Ginger RIP

I took my cat Ginger to the vet this morning and had her put to sleep. I think she was 19 years old but I dont really know since she wasnt a kitten when I got her. I had her for 17 years or so. She was pretty out of it but still wasnt happy about going. Still, it was a short irritation for her since I took her to the vet closest to my house, Ypsilanti Animal Clinic. They were really great there and the procedure was quick and painless. She had a pretty uncomfortable night last night. She wasnt in pain especially but was so weak that she could hardly walk. She could walk about a foot and then she would have to lay down and rest for several minutes. She was crying in frustration every time she tried to move. I know she just wanted to get to whatever spot she wanted to go to and I would have carried her if I knew where she meant to go. She was pretty dehydrated too as she had stopped drinking water for the most part and I could tell that wasnt especially comfortable for her. It was time.

I buried her in my back yard right in the middle of all the rose bushes.


The Story of Ginger

Ginger was a stolen cat. Her first owners abused her terribly. From what I understand, they beat her and starved her. I was working at a pet store at the time and one of my co-workers stole her from her neighbor in order to protect her. I think some of the odd behaviors she had throughout her life were a result of living in such a bad environment. For instance, she loved to open up packages of food and when she was young and spry, she often would get into the cupboards, open up boxes and bags of dog treats and then eat some and knock some down for the dogs. Needless to say, that increased her popularity with the canine members of the household.

The owner of the pet store agreed to take her as a pet store cat. It turned out, though, that Ginger did not have the makings of a pet store cat. She never was especially social (guests to my house often wondered aloud if I was lying about having a cat since they'd never seen her) so she hid from the customers all day. By night she prowled the store until one night either someone left the giant finch cage open or she figured out how to open it herself. Let's just say that Ginger was an excellent hunter which turned out to be another reason she was ill suited to be a pet store cat.

I had kind of been looking for another cat to be a companion for my cat Fred. The owner of the pet store agreed to pay to have Ginger spayed if I took her in so she came to live me me. I dont remember what her name was before but I changed it to Ginger because I thought Fred and Ginger were good names for a pair of cats. Her first week with me was awful. She went into heat and made my life miserable. She made Fred's life miserable as well as she kept getting amorous with him but with no success because he was neutered. Eventually, she went out of heat and I was finally able to get her fixed.

We moved around a lot. Some of my roommates liked Ginger and some didnt. Her favorite thing is the world to do was to claw up furniture and harass other cats (and especially Jeanne's cat Spock). But she got declawed and after Spock, she never had to live with any more cats other than her buddy Fred.

She did have to live with dogs though. After Fred died, 11 years ago, I brought Brooke into our household. She was 10 months old and had some issues of her own. Ginger always liked Brooke though. Sometimes when I would leave them home alone together, I would come home and Ginger would be crusty with dog saliva since Brooke seemed to like kissing her all day while I was gone. I cant say that Ginger liked that treatment but it is a testimony to how much she liked Brooke that she allowed it to happen. My next dog was Crissy and Ginger loved Crissy too. Sometimes out of the corner of my eye, I would catch Ginger giving "love bites" to Crissy. Then came Cookie who only was with us a short time. Ginger *hated* Cookie. Cookie was part Border Collie and had a hobby of herding cats. Ginger, it turns out was not very fond of being herded. She tolerated Cookie although sometimes Ginger would sit in the middle of the floor and hiss when Cookie walked by. And lastly, Ginger had Tasha. She didnt like Tasha at first but Tasha treated her very much as Crissy did, i.e. with a lot of respect and an acknowledgment that Ginger was the one who wore the tail in the family. Ginger warmed up to Tasha quickly and for the last several months, I sometimes found them sleeping in large dog bed together.

Ginger was a very bossy cat. She pretty much ran the show around here. I sometimes joked that if there were such a thing as reincarnation, she surely had the soul of a great general. I wonder if I will know what to do with myself without her to boss me around.

Sick Cat

My cat is probably going to die very soon. She isnt eating and can barely walk. She isnt in any pain though and trust me, she is the sort who would let the world know if she were. So for now, I am not going to take her in to be put to sleep since her least favorite thing in the world is to go anywhere in a car but she especially always hated going to the vet's office. She's 19 years old. It is the end of an era of my life, for sure.

Aging

Sometimes I cant even keep promises to myself. I skipped blogging yesterday but I dont feel bad about it. Well...not too bad. I wasnt feeling well. I had a headache and pretty much spent the entire day in a dark room sleeping because anything that had to do with light hurt my eyes. I think it was either a brain tumor (very unlikely), a migraine (still pretty unikely) or else my vision is going bad and I might need glasses (much more likely). This headache came on after I worked all day on a computer and then came home and read for 6 hours or so.

Of course, I dont have a vision plan so if I do need glasses, I'll have to pay for them myself. I am going to wait and see if I get any more headaches though before I decide to spend any money. The funny thing is that I dont know how much of that is because I dont want to spend money and how much of that is because I dont want to admit that my eyes, or any other part of me, might be aging.

I am not entirely sure why I dislike seeing the signs of aging in myself. It isnt so much that I am worried about losing my looks because I never had conventional beauty in the first place and in the second place, I kind of think that older women *are* beautiful in their own way anyways. No...I think what bugs me is that aging is a reminder that life is finite and I figure that around half of my life is over. I just feel like I want MORE time. Half over already? It can't be!

Oh well. I hear that when people get really old, they sometimes feel done. I guess that is my wish: That no matter when or where I die, I'll feel done living.

Sherman Alexie

Sometimes it's called passing out and sometimes it's just pretending to be asleep.

Sometime ago, I had a literature class where we read a collection of short stories written by Sherman Alexie called The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. There was one day where a friend called me to tell me that a mutual acquaintance of ours had committed suicide the night before by jumping in front of a train. That very evening I settled onto my couch to do some required reading for my class. I live next to the train tracks and trains come through several times a day and, as it happens, a couple of trains went by while I was reading.

The story was one of the most powerful stories I've ever read. The things going on my real life while I read it just made it more so. The story was A Train is an Order of Occurrence Designed to Lead to Some Result which you can read HERE

Since that time. Sherman Alexie has been one of my favorite authors. I admire him. I am jealous of his gift. I find his work entertaining. He makes me think. I guess you could say that I am a big fan.

Last night, I found out that Sherman Alexie is going to be speaking at Eastern Michigan University on Monday, November 5. Better still, as far as I can tell, the event is free!

People Who Died

I keep thinking that I want to write a little bit about my Baba's life since it was a pretty interesting life and certainly a long one. I am not especially ready for that yet though.

My grandmother was 93 years old. She died while eating breakfast. She had a waffle shaped like Mickey Mouse. My aunt said that she had eaten two ears and half a face before she died. She didnt choke. She wasnt ill. She just woke up that morning, sat down to breakfast, ate half of it...and died. Not a bad way to go if you ask me.

So, I caught a cold at the funeral from kissing too many relatives I guess. So I am cranky. Which is why it sucks that I cant get Jim Carroll's People who Died song out of my head. I feel like I want to add another verse:

"Baba ate two ears and half a face. She was 93 when she died...93 WHEN SHE DIED...
These are people who died died. They were all my friends, and they died!!!!"

Baba RIP

My last remaining grandparent died this morning. It hasnt really hit me yet but I am sure it will. She lived a long life and was well into her 90's so it isnt exactly surprising but well...I guess I feel a little surprised by it. Are we ever really ready for someone's death?

Life Without Cookie

So things are weird at my house without Cookie around. Brooke is just so good that in some ways it has been nice, i.e. I can take Brooke more places because she is better behaved and I can take her for walks without bothering with a leash because she’ll walk on heel and come when she is called.

But then, everything just seems so empty without Cookie. Brooke is a wonderful dog but her personality is more subdued than Cookie’s was. It has been too quiet at my house what with no one barking at the cat or demanding treats or whatnot.

It also has kind of sucked because Cookie really kept the cat in line. Now that Cookie is gone, the cat is doing all of the things she wasn’t allowed to do before. She is coming into my room in the middle of the night and waking me up by biting me. She is running out of the door to go outside when I let Brooke out which wouldn’t be a problem except she likes to do that at 11p when I am ready to go to bed. She has been eating the dog food again. The Cat is OUT OF CONTROL!

Ah well, I guess I just miss her.

Dog's Death

Cookie died while I was at work today. But I think she had a good last week.

Last Tuesday, she had a very bad day as I talked about in my last post. I was seriously going to take her into the vet to be put down last Wednesday. But then she seemed to get better – a LOT better. She hadnt been eating her dry food so I bought her a bunch of mushy food and I bought her her favorite snacks. It was almost as if she thought, “Well, I *was* going to check out but now that the service around here has finally gotten better, I think I’ll stick around for a while.”

So I didnt take her to the vet last Wednesday and instead I took her up to the lake. That is one of her favorite places and I thought she could get worse any minute and it would be nice if folks got a chance to say goodbye. But she didnt get worse, she got better. We even took a short walk that night. I took her back up to the lake on Friday. She was so excited to go that she did her little happy dance that she always would do where she would turn in circles and bark at me to hurry my ass up because we needed to go to the lake RIGHT NOW!!!

She had a really nice day at the lake on Saturday with my folks while I spent some time with a friend. Then I picked her up and brought her back home where she jumped on the couch and watched squirrels out of the window with my other dog Brooke. She went on a few adventures in the yard but mostly she slept (very peacefully). I spent some time rubbing her belly while lying in bed watching movies which is pretty much what we did Sunday too. She had to go outside a lot because her medication made her thirsty. I kept feeding her all the mushy food and special treats she wanted to eat and she seemed to be enjoying that, even going so far as to stand in the kitchen staring up at the cupboard where I keep the treats until I walked in and gave her some (which I did, of course).

Anyhow, she was doing so well that part of me thought that maybe I should tone it down with the ‘giving the dog whatever she wants’ thing because although I really loved Cookie, I know that she was just the sort of dog to take advantage of such a situation. I know this because she wasnt really my dog. She was my uncle’s dog or maybe it would be better to say that he was her person. There was no doubt who was in charge between the two of them and it wasnt my uncle! At my house, Cookie generally had to content herself with bossing the cat but she did that with such gusto it was hilarious.

But then this morning, she had a really hard time getting outside to pee and she wouldnt take a treat from me when she got back in. I came home for lunch around 3p and she wouldnt get out of bed nor would she take a treat from me. I pet her for 10 minutes or so before I had to go back to work. She didnt look in pain but she didnt look particularly well either.

And when I got home at 8p, she was dead.

I found a box in my basement and put her in it and then put the box in my car. I think my vet can arrange a cremation so I’ll take her there in the morning.

This is a picture I took of her a month or two ago.