Day 32: Time To Fight Back

 

This photo was timestamped 08-31-21, my 59th birthday. Abby was checking out the new toy I bought. I miss my sweet girl so much.

Life has changed more than I ever realized it would. For a long time, mornings were a mad rush to get the strays fed quickly so I could sit with Abby and make sure she ate good. I always fed the strays first because they are outside in the elements and only get canned food once a day. That also allowed me to spend enough time helping Abby eat. Cats lick their food and I'd help gather it so she didn't have to chase it all over the bowl. I used to feed them on paper plates and both cats ate without my help. I'm not sure when that changed and I had to start helping Abby, but it was long before I went to Florida in February 2022. She was also on baby food at that time. Every morning also meant spending time spoon feeding the baby food and dealing with the associated mess. Either I'd drop some off the spoon or Abby licking the spoon would cause some to drip. Several times I dropped the jar and the food would splatter everywhere. There were days she'd gobble the entire jar and then there were days she's eat less than half. Sometimes I would get mad at her, which was really misplaced frustration and fear. There were so many ups and downs with her. I'm guessing some days she just didn't feel good. She started eating less a few weeks back and that was a cue I should have picked up on. I guess I just didn't want to face the reality. In the end her little body was tired of the long struggle and I'm glad she is now at peace.  As I've already said, I never wished for this. I would have kept feeding her 10 times a day if it meant she would still be here and have a decent quality of life. She had that quality until the past week. I will admit that I do feel a weight off my shoulders. I think that is normal for a caregiver. I no longer have the constant worry of getting her to eat enough to sustain life. I felt a similar relief when Alex passed away. At that time I was balancing caring for him with trying to take care of a house in shambles, with 3 dogs and 6 cats running around while I worked in Syracuse all day. In 2014 I was still struggling to keep the bills paid and Alex had been in and out of the hospital several times between 2012 and 2014. His passing relieved a lot of stress but I was still dealing with the crumbling house, the animals, commuting every day and struggling with the bills. That struggle ended in 2017 after the fire. The house was gutted and remodeled and everything in it was replaced at no cost to me. The fire was the best thing that ever happened to me. How sad is that?

Rather than dwelling on the past, I need to set my focus for the present and the future. My sweet Abby has gone and I will do my best to ensure Minnie continues to live her best life. This morning, for the first time, she perched herself on the back of the couch to snooze, right next to me. Her spot was always the corner chair because Abby basically owned the couch. I guess Minnie has realized Abby is not coming back and she is making her claim. I don't think she will be lonely as she never "hung out" with Abby. It seemed like they just tolerated each other. It's impossible to know what your pets think or feel when it comes to loss. I'm sure they wonder what happened but I suspect their memory fades more quickly and life goes on. I will never forget Abby but Minnie likely will. I'm trying not to say Abby's name out loud so that I don't confuse Minnie. Best to let her forget and be content as an only cat. 

I was awake at 5:40 am today but I went back to sleep until almost 8. It feels very selfish, not having to leap out of bed to feed Abby. It seems like Minnie doesn't really want canned food first thing in the morning. She ate a couple bites and walked away. I'm going to start waiting until later in the morning to feed her, unless she gives me a sign that she wants to eat. Curled up sleeping in the chair in the dining room is not a sign .. lol! When I would feed Abby I always knew if Minnie wanted to eat, so I will wait for her cue going forward. 

Breakfast was the last of the 180 calorie Wegman's waffles with sugar free syrup. 

Last night I took a big bag of fun size candy bars to bed with me and ate more than necessary. Going forward I will grab a "couple" and keep the bag out of reach. If I don't, I can guarantee you the bag will be empty before the end of the week. This weeks goal is to get back on the treadmill. Sad but true that I now have much more "free" time since work is so slow and I no longer have to spend time trying to get Abby to eat. The house is going to stay cleaner now as well. I had a bad habit of leaving bowls of canned food on the carpet and Abby, for years, would use her foot to scoop food out of the bowl to eat it. This always left a mess and accounts for many stained areas on my carpet. I did run the carpet cleaner in November but I need to do another pass. I will no longer have that mess so that is time I've been given back. I left the food knowing it could lead to a mess, because it was more important to me that Abby eat as much as possible. I'm sad that with work slow I had much more time and patience to attend to Abby's need but she is now gone. I've been the victim of bad timing so many times in my life. I'm sure I'm not alone in that feeling. As I've mentioned before, the transition from caregiving is filled with a lot of regret and guilt. I was mean to Alex on so many occasions, but a lot of that was frustration as he had no interest in doing anything to try and improve his health. I was drowning at the time because all the responsibility was on me. Alex never really worked so my job was the only thing keeping us afloat. He did little to help around the house and he did little to help with the animals. So I worked all day and took care of the house and animals as best I could. I wish I could say I did an amazing job, but I didn't. The house was often filthy. I put the most effort into ensuring the animals needs were met, so there is that. In recent years I put a lot of effort into ensuring Abby's needs were met. I wasn't perfect but I did the best I could. I struggle with deciding if not taking her to the vet was the right choice. Would she still be here if she was on medication? I saw some postings online where people said their pet died within a year of starting treatment. Maybe I used that to justify my actions. I would say fear is what kept me from taking her. I didn't want to hear she had something worse than a bad thyroid. I am on vacation Memorial Day week and I intend to get Minnie to the vet for a good checkup. I'm not sure if I will go to Mexico Vet or try a new one. Maybe going to a new one would be a good way to make a clean start when it comes to proper care of your animals. Too little too late for Abby, I know. I also didn't take Pooh, Princess, Lucky or Tigger for care when they started to decline. I didn't take Hailey to address the tumor on her leg when it first started. At that time, Alex was still alive and I was struggling financially. I wouldn't have been able to afford surgery. By 2017 all of the dogs had passed and it was me and the cats. I was still struggling financially but things turned around by 2020. The house had been repaired and refurnished by my insurance company and I was able to pay off my credit card debt. So I have no excuse for not taking Abby to the vet. I could have afforded whatever her care would have cost. It was just fear and anxiety that kept me away. I am not going to let that happen with Minnie.

I spent the morning drinking coffee and watching YouTube video's. Laundry was on the agenda and I also wanted to give my feet a soak. I didn't really need anything at the grocery store so there was no place I needed to go. I managed to get the laundry started and the litter boxes cleaned before noon, then I went on a quest for the bottle of rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide I was SURE I had. Why did I need this? Well, yesterday when I got "all dolled up" to go to the casino I discovered that one of my earring holes had apparently closed up. No matter which way I moved the earring I could not find an exit on the back of my ear. I ended up pushing the post through, effectively re-piercing the ear myself! As a result, I now have to keep an earring in there and I also need to disinfect it daily while it heals. I looked upstairs and down and couldn't find it. I started to think I had imagined it, even though I could "see" the bottle in my mind. I finally did a second check of the cabinet in the downstairs bathroom and found it tucked behind some hand sanitizer. I pulled the earring out, disinfected the ear and the earring with alcohol and was able to easily put the earring back in. Going forward I will wear earrings more frequently! Once that was done I got a 3rd cup of coffee and microwaved a piece of cheese danish. It was SO good! I need to shower and wash my hair but I planned to do that later in the day.

My days feel weird now. It's 11:57 am and by now I'd probably have fed Abby 3 times. Not having any responsibility or accountability is my biggest problem. I am 100% accountable and responsible when it comes to my job, but outside of work I am only responsible for me and Minnie and I'm accountable to no one but myself. That would be ok if I was willing to hold myself accountable! Considering my shopping trip last night, I'm not doing very good at that! Yes, I'm sad and I've had a loss, but eating myself into oblivion is not going to change that. I'm feeling some guilt too but I think that will pass with time. It's all part of the grieving process. I did ask God to take Abby IF it was her time, but I made it clear I was not asking to be relieved of my responsibility to her early. I would have continued nursing her along until it was her time. I hope and pray that is was truly her time and that she wasn't short changed. I also hope that Lucky was there waiting to cuddle with her and make sure she wasn't afraid. I had that same wish for my mom when she passed. I take comfort in the thought that she has been reunited with my dad and her parents. She never stopped missing my dad. I'm sure she told him all about Point Place Casino. Dad would have loved it there. I wish mom was here to see the place expand. They're building a hotel and expanding the gaming floor and probably the restaurant options. Mom would have loved to watch that happen!

So I happened to see a recipe on Facebook that I'd like to try, so I "pinned" it on Pinterest. While looking around that site I realized I had 133 "followers". WTH .. who was following me? Turns out to be a bunch of Facebook friends, past and present. I was able to delete all but 4 of them. For some reason they would not delete, no matter how many times I clicked on remove. I ended up blocking them and that removed them from my followers. I now have 5 followers and they are all people I personally know. I also discovered I was "following" 127 people or boards. I unfollowed all but 8 of them. So now I have 5 followers and I'm following 8 people/boards. I also left a couple of Facebook groups and joined a new one, for weight loss support. I'm hoping to find some new motivation! I left the Nutrisystem group and a couple of iFit related groups as well. I stayed in the quasi-official iFit group. I was going to tackle my Facebook "friends" but that was too much to start at nearly 4 pm on a Sunday. By 3:50 pm I had cleared off the dining room table and removed the Christmas tablecloth. The peach one I put on the table gives me Spring vibes! One of the impulse purchases I made last night was a giant bag of Hershey Kisses. I put those in a tall pitcher I have and that is the centerpiece on the table. I won the pitcher at Gabby's bridal shower a couple years ago and it came to me filled with kisses, so that is how I use it now. I won it by having the closest guess to the number of kisses in the pitcher! I also took all the tags off the new tops, leggings and jeans I bought a few weeks back. I got all of that washed and put away, along with all of the blankets and sheets that I use to cover the furniture and keep the cats cozy. I will still cover the corner chair but I'm not draping sheets all over the couch. I have one where I set and I put blankets along the top of the couch since Minnie might make that her new home. I cleaned out the litter boxes today but didn't remove any of them yet as they all have a lot of litter in them. Once the litter volume goes down I will be getting rid of one. It'll probably be a couple days before I can do that.

I am still trying to absorb the loss of Abby. I just feel lost and I'm not sure why this loss is so hard. I've lost so many other animals and I think the only difference is I didn't have to put in the effort that I did with Abby. All of the others slipped away quickly, maybe because I was too "busy" to address whatever was going on with them. Until 2019 I was going to the office every day so I was gone from 6 am to 6 pm all week and on Saturdays I spent the day with my mom. Sundays sometimes involved a grocery store trip and then the week started over again. So I wasn't paying as much attention to their health as I should have. I would put their canned food down in the morning and at night and didn't pay any attention to who was eating and who was not. They always had plenty of dry food available so I never thought anyone would go hungry. I've spent the last couple of years nursing Abby along and now all that came to a screeching halt. I know I keep repeating this but maybe this is just me trying to understand and cope. I have no one to comfort me so I have to deal with it on my own, in my own way. Keeping busy today has helped. The house is looking much nicer but there is still a lot to be done, as always. I will continue to put in some effort every day. I owe it to Abby to use the time gained to do things, instead of sitting on the couch drowning my sorrows. By 5 pm I had put the 3rd load of laundry in the dryer and put a 4th in the washer. I also swept the laundry room floor and vacuumed the carpet out there. I put out fresh dry food and added water to the fountain, which I cleaned out on Friday. I also refilled the bucket of dry food for the strays, so that will be ready for tomorrow morning. With the weather getting warmer I'd like to move the canned food off the kitchen table and out to the laundry room. I'm ordering more plastic cat bowls to use for the strays instead of continuing to use the china plates. I have 4 bowls right now and with 1 cat I don't need them all. I will keep 2 for Minnie and I'm buying 4 more on Amazon. They have the same bowls I got at Walmart and the price is the same. I don't usually have more than 6 strays at a time, so I should have enough bowls.