It all started in August of 2014. Irene thought her Mother really wanted a companion cat, and so she went out and found what she thought to be exactly the kitten her mother desired: a Siamese – Balinese cross kitten, to be exact. The kitten was to spend a day or two in isolation at our house before making the trip over to the island to live.
It didn’t work out that way…
We knew it was a possibility, perhaps even probable. But that didn’t make losing Jasmine at the end of May any easier.
Irene and I both noticed something wrong as soon as we came back from our week-long cruise. Jasmine looked “puffy” around her chest, and seemed somewhat disinterested and dull. After a few days, she seemed to be having problems breathing. An X-Ray showed fluid and a possible mass in her chest cavity. Fluid was drawn, and ultrasound performed. The mass was quite large, 4 cm by 2 cm, and looked like a tumor. The fluid drawn from the chest, which eased Jasmine’s breathing for only a day or so, was also tested: it confirmed the worse.
My previous post was angry, and looked at the worst aspects of the human animal and how some can sink to levels that might drive me to violence against them. I find it really difficult to soften my feelings towards the two teenagers involved.
I’ve been working a lot lately, scrambling to catch up with some application programming work. Part of this is a result of being behind the technological curve in terms of the particular programming environment I’m working in (J2EE/WebSphere/Hibernate/Spring). Suffice it to say I’ve been working some overtime.
Iris was spayed yesterday. I was worried about the process, moreso than for our other cats. For some reason, I have emotionally tied myself to Iris in a similar way to how I did with Whisper years ago. And Whisper ultimately broke my heart when her little body gave out after her spaying operation.
Our kittens are growing up…Nimbus goes tomorrow to have his “bits” removed.
It’s a comparatively minor operation for the male cats, with very little risk. It’s also essential if you consider yourself an even remotely responsible pet owner.
We weren’t going to adopt another cat.
You know we are in trouble when my post starts off “We weren’t going to adopt another…”. And once again, it’s Irene who wedged the chisel into the cracks in my steely resolve. There were feral (semi-wild) kittens, you see, at the rescue shelter where she volunteers. And one of them was very scared, and curled up and buried his head in her sweater and purred when she was there. And it was very sad, and very cute, and couldn’t she please bring her home?