Splotches

Susie is just so unique, and I fell in love. Splotches all over, such character. Could not stay still for a moment.


Tonto is HUGE, badly in need of brushing, loved to be held, which wasn't easy.


They called her Oldie, the idiots. We dubbed her Wilma, and she would have sat quietly in my arms, or on my lap, for days, dignified and still.


Another one with a silly name, Biggie, climbed onto my shoulders, prompting me to get the nail clippers. He took that pretty well, they were curled right over, so much needed.


So when this man took a shine to him, since the cat obviously decided this was his guy and wasn't taking no for an answer, all went well, and without blood. I just asked that they rename the little guy - something like Tenzing Norgay or Edmund Hillary, speaking to the evident preference for high places.


Spent a lot of time with the cats today. One of the staff mentioned to L and me that they'd had to euthanize a number of cats lately, and we stopped her. We'd rather just believe they got adopted, even knowing better. It's kitten season, which is cute, but it's also the symptom of why we have more cats than we can accommodate. I know Ace, the one I got the mats out of a few weeks ago, ill, older, right before the influx of animals from the hoarder house, was no doubt one of them. And I find myself with the usual twinge of grief, as with any of my patients who died. The ones in hospice care, or the ones already brain dead whose organs we were recycling, or the occasional trauma or septic patient who didn't make it out of the OR. I've cried for every one, a few tears, then let go. Just life, which has to end after all.

And I thought about Wit. I never saw it all, and I found out about a scene later that I would have hated, so I always assume the main character dies right after this scene. She's dying, not verbal anymore, and an old colleague comes in - out of the blue, no one knows she is there. She happens to be carrying a picture book for a grandchild, she takes it out, and reads it aloud to her, and quietly leaves. No one but a dying and silent woman knows what she's done, the grace she has given, she will certainly never know how much her presence meant.

For all it's flaws, I forgave it much for that moment, one I will treasure all my life.

I feel I give those animals that moment of peace, whatever may come after. We share a space of love, when time is not relevant, not important. It's all any of us can do.