First Spay Accomplished!

This is the longest I’ve gone without posting on this blog, but it hasn’t been easy spending time on the computer with a very active 7 week old kitten running around the house. He requires a lot of attention, and of course then there are Lena and Tim, plus helping my neighbor’s daughter with math homework. I’m amazed I’ve gotten any sleep in the past couple of weeks. More on the kitten (whom we’ve nicknamed Ninja Kitten) later, as well as on the dog I rescued earlier this week. My animal stories never end.

The latest good news is that Mama Cat got spayed yesterday. I took her to a nearby animal hospital that one of my neighbors and one of my co-workers both recommended. They both like the doctors there and the prices were very good too. So Wednesday afternoon, as soon as I saw Mama Cat, I grabbed her, put her in the carrier, and took her over to the vet. She wasn’t supposed to eat after 9 pm, so that’s why I was bringing her in the night before the surgery. After all, it’s impossible to make sure that an outdoor cat fasts. Then Thursday morning they performed the operation and when I called that afternoon they told me that everything had gone very well and she was recovering from the anesthetic. They also gave me another piece of good news—she’s negative for feline leukemia.

This afternoon Tim and I went to pick her up. It’s been about 15 years since I last dealt with a recently spayed cat, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the incision was so small. She meowed some in the carrier, but looked fine in general. I’m going to have to take her back in 10 days to have those stitches removed. They had told me that it would be ideal if she could stay indoors tonight, but agreed that if she was going to go nuts indoors it would be best for me to let her out. They just told me to check on her and clean the area with warm water if necessary. Stray cats are pretty tough so I’m sure she will be fine. I’ll still keep an eye on her, though.

After I opened the carrier inside our apartment, she walked around a bit and licked the Ninja Kitten. She allowed me to pet her and didn’t seem too upset by the situation. After a while, though, it was clear that she wanted to be let out. So I opened the door for her and she went outside and socialized with her older kids as well as with a couple of the other cats. They were interested in sniffing her since she must have been carrying the unfamiliar smells of a veterinary hospital.

It’s been raining tonight, so a while earlier I went outside to see if I could find Mama Cat. She was actually sitting on the mat outside our door with Baby Boy, who was keeping her company. She looked fine and I was glad that she wasn’t alone (of course I’m just anthropomorphizing—I’m sure she would have been fine by herself too!) Splotchy Junior then showed up and I wouldn’t be surprised if Baby Girl was nearby as well. I have made an appointment for another spay next week, and I think it will be Splotchy Junior’s turn. The idea is to get the older kids spayed and neutered as well, and once they have all finished recovering I will take them to my boss’s farm along with Mama Cat. They will be safer there and will get plenty of food, plus whatever mice they can catch. I will then do the same with the other cats. I think that will be a better life for them. Of course I will miss the cats, but I think it’s the right thing to do for them.

Tough Week

The latter part of this week has been very tough for me because we lost two cats. The first was one of Mama Cat’s babies, who crawled into Debbie’s daughter’s car and she drove it, unaware. Then today I had to have Garfield euthanized because he had leukemia. Considering we lost Baby Tiger a few weeks ago, it’s been a hard month overall.

Back on Monday, the kids who were bothering the cats a couple of weeks ago discovered Mama Cat’s nest in my neighbor’s backyard. I think mostly out of ignorance they picked up the kittens and were poking around the nest area, and so later that evening Mama Cat moved the babies. I tried to explain to the boys that you just don’t do that with young kittens, unless the mother knows you very, very well. Even if the queen appears not to be there, more often than not they are nearby and many times they are watching. And even if she didn’t see the kids in her nest touching her babies, she smelled them. I watched her afterwards smelling the area around her nest intently. I hoped she wouldn’t move them, but she did. She had moved those kittens so many times since they were born that she had simply run out of safe places and so she resorted once again to placing them under cars. Mostly she kept them under our cars and it worked out that when Tim was gone, I was home and vice versa so they were OK.

However, then the kittens figured out how to climb into the front end of Debbie’s daughter’s car and I tried to stop them from doing it but they kept at it. I put them on the mat by our front door, and Mama Cat actually kept them there for a while. I was hoping they would be there when I came back that afternoon so I could try to find them another place, but that day they mowed the lawns and Mama Cat must have moved them under the cars again. Debbie’s daughter knew that the kittens had taken to crawling into her car, but neither of us knew all the places where small kittens can crawl under a car and while she looked to see if there were any kittens in the front end of her car, and knocked to startle them if they were there and even honked her horn, it looked like they weren’t there so she went where she had to go. When I came home from work that day I looked to see where Mama Cat and the babies were and I noticed Mama Cat sitting under Debbie’s daughter’s car. I looked under there and felt ill when I saw a small foot dangling from the underside of the car. I knew immediately that it was too late for that baby, and wondered desperately where the other one was. I didn’t know for a while if it had suffered the same fate or if it was safe somewhere else. I called Tim to help me get it out so we could bury it. So Tim, who has been so good through all these cat-related situations, came outside and told me to go inside, that he would deal with it. So he got the baby out, and buried it next to Baby Tiger behind our backyard. I was very upset and couldn’t think straight for a while. I wondered how Mama Cat would deal with the loss of her baby, and wondered whether the other one was still alive somewhere.

After a while, when I had calmed down a bit, I went outside to see if the other baby was somewhere safe. I looked for a while and couldn’t find it. I began to worry again, until I saw Mama Cat go under a car that’s been parked for months and heard her meow in that special tone she uses for her kittens. Out of the underside of that car came the other kitten. It was a huge relief in a way because the other baby was alive, and on the other hand I was alarmed that it was also hiding in a car. While that car hasn’t been drive in months, and probably won’t get driven again, I doubt that such a young kitten can tell which cars are abandoned and which ones are driven regularly. I was also worried that Mama Cat would move him again to a different car. So I did the only thing I could think of—I brought the kitten into our apartment. From the experience we had a few weeks ago, when Mama Cat’s babies were in our apartment for a few days and Mama Cat was so nervous with her kittens indoors, I knew it wasn’t the ideal situation. But considering what had happened to the other baby, I knew this was the only way to keep the surviving kitten safe. Mama Cat isn’t happy with the situation, and on top of that she has swelling from the accumulated milk that isn’t being consumed by the baby she lost. Especially in the past couple of days she kept looking for the missing kitten, and it broke my heart to see and hear her, looking and meowing for her baby. She has been feeding the surviving kitten some, but not quite enough. I think it may be part of the stress of dealing with the loss of her baby, the stress of having her other kitten indoors, and the swelling must not be helping either. Today she has been a bit more calm, and I hope she will continue to do better. I care a great deal about Mama Cat and it makes me sad to see her upset, and I wish she would stay inside with her baby, but she doesn’t want to stay indoors, and I just can’t let the baby out. I’ve talked to the vet, and they agree with what I’m doing. I hope that it’s ultimately the right thing to do. The kitten itself is a fuzzy ball of energy and I am very glad he’s alive. I just wish it could spend more time with his Mama Cat and that he hadn’t lost his sibling, with whom he’d been spending all his time until now.

This brings me to the other loss, of Garfield. He had been having trouble eating for quite a while, and because he couldn’t seem to eat hard food without being in pain, I started buying wet food for him. This was already a while ago—I’m not sure when I started feeding him wet food. Lately he’d even started having trouble with that and I’d mash the wet food so that he could lick it off the ground without having to chew. I was convinced that he had some sort of tooth problem and decided to take him to the vet. I asked Hannah for her vet’s name and so I called them up and made an appointment for this morning. Early this morning I looked for him and was worried I might not be able to find him after all, but eventually he did show up and he was affectionate as always. Because we had a little time before we had to head to the vet, we cuddled some and sat in the morning sun, which was very pleasant. He sat on me for a while, and then next to me on the ground, leaning against me. I thought our visit to the vet would go well and we’d be back home for some milk or wet food.

At the vet’s, I explained his problem with eating and when she tried to look at his mouth, he screamed. That was how much his mouth hurt. Because we didn’t know his medical history, and assumed he’d never had shots, she decided to test him for feline leukemia. She also took his temperature, which was low. When drawing blood for the leukemia test, she noted that his blood was dark, indicating that it was not carrying enough oxygen. At that point I really started to worry and began to suspect that the test would come up positive. While we waited for the results, I held him in my lap and hugged him and he sat there, purring in my lap. He was so calm. The vet came back after a while and confirmed that the test was positive. I knew that the only thing to do was to euthanize him. Leukemia is very tough for cats to beat, and they have to be isolated from other cats because it is contagious. Not only was complete isolation impossible, but the disease had already taken its toll on him, so I did the only thing I could do for him, which was agree to have him euthanized. It was a very clear decision, but nonetheless not an easy one to make. By now I was crying, and still holding Garfield, my little guy, in my arms. The vet gave us some time and so we cuddled some more. I lifted him up to my shoulder and he rubbed against my ear, the way he liked to do. I also told him I loved him. Finally it was time, so the vet first gave him a tranquilizer. I continued to hold him in my arms until his body was very relaxed, and then put him on the table. I continued to stroke him while the vet administered the injection and until he was gone. My little guy went, as the vet said, peacefully into the great beyond.

First Anniversary

Tuesday, September 13, was also a special day for another reason – it was our first wedding anniversary. It’s hard to believe that a whole year has passed since that beautiful sunny morning in Cambridge. Our wedding was short but we have many pictures of that day. It really was a wonderful little wedding. We set the date only 4 days before so most of our friends and family weren’t there, but we had several of our friends from Boston as well as my mother, who was in Florida at the time and flew up for a couple of days in order to be able to attend. The justice of the peace who married us clearly enjoyed her job because she was very friendly and was even clapping when the ceremony was over! Our friend Theresa gave us flowers for my hair and for Tim’s shirt and Ingrid brought me a bouquet of purple irises. In that small group we had 4 photographers, so the event was fully documented! The ceremony only lasted about 20 minutes, but we enjoyed every moment of it and have many memories. After the wedding my mother took us and our friends out to breakfast at a nearby restaurant, and that night, she and Tim and I went to Fugakyu, a Japanese restaurant in Brookline that serves delicious sushi (needless to say my mother stayed away from the raw fish).

On Tuesday, to celebrate our anniversary, we thought it would be fitting to go back to a Japanese restaurant, so we went to Yamato, a Japanese steakhouse here in OKC. While we didn’t make a whole meal out of sushi, we did have some as an appetizer before our hibachi meal. The hibachi meal itself was entertaining since they cook it right in front of you and the cooks always have fun doing tricks and tossing their knives around. Our cook kept trying to aim small pieces of food into our mouths, but unfortunately it never worked. However, we did get the rest of our meal on our plates! I somehow managed to eat the majority of my meal with chopsticks, even most of the rice. I did have trouble with the slippery vegetables, though. Tim and I had a great time at the restaurant and enjoyed our anniversary dinner. Afterwards we came home and had some cake, which Tim had had made for the occasion. What a thoughtful husband I have!

Seba

Two days ago, on September 13, was my nephew Seba’s 10th birthday. He is the oldest of my nephews. Like Pedro and his brother Juan, I haven’t seen Seba in a bit over 4 years, and I miss him a great deal. I hope he had a wonderful birthday and that he enjoyed his gifts. Seba has always been very affectionate and any time my brother Walter e-mails, Seba always sends lots of kisses. He’s also very proud of his new Uncle Tim, even though he hasn’t met him yet. It seems everyone likes Tim, even many of my relatives who only know him from pictures.

Seba is very careful about his toys and keeps certain ones on a shelf that is out of bounds to his friends. He is currently in the 4th grade and is doing well, especially now that he has been able to control his talking. Walter was telling me that he used to talk incessantly in school! Seba loves animals and currently has a dog and a parrot with whom he runs around and plays a lot.

I am really looking forward to seeing Seba again. If it weren’t for all the pictures I’ve been seeing I would probably hardly recognize him because he has grown so much. But then again, looking at a picture of him as a baby and a picture of him a few months ago, it is clear that they are both photos of my nephew Seba.

Disturbance of the Peace

So much for the uneventful weekend I’d been hoping for! It all started this morning when I was out with the cats and a couple of kids came around and started bothering them. I told the kids to stop but they only stopped temporarily and then continued. Finally the white cat with the dark fluffy tail ran off behind our apartments and I followed to try to calm him down. Suddenly, from under my neighbors’ gate crawled a large black dog that proceeded to chase the cat. They ran back and forth until the cat ran up a tree and we were able to grab the dog. It turned out that the dog belongs to my neighbors’ niece. I didn’t think too much of the incident and went about my way.

I went to the post office afterwards and when I came back the kids were bothering the cats again. They couldn’t figure out why Garfield wouldn’t come out from under a car just because they wanted him to come out. I tried to explain to them that a cat will come to you if he likes and trusts you, and that if you try to grab a cat, he will scratch (and will have every right to do so). They didn’t quite seem to understand but they eventually left. I talked to Debbie and she said that she’s seen them too and has told them in the past to leave the cats alone. I wonder if they will ever learn, and I also wonder where their parents are and why they aren’t supervising their kids and providing them with more productive, meaningful activities.

The early part of the afternoon was peaceful enough and I went to the pool for a while, where I ran into Noshin, Arman and their father. We chatted for a while and I came home. Then Tim had to go to work so we left home at the same time and I headed to Target, where I wanted to look for a couple more shirts I could wear to work. When I came back, I found the black dog harassing Garfield again. I tried to get her to back away but she wouldn’t so instead I got her to follow me around behind the apartments to see if her owner was in her aunt and uncle’s backyard. I didn’t see her, but instead saw her cousin (my neighbors’ daughter). I asked her if that was her cousin’s dog and she said she didn’t know because she hadn’t met the dog yet. I described to her what had happened in the morning with the dog running out of her parents’ backyard, so she went to get her cousin and sure enough, it was the same dog from this morning. This time she wasn’t even wearing a collar. The cousin took the dog back into the apartment and my neighbors’ daughter (who also lives in this apartment complex) told her to keep the dog inside so she wouldn’t run away again. I then talked to her for a couple of hours and she explained to me that her cousin had showed up unannounced with this new dog and she didn’t know how long she was going to stay.

As I was heading back to my apartment to get food to feed the cats, I ran into Debbie’s daughter and talked to her for a few minutes. She asked me if I’d seen a black dog running around loose, and I told her that sure enough I had and proceeded to tell her my two experiences with the dog so far. Just then the girl came out of her aunt and uncle’s apartment and the dog was running loose once again. The cats that had been around scattered immediately, with most of them running under cars. One of them actually confronted the dog, who backed away some but then started chasing him. Debbie’s daughter and I were angry that the girl had let her dog loose like that since the cats live here and she doesn’t. I tried restraining the dog until the girl could come and get her and I told her that she needed to get a leash. She didn’t take that too well, and then when Debbie’s daughter told her the same thing more forcefully (but not rudely) the girl proceeded to call her a f***ing whore. I thought Debbie’s daughter would take her down right then and there. And I wouldn’t have blamed her. There was this girl, causing a disturbance, and then getting angry and calling people names when they pointed out something that she’s supposed to do not only by apartment regulations, but also by state law. Needless to say, I could feel the adrenaline coursing through my system. I didn’t know at that point what would happen. The girl got her dog and stormed into the apartment. Debbie’s daughter was furious so she knocked on the door and my neighbor answered. He was apologetic, but we kept telling him that we knew it was not his fault. We did, however, want him to know exactly what had happened. I talked to him some more and his niece came out from the apartment and they exchanged a few words and he basically asked her to leave. She stormed off with her dog in her arms (rather awkwardly because it’s a large dog).

A bit later after that I was trying to regroup the cats, hoping that this time the dog situation was over. I finally met one of my neighbors whose dogs I see every day. He and his mother have a pit bull and a pit bull-lab mix. He had seen the black dog running around loose and was wondering what that was all about. I told him the brief version and he said he was thinking of calling security. The dog showed up yet again, and this time I had Garfield in my arms. The dog was circling around us and Garfield was getting really nervous because the dog wouldn’t stop. I don’t think the dog was being mean, but it had too much energy and was out of control. My neighbor offered me if I wanted to step into their apartment with Garfield till things calmed down. I gratefully accepted. I then met his mother and we told her about the situation. She was angry because she’s a responsible dog owner and doesn’t like people who let their dogs run loose with no control over them. I don’t either, and especially not when on top of being irresponsible they have such a bad attitude. She sent her son off to the security guard who stands outside our gate in the evenings but didn’t find him. She and I stood outside for a while and once again saw the girl. She was looking for her dog yet again. When she saw us she said in a rather annoyed tone something about us being the cat people who hate dogs. Boy, was she wrong, and my neighbor let her know it. Finally I went home, and brought Garfield inside for a short while until things calmed down a bit.

I then proceeded to spend a bit of time outside my front door, trying to coax some of the cats back with food and milk. Some of them came around and ate, but looked around nervously at the slightest rustling of leaves. Gradually they calmed down, and I calmed down too. I hope tomorrow will be a more peaceful day. And I hope I never have to see that girl again. I just don’t want to deal with unreasonable people who become so unpleasant without any provocation. After all, we pay rent here and have the right to expect a certain level of peace. She, on the other hand, does not pay rent here and has no right to disturb that peace. I’ve talked to my next door neighbor and he saw the dog running around too and agreed with me that that girl needed to leave.

I feel bad for that dog because having such an irresponsible owner, I wonder what will end up happening to her. She’s young and doesn’t respond to any commands and clearly never gets put on a leash. I hope she won’t run in front of a car one of these days. I have the feeling her owner wouldn’t even learn if that happened, and I don’t want the dog to suffer. I also don’t want to get my neighbors in trouble because their niece is being irresponsible and rude. They are nice people and I enjoy talking to them, and I also don’t want my relationship with them to get ruined because of this girl.

Perhaps tomorrow my uneventful weekend can begin.

An Eventful Week

Amazingly enough, it’s already September. This means I’ve been working for a month, and we’re about 3 weeks away from the official end of summer. It’s Labor Day weekend, but I’d been out of work for so long that I’d lost track of holidays. If it hadn’t been for one of my co-workers reminding me about the upcoming holiday I might have showed up at work on Monday wondering where everyone else was. I’m looking forward to having 3 days to relax since it’s been a long week. I’ve stayed late at work every day this week since I had so much to do. At least it has been a very productive week and I’ve made a lot of progress on several fronts. The extra effort was worth it, but I hope that next week I’ll be able to leave work at 5 o’clock every day.

Last weekend flew by and I’m not too sure what I did during those 2 days. Tim and I worked on our puzzle some more, and I worked on my plants. I spent plenty of time with the cats, of course. I also finally saw my neighbor Dean’a. I hadn’t seen her since I left for New Mexico in mid-July and was wondering what had happened to her and her husband. Saturday night I saw lights in their apartment and decided to knock. I got no response so I came back home, wrote up a note, and went back to leave it on their door. I thought I’d try knocking once more before leaving the note and Dean’a actually opened the door! She told me the reason why they hadn’t been around was that they were getting a divorce and so were moving out of the apartment. I couldn’t believe it, but then again I hadn’t known them that long or that well. She was working on packing up some of her things and said she’d be back in a number of times to continue with the packing. We sat outside to chat and before we knew it 2 hours had passed and it was time for both of us to go to sleep. It was nice to see her again, though I wish her news had been better. Then again, she seemed to be dealing with the situation very well. Now I have her cell phone number and she has my phone number and she knows she can call us or drop by anytime if she needs help with anything.

The other interesting development took place on Monday when we heard an unexpected knock on our door (we don’t get many visitors). It was Noshin and Arman, two kids who live across the parking lot. They both love cats and that’s how I originally met them since I spend so much time outside with the cats. Noshin is in the 6th grade and Arman is in 3rd. Noshin had her math book with her and asked if we could help her out with mixed numbers. I of course said we’d be happy to so I let them in and sat down with her to work through some addition problems that involved fractions and mixed numbers. It was fun finding ways to explain how to solve the problems, but also challenging. It’s much easier to do math than to try to explain it. It’s especially hard because if I have to add mixed numbers, I do it in my head and don’t really think about the process. I also take a lot of shortcuts, but I didn’t want to confuse Noshin with shortcuts. Shortcuts come later, once you understand how something works. Arman grew bored since he’s 3 years away from mixed numbers, so Tim took him upstairs to play with Lena. Luckily Arman had a great time with Lena, even though Lena wasn’t even playing along the whole time. We told the kids they could come back anytime they needed help with homework. Generally their dad helps them with math since their mom says she isn’t very good at it, but their dad is currently working afternoons so he’s not available when the kids come home from school and need to do their homework.

This means I finally met their mom, who is really sweet. Unfortunately she is terribly allergic to cats and during the short while she was in our apartment she was already feeling the effects of dander or hair or whatever was causing the allergy. We didn’t speak too long that day, but yesterday I went by their apartment and she and I talked for probably over an hour. She and her husband are originally from Bangladesh and lived in Los Angeles until a few years ago. Like me, they found OKC hard to adjust to because it’s such a different type of city. But also like me, they are enjoying the much lower cost of living. I’ve talked to her husband a number of times already (and he’s the one under whose car Mama Cat had placed her babies before I brought them into the house) and he’s a great guy too. They really make a wonderful family. We’re trying to see if we can find a time when everyone’s schedules work out to get together for dinner—I think that would be very nice.

This has also been a very eventful week in terms of hurricane Katrina and the devastation it has caused. We all knew that someday New Orleans would completely flood, but I guess residents weren’t expecting it to happen this time around. I can’t imagine losing my house and everything in it and having to be evacuated to a different city, and perhaps even a different state. It angers me that so many people are looting and that on top of that, some of the looters are shooting at rescue helicopters. As if there weren’t enough injured and stranded people, the looters are willing to prevent others from receiving help so that they may steal merchandise that has nothing to do with survival. I saw a sign online that someone had posted outside their home or store that said, “Looters will be shot on sight.” That person had the right idea.

One of the effects of Katrina that has hit everyone around the country has been the soaring price of gas. A few days ago I saw it rise within a few hours from $2.69 (which was already very high) to $2.75. The next day I saw it at $2.97, and luckily Tim fueled up then because a few hours after that the price had risen to $3.09. It’s unbelievable to think that just a few weeks ago I had fueled up at $2.17. At least the price seems to have stabilized. I’m lucky that I filled up my tank right before the prices starting going up so drastically. I am also very glad that Tim and I drive fuel efficient vehicles. I had to laugh yesterday when I saw a Hummer pulling into a gas station. I wondered how foolish the driver might be feeling at his or her vehicle choice. If gas prices stay this high for a long while, I am curious to see if there will be a lot of people trading in large SUVs for vehicles that are more appropriate for their needs and their wallets. But I’m not going to get into an anti-SUV rant. If I did, I’d be typing here for hours!

Now I’m looking forward to a relaxing, uneventful weekend.