anticipation/reflection/decision*

(*in no particular order)

monty's snoozing heavily in front of the mirrored closet door, but i'm sitting at such an angle as to obstruct my view of his reflection. it prompts me to think of the inevitable, to think that one day i will see this patch of carpet without his slumbering body camped out upon it. insert some brand of expletive here which summarizes my loathing for what cancer is doing to my cat. fuck you, cancer. seriously. sure my cat's dropped five pounds, but i'd not have wished him to lose weight this way.

one thing i fought with last week was getting him to eat. i'd leave for work lucky to have watched him down a teaspoon of food and come home to face the same struggle: my other cats, healthy (one trim, one plump), dominate at the food bowl. monty, from what i can tell, can't stand the drama. the decision i made yesterday is that, when i'm not home, i lock monty up in my bedroom with plenty of food and his own litter box. lo! it worked like a charm. food was eaten! and yet, the part of me that humanizes him wonders, "was he lonely?" chances are, no. in fact, lately his interaction with his brothers has been minimal. he eats. he sleeps. he follows me around when i am home and butts his head against my hand when i am sitting down. he purrs.

the fact that i know that i am going to lose this dear cat, that the time is imminent, is unnerving. it's made me unsettled and i feel like part of me is on pause until the day. in my head i've made the final decisions given the various foreseeable variables. it takes more energy than normal to drive things forward. i'd been dragging my feet for a month about reestablishing my writers group; tonight saw an end to that. so, good on me for that. i pat myself on the back and encourage me not to stop there.

yeah, but if i continue to talk in this manner i'm sure nothing good can come of it. i hope you see the point though...living in the shadow of things yet to come can be disabling. i'm trying to overcome that. i aim to. sometimes i will succeed, and sometimes i will not. the point is to try, and to accept, well, all of it.

rainy days and mondays

things are stabilizing with monty. his appetite is back, and after a week of administering fluids, i think it's time to see how he does without them. there's no recovery at this point, but i'm doing the best i can to make sure he's able to be himself. it's eerie to me that he has been given only a few months to live, but i see the external signs (there is some swelling in his wrist caused by bone growing where bone should not grow, and his breathing seems shallow at times because of the combination of asthma and [most likely] tumors reducing his lung capacity) and cannot ignore them.

i'm doing better with this than i was immediately after hearing the news (and certainly since my last post). i had quite a bit of down time on the weekend, but some up time as well--including getting a guitar. my friend's brother is going to give me lessons and i can feel the tips of my left hand wincing as i type this--that's after only two days of practice. yay for calluses! i wish they'd formed already, as my small hands need to practice scales to gain the kind of dexterity i'd like to have. i was a teenager last time i tried to learn to play something (piano) and string instruments have always been incredibly intimidating, so i say "bring it on!" i'll be serenading at campfires all summer. (note to self: take singing lessons concurrently)

monty

the weight of my affection hangs heavy on my heart. with tuesday's visit to the vet, you in tow, learned of things that make it both easier and more difficult to cope. with tuesday's visit to the vet, with you who let me trim all toenails in one sitting, four pounds lighter (when? i wondered...), a five-week old limp, and who suddenly ate little to nothing, vomiting or refusing food, who had asthma attacks though he was on prednisone.... all these symptoms and it wasn't until the x-rays were back-lit that i suspected something. it wasn't until the words "bad news" slipped from her tongue that i narrowed my eyes on your frame and looked for the hairline fracture or the distinct leap from bone to bone on the film. my eyes looped on the part that didn't fit, the part where part of you had been erased, so that when she said "cancer" i shook and fought to reject the truth. my eyes rested on the picture of your wrists, side-by-side, complete-and-incomplete. she grabbed a box of tissues, though the tears that were there in an instant dried up with all the questions i had.

you were better after our visit. you bathed yourself and ate the food that was offered. the food didn't agree with you though, so this morning something different was on your plate. and when i came home i saw it didn't agree with you. another phone call netted a trip to the grocery store for pepsid, and you fell for me when i opened the can of starkist tuna (you'd refused the other food i procured). you kept it down--i'm so proud of you.

so this is how the heart breaks
for a beloved feline.
i wonder how long this will last? how much time we have?
i hate how inefficiently and insufficiently my words capture it all.

ever onward

my living room floor is layers of boxes, empty and full, and documents that i've determined need keeping. i'm less and less tolerant of what needs to come with me. each time i move, it's like a shedding of skin. i peel the layers off and what i need to keep stays in tact. i've said goodbye to old letters and cards, photographs, high school trophies. i've kept a fourth of the photos i found, and intend to do something useful like put them in an album. i still can't bring myself to toss out two dozen mix tapes, though i haven't owned a working cassette player in about three years--and even back then it was in my car.

i'm sitting on a sofa i bought 9 years ago. it is in amazing condition. i'm glad it came back to me. i saw pictures of it tonight, in its youth in san clemente. it reminded me of things.

earlier today, i hired movers. as it turned out, the cost of moving all my belongings versus just paying someone to move the piano isn't dramatically different. i couldn't be more pleased. things are falling into place these days with work & now my future home. the next step is more writing. if EVER there was a New Year's Resolution, let that be mine!

pondering, weak & weary

i've been fighting off the potential cold this week, and thus far it remains only a potential. it could be really bad allergies. who can tell these days? well, not me.

tonight i cooked for the first time in about two weeks. it felt wonderful to go through the actions: a brief stop at the grocery store for a handful of supplies, then home to whip up spaghetti and meatballs. i managed to balance the entire preparation with two loads of laundry and a tubful of handwashables, so i'm feeling particularly accomplished this evening. i froze part of the sauce as my version of cooking for one never looks like i'm cooking for one. at least this time i think it'll keep. i tried to freeze part of a frittata once, and that didn't work out so well for me. at least one taste bud shed a tear as i tossed it into the trash a month later; the frittata was frostbitten, and the egg had turned a darker shade of yellow. ick.

next week i start my new position with the bank. how excited am i? so excited, i can't even tell you. plus, i'm sleepy now...

holding back, part 2

so i thought about a path that involves fewer cats. i've decided that's not what it's about. as mango lay on my pillow this morning and kneaded my head for a good 15 minutes while monty nestled at my feet and moxie licked at the water dripping from the bathroom faucet, i thought, "this is a good life i have, and what i need to stop doing is looking at my cats as an excuse not to do something: vacation, move, take a weekend away, whatever."

consider it done.

holding back

i was given food for thought this recent weekend: the same weekend i shot a rifle for the first time, and got my first bruise from the kick i felt on the second shot i took because i wasn't holding the durn thing properly nestled into my shoulder, and on the weekend where i took second place in an area contest for evaluator at toastmasters, and on a weekend where i ate at denny's because i couldn't sleep (the same denny's i went to throughout high school and the same denny's where last i dined with a crowd of current & former students for a goodbye meal with the music teacher from that same high school). other stuff happened, conversations were conversed, and let me tell you a la "the dude": new shit has come to light, man.

most of it concerns progressing beyond where i am, to grow into someone who is constantly learning and being challenged. part of that encompasses professional growth, financially stability, yadda yadda yadda--all the "grown up" stuff. other bits are more academically based, and still others are more deeply personal. so i was prompted in one conversation to look at the things that may be holding me back--to take these things into consideration and closely examine them. and three of those things are my cats.

back when i was looking at moving to new york in july, that was one thing that i needed to arrange for, and one thing that limited my appeal as a future roommate. and so i'm taking the time to just consider what it would be like to be less beholden to my cats. i don't know. i'm resistant to it. mind you, this is all hypothetical. but if i had the opportunity to place them in caring homes, could i part with one or two of them? i couldn't give up monty because he is my first, because that feels like a betrayal--a line i'm not willing to cross. the others? i just don't know. it's crazy to consider. but i'm really trying to scale back on things, and pet care/food is expensive, and i'd like to maybe have a roommate again when my lease is up so i can save more money.

yeah, i pretty much can't even come to grips with this without tearing up (also, pandora has cued up some depressing iron & wine song to accompany my blogging activities).

i'll put the query to you, readers: what are your thoughts? what could you give up if it meant that you would be less limited in some regard, if it would allow you to gain something desirable in your life? i'm not just talking pets here, the thing in question could be any number of things. how would you do it?