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I had a family reunion to go to this weekend and about a month ago I thought it would be fun to see the play that my friend Terry McGovern is in during the same trip, so I bought 2 tickets for Friday night. With Katey's declining health came the dilemma of boarding her at the vet or taking her with us on our trip. I took her to the vet on Thursday and he said it sounded like taking her with us was a viable and wise option, so we did.

Friday afternoon I put a cozy blanket on one side of the back seat of the car and her carrier on the other side with the door open and a small, portable litter box inside if she needed it.
I never did put her in the carrier because she seemed quite content to curl up on the comfy blanket in the back seat and I could reach back through the console and pet her and talk to her. She actually seemed to enjoy the two hour drive to Marin.

When we checked into our room I set her up with her blanket and food and water and put the litter box in the bathroom, showing her where it was and sitting with her for a bit until she seemed settled. She ate some of the baby food (the only thing she has been eating lately) and snuggled into the blanket and Mark and I left for the play.
When we arrived back at the hotel about three hours later she was still asleep in the same place and seemed fine.

Yesterday (Saturday) we dropped Katey and her stuff off with my son Brendan in Oakland and he was her kittysitter for several hours while I went to the family picnic. When I got back to Brendan's he said he had a very nice visit with her and that she ate a little but that he had to take her to the litter box as she seemed confused by the unfamiliar setup. When I thanked Brendan for taking care of her he said he was glad to do it and had actually considered driving up to Auburn to see her one last time anyway, as we all knew her time here was growing short.

On the drive home last night Katey seemed less comfortable than she had been the day before and I had to kind of form her into a curled up position on the blanket in the back seat before she could settle. A little bit into the drive I heard her stumble onto the console, trying to get to me, so I put her in my lap and petted her. She climbed feebley up to my chest and wanted to look into my eyes as we drove. So I held her like that while petting her most of the way home. I remember he purring the whole way.

When we arrived home at around 11pm I tried to get her to eat a little or at least drink some water, but she wouldn't do that or use the litter box. So, I just put her on the bed between us and we all went to sleep.

At around 3:00am I woke up to the sound of Katey jumping down to the floor. But it was more like a "thump" than a cat-like jump. When I turned on the light Katey was in a heap on the floor, unable to get up. I picked her up and took her to the litter box, thinking that was what she was most likely trying to do, but when I put her down on the floor her legs were all totally limp as though they had no muscles. Her eyes were glazed over and she was very disoriented.

I sat on the laundry room floor holding her and just cried because I knew this was going to be the end for her.

I took her back to bed and she moaned a bit, slept a bit, but did not move. When she did attempt to change positions only her head would really move and she would fall into a twisted heap. I put a towel over her as a cover and petted her as I tried to sleep. Occasionally her moans would wake me up and I would cry a little and pet her until we both fell asleep again.

At around 5:30am I called the emergency line for the vet to ask what the procedure for contacting them was on a Sunday and the woman who answered advised me to call back around 7am and she would page Dr. Jackson and have him call me back. After that we were able to sleep on and off, but occasionally we would wake up because Katey would moan in obvious pain. I just petted her and talked to her and she would calm down for awhile. I think sometimes when she moaned she was trying to purr. I think, but it was hard to tell.

At 6:30am I called the vet's line again and had him paged. He called back a while later and said he was currently attending to another emergency and said, "Susannah, if you feel it's Katey's time, I can meet you at the clinic at 9:30am." Katey, Mark and I went back to sleep for a little while.

At 8:45am Mark and I woke up. Once again I tried to get Katey to at least stand or respond in a coherent way, but she would just slowly slump down and moan. I couldn't get her to purr. I got up and put some baby food on a plate for her and although she could barely lift her head, she actually ate it, but I had to turn the plate for her because it was obvious she couldn't really see or move very well.

There is a small patch of sunshine that falls onto our deck in the back corner and I lifted her up and placed her in the sunshine for a few minutes and petted her while I talked to her. She still didn't purr but seemed at least comfortable.

Dr. Kent Jackson met us at the clinic, along with a vet tech named Ahnna, who knew Katey from the times I boarded her there when I went away for several days. Katey is renowned at the vet for being "difficult but lovable." Ahnna smiled and petted Katey as she told me she has worked for Dr. Kent for six years and "remembers Katey well," from the times she was boarded there.

Dr. Kent is the perfect veterinarian, compassionate and taking his time examining and explaining everything along the way. He gave Katey a gentle exam and found something very disturbing as he gently opened her mouth looked down her throat. "There is a large lump that is a very serious infection but it appears to be a tumor and my suspicion is that it may be cancerous."

I think the deciding factor was probably that even though I was constantly petting Katey at the vet, she never purred again. It was an easy transition for her and she didn't even seem to notice the final injection. I looked into her eyes and they opened wide and she only focused on me as I told her I loved her over and over.

After nearly sixteen years with my grumpy girl, I will miss her very much. But I am grateful she is no longer in pain.

Since our neighborhood basically burnt to the ground two and a half weeks ago, I seem to have fallen backward a bit emotionally. Our house still stands, but beginning three houses up the street it looks like a war zone. Although several lots have already been cleared of the depressing ashes with stand-alone chimneys in the middle, it is still eerie, sad and surreal driving in and out of the neighborhood.
One lady across the street (whose home did not burn down) had a stroke last week and another one just a few houses away whose house DID burn to the ground, apparently gave up and died a few days ago. We are told she was terminally ill and had recently been given about a year to live, but it seems she just gave up.
I had another meltdown today. My old cat Katey is down to 7 lbs and mostly blind in both eyes. I have to take her to the litter box, then to the food and water, then at night I pick her up and plunk her on the bed between Mark and me and she purrs in a gravely tone till she falls asleep.
Everything feels depressing to me lately.
Tomorrow I find (yet another) counselor, to help me cope with my chronically unstable life.

Now that I think about it, I realize I am inspired to create under two different circumstances.

1. I find I am most creative when I have had a revelation about something that strikes a chord within me and I want to share it... however putting that down in writing makes me feel like an idiot because that is probably the very definition "creating" and you were probably looking for more than that. Duh. So on to number:

2. This is a technique that was drilled into me by my 10th grad English teacher, whose name I just can't recall right now but her appearance I clearly remember. She had bright, red-dyed, big hair and wore oversized, flashy earrings and brightly colored clothing.

This teacher told us on the first day of the school year that every, single day in her class we would spend the first 10 minutes just quietly writing. "Writing what?" asked one of a group of four boys who were shit-disturbers who had no interest in English, writing or even going to school for that matter. Those boys gave that poor woman grief on a daily basis, and the more she tried to win them over with kindness or humor, the more torturous they became. They ruined the class and made her look like a clown (well, the red hair didn't help).

But for me, I saw this 10 minute writing requirement as a great opportunity to purge my deep, dark, 15 year-old-girl angst and be heard at least by one person (the teacher) and I always made the most of it.

Today I am aware of what an incredibly valuable tool she gave me... just write. Sort of the literary world's early version of Nike's "just do it."

As far as my other creative outlets, I am driven by a need to produce physical proof of the thoughts and feelings inside me. I have to leave my mark.

I stepped outside to take out the garbage tonight and breathed in the sweet smell of pine trees and the Christmas season. As I walked back toward the house I thought about last March and how beautiful it was when it snowed heavily here. Did I remember to send those photos of the house to my dad? Maybe not. He did say he wanted to see them. But I feel him and my mom around me all the time. To the point that I catch myself trying to behave the way they would want.

On to the good news:

We have been slammed at work with so many people making their exodus from the newspaper over the past few months. The new lady in our department, Caroline, is working out great, but she is still very much in the learning curve. Cindy is on vacation until tomorrow and despite being pretty sick, I have come in to work because they couldn't have made it without me.

The upside is that I quadrupled my goal yesterday and more than tripled it today! Talk about job security--sales is gold in any business, but at a struggling newspaper where the publisher stalks us daily, it's more like platinum (that's worth more than gold, isn't it?)

Debbi, my supervisor told me today she is thinking of either getting a second part-time person or making my position a full-time one. She had recently offered me the other two ad sales FT positions that came available, but I turned them both down; partly because my life has been so insane this year I felt I couldn't handle more than part-time work, but mostly because I really didn't want to sit in the front lobby and just take ads. My position is more of a back-up one and I literally take a back seat. Unlike Cindy and Caroline, I sit where I am NOT converged upon by the public when they walk in the front door.

So, I asked her what she meant by making my position a full-time one. She told me it would basically remain what it is and I could keep my desk and take on more of the online business. Also, I wouldn't have to take an hourly pay cut, which the other positions would have required. Their reasoning is that full-time ad reps make more commission so they can cut back on the hourly pay. I didn't think those numbers added up right, another reason I passed on full-time.

BUT, today I told Debbi:
-- I wouldn't mind staying where I am and doing what I do full-time.
-- Since I will be investing money into another property soon I will need full-time employment to qualify for a loan.
-- After spending $65 seeing the doctor yesterday and another $50 on meds, I could certainly use the benefits that I would qualify for by working full-time.

SO, she is getting budget approval to do this and it shouldn't be a problem at all. I expect that when I get back from my trip to Texas on December 14th, I'll be working full-time. My future is looking brighter!

My dad died this morning at about 11:45am, just after my sisters and I made the decision that we would take him off the ventilator as soon as my son arrived.

He made the decision to go before we were able to tell the doctor we were ready to disconnect the life support. It was so like him to make that decision and give us all the tremendous gift of not having been the ones to decide.

William Douglas Griffin
January 30,1930-August 4, 2007

My sisters and I have decided that, according to my dad's wishes and because of his rapidly declining bodily functions, we will take him off the ventilator tomorrow and let nature take its course. Thank you all for your love and prayers.

My dad had a heart attack last night, while in ICU, on the ventilator. He had shown an improvment yesterday and it looked like he was going to get better and come home by next week.

Instead, the doctor told my sister Lynnie and me the short-term alternatives we have before we just give up and disconnect him from the ventilator. Instead I called my sister in San Diego and my daughter in Dallas and told them that they need to be here tomorrow, that this is it.

If anyone deserved to have another year or two, it was my sweet dad, who spent all those years taking care of my mother as she declined. He was so hopeful about his future--FINALLY. He was happy, he was walking a mile or more a day on the treadmill, he had already planned Thanksgiving and invited me to join him next year on the trip he planned to go visit his two sisters in Texas. I am so grateful that they had just come out here to visit, it was less than a month ago. My dad wanted us to take the ferry to San Francisco and he treated us to lunch at Sinbad's restaurant, just like he and my mom used to do until she lost her mind. It was the first time in nearly TEN YEARS that he had been to the City he and my mom loved so much. It's only 20 miles from his house, but it was 10 long years.

He was just beginning his life again, we all (most of all my dad) had such hopes that he was finally going to have at least a couple more productive, happy years. I was going to take him to a Giants in the next month, he'd never been to the new ballpark and he loved baseball and the Giants.

I am staying in his house, my parents house, the house I helped choose the colors for when I was only 12 years old and we moved here to this typical 60s neighborhood with all those other families with all those other kids.

I am using his little laptop, the one I have cursed since he bought it 3 years ago, for being so lame and simple. I look around and see everything he built with his own loving hands, the furniture, the paintings, the tile on the kitchen counter. He did it all, he always did. He should have had more time.

Just staying here, sitting here, sleeping here, alone, in this home that my parents built and loved is the hardest thing I have ever done. I am crying and can't seem to stop. I am so sad that he is lying there in the hospital with tubes in him, when he should be here on this laptop I am using or watching CSI or some other TV show he loved that I would tell him was too gruesome for me.

He, of all people, deserved to have more time.

I came back to Marin on Saturday, let's see 3 days ago, to be with my dad while he goes through yet another hospital experience.

He had pneumonia in May and spent 9 days in the hospital, while they took him off all the drugs he had been taking faithfully for many, many years for his heart condition. His kidneys were failing from all of it. He had sort of an overhaul.

Anyway, he came out feeling better than he had felt in years! They took him off half of the medications he had been on all those years and gave him a prescription for Prozac after determining he was also depressed. Within a couple of weeks he was feeling like he had a new lease on life! It was wonderful to see him so happy and hope-filled after all the years of struggling not only his own health problems but, taking on the full-time responsibility of caring for my mom when she was so physically and mentally ill, right up to her death last year.

So to have him come down with pneumonia again and be so breathless all of a sudden last week, has hit him hard. They admitted him to the hospital on Thursday, just to observe him. His chest x-rays got worse each day. Sunday they put him in Intensive Care "to be overly-cautious" the doctor said. But after 2 days of worsening instead of getting better, he agreed to go on a ventilator today. At first he was adamant about not doing that, a ventilator is basically the same as what they refer to as a "life support system" when someone cannot live without artificial means.

In my dad's case, the doctor explained that his body needs about 2 weeks for the medications (steroids) to take care of what is going on in his lungs, but since he could barely breathe without help from what they call an "IPAP" he can't eat and the medications won't have time to work without him basically dying.

So today he told me and the doctor they have "two weeks" to either get him better on the ventilator or let him go. My sister Lynnie cut her vacation short and came home today to be here. My other sister Tina is standing by to fly up from San Diego and I have been on the phone with all the relatives trying to relay the details and feeling like I don't have the right answers to all their questions.

Lynnie came to the hospital at about 6:30 tonight, took one look at my dad, (who is heavily sedated and strapped to the bed, with a tube down his throat) freaked out and ran out to the waiting room. Why am I the only one who can seem to handle a hospital room and all it entails? Did I miss my calling somehow? You just deal with it, right? I mean it's about my dad, not us...isn't it?

I'm so tired. But one thing that helps about staying at my dad's house during times like this is he has HBO and they have really dirty, nasty, sex shows late at night and that really takes the edge off when I am trying to (unsuccessfully) fall asleep.

I decided to "Google" someone who held a significant place in my past. His name was Guy Bachelis. When I was 18 some friends took me up to a place called "Switchboard of Marin" because I had consumed most of a bottle of Ripple wine (yes, Ripple) and decided to walk out of a moving car. They didn't want to take me home where I would get in trouble, so they took me up there. It was at the top of a steep, tree-filled hill, housed in a back room of the Unitarian Church.

Guy Bachelis was only 19 years old, but he alone was responsible for opening and organizing the volunteer staff of Switchboard of Marin. He decided Marin county young people needed a place that was similar to the one in Haight/Ashbury in San Francisco, where they could get help when in crisis. There was always a young, hippie-type person there as a volunteer. I don't think anyone there was more than 22 years old, most of them younger. All of the volunteers were socially conscious and very evolved--or at least trying to be. I became one of them. In fact, I cleaned up my act (for awhile) so that I could become one of the volunteers. Guy had a rule about the volunteers never being under the influence--while on duty at least.

Guy had very long, dark hair way down his back, usually pulled into a pony-tail. He was around 5'10" and slightly built. He had huge, beautiful brown eyes and a soft voice that never minced words or dodged a question. He always had something to say. He was a leader, a motivator, a somewhat extreme social activist, and about as sexy as they come.

I fell for him immediately. He counseled me and helped me to more or less stabilize my out of control ingesting of anything that would pretty much knock me unconscious. Often that "counseling" was done while I was sitting on his lap. It was almost more like teaching or mentoring.

I learned many things from him, not the least of which was how to open my mind and accept new concepts. Guy had a strength about him that often intimidated me. He would ask me probing questions and if I didn't have an answer (or was to shy to tell it) he would just keep looking into my eyses until I responded. Then he would probe deeper. I wasn't ready for a relationship like that. We both knew he was much more mature than I was at the time and yet we were very drawn to each other.

We had a wild, sex-filled, very interesting and unusual relationship. We got stoned together a lot. He taught me how to cook things like brown rice and tofu. And he taught me some very different techniques for making love. Looking back, I guess they were tantric. We fucked each others' brains out and had an off and on relationship for about three years.

He took me to hear strange people speak about strange things. Once we went to a group where we all took turns "falling" backward into each others' waiting arms, an exercise in trust. I had a hard time with that. We went to interview the staff of a new organization that had opened up locally that was called Planned Parenthood, to see if their resources would be beneficial to the young people of Marin. No one had ever heard of it before. Afterward, I helped him put together an article about it for the newspaper.

I met his mother once. She lived in Berkeley and was rather unique, too. When I asked her why she had named her son "Guy" her answer was simply, "I couldn't think of a name, so I just decided to call him Guy!" She didn't even bother to give him a middle name. I once saw his driver's license. It said, "Guy NMN Bachelis." The NMN stood for "no middle name"! Like me, Guy had taken his step-father's last name during many of his school years, so he was also known for a time as Guy Barnett.

He invited me to move in with him at one point toward the end of the three years I knew him, but I didn't. I knew I wanted to have a monogamous relationship and have children. He wouldn't want that.

I just did a search on Google for him and found out that Guy Bachelis died suddenly last December.

The last time I spoke with him was 1989, when I called him soon after my divorce. He was really happy to hear from me and wanted to get together right away. I remember feeling awkward that he actually began coming onto me after all those years. There I was, newly divorced, my two kids in the next room and he was acting like it had only been a year since we'd spoken. It had been about 18 years. I suddenly felt that same insecurity I had felt with him at times so many years before.

If he hadn't been so forward on the phone, I probably would have gone to see him. But I never did. I thought about it many times, but I never did.

http://classreport.org/main/selectfamilynews.asp?dname=/usa/ca/mill_valley/ths/&clid=159536&cl=1967&hs=THS&clr1=mediumblue&clr2=red&clr3=lightgrey&stcnt=437&item=5732

I have been on the internet for about 25 minutes now. When I started up the computer it asked me if I wanted to download anti-virus updates and of course I said yes. I just held the cursor over the little shield that signifies the updates are happening and it said "Download 14% complete"!!!

That means I will have to stay online for about 3 more hours in order to complete the process, but I really have to get to bed. Dial-up sucks, but I am so glad to have at least some connection.

Well here I am in my little, adorable, homey cottage in Grass Valley, California. Just under 800 square feet of living space for me and the four cats. Today I finally learned my username and password for the internet, so here I am! The down-side of course is that our rural street has not yet been upgraded to high-speed, so it is dial-up for now. Not too bad so far, but for some reason I can't go to my friends' page. I have no idea if this is related to the dial-up connection, but for now I will just write.

This is really the first night I have stayed home and just been with the kitties and felt like I am settled a bit. Honestly this place is very, very cozy, good vibes in it and my elderly landlords are very nice and kind of cool people.

My job is coming along fine. I am now working on display ads as well as doing all the pre-press and page composing for the newspaper (www.theunion.com I'm even listed on the website).

Friday I went down to the bay area to do my big final corset scene in the movie (www.silentalarmmovie.com), had to wear 6 inch platform, patent leather boots and created a few nice out-take shots for people to laugh at losing my balance while trying to sexily put my foot up on my co-star's lap--hilarious! I must admit I was so well made-up and squished into that corset that it shocked me to see how hot I looked when I saw myself in the mirror! I really should wear a corset every day, it gives me a waistline.

I miss seeing Deborah and writing regularly to Susan and I really miss Robert, but hopefully now things will settle down in my life and I will continue to feel more and more normal, especially with the holidays approaching. Jake is stressing now though because he has to leave the place he has been renting. It's sad that he is always so unhappy.

Anyway, bye for now to anyone who is reading this. I will be back soon and often once again!

Why oh why do I do it? I have a house to clean, more important things to do on the computer, my cats want my attention (ok I have been playing with Thumper as I sit here). But why do I waste my time playing a senseless, inane, stupid, pointless, yes I'm being redundant, game?? Is it a high-tech, mind-bending game filled with color and challenge? NO! It's Solitaire--stupid, pointless Solitaire!! And I just can't seem to win it tonight, so I keep trying and trying and dealing and dealing and losing and losing and saying "Just one more game and I'll quit..." Aren't you supposed to quit after trying once or twice? Otherwise you just keep playing until you win and then what's the point??

This is why I don't gamble very often.

I have never been so happy to have a job--seriously! I began my new job today and even though what I have been doing so far is semi-boring and the pay is pretty crappy, I kept saying to myself "I actually got offered full time work with benefits. They WANT me to stay AND I'm not a frickin secretary!"

Yes, I am grateful.

I got called for a second interview by the manager of Creative Services at the newspaper in Grass Valley. (Yay!) I am determined to get this job. So I have begun my investigation of the Grass Valley/Nevada City area to find the best choices I will have for living there.

I found this great memoir that was taken in 1881 by the daughter of a woman who had come with her family to Nevada City at the beginning of the Gold Rush. My favorite part is how she said men came forty miles just to look at her because they hadn't seen a woman in so long! I wanted to share her memoir with all of you:

http://www.nevadacitylive.com/history-nevadacitysettler.htm

Last week I finished the front and back pages of the KFOK Listener Guide and it went to print with a minimum of fires to put out.

I am very pleased with how it turned out, grateful to my friend Susan for her helpful, professional pointers and critque. I also want to thank the people I met on LJ who have "Indesign" as one of their interests. It was great fun connecting with them, especially the nice Aussie lady!

I feel much better prepared now to go into a print production job now. I really want to start doing contract work right away and just do this and do it until it is second nature. I love design and page layout. I am having fun with Indesign, Photoshop and Illustrator and am learning more every day.

The front and back pages of the LG are the last two on my online portfolio:

www.susannahperri.com/portfolio.html

Well, the good news after losing the little kitty I called Tuxi last week, is that his brother is about the sweetest, most easy-going, adorable little cat I've ever known! He has turned out to be so loving and no trouble at all. He has used his litterbox since day one and when I put him to bed at night he just snuggles into the little blanket I gave him and lays his head on this little pink teddy bear that none of my other cats seemed interested in and watches me as I shut the door.

He rarely meows for anything, doesn't do the hyper-kitten pounce on the other cats when I let him out. He just quietly roams around checking things out and the next thing he is at my feet looking up at me and uttering a polite single meow. When I reach for him he sort of climbs into my arms and snuggles his head and body close to me. He is so precious! He has little tufted, furry points at the tips of his ears like a bobcat, so I decided after just calling him "Baby" that he deserves a name. His name is now Bobby and it fits him perfectly!

My three year old kitty Flower has been "babysitting" him for me. At first she just seemed to want to go into the downstairs bathroom (which is his makeshift bedroom) and stare at him. He would go up to her and give her a "nose kiss" and try to rub up against her, but she kept her distance, preferring to sit on the toilet seat and observe this new little creature.

Then yesterday I found him curled up with her in one of the little circular cat beds I have for them. Today he did the same thing and she gave him a complete licky-bath as he purred and purred. She has become his surrogate mom! Today she actually chased her brother Thumper down the stairs and over the counter after he growled at Bobby! Thumper is having the hardest time accepting him, but he seems to be coming around. Bailey was not too happy either, but even he has stopped growling and just watches the little guy.

I sat with him at the Petco in Roseville for three hours yesterday, trying to find him a home. I was with Rosemary Frieborn, a friend and the founder of Friends of Placer County Animal Shelter, http://www.animalplace.com/ who came with another volunteer and about nine cats from the shelter in need of homes. Only one was adopted.

Anyway, a young woman who just got married really wanted Bobby. She used to have a cat who looked and behaved very much like him and she was so happy. But after she got home she called me to say that she and her new husband are living with his grandmother and she didn't want another cat in the house. Darn! But it was sort of a relief to bring him home. I really don't know what I am going to do when it's time to move in a week and a half. If I had my own place I think I would keep him, but I am going to be living with relatives and it's too much to ask them to accept a fifth cat... isn' it?

I have never owned a Tuxedo cat. I don’t even know if that is what they are called, but that is what I call the short-haired, sleek, black and white kitties that look sort of like they are wearing a tuxedo.

Today when I tried to do my part, something went wrong and I am very sad about it and needed to share.

Since I am going through a divorce, we sold our home in Cool and I have been living in an apartment in Auburn since June. As much as I love it here, recently I have decided I would do better monetarily and maybe emotionally going back to the bay area for awhile. But before I left, I wanted to make sure I did what I could about the strays that have made my backyard their home since soon after I moved in.

Three of those were little kittens no more than seven weeks old when they first showed up a couple of months ago. They seemed to live in the field behind my place at Auburn Townhomes. I found out about them when I heard one of them meowing loudly when he was stuck between the wooden and cyclone fences that separate this property from the field. After that they all began showing up almost daily, but would never let me touch them ...at first. They would each give me one "obligatory" hiss, but then watch me.

One (the one that got stuck) was a light gray tabby. The other two were a darker gray tabby with white chest and paws and the third was a "tuxedo cat". It was this little guy who seemed the most interested in coming back to see me, and the first one who allowed me to touch his head.

The lighter gray one has not been around for about a month now--no doubt caught by a coyote or run over. But the other two have been coming over almost daily and I have kept them coming by putting out food and water and spending time bonding with them. It was the little tuxedo guy that made the first move, climbing up onto the back of one of my chairs to peek into my kitchen window to watch my four mesmorized indoor kitties. I called him Tux or Tuxi. I called his gray tabby brother Baby.

I set my date for moving as the end of September and knew I had to get a trap and take them to be fixed at the very least or I would worry of their fate (and their thousands of future offspring) for the rest of my life.

They got to the point where they would actually purr when I slowly reached down to scratch their heads. The black and white one remained particularly curious about me and would walk towards me, but then stop and I would have to verrry slowly approach him with my hand, and then he would purr as I scratched his head.

So a week and a half ago I made an appointment for them to be "fixed" today. I was a bit nervous about having to wait that long, so I made certain I had fresh food and water for them every day and I would sit out with them, talking to them as they watched me. Then they would fall asleep in my yard for most of the day.

Last night those little guys actually let me pick them up by their scruffs and gently take them into my downstairs bathroom where I had all the provisions they would need to spend the night before I took them to their appointment today. They snuggled on top of each other all night, leaning up against the mirror on the countertop. They were scared, but still sweet. They never hissed or scratched.

So first thing this morning I took them to the Spay/Neuter Clinic and at the end of the day, when I went back to pick them up, they said the kittens were still sleeping. So I came back in about 20 minutes, but they were still not ready. I waited about another
half hour and then was called into the back by a very nice woman to speak with her.

She told me Tuxi had not made it. The little guy had gotten through the surgery and his shots just fine, but his heart stopped later on. She said, "This is rare, but sometimes it just happens. He might have had a genetic problem or maybe a reaction to the shots."

I burst into tears. All I could think about was how sweet that little guy had been, coming up to my window and over to me to let me scratch the top of his head and later his back--and then his brother had let me pet him too. I called Jake and told him and he said, “I am so sad. And I’m angry, not at anyone, but it’s so unfair.” I asked him if he could come over for awhile because I just didn’t want to deal with this alone.

He got to my place before I did and as soon as I got home with the one remaining kitten he put his arms around me and and we both cried. Through Jake’s tears he said, “Why am I crying? It’s just a dumb cat, I shouldn’t be this upset.” But he had watched me grow attached to that little tuxedo cat. And we acknowledged that the circumstances of this past year have probably hit us both harder than we realized.

So I brought back only one little drugged-out cat. I held him for three hours until he woke up. He snuggled in my arms and all I wanted was for this little cat to feel secure and safe and loved. I knew he would no longer have his brother for comfort and familiarity. Jake went and got us pizza, but I barely touched mine. I just held that kitten, knowing it needed comfort and love and I was going to be the one to make sure he had that.

If Tuxi had made it I most likely would have just put them back into my bathroom with food, water, a litter box and blanket, but since it was only "Baby" who survived, I wanted him to wake up seeing how safe I was. And he did. It was wonderful! I think this guy might well end up being a real lap cat!

My mouth is sore. I spent 3+ hours yesterday being worked on by the dentist. I mean he worked on my teeth. I had 3 temporary crowns and 5 fillings done--on both sides of my mouth, upper and lower!!

For the most part, I slept through the whole thing, because of Triazalom, otherwise known as Conscious Sedation:

http://jada.ada.org/cgi/content/short/137/4/502

I had one crown done last month via the same sedation method, but that was only a little over an hour and I only took two of the tablets, one at 7:00am, an hour before I was to be at the dentist's office and one more that the dentist gave me after I got there. It was great, I fell asleep, stirred a bit when he and the assistant first stuck the needle in my mouth and the last thing I remember before waking up was him saying, "Why don't you take a little nap, Susannah?" And so I did.

But yesterday, he gave me a third dose, which I don't remember taking AT ALL. And one thing I have read online about this stuff is that the results are not conclusive as to how much Triazalom is too much. In my case, I'm ok, but I don't think I was completely myself until I woke up this morning. I was walking around and talking on the phone yesterday afternoon, but I really wasn't "present".

Eating is a little uncomfortable today, I found myself chewing everything with just my front teeth. All the work is being done on molars, the only teeth I have ever had any trouble with. On the one hand, I am glad that most of the work is done, but on the other hand, both sides of my mouth feel a little beat up and one of the temporary crowns isn't quite meeting the lower one. He did know this was the case when I left, but I kind of remember him, the assistant and me all agreeing that enough was enough and he'd fit the temporary crown better another day.

Also, I remember waking up a bit because some instrument was sticking in my lip. Today my upper lip is swollen and hurts.

Geez, I hope I wasn't raped or anything!!

I am driving myself crazy trying to master these programs. Just when I think I'm doing great in Indesign, something totally confounds me (I never use that word!) and then I spend two effing hours clicking and drop-down boxing and control Z-ing and watching the tutorial I spent $100 for (discounted on ebay) and STILL not correcting the problem. Then I move on, knowing I can get back to the problem later and that it is better to just do the next necessary thing.

But what is the problem? I can see in the navigator that I did indeed place an image into a polygon--but why can't I see it?? And I placed type into a box and put color in the background, and SENT that background TO THE BACK--but it still seems to be obscurring the text!!!

AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At least I did some cool things in Photoshop today.