Category Archives: pets

December 12th, Nebula comes home.

December 14th, I give up trying to separate her and Phantom while I’m home because I.need.sleep. I share her existence on social media.

December 15th on, I discover how very sharp her claws are and how very sensitive her play switch is. Scars commence.

December 18th or so, I put up my Christmas tree but left it bare to test her reaction. She enjoys sitting on the tree skirt. I post the first picture taken by me to social media.

December 21st, Sam meets her niece and falls immediately in like with her. The feeling is likely reciprocated due to treats and other gifts. We put lights on the tree.

December 25th-ish, I leave them alone for a walk. No one dies. Success. I finally finish decorating my tree.

December 25th on, she takes down ornaments from, climbs up, and jumps in the tree. I yell.

January 4th, tired of picking up ornaments and straightening the star, I break out the water bottle as a last resort. It is almost immediately effective and she stopped climbing the tree after a day or two.

January 5th to now, she doesn’t yet understand her name. I try to teach her with treats. Need to be more consistent

January 12th, she discovers cardboard scratchers.

January 13th, friends flood into my home, meet my cat, and dote on her friendly compliance. I recognize the first month.

January 16th, I mistake her for Goliath for the first time. )= But am grateful for the reminder of my sweet boy.

January 67th, she continues trying to get closer to Phantom but he moves too quickly for me to snap a shot of them touching or mirroring each other.

January 17th, she aggressively licks Phantom, and I break it up before it can become a thing. Their truce is tenuous at best, and I try not to associate their interactions with negativity.

January 18th, the peace is broken while I type this. I separate them with my scratched hands. This is my life now.

Three weeks ago, I took Phantom into the vet because he was sick. I received a surprising diagnosis, one that was fatal and one that, fortunately, has been somewhat reduced. He may not longer be on death’s door, but he’s still sick. I still have to administer medicine. And while I don’t have to watch his every move because this might be ‘it,’ the moment that I need to humanely end his life, it’s hard not to.

I spent that first week basically unable to do anything — eat, sleep, work, breathe. The anxiety and stress was oppressively heavy. Anyone who talked to or saw me was witness to that. And while things are no longer as dire, it feels as though the wool has been lifted from my eyes. There’s something wrong in my life that I am now painfully aware of, and I can’t forget it. Even if I could, I need to be alert for Phantom’s sake.

Of course, anyone might be a little stressed over this, but I’m already anxious to begin with. And that something so small as a the health of a pet has me spiraling so far downward makes me feel incompetent, like a failure. Every time Phantom refuses a pill, I wonder why I can’t be better at such a small thing.

I’ve fill a lot of the last three weeks with TV shows, just some noise to keep on in the background. There’s not much else to do when the weather has me trapped inside.

But I can’t use this time productively. It takes me longer to get around to do chores or run errands. My Christmas tree is still up. Laundry has piled up on my bed. All of my blogs are forgotten. I’ve forgotten about games that need to be finished. I’ve managed to finish a single book, but many others have languished. My kitchen table has accumulated an embarrassing amount of mail, trash, and empty shopping bags.

I could invite people over to while away some of the time — if only I wasn’t so ashamed of the state of my apartment.

And maybe it’s not that bad. Maybe it’s in my head. Maybe it’s just my anxiety making me feel like everything is worse than it is, you know, the way it does. But that’s one more thing to feel bad about.

Perhaps in time I’ll forget about some of the things that are bothering me just like I occasionally forget about my own mortality and impending death. The feeling of despair will only wash over me and settle in the pit of my stomach briefly before I am able to push it back, to deny that it bothers me.

Or maybe I need a better coping mechanism to deal with life.

I don’t know what else it could be.

Take Goliath, for example. He never used to be that vocal. He would chirp if he jumped between varying heights. He would squeak if you accidentally stepped on him, and he would growl as he carried toys around in his mouth.

Now, he’ll cry mournfully as he looks for a toy. As he carries it to me. As he drops it by me and waits for me to get out of the shower to throw it. He’ll whine for me to throw it even if he can’t see me and neither of us knows where it is. It’s pretty obnoxious.

Phantom has also become news kinds of annoying; although, he was always a bit annoying. He’s taken to dropping things such as expensive nail polish right off of tables and counters. He’ll grab papers from the mail slot on the fridge and try to eat them. Now, there are plenty of things — whining, knocking magnets down, clawing my boxspring — that he’s done for years. But these are new annoyances.

I love them but, come on now! You’d think that they’d be settled in their weirdness, and I could figure out what I need to do to live happily ever after with them.

Or not.

Goliath is a sleeping beauty, stretched out along my arm and contoured against my body. He keeps me warm with his soft fur. If I listen closely, I can hear him purr, a small purr for a cat his size. I’m more likely to hear his breathing than to hear him purr.

Sometimes we’ll stay like this all night, with me waking periodically to the warmth of him against me. Other nights, he can’t seem to get comfortable. So he’ll toss and turn and eventually leave, perhaps to come back a time or two to repeat the process.

There will be night when we don’t quite fit right, and his tail or paws will cover my face, and I’ll struggle to breathe. Sometimes our slumber will be broken by his brother, who unknowingly — or perhaps knowingly — walks over Goliath as he tucked under the covers.

Goliath is a sweetheart, who lets me pet him when he just wants to sleep. He tilts his head just right so I can scratch his chin or touch his ears.

He is, in almost every way, my sweet baby boy, momma’s cuddle bug.

The other day I had a terrible dream. It was one of those emotional dreams where you wake up and you still have the feelings you had in your dreams.. even those it was just a dream. Even though you’re awake now, and none of that actually happens. But your mind has gone ahead and processed everything and all the hormones and chemicals have brought you to that place anyway.

In the middle of that terrible dream, I looked at someone and said “I wish I was at home in my PJs with my cat.”

And I woke up, in my PJs next to Phantom.

In my time of duress in my dream, the only thing I wanted was to get back to my regular life. I didn’t want anything more than that. I woke up to that place, comforting and full of love. Emotionally stable. Free to do as I please.

Since that night, I have been ridiculously grateful of my life. Of the people and things in it.

All things considered, I am in a good place. A place where I am happy to remain; although, I am open to better things, they would have to be significantly better to motivate me to stray

As emotionally tumultuous that dream may have been, it was certainly something I needed.