Today's Carpe Diem prompt involved revising this well-known Haiku by Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694).
old pond
a frog jumps into
the sound of water
Today's Mindlovemisery's Menagerie prompt was crystals. We were asked to follow traditional Haiku rules, but, sorry, no can do when such a stellar Senryu using both prompts has hijacked my synapses!
I dreamed that my wonderful cat Trinity, whom I had to have put to sleep three years ago on November 9 due to brain and lung cancer, was here with me. November 9, 2016, was a garbage day in history. I lost my great friend on that day, and Lord Dampnut was elected "president." It was a terrible time to be alive.
She was such a special cat. I miss her big, chonky body, her big, chonky personality, and her big, loud purr.
In 2001, the first year that my son and I were in the mobile home (the one we are now clearing out to sell), we had a problem with mice. Fortunately, we also had a mousetrap.
Our mousetrap was the big gray and white guy, although he was still a juvenile then. His name was Raymond (2001 - 2018). One of my co-workers took in a pregnant cat. Raymond, seen here with his brother Leon (2001 - 2017) was one of the kittens. Leon, obviously, was another of the same litter.
One day Raymond dropped on my pillow what I thought was the back half of a catnip mouse. I was half right. There was no "catnip" to this mouse. I screamed and hurried the mouse ass outside. I can only reason that Raymond ate the head and figured that it would be kind to offer me the butt.
Raymond caught a couple more mice. Then the mice must have gotten savvy to the fact that there was a cat in the house and stopped coming around.
I had to have Raymond put to sleep when he was 17. He had tumors all over his body including his digestive tract and in his forehead. I probably shouldn't have waited as long as I did.
Leon had to be put to sleep a few months prior. He developed feline infectious peritonitis, which puzzled me because I never let my cats outside, except for Isis, who was semi-feral and I couldn't keep her in. The vet said that the FIP had probably been dormant in Leon's system for his entire life. It can sometimes take many years for it to become active.
Anyway, I never was keen on the bone-crusher type of mousetrap. If you don't have a mouse-head-eater like Raymond living in your house and you have mice, try a humane trap like Ghost Town Grover sells in his general store. If you order through the link, we earn a small commission.
I normally write for adults. I find writing for youth extremely challenging. I ended up opting to write a lightly fictionalized autobiography of myself between childhood and my pre-teen years which centered around my imagination and the fantastical fiction genres which inspired me. In writing about myself I ended up opening a lot of pockets of unresolved grief.
The place I lived between the ages of four and nine was a semi-rural pocket in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where people could have small farms and keep chickens and such. We had a very large yard, a half-acre. Unfortunately, the house was in rather a shoddy condition and cockroaches the size of school buses had a tendency to get inside. The bugs are huge in New Mexico, and I was not keen on that. But I did love the little skinks and horned toads and such. We also had many beautiful plants around such as the honeysuckle vines, and the cicadas would sing us to sleep.
I was a very shy child and did not have many friends. The characters I met in fantasy worlds were my friends, as were my pets and the animals in our yard.
Although I was born in the Western United States and raised in the Southwest for a number of years, my parents were both from New York. When certain relatives would visit, they would ridicule my accent. A New Mexico accent is a bit of an off-Texas drawl. To this day, I bristle whenever anyone askes the seemingly innocent question: "where are you from?" To me, that question is loaded.
Missing Lafayette. Lost him July 17 of last year to kidney failure.
Missing Trinity. Lost her 13 days ago to brain and lung cancer.
Feel so sad about the way dementia has destroyed Malcolm Young’s mind so he “isn’t in there at all any more” according to his brother. Fucking dementia is the worst.
The 28th of this month will mark the 6th anniversary of my father’s passing after 6 years of decline both physically and cognitively.
You are forever loved, but my love is worth fucking nothing. It can’t save anybody, can’t bring anybody back. My love is hollow, painful, a worthless echo. I am so sorry. If I could trade I would.
~Cie~
1. Financial management should be taught in schools.
2. The last item I donated was some clothes to be sold to benefit the Colorado Sled Hockey team.
3. My (personal) song is Albatross by Judy Collins , because it describes what living as me is like in the lyrics.
The lady comes to the gate dressed in lavender and leather
Looking North to the sea she finds the weather fine
She hears the steeple bells ringing through the orchard
All the way from town
She watches seagulls fly
Silver on the ocean stitching through the waves
The edges of the sky
Many people wander up the hills
From all around you
Making up your memories and thinking they have found you
They cover you with veils of wonder as if you were a bride
Young men holding violets are curious to know if you have cried
And tell you why
And ask you why
Any way you answer
Lace around the collars of the blouses of the ladies
Flowers from a Spanish friend of the family
The embroid'ry of your life holds you in
And keeps you out but you survive
Imprisoned in your bones
Behind the isinglass windows of your eyes
And in the night the iron wheels rolling through the rain
Down the hills through the long grass to the sea
And in the dark the hard bells ringing with pain
Come away alone
Even now by the gate with you long hair blowing
And the colors of the day that lie along your arms
You must barter your life to make sure you are living
And the crowd that has come
You give them the colors
And the bells and wind and the dream
Will there never be a prince who rides along the sea and the mountains
Scattering the sand and foam into amethyst fountains
Riding up the hills from the beach in the long summer grass
Holding the sun in his hands and shattering the isinglass?
Day and night and day again and people come and go away forever
While the shining summer sea dances in the glass of your mirror
While you search the waves for love and your visions for a sign
The knot of tears around your throat is crystallizing into your design
And in the night the iron wheels rolling through the rain
Down the hills through the long grass to the sea
And in the dark the hard bells ringing with pain
Come away alone
Come away alone with me.
4. Three things I am thankful for this week are:
My son's emotional and financial support when I had to make the terrible decision to have Trinity put to sleep
The veterinarian who helped us
and
Trinity
?/?/2005 to November 9 2016
Although we couldn't afford the extensive testing, the veterinarian's professional opinion was that between the fluid in her lungs and the staggering when she walked, Trinity had both brain and lung cancer. She said if treated, we might be able to have a couple weeks to a couple more months with Trinity. I felt such a decision would be more in our interest than Trinity's.
I couldn't say goodbye, so I said good night to my best girlfriend and my son and I stayed with her until the end.
I have a lot of cats waiting for me on the other side.
I have three still living, and my son has two.
I will not have any more pets. I don't have the resources, and I can't stand the grief every time I have to have one of them put to sleep or one of them dies.
My best friend in this damn shitty world died Friday. He was six years old. His kidneys shut down, and my son and I agreed that it would be best for him to be released rather than having to endure costly treatments that wouldn't buy him more than a week. He was a very sick little guy, but very brave to the end. If you want to read what happened in detail, I've published a post here. I honestly didn't know how sick he was.
This post is going to be long, rambling and ranty. It isn't going to be full of sunshine or unicorns farting rainbows. If you have a problem with long, ranty, rambling posts short on sunshine, unicorns, or rainbow farts, this is your cue to exit.
Anyone who sees the need to tell me that I need to be more positive, think more positive, or anything else of that nature needs to realize that you are a sanctimonious ass and you need to not tell others how to think or feel. I've more than enough of your kind of person in my life.
I am a very angry person overall, and life hasn't done much to make me less angry. It seems that every time I find something that softens my heart, the powers that be conspire to take it away.
Now, here is the difference between my mother and me.
I'm pretty sure this plane is purgatory. I've developed this belief over a lifetime of being kicked in the teeth at every turn. You don't have to join me in my belief. I will never say that anyone has to believe what I do.
I have stated that I am an angry person. I probably qualify as bitter, although I try not to be hateful. In spite of being angry and bitter, I actually am capable of caring. Sometimes I care quite a lot.
I loved Lafayette more than I love just about any other creature on this planet. I was the one person that he really trusted. His love for me was innocent and unconditional. That kind of thing doesn't come along every day, and I let this little creature into my heart.
When he died, I was utterly devastated. I wondered how I could have missed the fact that he was so sick. Logically, I know why. I'm currently working two jobs. I'm trying to pay off massive amounts of debt, mostly vehicle related. I'm helping my son, who is unable to work due to severe anxiety and depression. I'm just trying to keep afloat.
It wasn't until Thursday that I was aware that Lafayette was having trouble eating and drinking, and I made an appointment to take him to the vet.
He was much sicker than I thought, and there was nothing that could be done.
I ended up talking to my mother, whose comfort came in the forms of statements such as this.
"This is why I won't have animals."
Yeah...thank you for letting me know I'm an idiot. I was already aware, actually.
"Things like this happen so we can form callouses on our souls."
My response was "because that's what I really needed is more callouses on my soul. Look, I already resigned myself a long time ago to the fact that nothing good is ever going to happen to me. What the hell more does the Universe want?"
I wondered if this tragedy came to me because I recently got a new job and I was happy about it. It seems that I can't have anything good happen without having something really shitty happen in return.
"Well," my mother said, "we have to pay for what we get."
"Yeah, but this is completely out of line," I said. "This sort of thing is worth a vehicle breakdown or something of that nature, not something utterly tragic."
"Oh, you don't want car problems," she said.
Well, I'd much rather have car problems than to have a creature that meant the world to me die!
Now, in my mother's defense, she comes from a family with a really harsh world view. When her dog got hit by a car when she was in high school, she was devastated. Her grandmother told her "stop crying over that dog. Just think how you'd have felt if it had been your sister."
My great grandmother had a very difficult life and had developed a lot of callouses on her soul.
Thing is, I honestly don't think this is a good thing.
Somehow this conversation reminded me of the song "Soul Stripper" by AC/DC. Possibly because the band's founder, Malcolm Young, is getting the royal shaft from the Universe himself by having his mind stripped away. If you believe the Satanic Panic shitheads, you believe he deserves this. Please pull your head out of your ass if you believe those fuckwits for even a nanosecond. This man was far from evil and in no way deserves what's happening to him.
In any case, the line that I was reminded of goes like this:
She started moving nice and easy
Slowly getting into my spine
Killing off these nice little feelings
Every one she could find
Granted, the song is about one of those awful, doomed from the start, obsessive romantic attachments. But my mother's statement about forming callouses on one's soul made me think that this is what the miseries of life can do. Eventually enough nice little feelings are killed off that a person becomes cold and hard.
I may be angry. I may be bitter. But I refuse to be cold and hard. No matter how much it hurts to let myself feel, I will feel. I don't ever want to let my soul be entirely stripped away.
I contemplate suicide often. The only reason I don't do it is because my son still needs me.
Because this is my damn blog and because I love this band, here's Soul Stripper. One of the reasons it sounds so different from a lot of AC/DC's material is because Angus and Malcolm switched who was playing rhythm and who was playing lead. Malcolm really didn't like playing lead, but he was perfectly capable of it. This song was never meant to be a "single." They were having fun, and it shows.
I think if one more person tells me I did the right thing by having my best friend euthanized, I'm going to run screaming into the night.
I did the only humane thing.
He would have been dead before the weekend was out no matter what. My choice simply spared him a few hours to a few days suffering.
When I took him into the vet, I was sure he had a resurgence of feline stomatitis and they'd have to take his remaining teeth.
Instead, I found out that he'd lost more than half his weight and his kidneys had shut down.
Doing three thousand dollars worth of treatment (more than I make in a month even with working two jobs) would have perhaps extended his life by a month or two.
There may come a time when I can think of him and tears don't run from my eyes and my throat doesn't feel like its being shredded by knives while I'm being garroted. But I will never be over this.
Lafayette was the one creature in the world that loved me just the way I am. He loved me and he trusted me. He really didn't trust anyone else the way he trusted me.
When I first brought him home he was very agoraphobic because he had lived at the shelter from the time he was a month old to the time he was eight months old and I adopted him. He hid under the computer table and came out when I was asleep to attack my hand and arm when it would come out from under the covers. My hand and arm was shredded. He wasn't doing it to be mean, he had simply never learned to play appropriately. I took him for his first vet checkup. We got his claws trimmed and I taught him to play with "soft paws." There was no more shredding.
Lafayette always came to greet me when I came in. He wasn't terribly vocal but when the water bulb was going empty, he made sure to let me know. He always liked to be the first to drink the water with the fresh refill.
Lafayette always came and sat on my shoulder when I lay down. He nuzzled his face against my hand while purring and kneaded the covers and, consequently, my chest, which could sometimes be painful with a thinner cover. He was like a big kitten, although big is something of a misnomer. He only weighed nine pounds.
Today I discovered that he had gone down to five pounds.
Both the vet at the humane society clinic and the one at the emergency clinic where we were referred for potential overnight care said that he didn't have long to live regardless of any heroic measures. Kidney failure is painful. My son and I agreed that he shouldn't have to suffer.
When they brought him into the exam room to say goodbye he tried to meow for us. I think he struggled for much longer than I knew to be brave for me. It was only in this past week that he started giving mournful little meows while looking at the full water dish. He would come up to the sink and meow. I left the faucet dripping a bit, thinking it might be less hard on his mouth to drink from the faucet.
I really, really wish it had been feline stomatitis.
Lafayette was brought in to the shelter with a feral colony. The kittens were more than likely inbred. Tara, the cat I adopted with him, was from the same colony. She also had to have most of her teeth pulled due to feline stomatitis. She has done very well since. The vet asked if they were related. Initially I said I didn't think so, but after thinking about it I came to the conclusion that they probably were. Tara is two months younger, so they were likely half siblings or cousins.
Lafayette's immune system was never good. He had a high sensitivity to grain. It made his skin scabby and his fur came out in clumps if he ate anything with grain. As I said, he never got very big. He was half the size of my other male cats.
I told Lafayette that he was my best friend and that I loved him and would miss him. We stayed with him, petting and talking to him, while the vet administered the medication to end his suffering.
I feel like someone scooped out my heart and smashed it into a bed of nails, repeatedly.
I know I did the right thing, that is to say, the humane thing.
It doesn't make this pain in my soul go away.
Special note:
When we returned to my son's place, a bee landed on the inside of the open car door. Honeybees are notoriously quick to sting, but this was the mellowest honeybee ever. It sat there for a few minutes cleaning its wings. My son suggested we leave the car window open a crack so it could get out. As I was trying to turn on the car to open the window, the bee flew off. My son said he felt that the bee was a good sign. I said that in some cultures bees are considered psychopomps. Perhaps Lafayette was letting us know that he was okay and appreciated what we'd done for him.
