By a Thread

Sunday, May 2, 1999

Sorry I didn't write yesterday... it started off fairly well, and the yard sale went great, but it started going downhill quickly after that. I handled all the money and adding up purchases and all at the sale -- really surprised Mom, or so she said later -- but by bedtime, I was pretty much useless.

Why? Well, Munchie, my black cat, has been having some sort of intestinal problems lately, and last night she ran around the house, leaving messes everywhere. Mom cleaned them all up and put her in the pet taxi out on the porch, and by morning she was okay again. This has happened a few times now, but we thought we'd gotten her tummy back in shape after the last time (which was two or three weeks ago now), so it was really surprising that it happened again.

While we were out having our sale, it happened again. Mom stuck her in the carrier, and we cleaned up messes all around the house... after having taken down all the stuff from the sale, and so on and so forth. I went to take the cat some water while Mom took the sale tables we'd borrowed from the neighbor back over to their driveway, and when we cleaned up, we decided it had already been a while since it had happened, so I was a softie and I let her out, and put the dish of water in the back of the cage.

We laid in a patch of sunshine in the living room, and I worked a bit on a story, while she soaked up the sun. I thought she was okay again. But later that evening, she threw up some dry food she had eaten, and so Mom stuck her back in the carrier. I didn't realize it at the time, I thought she had just cleaned up the mess and let her go, since we're kinda used to those kinds of messes.

Several hours later, after Jev and I had talked, I said goodnight because I was tired and he was too wrapped up in TV and surfing to pay much attention to me. I was feeling low, and went out in the kitchen to make myself some cinnamon toast. Mom came out and startled me, as I was going over and over in my head that I was completely useless and that stupid hockey was more important than I was, and she said she thought I should go check on Munchie and take her and see if she would use the litter box.

As soon as I realized she was in the cage, I felt horrible. I had a feeling that she hadn't gone in without a struggle, and I was almost sure that she'd at least stepped in the water. So I went and turned on the porch light (we have an enclosed porch), and knelt down and opened the cage. She was soaked to the skin, and I knew she'd probably been that way for hours. The floor of the cage was wet; she'd turned the entire water dish over, and there was no place she could sit that wasn't wet.

I let her out, and ran to find a towel to dry her down with, and I finally did come up with one, and dried her a bit. She wasn't too happy about being 'caught' again, so drying her wasn't easy, and Mom finally got out of bed and dried out the cage (she'd only gotten up to tell me to check on the cat, and gone right back to bed), and put a sheet in the bottom so Munchie would have some protection. And I had to put her back in the cage and leave her there. I felt terrible.

I noticed my cordless phone on the table in the living room, and took that back to my room with me, knowing that Jev would probably be in bed and halfway asleep already. I decided to chance it and hop online anyway and see if I could find him. He wasn't on ICQ, but since he has a fixed IP address, I was able to call his computer on netmeeting, and sure enough he was still surfing.

I was a mess, and I tried to explain what was going on, and what I'd done, and how poor Munchie was already sick, and I'd probably just made everything ten times worse. He did what he could to calm me down and reassure me, and though I wasn't really feeling great when we said goodnight again (this time with him up in bed), I felt a little better than I had before.

I'd already put bread in the toaster when Mom startled me, but I was bawling and so upset that I just let it stay there. After Jev went to bed, I went and re-toasted it, and made cinnamon toast, just so it wouldn't go to waste. It was time for Star Trek: Voyager, so I turned that on and watched and nibbled my toast. Once in a while I'd start crying and beating myself up over everything again, but by time the show was over at 11:30, I was exhausted enough that I did eventually fall asleep.

I woke up at a quarter to five or so, went to the bathroom, and my mind started going over last night again and again, and I started crying. Now, I've lost one cat before, where Mom shut him in the cage because he was running around wetting everywhere on a Sunday night when the vet wasn't available. Monday morning, he was dead. I was so afraid of that happening again, that I couldn't bring myself to go out and check on Munchie. I just cried and pulled the covers up over my head, and tried to sleep a little more.

I finally did drift off to sleep, only to wake up half an hour later to the sounds of Mom in the kitchen, and Munchie meowing as she came in to ask me for a morning drink. I got up and went to the bathroom again, and she came with me and waited for me to turn on the faucet in the tub. She drank quite a lot, so I don't doubt that she was at least a little dehydrated. She must have puked again in the night, and not been able to find a clean place to lie, because she had spiky, gross spots in her fur, though they were all dry by now (and so was the rest of her).

Once she had her drink, I coaxed her to come back to bed with me, and she did lie down with me for maybe an hour or so, all told. At one point, I got up and found an old brush that I hadn't discarded when I was cleaning cupboards the other day, and she let me brush some of the crud out of her fur. I guess she got tired of that eventually, or just wanted to sleep without being bothered, because she got up and verrrrry carefully -- as if she was very stiff and sore -- got down off my bed and walked off. Later, I saw that she was curled up on Mom's bed, sleeping.

Mom says we'll take her to the vet in the morning. We tried calling yesterday, but there was no answer, and Mom didn't want to call the doctor's residence. Hopefully Munch will be okay until then, and then we can figure out what's wrong with her. I'm still afraid of losing her, but I'm so glad she doesn't seem to hold last night against me.

I feel like I'm such a terrible caregiver. I can't even keep a cat clean and comfortable and happy; how could I ever hope to care for another human being? I just feel prety worthless at the moment.