To Write of Random Things

I guess most new bloggers start off with an inaugural post introducing their blog, telling why they decided to create it, why they titled it as they did, and what kinds of things they'll be blogging about. I didn't do that, so I suppose this post is overdue by about two months.

I've thought about starting a blog for over a decade now and both of my daughters, who have their own blogs, have encouraged me to for almost that long. They both love to read and write as much as I do and they are good at it. My oldest daughter, Kelly, was once challenged to write every day and she challenged me to do the same for a month. We were going to share what we wrote with each other via email on a daily basis, but life was busy for both of us and we kept that up for about a week.

I was finally compelled to start blogging in the aftermath of the most recent presidential election. I had been thinking for so long about some issues that I was hearing a lot of rhetoric about, and finally the dam just burst. These thoughts were not necessarily profound, but it can be difficult in casual conversation or in Facebook comments to explain why you've changed your mind about something or how you've arrived at a position contrary to what others in your life may believe.

I prefer to put things in writing, in part because it helps me process ideas and sort things through. I tend to decide I want to explore an issue and examine my assumptions about it, which will lead me to read and research and end up coming up with an opinion that may leave my family and friends scratching their heads. Sometimes things just happen, in your own life or in the world, that cause you to think differently or more deeply about something than you ever had before.

Writing has always been therapeutic for me. Most of what I'll be writing about here is not political or controversial or all that important. I like to write about how one thing leads to another as I trace how changes came about in my life or in my thinking. I like to write about life and about things I like or why I don't like other things. In other words, I'll be writing about random things, but two of my relatives already have blogs with the word, "random" in their titles. 

My mom read to us a lot growing up, and she liked to quote, yes, at random, from children's literature.

" 'The time has come,' the walrus said," Mom would quote, out of the blue,

" 'to talk of many things...' "

Those words will pop into my head, quite at random, like so many other things that make me think of Mom on any given day. And obviously, those words from Lewis Carroll inspired the title of this blog. 

I'm hesitant to write about the really big things, heartbreaking, profound, important things. I'm reluctant to tread clumsily on sacred ground. Someday I'll write more about my mother and the experience of losing her by degrees to ALS.

I don't have aspirations of attracting a lot of followers or earning money through advertising on my blog. I'm blogging because I like to write and because my daughters have encouraged me to and because maybe someday my grandchildren will be interested in reading some of what I've written here.

My sister-in-law is a published novelist, my brother-in-law writes a blog for the Houston Chronicle, and my oldest daughter has sold articles for publication in magazines. I am not talented or hard-working enough to write like that. Even if I was, I'd be too thin skinned to handle pesky editors telling me to change this or cut that.

It'll be so much easier to just write my own little blog. I hope you'll like it, but if you don't, you don't have to tell me.

For Love of a Dog

Zoe honestly came in from the backyard one day with this Plumbago flower stuck just so.

Rick and I have made a decision about surgery for Zoe. It's interesting how decisions about medical care for pets can be so complex. People can be quick to judge others' allocation of money to care for their pets, speculating about how much good could be done for needy human beings with those funds. I sometimes wonder why the same people don't make those judgements about others' decisions about spending on things like electronics, furniture, vacations, cars or hobbies.

We are solidly in the middle class and have had some financial setbacks as Rick's business slowed considerably during the recession. And giving to help human beings in need is just part of our lifestyle as Christians. But when we get a pet, we see that as a commitment to take care of that animal, exercising reasonable stewardship according to our means. Our Weimaraner, Dusty, lived to be fifteen and our Labrador, Shadow, made it to thirteen, both outliving the average life expectancy for their breeds.

Zoe is a French Brittany (Epagneul Breton,) a breed with an average life span of  12-13 years. She has hip dysplasia that has progressed very quickly and at the age of seven years, she lives with a lot of pain. Her back legs frequently collapse and she falls down hard. She can't keep her footing on smooth floors at all. But she gets some traction outside and still loves to go for her walk. I guess the endorphins kick in because she walks fast, if somewhat awkwardly, out ahead of our other two dogs when we take them all out together.

It's pretty clear to us, though, that if we don't do something for her, we won't be able to maintain her quality of life for very much longer. And we just love her. She's sweet, affectionate, loyal and loveable. The neighborhood kids call her "The Lickster," because she can't keep her tongue to herself.

We've always assumed that total hip replacement was the only surgical option and that was just not within the bounds of what we consider reasonable stewardship of our resources. If we had unlimited financial resources we'd do it in a heartbeat.

We recently learned of another option, considered more of a "salvage" surgery, that should greatly reduce her pain, increase her mobility and improve her quality of life, even if it won't make her hips as "good as new." It's called "Femoral Head and Neck Ostectomy," and will involve removing the ragged tops of her femurs and smoothing them out. Scar tissue is supposed to fill in and form something almost like a joint. We've now talked with three veterinarians who agree that Zoe's hips are very, very bad and that she should be a good candidate for this surgery.

She'll have to have one hip done at a time, so we've scheduled her first surgery for mid-January. It's going to be hard on her and hard on our budget, but we think it's our best option and that we can all manage it.

That Dog is Our Dog

Parts of  Gypsy's story would resonate with anyone who has adopted a dog with an abusive past. After Rick came home on New Years Eve, 2011, the day I brought Gypsy home, she tried hard to avoid him, but didn't want to let me out of her sight. She followed me everywhere unless he was close by. If he entered a room she was in, she got up and walked quickly out of it, tail between her legs. I knew that if anyone could win her over, my husband could, and by the next day she was starting to relax around him.

It took her longer to warm up to our son, Paul, who is single and spends a lot of time at our house, but eventually she decided he might be safe too. They were both patient with her and learned to wait for her to come to them. For a long time she cowered when either of them raised their voice just to be heard from another room or in excitement over a sports play on TV. She did the same if one of them moved toward her abruptly. Sometimes if they lifted a hand  in her direction she cringed and yelped in anticipation of pain that didn't come.

She became completely comfortable with both of them in time, with Rick first, of course. Now she loves to play "rough and tumble" with  him  and knows he can always be counted on for a treat.

She was afraid of any situation that presented no way of escape. She liked to rest in the crate I had put her in the day I brought her home, as long as the door stayed open, that is. The first time I latched the crate door and left the room, she panicked, crying, jumping and pawing frantically against the wires.

If I wasn't around, she was comforted by anything with my scent. She would pull my bathrobe off the bed and lie down on it, or snuggle up with one of my shoes.

Our home was the only place she felt safe and it was a struggle to even get her out the front door. She pulled hard on her leash to turn around and go back in. We would start out the door for a walk with all three dogs, but couldn't get Gypsy to venture past the middle of the front yard, so I'd bring her back in while Rick walked Penny and Zoe. We kept working at it, coaxing her a little farther each day, until we could finally go all the way around the block.
 
Still she was afraid of everyone she saw. One day Rick was ahead of us with Penny and Zoe when a neighbor came out of his house, talking in a loud, but friendly voice. Gypsy stopped in her tracks as I tried to coax her forward. She pulled back hard, jerked her head, slipped her collar and ran in the opposite direction, leaving me holding the leash and empty collar. Rick gave chase and caught her as she headed around the block back in the direction of our house. I took her home while he finished the walk with the other two dogs.

Now she eagerly anticipates her walk and will allow the neighbors to pet her, although not as enthusiastically as Penny and Zoe do. The neighborhood children have been more than happy to help us socialize her.

She is still wary of anyone new coming into our house and she's so afraid of going anywhere new that I often have to carry her out of the car and inside the vet's office or pet supply store, which must look ridiculous. Once inside, she plants her feet and I have to coax her forward step by step. She's making progress though.

Through all this, we've never seen her fear take the form of aggression.

There's so much we'll never know about her old life, but let me show you a little of her new one:

She gets along quite well with her new big sisters, Penny and Zoe.

She loves to chase Luna, who likes Gypsy better when she's sleeping. I found them both at the shelter on the same day and since they're the youngest animals in the household, I hope they'll grow old together.

She likes to lick Sasha's bowl clean, but knows better than to mess with her. Nobody chases Sasha.

Although she likes to cuddle with my tennis shoes, she prefers sandals for chewing.

She likes to steal bubble wrap and run out the dog door with it so she can have it to herself as long as possible before she gets caught.

 She loves store bought chew toys but is also perfectly happy to find her own in the backyard and haul them in the dog door.









       If sweet friendly children want to pet her and walk her, she's okay with that now.

 She sleeps quite soundly like this...

        or like this.













When she wakes up in the morning, she comes and paws gently at my side of the bed. If I don't respond she pushes her face close to mine. If that doesn't work, she'll plant her front paws and upper body on the bed until I say good morning to her and stroke her head. Only then is she ready to start her day, even if that means going back to sleep for awhile.

I think "that dog" is happy to be our dog now.

THAT Dog

Early last New Years Eve, after finishing my paperwork to hold the cat I was going to adopt, Claire, the adoption counselor and I were walking from the adoption office at the back of the dog shelter through the dog kennels. As we walked past one kennel in particular, she said,

"That dog breaks just breaks my heart"

I could barely make out the dark form of a medium sized dog in the back of the kennel as I asked why. She explained that the dog had been picked up on the west side of town the day after Christmas with a pickle jar jammed over her head and duct taped into place around her neck. She'd had to be sedated to have the jar  removed after she was brought in on the animal control truck.  She was still in pain recovering from her injuries and was terrified of everyone. She was scheduled to be euthanized and Claire had been able to get her a twenty four hour stay, but her time was running out.

I sat down cross legged on the concrete floor outside the kennel, held my closed hand up to the wires and began talking softly to the dog as the tears came. The dog finally approached me slowly, warily. I looked up at Claire and asked through my tears,

"Is there anything I can do?"

"You can get her out of here."

Gypsy at the shelter, scheduled to be put down the next day

After a call to Rick, I signed some paperwork with Claire, who gave me the dog's antibiotics and pain meds. She advised me to feed her soft food since the inside of her mouth was injured. One ear was held together with surgical staples. The agreement was that I would foster her to buy her time. After ten days I would bring her back to be spayed and have the staples removed from her ear. Then if the fostering was going well, I would bring her to public adoption events to try to find her a home. The shelter hadn't named her because she was going to be put down, not put up for adoption. Claire said I could pick a name for her, and Gypsy just seemed to fit.

When we opened her kennel, Gypsy trembled and was too frightened to take a step forward, so a kind man who was also visiting the shelter picked her up and carried her out for me. She was completely subdued, passive on the car ride home. I had no idea how the introduction with Penny and Zoe would go. I knew nothing about Gypsy's background and wondered if she would react aggressively when faced with the inevitable excited barking and jumping.

It took a lot of coaxing to get the poor thing out of the car and into the house. I led her into a large crate that Rick had left near the inside of the front door before he'd had to leave the house after my phone call. She was quiet as Penny and Zoe barked and sniffed at her in the crate. When they calmed down, I sat down and read from the paperwork Claire had sent home with me.

Some excerpts from the veterinarian's transcribed report from the day Gypsy was brought in:

"...this pet is actively hemorrhaging from head and face...frantically resists handling during attempt to remove pickle jar by cutting the tape and jar from around the pet's head and neck...pet is fractious and requires gas induction to explore other injuries...presumptive evidence of mistreatment of pet by a person--evidence of pet's struggle to escape whomever mishandled her or otherwise to remove pickle jar from her own head to the point of possible self-induced injuries to ear, inside mouth, inside nose and all paws...This appears to be a case of animal cruelty...Pet's age est 1 yr...weight est 35 lbs..."

Gypsy her first day home wearing an old collar of Penny's

She seemed to view me as her savior in the beginning and followed me everywhere.

Ten days later, when I met that veterinarian, she was overjoyed to learn that we had decided to adopt Gypsy. What a bighearted lady she was! She said that the vet clinic staff was tempted to go out on a "vigilante run" the night Gypsy was brought in, if they only knew who they were looking for. She said several times of Gypsy,

 "She's just a baby." 

She thought Gypsy was not even a year old. I was happy to know that she approved of the name I had chosen. The vet told me that her mother and niece had been visiting her for Christmas when Gypsy was brought in and had texted and called a few times since then wondering what had happened to "that dog." She was going to be happy to tell them Gypsy had been spared and had found a home.

A few weeks later when I took Gypsy for her first checkup with our own vet, she too was delighted to learn that we had adopted "that dog," the one they called the "pickle jar dog" on Facebook. Dr. Williams said that the "rescue community" had been all abuzz about Gypsy on Facebook after she had been brought into ACS. Apparently a volunteer who had been there that day had posted her story...

...but not the rest of the story...


 

The Last of the Purebred Puppies

Zoe in 2005

This is Zoe when we brought her home in December of 2005. Wasn't she adorable? She's still sweet as can be at seven years old and we love her dearly. I hate to say never, but I think she's the last purebred puppy we'll ever buy.
 
She's a French Brittany. We bought her from a friendly breeder who seemed to have nothing to hide. We went to his home, met his family and saw both of Zoe's parents.  We scrutinized her pedigree going back several generations and saw no evidence of inbreeding as far at we two laypeople could tell.
 
Zoe has hip dysplasia, which showed up pretty early in her life and now at the age of seven, she lives with a lot of pain and her back legs frequently collapse out from under her on smooth floors. We wonder how long we can maintain her quality of life. I had assumed that since hip dysplasia is supposed to be more common in larger dogs, that a French Brittany would be less likely to develop it. Zoe weighs about thirty five pounds, which is average for females of her breed.


Until our newest dog, every dog Rick and I have ever owned was a purebred purchased as a puppy from a home breeder. When we were young, we would just decide what breed we wanted and then look in the classified ads for puppies for sale.   

Max as an adult with Dusty as a puppy in 1976.

Rick had a fox terrier growing up, and so that's the breed we chose for our first dog. Sadly, Max's life was short. If we had been older and wiser he might have had a better chance at a longer, happier life. A male fox terrier was not necessarily the best choice for a household with small children.

Ten year old  Erika, with 14 year old Dusty in 1990.

Our Weimaraner, Dusty, was destructive and hyperactive into her old age, but she took whatever the kids dished out without a hint of aggression.

We bred her with a neighbor's male Weimaraner just once, sold her puppies, then had her spayed with some of the profits. I suppose that made us backyard breeders, except that Dusty and her puppies lived in the house.

Dusty had heart worms when she was young and her treatment was expensive for us and dangerous for her. We learned our lesson about heart worm prevention, but thankfully Dusty came through the experience just fine.

She was hardy and healthy and lived to the ripe old age of fifteen when she spared us any painful decisions by dying quietly in the backyard on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

After Dusty, I did a lot of research before deciding what breed to get for our next puppy. We still preferred  larger breeds and females, but now understood that Dusty's hyperactivity and destructiveness were typical traits of her breed, which we had been ignorant of when we bought her as a puppy. Maybe, I thought, with enough careful research, we could select a breed without those traits. In hindsight, I realize one thing I was still ignorant of was good breeding practices.

Paul and Erika with Shadow the day we brought her home in 1991

We bought Shadow, our black Labrador retriever, from a family who lived out in the Texas Hill Country. She was loveable and great with our now older kids.


Shadow retrieved the first ball we ever tossed her without any attempt on our part to teach her how to fetch. She lived to fetch tennis balls for the rest of her life.

Shadow,  1991

Once Shadow was past adolescence, she did turn out to be less destructive and hyper than Dusty had been.

But when she was still fairly young she began snapping at small children when they got up close to her face.

Before she was two years old we learned she had hip dysplasia, but it didn't progress nearly as fast as Zoe's has.

Shadow, 2002

 
Shadow lived to the age of thirteen when we had to have her put down because she was living with too much pain and too little  mobility.  We may have let her suffer longer than we should have, but anyone who's ever had to make that decision knows how difficult it can be.

Shadow lived longer and had more good years than we had hoped for after we learned about her hip dysplasia and we were thankful for that.

In looking back at her pedigree after she was gone, I noticed something I had forgotten: Her father was also her grandfather. The couple that bred her assured us that this was common practice to reinforce "good traits" and was safe, but now I wondered if this inbreeding had something to do with her hip dysplasia and her tendency toward snappiness, which I had not anticipated in a Labrador.



When we were ready to get our next dog, I made one visit to the Humane Society. I knew people who always adopted mixed breeds from shelters and I thought that was admirable, but after all a pet is a long term commitment. I wondered how you could predict the likelihood of serious problems with a dog whose breeding and background you knew nothing about. Getting a dog from a shelter seemed risky. I wanted as much predictability as possible.

We decided we would do what we had always done, buy a  purebred puppy. We knew we wanted a breed that was unlikely to be aggressive with children and a puppy that had not been inbred, so this time I was going to pay more attention to the pedigree. We weren't getting any younger, so we thought we should get a smaller dog this time. Also on my shopping list of desirable traits was "less doggy odor," "not a heavy shedder," etc, etc. I had taken on quite a consumer mentality about selecting a family pet.

Penny, 2005

 A Vizsla seemed like the perfect choice. We paid more for Penny than we had ever paid for a dog in our lives.


And she's everything we hoped she'd be, super-affectionate, great with children, no doggy smell, with a silky short coat and velvety ears.

Penny 2007

Then there's that earsplitting high-pitched bark when she gets excited, which is often, and her habit of jumping on people, which we just can't break her of. Oh well, no dog is perfect.

At seven and half years old now, she's healthy and energetic and we expect her to be around for a long time. We love her dearly.

(Edited to add: June 24,2014 Yesterday we had to have Penny euthanized after learning that she had cancer that had metastasized to her lungs. It was probably lymphoma which, as it turns out, is fairly common in Vizslas. We are heartbroken. She had just turned 9 years old. It's hard to believe I wrote the words above just 18 months ago. And two weeks ago, Zoe had her second hip surgery, a femoral head ostectomy)

After we'd had Penny a few months we decided we could handle a second dog and that it would be good for Penny to have a canine companion.

Zoe and Penny in 2011

The same kind of research that led us to choose a Vizsla also led us to choose a French Brittany. Zoe is just five months younger than Penny and didn't cost quite as much. They get along together beautifully.

Zoe is lovable, sweet and affectionate with us and with the children in our lives. Like every dog we've ever had, she has a few annoying habits, but what dog doesn't?

It's heartbreaking to see her living with pain and having a hard time climbing the stairs at only seven years old. Some things just aren't that predictable.



A year ago when I was making the rounds of shelters looking at cats, I couldn't help but notice all the dogs and somehow I felt differently about them than I had in my visit to the Humane Society seven years ago. I saw so many adult dogs that looked gentle and friendly, frightened and stressed. I couldn't help but think that if people like Rick and I only ever chose purebred puppies, dogs like these were doomed.
 
I thought about how quickly our own dogs' puppy days had been over and it didn't seem so important to only ever consider puppies. I thought about how we've learned that the health and behaviors of purebreds are not necessarily all that predictable.

The latest addition to our dog pack is a beautiful, loveable mutt who was about a year old when we brought her home from the city shelter.

Penny, Zoe and Gypsy in 2012

Rick and I aren't getting any younger and we probably don't have many more dogs in our future anyway, but  we bought our last purebred puppy when we bought Zoe. The key words here are "bought," "purebred" and "puppy." We won't purchase a dog again and contribute to the market for puppy mills and breeders when so many adoptable dogs are put down every day. We've learned that an adult mixed breed can make a wonderful pet. Too many of them never get a second look in the shelters because everyone wants a puppy and most people prefer purebreds. But even purebreds can be found in shelters and adopted from rescue organizations.
 
I had heard about the horror of puppy mills for years, which is why we at least always bought our purebred puppies from home breeders. This year I  actually "met" a product, or maybe I should say a producer, of a puppy mill. This is Rainbow Diamond. She was rescued in a raid on a puppy mill and taken in by "Diamond Dachshund Rescue." She is a patient of our veterinarian. She lived in a grungy bathtub where she was bred continuously despite a fractured spine that never healed. I don't know why any dog lover would want to be a consumer of this market, if they know about it, that is.

Confessions of the Wife of a Kindhearted Man

Some of my recent posts may have given the impression that I am a passionate animal lover whose passive indulgent husband is just along for the ride. Nothing could be further from the truth. My husband is the one who cannot bear to walk away from a needy animal. And he is certainly indulgent, but more about that later.

Rick with our pack of three plus one grandpuppy,

Upon seeing a needy stray animal, I tend to wish there was something we could do, while thinking of lots of practical reasons why we can't. Not him. He'll rescue first and then try to figure out the details.

This explains:

why he'll walk in the front door carrying a dog in his arms while our three resident dogs go ballistic, barking and jumping at the anxious new-comer...

and why I came home from work to find this stray cat in the garage one day last December...

and how these homeless traveling companions ended up in our backyard and then in our house one day in the fall of 2007.

Ginger and Louie, dirty, matted and hungry.

We called this guy, Louie, because he was short, squat and somewhat obnoxious, but lovable, like the character from the TV show, Taxi. He was a purebred Pekingese and after we had him scanned for a microchip (he didn't have one) and tried in vain to find his owner, we took him to a Pekingese rescue organization who were able to find him a loving home.

Louie all cleaned up.

We called this pretty lady Ginger. Beautiful as she was, it was harder to find her a home because she wasn't purebred. Sad, isn't it?  Her microchip traced her back to a shelter in Los Angeles. She had been adopted by someone who never registered the microchip in their own name and didn't seem to be looking for her.

We might have kept her permanently, but sometimes she was aggressive toward Zoe.

These three didn't always get along this peacefully.

Ginger never showed any tendency toward aggression with people though, and she became the only dog of a loving family that adored her and continued to call her Ginger. As far as I know, she still sleeps at the foot of her best friend's bed, a little boy who told his parents that they didn't need to check on him at night anymore because Ginger was protecting him.

Ginger and Louie both owe their new lives to my compassionate husband.

One of our grandpuppies (in the back) joins our pack for treat time in the kitchen.

My husband is a creature of habit and our four legged creatures have happily fallen into the rhythm of his habits. Most mornings he eats Frosted Mini Wheats for breakfast and that means three dogs each get a Mini Wheat and two cats each get a little milk in a saucer. If he has a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, three dogs get a peanut butter filled "kong." If he has a banana, each dog gets a slice of banana. When he makes himself an ice cream sundae, three dogs and two cats gather round as soon as they hear him squirting Redi-Whip out of a can, because they know they are each going to get a dollop. Now you might say that these are not the healthiest of treats, and believe me I've said the same, wagging my finger and shaking my head in the background. His reply is always that this little bit of (fill in the blank) isn't enough to do them any harm. I've given up. He knows what foods are truly harmful to dogs and cats and knows better than to give them those.

Sasha and her favorite human

He grew up with dogs and cats and his mom has never met a hungry cat she didn't feed. When I decided I would like to adopt a cat from a shelter I knew he would take no convincing.

He once asked me why I had turned off the ceiling fan in our air conditioned living room. "Because there was no one in there," I answered. "The dogs are in there," he replied.

He carries Zoe up and down the stairs when she's in pain from her hip dsyplasia and arthritis.

He is the reason our dogs can count on their daily walks, which would probably be less frequent if it were only up to me.

He is the reason our grandpuppies are just as excited as our grandchildren when we come to visit, because they know they are in for lots of extra attention and treats.

And he is the reason I was confident I could bring this dog home and try to save her when I found her cowering at the shelter within 24 hours of being put down on New Years Eve 2011.

Confessions of a Converted Cat Lady: Sasha

After Luna had been home a couple weeks and we had added a third dog to our household, I began to think along these lines:

"The dogs have each other to play with...Poor Luna is outnumbered three to one...Luna needs a feline friend to play with"

By the time I mentioned to Rick that it didn't seem fair for Luna to be an only cat in a three dog household, he just sighed resignedly,

 "What difference would one more animal make at this point?" 

 Famous last words, as you'll understand later in this post.

When I found Sasha at ACS, the city shelter, I was drawn to her because she seemed like a non-Persian version of Flannery, small and gray with a spunky outgoing personality. They told me she was about five years old, which didn't seem too old to be a companion for Luna, who was supposed to be about two, but was probably younger..

Our vet soon got to know Sasha very well. She said that she was at least ten years old, which explains why she's not interested in playing with Luna and likes to cuff her around to keep her in her place. They are like   feline versions of a flighty teenage girl and a crotchety little old lady.

Sasha has ear polyps, one of which the vet removed, but she's still prone to ear infections. She also has feline IBS, which I won't go into detail about, but lets just say that the half price I got on her adoption fee will never make up for the fortune it costs us to feed her.

She has patiently tolerated me squirting medicine in her mouth and ointment in her ears, but she does seem to have less affection for me than for my husband and son. Every evening when Rick settles into his recliner, she settles into his lap.When he sits down at the breakfast table, she is on the table practically on top of the newspaper as he tries to read it. He is clearly her favorite, but that's OK, because I am Luna's.

This dog person has learned that cats, like dogs, have their own unique personalities and most don't fit the stereotype of being aloof

Sasha came to take over. Rick says we should have named her Lola after the song lyric,

"Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets"

We named her Sasha because she's a Russian Blue, although probably not purebred, and because we just liked the name.

She reminds me of Granny from the old Beverly Hillbillies show: small, stubborn and spunky, but lovable.

You know how some dogs insist on head-butting your arms to get you to keep petting them? Sasha does the same. She demands that you keep your hands free for her to rub her head and face on them, endlessly.

She loves pens and pencils and will boldly try to take them out of your hand with her teeth while you are writing with them.

She's a relentless demanding little terror in the kitchen if there's any meat or dairy out. 

This five pound cat is completely undaunted when surrounded by three forty pound dogs. She will brook no nonsense from them and will just slap them upside the head with a paw on general principle.

Gypsy would really like to just take that food, but Sasha is more formidable than she looks.


 

Confessions of a Converted Cat Lady: Luna

After decades of seeing myself as a "dog person" who was allergic to cats, by the end of 2011 I found myself wanting a cat, a rescued cat who might not otherwise live or have a home. It's easy to think you're not a cat person if you haven't had a cat climb into your lap and fall asleep purring or rub its soft little face affectionately against your hands.

But was I still allergic? I knew I used to react if I spent too much time around my parents' cat, Perry years ago. I considered that I might not have reacted to Flannery  because her little body was shutting down by the time we took her in and we didn't have her long enough for a lot of dander to build up in our home. Still, I knew that I had spent hours petting and holding her.

So I started doing research, which I can be somewhat obsessive about. I learned that there's credible evidence that female cats, and especially spayed female cats, produce less of the enzyme, fel-d-1, that causes allergic reactions. I learned that bathing cats makes them a little less allergenic and I had learned from my friend, the cat groomer than you can bathe a cat and live to tell about it.

 I started making the rounds of the animal shelters, holding and petting female cats, breathing deeply with my face near their fur. (I tried to do that when the shelter workers weren't looking, so they wouldn't think they had a nut-case on the premises.) I never had an allergic reaction.

I found out that my primary care doctor's office offered allergy testing and that my insurance would cover it, so I set up an appointment. I tested allergic to cats again, but to give South Central Texas residents some perspective on it, only half as allergic as I was to mountain cedar. It seemed that the severity of my cat allergy had diminshed somewhat over the years. The clinician thought that if I took antihistamines and /or immunotherapy I might be able to tolerate a cat.

Rick and I decided to go ahead and adopt a cat  from the city shelter, since they are not yet no-kill and we knew we would be saving a life. We agreed that choosing a pretty cat was not a priority.  On December 31, I went to the cat shelter at Animal Care Services.

As  I walked into a big room lined on three sides with cages, a cat walked to the front of her cage on the back wall and started meowing. Other cats were sleeping or crouching quietly in their cages, but this one obviously wanted my attention so I walked over to her, not knowing yet she was a her. She was beautiful, sandy colored with soft gray tabby markings, blue eyes and a little pink nose, but skinny and with cuts on her legs. I put my hand against the wires of her cage and she rubbed her face and head hard against it, purring loudly. She scrambled to press her whole body against the front of the cage and overturned her water dish, sending it splashing over both of us. She jumped to the back of her cage in astonishment, as if to say,

"What did you do that for? I thought we were friends."

 I knew I had found my cat.

Luna's first week at home.

The shelter worker explained that she had just been brought in off the street the previous day and that she had to be held long enough for an owner to claim her. Then she would be spayed before she was released for adoption, but that I could have her held for me pending the waiting period for an owner to claim her.

He wrote down her ID number and directed me to the adoption counselor, Claire, who keyed it into her computer, looked up and asked,

"Did this cat look alright to you?" 

She looked fine, I said. Claire told me that when the dog/cat catchers (for lack of a better term) arrived at the shelter with this cat in their truck, they weren't sure she was still alive. She just lay in the cage, silent and still. I think she was just terrified and traumatized, because we've never seen her react to anything like that since we brought her home.

Sometimes she tries to play fight with us, by scratching and biting at our hands and feet, but she never fights back when our other cat cuffs at her or one of the dogs (post yet to come about THAT dog) corners her. I wonder if she would try to defend herself if she were really in danger or if she'd just freeze like she did when she was brought to the shelter.

We named her Luna, after one of my favorite characters from the Harry Potter stories. I think she's silly, sweet and brave, just like Luna Lovegood.

Most nights she jumps up on the bed after I settle in and she curls up against the back of my legs. She loves to rub her face against our hands and touch noses with us. She finds the dogs' habit of sniffing behinds to be offensive and tries to show them that touching noses is a much nicer way for polite animals to greet one another. When she rubs against your leg or arm it's like being caressed by a silk scarf, she's that exquisitely soft. At times she runs around the house like a wild banshee. She loves to hang out in cardboard boxes. One day I caught her running through the living room with a bag of candy in her mouth. Another time I found her dragging one of my sweaters across the bedroom.

My Looney Luna is full of affection and personality, just like every dog I've ever loved. And speaking of dogs, a dog features prominently into the full story of the day I found Luna at the shelter. But that's another story.

Confessions of a Converted Cat Lady's Daughter

Last December when we took Flannery in, I often thought of my mom, who had passed away about eighteen months earlier. I missed her every day and I liked the idea that Flannery might be my "Perry," the cat who stole my mother's heart when she was about my age.

I have vague memories of the only cat we had as a family pet early in my childhood. Her name was Jenny and we gave her to a German farmer when we left Germany to come back to the states.

Mom didn't like cats much, because stray cats killed birds and pooped in her flower beds. The last dog my parents had was a Dalmatian named Molly who they got when I was in junior high. She was so aggressive toward any cat that got into the fenced backyard they were afraid someday she might kill one, but fortunately she never did.

Sometime after Molly died, a stray cat started coming into the backyard and Mom kept shooing him away with her broom. He was very persistent, though and one day she turned the water hose on him. She was immediately guilt-stricken because he looked so "pitiful," as she told it, and for the first time she realized how skinny he was. Perry's life turned around that day. Mom named him Periwinkle because he liked to nap in the sun in the periwinkles in the flower bed.

Mom with Perry in 1991

Perry wasn't skinny for long. Every morning he started his day with a can of Sheba Premium cat food, his favorite. Perry liked to attack and bite people's feet, but Mom always forgave him, because she was sure that someone in his past must have abused him by kicking him.

One day he got out and when they found him he had been shot with a pellet gun. He recovered nicely, but mom never felt the same about her next door neighbor. He denied it, but Mom always suspected him since she knew he had shot stray cats before.

 Like Flannery, Perry had a fondness for drinking water from the toilet bowl and one day he fell in. From that day on in my parents' guest bathroom there hung an attractive framed picture of Perry with this little rhyme printed underneath:

We have a cat who cannot swim,
Nor can he balance on the rim,
So please make sure the lid is down,
We do not want our cat to drown. 

 After Flannery died last December, memories of her and of Mom with Perry left me feeling that I needed a cat in my life, a needy cat who might not have a home otherwise. I didn't know to what extent I was still allergic to cats, but I started making the rounds of the shelters, holding and petting cats, putting my nose close to their fur and inhaling. And I made an appointment to have allergy tests again.

Confessions of a Converted Cat Lady: Flannery

I had never thought of myself as a cat person. We'd had five dogs and no cats as pets in almost forty years of marriage. I had tested allergic to them and had some fairly severe allergic reactions when I'd spent much time in homes where cats resided.

 I've never had anything against them though and never understood why some people seem to hate them. What's to hate? I've always thought they were fascinating creatures and from time to time had thought about being allergy tested again to see if it might be reasonable to try having one as a pet. I guess you could say it was on my bucket list.

But cats were the farthest thing from my mind when I was driving home from work early one December evening last year. I called Rick on my way home to tell him that I'd like to go out for Mexican food. He said that was fine and that he'd meet me at the house but that he just wanted to warn me that there was

"a badly neglected cat in the garage."

"WHAT?!"

He said that he'd explain when he got home, but just wanted to give me a heads up.

I arrived home to the usual noisy exuberant greeting from our two dogs and slipped into the garage where a wretched looking gray creature with yellow eyes, a pushed in face, and a mass of horribly matted fur came meowing out at me from among the clutter in the garage. I looked, wondered what in the world we would do with  it, and went back into the house. When Rick came home, I remember saying two things,

 "That is NOT a pretty cat" and "What makes you think that cat is so neglected?"

He looked at me seriously and asked,

"Did you touch it?" 

 "No," I said, "I'm allergic, remember? I'll get hives."

"Just touch it," he said, "under the fur."

So I went back out into the garage and touched the cat. As soon as I did, the cat started purring and I knew what Rick meant. Under that mass of hair I felt nothing but sharp bones under paper-thin skin.  Rick told me how the cat had approached him in the front yard and seemed hungry. He took some chicken from the fridge out to feed the cat, which ate out of  his hands so voraciously that it bit his finger and broke the skin. He explained that he felt he should confine the cat just since it had bit him and we should be sure it didn't have rabies. I knew right away that this was just an excuse by my tenderhearted husband who couldn't bear to turn his back on a suffering creature.

It was cold and messy in the garage, so before we went out to eat, Rick carried the cat past our excitedly barking dogs, and shut it in our large master bathroom. On our way home from the restaurant we stopped to buy a small supply of cat food, a small litter box and cat litter.

Soon after we brought her in.

The next day we called a couple of shelters, realized the cat would just be put down or turned away, and  took it to our own vet, who cut away enough matting to tell us that the cat was a female and that she was well over ten years old. She said  that she might be in kidney failure, but that if we wanted to try feeding and sheltering her we should know in a couple of weeks if she had a chance. The cat was a pure bred Blue Persian who had probably lived out on the street for at least a year to be so badly matted. Our vet said that she would have to sedate the little cat to remove all the matting and that she was too fragile for that. She weighed three pounds and most of that was matted hair.

'People are always dumping Persians," our vet said. "They buy them because they have the money and then when they get sick or just turn out to be too high maintenance, they dump them."

We took the little creature home and I named her Flannery. It took some doing to keep her away from the dogs, but for the next few days we fed her and fell in love with her. I decided that her eyes were topaz, not yellow, and that she was a pretty cat after all. I cut away at the matting without getting anywhere near the tiny skeleton underneath with my scissors.

 Finally I remembered that a friend from church was a cat groomer. She came to the house twice and spent hours carefully removing matting and finally bathing Flannery. During these grooming sessions I held Flannery much of the time and never had any allergic reaction. My friend said that she thought Flannery was going make it.

Tiny, spunky, and sweeter than you can tell by this picture

And we dared to hope so. She had some fight in her. When we finally tried to do a controlled introduction to the dogs, she stood up to their rushing and barking at her. She soon walked confidently between and past them. No matter how we tried to tempt her with drinking water from a dish, she preferred perching on the toilet seat and leaning down to lap water out of the toilet bowl. And how she loved to eat!

I realize this view is pretty shocking, but it's the only picture we have of her with Zoe.

She wasn't  intimidated by Penny either.

But she loved nothing more than to climb up into our laps and fall asleep purring. In fact she continued to react to a mere touch by purring, just as she had when I first touched her in the garage. It seemed that she came to us every bit as starved for love as for food.

We had longstanding plans to go to Dallas for a couple days to see two of our granddaughters dance in The Nutcracker and have an early Christmas celebration with our daughter's family. Our son stayed at the house to care for the pets. He had come to love Flannery too and we knew he would take good care of her.

When he returned from work as we were driving home Sunday night, he called to say that something was wrong with Flannery. From his description we knew it wasn't good. When we arrived home she was sleeping on a soft rug on the bathroom floor where she had often slept in the ten days since we brought her in. But she didn't wake up when we came in and her little body felt cooler than it should have.

We took her to an all night emergency vet clinic where a sympathetic and compassionate vet listened to our story and reassured us that we had done all we could to fill Flannery's last days with the love and care she lacked for so long. She said that Flannery must have been dying when we took her in and that she probably  rallied under our loving care and may have felt stressed when we left her, but that she would have died anyway.

We both shed many tears over that little cat. It was hard to believe we could have grown so attached to her in just ten days. I told my family and friends that she left a little kitty shaped hole in my heart. And I remembered  the emergency vet  saying,

 "You did the right thing by taking her in. Maybe Flannery paved the way into your lives for some other little cat who needs a home."

And so she had.

Our sweet daughter, Erika, made this little keepsake.