Year-End Review Part I: One Dog Closes, Another Opens. And The Cat Came Back.

[captainsblog]

Tomorrow brings one final workday in this year. (Except you know me: I'll write up my time and check the mail at the office on Saturday like I always do, and since Eleanor has a full day at work Monday, probably more of the same....)  But seeing the end in sight reminds me to get the first of my traditional wrapups here of the days, months and year.

How can we not begin other than with the ch-ch-ch-changes in the aminal population?

Ebony, our lab-sharpei mix, turned 15 at about this time last year; she came to us as a puppy a few weeks after that.  She instantly befriended our previous (and much more troubled) rescue Tasha; knew and loved every cat who came before and after her; and for the previous couple of years was a regular parishioner with me at Dog Church, as we call our Sunday morning trips to the local bark park.  As late as this March, people would stop me and ask her age, shocked she was that old. She still looks so puppy-like! (And her furbuddy Ursula looks just like a wolf. Yeah. We know;)  Other than a little white around her muzzle and a general slowing down, you really would never know; and labs are famous for being pretty slow doggies in the first place.

Yet we knew it wouldn't last forever.  Toward the end of April, we got the first clear sign: a bad episode of her weeble-wobblying when first awake, unable to move except at a crawl.  Dr. Eleanor picked right up on it and we got her into the vet- and came out with a surprisingly upbeat diagnosis: vestibular disease, essentially the dog version of vertigo.  It seemed to improve a bit, with no treatment for it other than time and TLC, and things seemed stable enough for me to take the first weekend of May off to see a bunch of friends at a Mets game in Queens.

I never saw Ebony again.  Come Saturday morning, overnight at my sister's en route to Metsville, came the call: another episode. Much worse. This is it.  If I'd bailed at that moment and headed home, I wouldn't have been there in time. The vet got her in on an emergency basis and did what needed to be done.



Zoey, the good kitty, was very aware of Ebony's pain. She kept going over and licking the dog's muzzle; they were never snugglebuddies beyond the coldest of days, but they got each other- each the last in to an established herd.  Just the other day, we put Ebony's ashes into our front garden along with Tazzer's (who passed the year before) and joining four other of our furbabies and one of the kids' out there.

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The ensuing weeks were way quiet.  I can't remember if I went stag to the Parp! those first few Sundays, but by that first weekend, we'd gotten word of a new life in need of a new home. A coworker of Eleanor's, who'd placed Zoey with us nine years before, had a line on a youngish mix-breed who her daughter couldn't keep anymore.  Seemed the perfect age, size and, after meeting her at her grandma's house, disposition. Pepper would be ours if she could get through a home visit with Zoey and the Evil Cat.

But then, grief got in the way.  There were a lot of pent-up feels about how Ebony's final days went down, and how Eleanor had to bear that load without me.  In the end, we had to say no before we could, yes, dare to ask if Pepper had been adopted out yet.  She hadn't.  The home visit came about. Zoey hid; Michelle hissed.  Nothing new with either of those.  Most importantly, nobody tried to kill anybody.  We got permission to take her to the dog park the following Sunday, and by that next Monday, she was ours.

I made a quick trip to the town for a license (and to turn in Ebony's), followed by one to the pet store for a tag with our number on it.  While there, I found a cute toy (she came with a bag full of them, and more would follow from her former home, but we wanted something she'd associate with the new home). It was, and still sort-of is, a Kong branded elephant squeaky toy.  She instantly bonded with it as her lovey; over time, she shredded off his left ear during tug-of-war time (earning him the name "Vinny"), then the right ("Helen" never stuck) and eventually most of his stuffing.  Always thinking, I picked up a duplicate of him in case he ever went missing or simply dissolved; that one (alternately known as Twinny or Vinny II: Electric Boogaloo but often just Vinny as well) went into play a week or so ago, and she loves her frens both the same:)

Until today.  After I walked and fed her and then went to work this morning, Eleanor texted me. Did she eat? Because she seems off- very clingy and whiny and constantly wanting to go outside. I was worried enough to check on her after some errands, and she seemed okay- but where was Vinny?

I couldn’t find either. I looked and looked, and finally found the older one. I swear she perked right up- and even more just now when Twinny surfaced in the sofa cushions.

This dog.



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Also, those cats.

Not much to report about Zoey, the younger and sweeter of the pair. One reason for hesitating on the new adoption was how much she seemed to enjoy the extra attention during the indogregnum. We've tried to keep her amused as much as possible, and I think she appreciates having a fellow fun soul around here, even if they sometimes chase after the same toys.  We did have a minor scare a couple of weekends ago when clipping her claws- and discovering one was missing. No sign of pain or disability- and she (and She Who Must Not Be Named But Will Be Mentioned Next) have checkups at the vet on Monday, so we'll make sure she's okay from whatever caused it.

And then there's the evil one.  I'm often warned to be careful in my descriptions of Michelle, on the premise that it could turn into bad karma.  My response: There IS bad karma, and she's it.  Yet for almost two weeks, she wasn't it.  Toward the end of the summer, her overnight caterwauling got so bad, we started routinely tossing her in the garage in the middle of the night.  She didn't seem to resist: by mid-September, we were basically opening the door for her and she'd let herself out.  One night, though, dum-dum here forgot to shut the back door out of the garage, and the next morning she was gone.  No sign of critter around.  We made efforts to find her; a fellow dog park mommy brought Ursula over to help in the hunt, calling out Michellllllleeeeee! while I went with the more familiar SHADDAP CAT!  We notified websites and the SPCA whence she'd come 14 years before, and finally consigned ourselves to getting good nights sleep after years of cattus interruptus. Then I made the fatal mistake: I attended another Mets game in Queens. (A road trip to Toronto to see them in July had no ill effects on the aminals.)

Sometime during the pregame tailgate, Eleanor texted me: Michelle had returned, marching into the garage demanding food.  Not a scratch on her. Clearly, SOMEBODY had been hornschwaggled into taking care of OOOH THE CUTE KITTY until they, predictably, got sick of having her around as well.  So she's been home ever since- she wrecked her tag in her travels, so I replaced it with this one, so future escapes will warn potential Good Samaritans of the error of their ways:



Yes, I'd miss her. But eventually my aim would get better.

Comments

[warriorsavant]

Condolences about the animals. They are part of the family.