a month, Daisy and I will be celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary.

A lot of marriages -- a lot of them -- do not make it to ten years. My mother was married twice, and neither of those marriages lasted ten years (one lasted seven, the other lasted four). 

It is not always easy. For those of you who are not currently married or who have never been married, I will tell you that it is not easy. A marriage takes a lot of work on both sides, and my marriage to Daisy is likely what you'd expect in many ways and completely outside of what you'd expect in many others. Neither of us really believe in traditional gender roles, or roles within a marriage. We're both just partners and we each do what we can or what we're skilled at. For example, Daisy does cook and clean -- a lot -- but I do all of the laundry and keep the cats fed and always have their food stocked. Daisy is the handyman of the household (because really, I'm not) -- she handles electrical work, replacement parts for most appliances and household items, does a fair amount of the yard work, and is a Ms. Fixit type of person. I am not that guy, I don't have those skillsets. I am not ashamed to admit that. Most of the time I mow the grass and do the string trimming, I take care of the trash and recycling every week, I try to keep us stocked on every household supply one could think of, and I do all of the incidental stuff that Daisy either wouldn't think of or wouldn't care to do -- for example, the Christmas cards every year being one of those things. She vacuums, I wash and replace the cats' couch blankets. She cooks most of the meals and does most of the dishes, and I handle all the cats' dishes and wash their fountain. I strip the bed, wash it and make it again every week, and she cleans the cat pans. I keep an accurate bank ledger to the penny to take care of our finances, she schedules vet appointments and doctor appointments for us.

I could go on, but my point is that Daisy does a lot, and likely does far more than I do in the grand scheme of things to keep this household running at the forefront. What I do is mainly the upkeep and maintenance work in the background on a great many things. Daisy is active, and I am passive. I couldn't do the laundry (a background task) if I didn't keep us stocked in detergent and fabric softener (also another background task) for example. And occasionally roles do change and/or reverse. There are rare occasions that I cook dinner and do all the dishes, rare occasions where I vacuum or clean the toilets or kitchen, or clean the litter pans -- and I do admit that all of those things are rarer than she or I would like. There are also times where she mows the grass, too, or does a load or two of laundry (I jokingly refer to this as "job theft"). 

She and I got into a dispute last week when I told her I buy about 60% of the weekly/monthly groceries and necessities for the household -- she was not having that. But the truth is, she mostly buys produce and stuff to cook for meal planning for the week -- stuff we both eat, yes, but is mostly for her (either physically or spiritually). And she usually goes to a grocery store, whether it's Whole Foods or Trader Joes or somewhere else, about 2-3 times a week to get all of those items in the moment, which can get expensive and frankly I think inflates psychosomatically the amount she gets with the percentage of what she gets. 

Meanwhile, I'm in the background making sure all of the cats have enough canned and dry cat food and treats, that we have laundry detergent, soap, dish soap, fabric softener, dishwasher pods, washing machine cleaner, other cleaners as necessary, bread, chips, salsa, some sauces and dressings, a fair amount of baking supplies for her including but not limited to various flours and meals, butter, many gallons of distilled water for her CPAP and sinus rinsing, about half the paper towels, almost all canned vegetables and soups other than beans and tomatoes, vitamins, most over the counter medications (ibuprofen, antacids, allergy pills, NyQuil, etc), her chewing gum, her ice cream bars, tissues, light bulbs, glasses wipes, batteries, most fake meats, roughly half the coconut water, almost ALL of the food I eat that isn't part of her meal planning...

AND. And. Every streaming service but one of them (Hulu) is my responsibility too. Would I classify them as groceries? No, but are they commodities as much as laundry detergent and tissues are? Yes. 

So she gets a lot of actual food, actual groceries. I get a lot of actual food and almost everything else. The big exceptions to this rule are toilet paper, cat litter, and our vegan milk -- she gets those auto-ordered and delivered and I don't necessarily count those as "weekly/monthly" purchases that are intentional -- they come on a schedule. But she does get those too.

But this is a microcosm of marriage, my friends -- there are lots of moving parts. Some things that wouldn't work for others will work wonderfully for you. Sometimes you'll have a spat about who buys more groceries and sometimes your wife will randomly bring a new cat home. Sometimes you'll get a burst of energy and do house chores for hours to surprise your spouse and they won't even notice, and sometimes your wife will do her own laundry and you'll get really irritated because it's your job. Sometimes, you'll wash and put away all of your wife's laundry and organize it within her closet in a way that actually makes sense, and she'll be mad about it for days.

I...may be speaking from some experience on some of this. 

My point is -- it's a partnership, and it is work and takes love and patience to maintain. Not every day is going to be great. The first year or so of our marriage was hard. But, if you do it long enough, if you put the work in and perform the upkeep and maintenance, you will have far more great days than bad ones. I've said it before here and I'll say it again -- marrying Daisy was the best decision I have ever made. And it's a continual decision we've made every day for the past ten years.

So, those are my thoughts. For now.

I'll have more to share soon; we have a lot coming up over the next few weeks and months.

The Marvelous Miss Mable, Part IV: Mini-Me

 On the fifth day of living in her new home, Mable went to the vet for her first appointment.

Per the vet (and I'm paraphrasing what Daisy told me, as I was not there -- I was asleep) she appears to be healthy. She is 2.12 pounds -- still very tiny -- and our vet does not think she will be a large cat once she's fully grown. That could always change, of course. For example, Sadie was very small most of her life, then got big and fat for a few years, and has now shrunken back down to barely seven pounds in her old age.

The parents have a very small orange-and-white tabby (who could be Hank's sister by the way her patterning looks) that is at least seven or eight years old now and never got much larger than she was when she was a baby. She's smaller than Sadie. So small, fully-grown cats do exist. It's just weird for me to wrap my head around that concept since all of my cats have always been giant. Maggie was, as the kids say, a heckin' chonker, Pete has always been huge, Hank may now be bigger than Pete as he is built like a brick shithouse, and Empress is catching up to the big boys as her Maine Coon genes kick in. 

I'll remind you all that Hank, Empress, and Pete all have a sizable chunk of Maine Coon DNA in them, with Empress (of course) possessing the largest chunk of that. 

Anyway. Mable appears to be fine. And, surprisingly, in the last 24 hours has started to find her place within the house society.

Daisy worked from home today, as she does two days a week. I was asleep in my chair in my office, where I have slept since Mable came home -- I am terrified of rolling over onto the little child in my sleep and suffocating her, because sometimes I sleep very hard and Daisy says she likes to cuddle up right against you. I also value my sleep because I have to stay up all night every night for work, and if Mable keeps me up all day biting me or getting into shit because I'm not playing with her I might lose what little sanity I have left.

So, when I awoke this afternoon, Daisy was nowhere to be found, the bedroom door was wide open, and none of the cats were in sight.

"[Daisy]," I said, "...where's the cat?"

"Cuddling down here on my chest," Daisy said from downstairs in the living room. "She's had basically free run of the house all day."

"And Hank and Emmy haven't murdered her?"

I've mentioned here before that I want to get Mable used to the house, and the other cats used to her, as quickly (but gently) as possible, as I want everyone to mesh well and I want her to be able to be comfortable and know where everything is (food, water, litter pans, etc) long, long before we prepare to return to Nova Scotia in a few months. The more comfortable she and the other cats are together, the more comfortable she is with the navigation of the house, the more comfortable I will be when we up and leave for two weeks and have Dad and a friend or two stop by to take care of them on multiple occasions.

Pete, as mentioned, does not seem to mind the little girl at all, and actually seems somewhat fond of her. Pete though is used to new cats just randomly appearing in the house at this point, I'm sure -- she is, after all, the third new cat in less than a year. Mable curled up with him and flopped down against him for the first time today, and he seemed to have a vague realization that there was a tribble laying against his ass but had no real problems with it. He likes to watch her and observe her from afar most of the time though, like a dad. He does protect her though, as he did when he stepped between her and Hank when Hank was being a butthole and growling/hissing at her. Mable is his Mini Me -- she just looks and acts like a much smaller version of Pete. 

Something has changed, however, in the house dynamic within the past 24 hours.

Daisy said this morning, Hank and Emmy were still sort of growly with her, and then...it stopped. Emmy now has no real problems with her. Hank has approached her multiple times this afternoon to smell her and interact with her with no growling or hissing. When I fed them all about an hour ago, Mable bounded down off the couch and ate with all of them at the same time -- which is what made Sadie accept Empress, for example instead of being somewhat scared by her in the beginning days. 

Eating together is a very big step. It shows that there's not a competition, that she is not excluded, that they can share food as part of the same household without anyone being territorial or greedy over it. Sadie, Emmy, Pete, and Mable all ate from the same bowls at the same time, and I am sure all of them were aware of the new little furball eating there with them. 

Hank does not care for the wet foods about 95% of the time and spent this time in the bay window in the dining room, lounging and watching the outside happenings.

Sadie still does not seem to give a single shit. She is well aware of Mable and well aware that the others did not like her for the first few days she was here in the house, but it's Sadie. Sadie is old and crotchety and mostly keeps to herself or is with us humans for companionship, much as she always has. 

So I guess we're officially a five-cat integrated household now. It will be interesting to see, once she's out of the bedroom full time and has 24/7 run of the household, if Emmy and Hank play with her or cuddle up with her, or let her play with them -- or if Mable will remain a "humans" cat and show no interest in being a social-with-other-cats cat. I'm also looking forward to her being out of the bedroom at night so that she can sit on my lap, chest, or shoulder while I work at my desk downstairs. She really likes to be held or to lay on you, not just with you, which I adore. 

The fact that she's beautiful really helps that too. She really is a Mini Me of Pete.

Any anger or frustration I had about Daisy bringing home another cat has long melted away. She is such a funny, sweet little thing. And the old farts won't be around forever. Soon enough -- probably sooner than we might think -- the previous generation of cats will all have moved on to the other side and our house will have nothing but the three new, younger cats to continue the status quo. It's not something I want to really think about, but it's interesting how the parallels of life work. 

For the past sixteen years, almost seventeen, I have had these three cats:

Maggie -- a giant white and gray chonker girl with distinctive face markings, purrs that could be heard across the room and a propensity to be very vocal, with giant eyes. Short front legs, very long back legs. Attention whore. Heavy drinker. Voracious eater. Couch potato. Former queen of the household. Now deceased.

Pete -- The long-reigning king of the household, large black shorthair with hidden Maine Coon/exotic genes, with an attitude. Was a demon as a child. Has anxiety/territorial issues as an adult, but is ironically the most laid-back and loving/relaxed cat of all. The teddy bear. The cuddler. The lover. For the kittens, a social butterfly with Big Dad Energy™.

Sadie -- a small Russian Blue gray tabby who keeps to herself and likes us far more than other cats. Was second banana to Maggie, the other female in the household, during most of her reign. The cat personification of don't start nothin', won't be nothin'. Intelligent and sweet, but crotchety and will throw down in a fight if she feels she's been wronged. 

Now...look at how similar the new set is:

Hank -- a giant orange and white chonker boy with distinctive face markings, the king-in-waiting of the household, also with beautiful eyes and a propensity to be very vocal. Our pumpkin spice child. Four short little legs. Is not food motivated, but is heavily motivated by love and attention. Couch potato, but has amazing orange cat energy when he wants it. Goblin. Scared of everyone and everything but us. May be an actual potato with fur.

Empress -- A mostly Maine Coon brown tabby with giant, gorgeous eyes. The queen-in-waiting of the household. Will likely be a longhair and will possibly grow quite large. Tail as long as her body, with long legs. May actually be part raccoon. Also intelligent and sweet but will cut a bitch. Attack gremlin. Thinks she's the dominant one instead of Hank. May actually be the dominant one. Loves everyone and tries forcing love on the less receptive.

Mable -- The new black cat of the household. Second banana to the other female cat of the household. Prefers people to other cats. Voracious eater. Tiny and tribble-like with small eyes and understated facial features. May outlive all the others of her generation to become the next queen. 

Aside from these parallels, look at the other broader ones -- three cats, two females and one male. One giant cat, one normal sized cat, and a tiny one. One black cat, a tabby, and a two-color cat with a lot of white being one of those colors. All of the cats roughly the same age. One cat far more vocal than the others (Mable). One cat who wanders the house and cries (Hank; Pete does this too). One female with an attitude (Empress). 

None of this was intentional. It's just sort of how it happened. Random chance. 

I'll keep you all updated, of course, on how life progresses with these little children, as well as with the remaining old ones. But for now, you've likely heard enough about my cats.

The Marvelous Miss Mable, Part III: Big Mad

 The one thing I haven't mentioned yet in this story is the reactions to Mable from the other four cats. 

Hank is, as the Gen Z'ers say, big mad. He is very angry with us that we brought yet another child into the house. He knows she's there and it seems like he resents us for it. He's been much more easily spooked than normal, sometimes growls and/or hisses at Daisy when she tries to love on him, and has generally been a pretty big butthole about the whole ordeal. He has not, however, sat outside the bedroom door (or the bathroom door, when she's been in there) growling and sniffing at her like he did with Empress. This is a bit concerning to me, because I want him to have an actual interest in her and not just hate her. 

We introduced him formally to Mable yesterday afternoon, as we let her toddle around the living room a bit. He slunk low to the floor, never let her out of his sight, and hissed/growled at her. She, in turn, hissed back at him, but stood her ground. Mable does not want to make friends easily, as Empress did -- she is cautious and likely scared when the giant orange behemoth sits there and hisses at her. 

Empress's reaction to Mable was similar. She is curious but very cautious and does not know how to react to a little black tribble existing in the same space as her. Emmy hisses at her too, but less than Hank. Emmy will actually get up right in her face to examine her, while Hank won't yet. I think Emmy will warm up to her faster than Hank will, and that for the moment, she's just a little spooked. 

Likewise, it appears that Mable actually wants to interact with the two goblins, but her own desire to is hampered by her own fears. I am sure within a few days or so, all of them will -- as they say -- get over it. We're going to put them together in the bedroom, one by one, so that they can interact with her one on one. Likely Hank will be first, and then we'll do Emmy.

As for the golden oldies? Well...

Sadie, as expected, does not give a single shit. On Friday morning when Daisy woke up early because of Mable's antics, we let her toddle around downstairs a bit. Sadie was sleeping under my desk at my feet, as she frequently does, as I was still working. Mable went right up to her and examined her, sniffed her all over, and Sadie was completely unfazed. She sort of gave me this look like "Oh, you got another one? She's cute. She isn't gonna go after me? Cool. She's fine." And that was that. Sadie has not cared at all, and I think she's used to new children occupying the house at this point. She is a very independent cat and very much has the don't start nothin', won't be nothin' mentality. 

Pete has, not exactly surprisingly, been the most wonderful cat of them all when it comes to Mable. We introduced them within an hour of her being home, and he looked at her, and us, like "you...you had another child? And this one looks like me? I love her." And he has taken it upon himself to be her protector and big papa. He has spent more time with her than any of the others, mainly just observing her or hanging out with her. When she has gone after his tail, he's firmly but not angrily whacked her with his paw, like "we don't do that, I love you and you will not attack tails." When Hank growled and hissed at her, Pete came off the couch to put himself between her and Hank to "protect" her. It wasn't done in an aggressive way -- he didn't challenge Hank or anything, but it was very much a protective move. 

Mable has not yet cuddled up with Pete, flopped out with him on the bed or anything like that like Empress immediately did and like Hank did, but I'm sure it's coming eventually. Pete just loves being in her presence. He likes to smell her and groom her and give off those big dad vibes. I like to say that I am the best cat dad I know, but I'm not -- really, it's Pete. Pete has been so kind and loving with all of these kittens, and so incredibly patient even when I can tell he does not want to be. Mable may be the cat that Pete needs -- he bonded strongly with Hank, and then when we got Empress, Hank had no time for Pete anymore and I think that hurt Pete's feelings. When we got Empress, she bonded with Pete a lot, but her one true love has always been Hank. Sadie fights Pete half the time, so while they've been together the longest they're basically roommates and don't interact more than they have to. Maybe Mable will finally be Pete's little child who will bond the strongest with him.

And then he'll die and it'll devastate her. Because, not to be morbid, but let's be realistic here -- Pete's time on this planet is likely coming to a close sooner rather than later. It was the driving factor behind Daisy adopting Mable -- always having a black cat in this household -- and for the moment, two. 

Last night -- her third night in the household -- was much quieter per Daisy. She slept cuddled up to Daisy's chest and neck (which, let's be real here, is fucking adorable) and she did not bug her that much for playtime. I'm hoping this becomes more of a pattern as she settles in and becomes used to us and her new environment. 

The Marvelous Miss Mable, Part II: The Screamer

 

She is a beautiful little beast.

Mable is, I will admit, all of the qualities I wanted in a cat when we were looking for Empress. If we'd found Mable four months ago, she would be Empress. 

We don't know what Mable is. She is medium-haired, which means she could either grow into a longhair or a normal shorthair. She does not have the fur between her toes like Empress does, which would denote a longer-haired breed. She is one of six in her litter -- her mother was at the shelter too (she was adopted yesterday) and her mother, named Sassy, was a normal black domestic shorthair not unlike Pete. We do not know what her father was, however. All of Mable's siblings were fuzzy/poofy like her. All of them have also now been adopted.

Mable is not entirely black. She has some cinnamon/brown undertones, similar to Pete, and if you look closely in the photo above, you can see that she does have some mottling of white hairs on her back leading to her tail, and she has a little white spot right underneath her neck. 

She sort of looks like a werewolf -- giant, super-furry ears with tips and hair growing out of them like a Maine Coon (also, like Empress) and an overall very fuzzy, scraggly, super-soft coat all over. It's very possible she'll end up as a longhaired cat. It's also very possible she'll be a normal shorthair like Pete, as Pete looked similar when he was a baby in 2007:

Pete, however, was always destined to be a shorthair -- he was never that fuzzy, not like Mable. 

We learned some things about Mable the first night we had her, and the first (and most obvious one) is that she is a screamer. 

I wish I were making this up.

Mable does not like to be left alone. She wants to be around people and around other cats. Her history report says that she, her siblings, and her mother were all "owner surrendered," which basically tells me that whoever had her mother didn't like the fact that she'd gotten knocked up, and as soon as the kittens were born and old enough to go into the shelter system, away they went. Mable's mother is only a year old, so she is young herself. Mable is nine weeks old, and she'd never left the side of her siblings -- they were all fostered together, they were all sheltered together (three in each little enclosure) and to my knowledge, they were all adopted out separately. 

This was a problem for Mable. Being constantly around other cats and people in the fostering/shelter environment made her wonderfully sociable with cats and very comfortable around humans -- but when she's alone, she screams.

As in, if we're in the bedroom with her and then leave, closing the door behind us (we still need to keep her sequestered a bit so she can fully heal up from her surgery), she begins screaming once she realizes she's alone. And they're not cute little kitten mews, they are screaming banshee cries like someone is beating her. These cries can be and are heard throughout the house, which I am sure was the other cats' first clue that there was a new child upstairs. 

Sometimes she screams for only a few minutes before she settles down. Other times she can go for close to an hour, especially if she knows we're still around and just not in there in the room with her. It's because of this that we will absolutely be trying to expedite her introduction to the house and other cats, because I honestly don't know how much of that needy screaming shit either Daisy or I can take before we lose our minds.

Ahem. Anyway.

Mable's first night home was Thursday. I work Thursday nights, and Daisy always works in the office on Fridays. So, I was downstairs and she was closed in the room with Daisy upstairs. We'd established early in the night that yes, she is litter trained -- she knows how to pee and poop in a pan, and she knows how to find the water and food bowls. Daisy had done a quick runthrough of the room so that there wasn't anything the tiny little tribble could get into in the night, and went to sleep with her. Per her reports, Mable is a cuddler and would change positions with her, always trying to cuddle close to her and sleep. This is a good sign.

However.

Mable was spayed on Wednesday. It takes a few days -- longer for female cats, as we saw with Emmy -- to really recover from it. During that time they're frequently sick, they either don't want to eat/drink or they are constantly nauseous from the anesthesia as it wears off. Emmy had diarrhea on the bed a few times, and vomited water several times in the first 48 hours we had her, the poor little thing. 

Mable was a little different. No diarrhea that we saw, anywhere, but she did vomit water a couple of times. However, hilariously, she had manners and would go into the pan when she needed to vomit -- which Daisy found endlessly funny.  But that was it, her apparent nausea wore off quickly, and by Friday night we were beginning to see her true personality start to come out.

That personality is -- as I expected it would be -- a hellion.

I had warned Daisy, and I have mentioned it here a number of times in the past, that raising a black cat kitten is no joke. They are the most difficult cats to raise, because they are all little demons. I have never seen an exception to this rule. Daisy wasn't around when I raised Pete; he was five years old when she and I first got together. She did not, therefore, see the levels of absolute asshole that Pete was during his first year or two of life, asshole levels he maintained until he was about four years old. Pete climbed into, on top of, or under anything he could, and destroyed everything he possibly could. He got into everything -- he once broke into the closet where I stored his food, tore open the bag, ate his fill and scattered the rest around the top floor of the Kansas house. He howled. He mercilessly attacked his sisters. He left scars from teeth and nails on my feet, legs, and hands that wouldn't fade or fully heal for years. He once gave me a black eye for a week when he decided that he wanted to run full speed from one end of the apartment to the other, ran up the bed, up my body, and three feet up the wall before gravity took over and he landed with the force of a brick right on my eyeball. 

He was a dick, is what I'm saying. I love Pete dearly and he has very much softened and slowed down now that he's a very old man, but he wasn't a fun kitten to raise. He was an asshole. 

Mable may end up being the same way. She's already showing some tendencies of it.

For one, she's hyper. For a two-pound tribble, she toddles around very quickly and she likes to bite. A lot. Daisy thinks she was weaned too soon, and when she bites, she's looking for a nipple. Thursday night, she awoke Daisy several times to play, because kitten energy, to the point where Daisy was downstairs and awake for the day by 5:30 in the morning. A lot of that playing involved biting. 

Friday night was no different. In the overnight hours, she incessantly attacked Daisy while she was sleeping -- she seemed angry that Daisy was sleeping and not playing with her, and went after any body part she could to wake her up and get her to play. So, as I usually take a night nap on Friday nights so I have energy for Saturday, when I awakened around 5am to go to the bathroom I saw the following:

1. I exited my room, where I'd been sleeping in the chair, to see that the hallway light was on.

2. In addition to the hallway light being on, the trash can from the bathroom was sitting in the hallway.

3. In addition to that, the bedroom door was wide open (no idea how Daisy could sleep like that)

4. And the bathroom door was closed.

I opened the door to the bathroom to see a very sad looking, confused Mable sitting on the bathroom rug next to the bathroom litter pan and her water bowl. She meowed sweetly at me, and as soon as I peed, flushed the toilet, and left the room -- because I assume she was put in there for a reason -- she began screaming. 

Which, of course, I'm sure she'd done when Daisy first put her in there, but I was asleep and did not hear it.

I had no messages from Daisy -- no texts, nothing. No explanation. We had to put Empress in there for about 36 hours when she was having her diarrhea, so I assumed maybe Mable had experienced a similar episode.

Nope. She simply wouldn't let Daisy sleep, so Daisy locked her in the bathroom.

I was, at the time, angry. When she started screaming again, it once more woke Daisy up, and I said something along the lines of "I can't imagine what you'd do with a real kid, because you can't just lock a child in a bathroom when you don't want to deal with them anymore."

This was cruel, and I later apologized for it because I realized that, but I am not wrong.

I took Mable into my office with me, where she continued trying to be a hyper, biting gremlin, so that she would stop screaming and so Daisy could sleep. She sat in my arms -- I would not let her go/get down -- and I loved her and soothed her. Eventually she calmed down and fell asleep on my stomach/chest:

And I did this for three hours while Daisy slept. When Daisy awoke, I had already moved back to my lounge chair and Mable was sleeping on my chest just below my neck. I wasn't even holding her anymore, she was just snuggled up there. I was watching TikToks, for the record, at the same time -- which tells you how at peace she was. 

She really is a sweet little girl. But she has that black cat kitten energy. So I employed the same tactics with her that I used to use with Pete when he wouldn't settle down -- I held her lovingly, but firmly against her will until she settled down and just accepted it and willingly bonded with me by sleeping on me. It's how I trained Pete to be a teddy-bear kitty and hopefully how Mable will become one as well given her predisposition to people and liking to cuddle anyway. 

She's still a screamer when she's left alone in the bedroom, and it hurts my heart to hear her cry. But, she's crying for lesser amounts of time every time -- shorter durations -- and she is always incredibly happy to see us when we return to her. We're sort of unintentionally training her to be able to be independent and alone, but also know that we're always coming back. I think it's going to end up being a relatively slow process compared to Hank and Empress. 

The Marvelous Miss Mable, Part I

Well now.

Last week, when we got Pete's test results back, the docs diagnosed him with hyperthyroidism -- just like Sadie has. He was put on pills for it, tiny little pills the size of a pinhead, that he has to take twice a day. This isn't really a problem for Pete; he's used to pills at this point and he doesn't fight us on them or anything, at least not much anymore. It'll be a problem for us if he can't go off it or at least get reduced doses while we're in Canada this summer, but that's a bridge we'll cross when we come to it. Otherwise, we were told that his other results were normal and chalked up his odd behavior as being too drugged by the Prozac and its side effects. 

When Daisy spoke to the vets, she had them transfer Pete's records to the other vet across town where we take the other cats to -- Pete and Maggie were the only ones we used this particular vet's office for. Well, Maggie is dead now, and with the other three cats seeing another vet there's no reason Pete can't go there as well. 

When she did that, she got a call from our (now primary) vet, who had looked over Pete's records and test results and was a bit concerned. Hyperthyroidism can mask progression of kidney issues in cats, and can at times even accelerate them. Given Pete's lethargy and reading the report about him peeing himself, coupled with Pete's weight loss gave him cause for concern, and he called Daisy to discuss with her for some time. Basically, from what he saw in the labs, it's possible -- if not probable -- that Pete's kidney disease is progressing faster than the tests would otherwise show. He said if the lethargy comes back and he doesn't seem to really want to move around and play and eat and the like, to get him in immediately. Otherwise, Pete's first checkup with him will be on May 2. 

This upset Daisy quite a bit, of course. Pete is her son. He is her favorite cat, he is the world to Daisy. She loves him more than anything, probably more than even me. And Pete is a good cat. It makes me very sad to know that he is on his inevitable way out. I got Pete first -- he was the first of all of my cats, seventeen years ago when he was small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. He has lived a very long, mostly privileged life where he has wanted for very little or nothing -- he's always been safe, well-fed, and very loved throughout that entire time. He has lived in three different states, six different apartments/houses, and with a total of five other cats and two dogs over his seventeen years. He has seen a lot. He has endured a lot. And every day he cuddles with me and Daisy on the couch, and usually sleeps in the bed with me as my teddy bear. I would like to think he has lived a very happy life, but neither Daisy nor I are ready for him to go. We know it's coming -- the sad inevitability that one day he won't be with us anymore -- but that doesn't mean we like it or are truly ready for it.

I discussed with Daisy some time ago -- and I mean years ago now -- that I never wanted to live in a house without a black cat. That's how much Pete has been a staple of my life. It would feel very strange to not have a black cat in the house. I told Daisy that the day Pete dies, I want to go adopt another black kitten -- not to replace him per se, because he can't be replaced -- but to carry on the household tradition that we will have a black cat we can give our love to. 

But that was years ago. In the years since, Daisy has begun subscribing to that mindset as well -- the black cat as an institution. 

Well.

On Wednesday night, the Nebraska Humane Society had a litter of six kittens come in. All of them were medium-haired fuzzballs, and were both males and females. All of them were gorgeous little babies. We check the humane society's webpage every night for amusement's sake -- we weren't necessarily looking for another cat, it was more along the lines of "look at the gorgeous cats they have" more than anything else. I was quite happy with the four we have in the house -- two younger children and two old farts. I had my Empress, who looked different than the Empress I originally had in mind, but had become the sweetest raccoon child, and we had Hank, our short-legged orange lad. Plus Pete, plus Sadie. The house had a healthy dynamic, and all four of them meshed well together with us. 

We looked at the adorable kittens, and I was particularly fond of the boys -- there were two boys, one with a little white stripe down his forehead and another that was a full tuxedo black/white, who I thought were very pretty. Daisy gravitated towards the girls, who were all fuzzy black things with tiny little eyes. Every one of them were so very precious. The girls -- I swear, if we hadn't found Empress four months ago, one of them (any of them, really) would have been Empress. In a heartbeat.

Daisy discussed going over to look at them. I told her if she wanted to that was fine, but I didn't necessarily need or want another cat (especially a few short months before we're going on vacation). However, if she wanted to go look on her lunch on Thursday, she could, and if she wanted to bring one home I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to it, but I didn't really want one and I loved the four children we already had. Thursday morning, I texted Daisy as I was going to sleep, to tell her "Please don't bring home another cat, I desperately need sleep."

I'm sure you folks know where this is going already.

When I awoke Thursday afternoon, I didn't feel great. My allergies were killing me, there was so much around the house I knew I had to do over the course of the next several days, and the week at work has sucked and dragged on forever -- I just wanted it to end so I could rest, so I could start my weekend. 

I checked the humane society website, as it gets updated throughout the day. Only one of the six kittens was remaining and hadn't been adopted yet.

I texted Daisy to tell her this, and she said she knew, she'd looked too. We discussed dinner plans -- I told her I was in the mood for pizza. Thursday is Star Trek night -- the new/final season of Discovery just started on the 4th and new episodes premiere on Thursdays, and I thought pizza and Star Trek would make for a nice, low-key evening for us. She said we could discuss dinner plans when she got home -- she was having a hard day at work and wasn't feeling great either. I asked if she could pick up my Trulicity (which had been filled and was waiting at the clinic pharmacy) on the way, and she said she was feeling bad and just wanted to come home, that she could get it on her lunch hour on Friday or we could pick it up Saturday morning. I said that was fine. It was a normal weekday-afternoon conversation with nothing out of the ordinary.

What I didn't know was that shortly after I went to sleep on Thursday morning was when Daisy received the call from the vet about Pete. And to get such news about her most beloved cat possibly joining the afterlife much sooner than expected, the morning after six gorgeous black kittens showed up at the humane society ready for adoption, well...

I heard the garage door open around 5:40 or so -- which is early for Daisy to be home. I didn't think much of it. Sometimes she gets home earlier than other times, it just depends on traffic, her workload for the day, and when she is able to get out of the office. Even when she gets home, most nights Daisy doesn't immediately come upstairs. Some nights I don't even know she's home until she enters my room, especially if I'm doing laundry or watching a video on Youtube or doing anything similar that would drown out the noise of the garage door and/or house door. Our home doesn't have great acoustics so it can be difficult to hear.

Thursday night, she came straight upstairs. She opened my door, I turned around, and I saw this:

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," I believe was my first response. "I can't believe you did this."

Not the greatest first response, I'll admit.

Daisy was near tears she was so happy. 

She brought her to me and gently placed her into my arms. 

"Mable," she said.

This cat was tiny. Barely two pounds. Almost as small as Pete was when I first got him. She was purring so hard she was practically vibrating. Long, fuzzy hair and a short, stabby, knife-like tail, with tiny little eyes that seemed to glow a bright green. Her belly was shaven and her sutures from being spayed the previous day were warm to the touch. She settled into my arms quickly and seemed very happy.

I was speechless. I...would have liked to have been notified, of course.

"How? When?" was all I could really say.

She went on to tell me the story about getting the call that morning about Pete, and about how she remembered that she never wanted us to be without a black cat. If it goes south with Pete quickly, as it did with Maggie, she knew she'd be too distraught to go get another black kitten immediately. And something told her that she needed to go to the shelter on her lunch. So, she did. She was second in line to see the kittens -- there was one other lady there to see them before her. She looked at one of the boys first, the one I thought was the prettiest of all of the cats. He was an absolute hellion from Daisy's description, and she knew he would not mesh well with the household, as gorgeous as he was. The other lady there adopted one of the other boys, the one with the stripe down his forehead. 

Daisy asked to see one of the girls; it didn't matter which one. The one she was given to meet up with and get vibes from was the cat I was currently holding. She immediately adopted her, registered her as "Mable" -- a name she's wanted to give a cat for a very, very long time -- and brought her over to the parents' house for "babysitting" while she worked the rest of the day.

Neither Daisy nor her parents told me anything about this -- Daisy wanted it to be a surprise.

While at the parents', little Mable snuggled with Mom in the living room, ate a lot of Fancy Feast and drank a lot of water, and led Mom to believe that she was a cuddlebug. Which is...semi-accurate but believe me, I'll get to that. Daisy picked her up on the way home, drove straight here, and now she was sitting in my room with us, in my arms -- this little fuzzy thing resembling a tribble with eyes.

"I can't believe you did this," I whispered to Daisy, sweetly to keep the child calm but also incredulously.

And I couldn't, really.

I kissed the top of the tribble's head and she settled a little more into my arms. 

Have you ever been incredibly frustrated and slightly angry with someone but also really happy with them at the same time? I hadn't before. Not until I was holding this cat and looking at Daisy, anyway. It was a completely new emotion that I am not ashamed to admit that I did not know how to process. 

"I wish you'd told me," I said. "We have to sequester her in the bedroom, which means I could have cleaned it and prepped it beforehand, made sure there wasn't anything she could get into or destroy, etc."

And so, we had another cat. This brings us up to five, which is the legal limit of cattitude that the City of Omaha allows. 

Dead Ghosts

 Our fish, Ghost, died last week. 

This is sad, to be sure, but neither of us were super broken-up about it. As one of my friends told me, it's difficult to become emotionally attached to a fish -- even a betta fish who was as smart and as amusing as Ghost was. 

We could also tell it was coming for some time. For the past three weeks or so, he'd been a lot more lethargic than usual -- sleeping lazily on or inside his little fish house, or at the bottom of the tank, not wanting to move around a whole lot. In the mornings, when I'd wake him up to be fed by turning on his light, he'd swim up to greet me, maybe eat a piece or two of his food, and then slowly let himself sink back to the bottom of the tank.

By last week he wasn't even doing that. I'd turn on the light, tap on the glass where he was stationed at the bottom of the tank, and he'd barely move. Occasionally he'd switch positions from one side of the tank to the other, or from inside his fish house to on top of it, but it was very clear that he was -- as they say -- straight up not having a good time, bro. 

Daisy did some research on how to bring him back, including adding some special medicines to the water and using some aquarium salt -- and said research also said to stop feeding him so he could recover (seems counterintuitive to me, but whatever). It was all too late, however. The last two days he was alive, he sat on the bottom of the tank in the corner, unmoving. I would check on him multiple times a day/night, and he just looked so sad -- struggling to breathe, not wanting to expend the effort and energy to move. 

Eventually his breathing stopped, and he was gone. 

Daisy looked up how to dispose of the...well, corpse, I guess, though it feels weird giving that description to a fish. I always thought fish got flushed down the toilet as a traditional burial-at-sea -- the fish I'd had in the past (read: very few of them over my entire life) all got the toilet treatment. Apparently you're not supposed to do that anymore. I assume, as I did, that Daisy found the thought of trying to bury a fish smaller than my pinky finger preposterous, so she quietly disposed of him in the trash while I slept, several hours after I'd told her he'd died. This was Thursday; trash day is Wednesday, which means there was a fish corpse somewhere in a trash bag at the bottom of our trash can in the garage for a week.

Yeah, it's slightly morbid when you think about it that way, isn't it?

We have not yet gotten a new fish. Daisy does not know whether she wants to get one before we go to Canada this summer, or whether she wants to wait. We have hundreds of dollars' worth of fish equipment, everything from the tank and its machinery to aquarium salt, gravel, fish food, fish medicine, aquatic plants, water pumps, lighting and decor. Seems like a waste not to keep it in mostly continuous use, right?

It's Daisy's call overall. I told her if she wants to get another fish before we leave for vacation, we can. If not, that's fine too. Believe me, I have a ton of stuff to do before we leave on that trip that getting a new fish is very low on my priority list -- there are so many more pressing things to be done.

To those ends, The Great Cleansing of 2024 is moving a lot more slowly than I would like. Part of that is because the last few weeks have been crazily hectic and it seems like we really haven't gotten an actual "weekend" because of everything we've had to do. Two weeks ago was Easter, of course, and Daisy's sister, our brother-in-law, and their four boys were in town. We also had to deal with Pete being sick (more on this below) and Sadie's follow up blood-draw last Saturday, and work has been a nightmare for both of us. 

So let's start from the beginning.

I've written here previously that Pete, our oldest cat -- my first son, the one who has been with me the longest and who I would say was the first real pet who was fully mine -- has anxiety issues. Like, really bad anxiety issues. He was on gabapentin for them about six or seven years ago, and after a while he didn't need the gaba anymore, so we weaned him off them. When we adopted Hank, and later Empress, the new cats in the house -- even though he loved them both (and still very much loves them) caused a spike in his anxiety and he began marking walls, the couch, Daisy's shoes, etc. We got him checked out and the vets said he didn't have any urinary issues, so it was likely the stress and anxiety of having the new cat(s) in the house even though he loved and got along with them. We got him back on the gabapentin at that time, and he seemed to -- eventually -- calm down quite a bit.

And then Maggie died. 

Maggie, his cuddle companion on the couch, the sweetest and most vocal girl who he grew up with and lived with for almost his entire life. The girl who kept his attitude in check, the girl who would snuggle with him and keep him warm and who was always a constant fixture of the household was suddenly gone, he didn't know why, and she didn't come back.

And his anxiety went through the roof. 

He'd spend hours pacing the house, howling, backing up on things (and occasionally actually peeing), chewing on plastic, attacking Sadie -- who to her credit had done nothing wrong, she just wanted to drink water or go to the pan -- etc. He would howl at my door and scratch to come in and out over and over, to the point where he would never let me sleep because of the in and out. This scratching and howling to get in and out of my office, by the way, wasn't just when I was in there -- oh no, it continued even when I was downstairs or sleeping in the bedroom. The only thing that stopped this behavior was eventually putting up a baby gate in front of my office door right up against the jamb, so that he couldn't scratch on the door. That seemed to give him the message.

We talked to the vet about it when he went in for his checkup shortly after Maggie died (by shortly I mean, about two weeks or so -- give or take). They said we could give him the gabapentin as needed, up to 2-3 pills a day, and that we could also supplement it with melatonin. Yeah, like the same melatonin pills humans take to get good sleep -- it's apparently supposed to work as an anti-anxiety for cats, and he could take up to 9mg a day (or something like that) as necessary. 

I'm going to pause here for a moment and state for the record that you can get melatonin very cheaply off the shelf almost anywhere, in a number of different doses. The stuff I already had in the house was 0.3mg per pill, I believe. When I've taken melatonin in the past for sleep concerns, those very-low-dosage pills have one of two effects on me --

1. nothing at all happens whatsoever

2. they knock me out and I sleep for twelve hours straight

And I never know which one is going to happen. 

Due to the unreliability factor there, I haven't taken a melatonin in years. 

We gave Pete a few of those pills along with his gabapentin. They didn't seem to really have any effect. Daisy then ordered a bottle of 1mg melatonin pills off Amazon (for, and I'm not kidding, like five bucks). Those, when administered to him twice a day, along with his gabapentin, seemed to finally begin calming him down somewhat. 

For a short while.

It wasn't long before even this wouldn't even quell his restlessness and anxiety, even with a morning dose and an evening dose of both medications. He'd still pace, he'd still howl, he'd still back up on furniture and walls, and there seemed to be zero rhyme or reason to any of it. He was well-fed, he would get hours of love, attention, treats and cuddle time every day, yet his overwhelming anxiety was still there. Eventually, he began violently attacking Sadie for no reason -- the little old lady wasn't doing anything but existing -- to the point where she would pee herself on the floor or on the couch or wherever it was he was attacking her. 

That was the last straw for me.

The vet, when we were in to have him looked at for his checkup, said that another option would be Prozac. As in, not cat Prozac, human Prozac -- pills cut in half and given to him once a day. She wanted to hold off on that as a last resort of sorts, because for cats with kidney issues (such as Pete, who is in the downhill decline of kidney failure already) it can really be hard on them in some cases.

But we were at the end of our rope, honestly -- nothing else was working and honestly we may as well have not been giving him anything at all -- gabapentin, melatonin, or both -- because it no longer seemed like either of those medications were doing anything to help him, and he needed to stop going after Sadie. So we had the vet call in the Prozac.

Prozac pills are tiny and blue, and we cut each of them in half with a pill cutter. From the first dose we noticed an almost instant and immediate effect -- it was like a hard reset for Pete. He immediately became very chill and calm, and just slept on the couch a lot. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Two or three days in, we began to get concerned. He was chill, yes. But he'd become what I can only describe as "sedated" a good 90% of the time. Yes, he would get up and move around, eat, etc for that other 10% of the time, but the rest of the time he just melted into the furniture as if he was trying to become one with it. 

And then, in the middle of the night last Monday night, he peed himself in his sleep, on the couch, while I was working. He did not seem to even notice he'd done it, or if he did, he didn't seem to care. Both were concerning. I gently and lovingly washed off the back half of his body in the kitchen sink, held him and loved on him, and let him know it wasn't his fault. I had some sobering flashbacks to Maggie, who had done the same thing about a year or two before she died of the same kidney issues that will, eventually, take Pete down as well. 

He seemed okay otherwise and slept on the couch (once I replaced the blanket he'd peed on, of course) and slept with me upstairs that day. But we noticed something else in the following 24 hours -- he did not go to the pan, and I saw him drink very little water.  When we took him to the pan, physically, to see if he would go, he wouldn't. 

Daisy called the vet and we got him in the next afternoon -- and of course we immediately stopped the Prozac. Prozac can cause incontinence issues in some cats, but in most cats -- if there's a side effect at all -- it's urinary retention and elimination issues. Basically it keeps them from being able to pee and it constipates them. It doesn't happen to all cats of course, but still, major cause for concern. The vets, as soon as they heard what was going on, insisted we immediately bring him in so they could check for a urinary blockage. 

He did not have a blockage. He did have urine in his bladder, and he did have poop inside him, but per their examination neither were a cause for concern. He has, however, lost three pounds in as many months, and they are concerned about that as it either means his kidney disease is rapidly progressing or that he may be diabetic, like Sadie is. 

Or, as I mused, he's old. Pete turns 17 this month, and I don't know of any cats who didn't slowly or quickly lose a lot of weight and body mass as they age. Sadie was 15 or so pounds at her largest, six or seven years ago, and she is now half that. At Pete's heaviest, I think he was 21 pounds -- he's now 12. 

They took some blood for tests (saying that he was "spicy" while they were getting said blood) and sent us home, telling us we'd get the results when they had them. 

Since returning home, the "hard reset" has mostly stuck with Pete. He has not been anxious, hasn't been particularly on edge, and has been...normal again. He used the pan that night and has been using it since, drinking and eating normally from what I've seen, and for all intents and purposes has been the cat he always was before the anxiety issues. So I really don't know what it was -- if his body just needed the shock to the system or what. Once the Prozac completely worked its way out of his system (apparently, it can take a few days) he returned to being his normal old self.

This next year or two is going to be really rough on us cat-wise. I don't expect Pete to live more than another year or so, and Sadie is of course in the same boat as well. Both of them have lived long, full lives, but it's very clear that both are on extremely borrowed time. Pete may look and act spry, but 17 years is a long time for a cat to live, even a healthy one. Sadie is old, frail, and on multiple medications, and is the same age. I truthfully don't know how long either of the golden oldies have left.

Daisy will be sad, but mostly relieved when Sadie dies (I am only slightly bitter about this), but when Pete goes, she will be absolutely inconsolable. 

We'll then be left with the two rugrats.

Sadie had her latest blood draw last Saturday morning to check her levels. She seems more active and more lovey, generally, than she was several months ago. It is clear she misses Maggie, and with Pete being an asshole towards her as of late, she's gravitated much more towards us for love and comfort.  She also loves it when Empress cuddles with her...most of the time.

Her new bloodwork came out fine. She is normal and stable and responding well to her medications. Docs said she doesn't need to get rechecked for six months.

The children are also doing well. Empress is very slowly beginning to grow her long coat back in -- I don't expect her to have it fully grown in until around her first birthday this fall (or even sometime after that, but it's coming back in. Hank is Hank -- our short-legged potato child who loves that little girl so very much.

Empress went on her first car ride last weekend. Daisy wants to get her accustomed to travel so that we can get her on flea/tick medication and she can become our "adventure cat." Meaning, take her on walks, travel with her, she goes where we go, etc. She wanted to do that with Hank, but he is far too timid around anyone but us. He is also fearful of the outside and does not like sounds and noise. Empress seems to have no fear whatsoever of anyone or anything, and she demonstrated this by literally falling asleep in my arms during our car ride:

We took her to Goodwill, where I dropped off two more bags of things, and then to see the parents. She was very chill throughout and just liked being held, appreciating the adventure.

She's such a sweet little cat. So very comfortable and such a loving blessing to the household. I am though, very clearly, her person. She likes Daisy fine, but she adores me. She wants to be around me all the time, she wants to lay next to me, she licks my feet/toes/fingers/hands nearly incessantly if I let her, and when I hold her (as you can see above) she instantly relaxes. I don't know that she'll ever be a teddy bear cat like Pete is, and I honestly doubt it, but it is very clear the love the little girl has for me. Daisy picked the right cat and I love her so much. She is going to be gorgeous once she grows up, too.