I’m in a hamster-wheel, spinning, spinning, spinning. Every day is the same, every moment a repeat of the previous. That’s how my life has felt these past eighteen months.

My partner, Sam, moved to New York City to care for his mother, after she’d fallen and it was discovered she was severely septic. She was hospitalized for over a month. Sam went to see her every other day, at first. The 90-mile drive from our home in Connecticut could be brutal. If he chose the wrong time of day, if the weather was poor, or there was a car accident, the 90-minute drive could stretch into many hours. Then add another crap-shoot-ETA to make it a round-trip meant most of the day was spent driving. How was Sam supposed to make a living? How were we supposed to have a relationship or manage our home if he was gone all the time?

After that first month, the hospital moved his mom across the street to a rehab facility and Sam continued making the trip to NYC to see her. Even though he was exhausted, and our finances were taking a hit, was by her side. Without warning, the rehab released her. We had to scramble, not sure what to do with her because she wouldn’t get the care she needed to live independently in her apartment, and Medicare would only provide a health care aide for so long.

We made the painful decision for Sam to move in with his mom to save on travel time, and so he could look after her until we figured some things out. We knew his mom did NOT want to go to rehab ever again or into a nursing home. I had to agree. The rehab place was out of a David Lynch film but, not in a quirky, entertaining way. Sam had to set up shop in his former childhood bedroom, where he'd try to work. We bought him a new twin bed, but there was nothing money could buy to help him feel comfortable returning to that apartment.

We hoped it would only be “for now.” I feel awful saying that we all thought, even his mom said as much, that she wouldn’t be with us much longer. If that was the case, then Sam should maximize his time with her and I’d stay in Connecticut to continue to operate our non-profit rescue, Kitten Associates, take care of our 9 cats, continue working as a freelance graphic designer, and take care of the house.

It was going to be tough on both of us, but frankly, in a lot of ways, it was a welcome break. We hadn’t been getting along that well for years. The constant stress on our relationship, never having a vacation in over 10 years, never even having a break for a weekend away, turned us into hamsters, spinning away in our wheels. We did what was expected of us and everything else fell to the wayside.

Our feelings for each other waxed and waned, but it eventually got so bad before Sam left, that I slept in the foster room with the cats for months rather than be anywhere near him. It got so bad I began taking a hard look at what I could do with my finances, where I could move, what sorts of home I could afford. The answer was pretty bleak. I wanted to leave, but I just couldn’t do it without seriously risking becoming homeless.

Sam’s mom falling ill helped us shift gears. The first few months of being apart most of the time, began to open our eyes. We started to see what the other brought to the table, how we depended on each other, and that no matter how bad things got, we still had a heart-connection.

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I remember the morning Sam left. It was late October 2018. I had just walked up our steep gravel driveway to check the mailbox and was now heading back towards the house. Sam was driving slowly up the driveway to exit at the street and begin his journey. We met halfway.

I looked at Sam as he rolled down the window of his car. I told him I loved him (not something I easily do). It felt like my whole world was crumbling without his support, but there was also a sense of being grateful he was leaving. We really needed a break. The only problem was, neither of us knew when it would end.

I choked back tears as Sam and I had our final kiss goodbye, but there was also a pang of guilt. I felt relieved. Finally. The balloon of stress popped. Time for peace and quiet. At first, I even enjoyed the solitude and freedom.

This was my “before” life, life before the COVID19 pandemic changed everyone’s world. Life for the past year and a half without Sam became a deep, dark rut. Feed the cats. Clean up after the cats. Make cat food. Run cats to the vet. Try to figure out what was going on with the cats. Medicate the cats. Do more test to the sick cats. Euthanize one cat. Weep hysterically over losing my cat Spencer months later, but as bad as it was, who could have predicted what would happen next?

I tried to keep the house tidy. I did some work here and there. I put seeds out for the birds. I fed myself (not very well since it was just me to feed). Though there was a sense of relief to be away from Sam, over the months there was a softening of feelings between us.

In a way, we travelled back in time to the days when we didn’t live together, when we only saw each other on weekends. Sam lived in Brooklyn with his young daughter. I lived in Connecticut. With shared custody of his daughter, Sam couldn’t see me very often. It was perfect because we were only together when we both had time to have fun. We never had to do the laundry or cut the grass or take the recycling to the dump. We went to the movies. We went out to dinner. We stayed in hotels and had..ummm…a nice evening.

While it wasn’t exactly the same, our communication was what was familiar. We spent more time texting or talking on the phone. We missed each other. We were kinder to each other. We realized we’d been taking the other for granted for a long time.

Meanwhile, Sam struggled to care for his mother. She was 89 and physically, she was in poor shape. Mentally she was still sharp as a tack, which wasn’t always so wonderful. She’d rudely point out to Sam that his belly was getting big (her words: fat). She’d climb into her wheelchair, roll it to the next bedroom where Sam fitfully slept, then rammed the door with the wheelchair and yelled at him; “Where is my coffee and New York Times?”

It was only 7:30 AM.

We both were overwhelmed by our own responsibilities. I would have a melt down about once a month. Sam did his best to come home and help out, but he could only stay a day or two. Once I stopped only thinking about myself, I began to see how my complaining left him with absolutely no space for him to manage the stress he was facing. I had to work on being more compassionate and have faith it would be okay one day. He was flirting with having a nervous breakdown from the stress. I couldn't add to that. A few months ago, I began seeing a therapist so I could learn to communicate better.

You have to understand that Sam did not have a great relationship with his mom. He was a dutiful son, but where there should be love in his heart, was only resentment. His mother never let him talk about the fact that his dad abandoned them when he was a kid. She never asked him how he was doing or seemed to care. I get it. She was a single woman with a child, trying to make a living in New York City in the 1960s and her entire family was in Arkansas (and weren't too thrilled with their rebellious daughter). It couldn’t have been easy. Sam was not in an environment where there was much, if any, love. His mother was angry, frustrated, probably scared.

She would get home from work and didn’t have much left to give to her son. He had to keep his head down, stay out of trouble. I don’t know how Sam managed to not go completely down a road that would land him in jail. He’s done a tremendous amount of work on himself over the years. I’m lucky. I get the good guy. I get the guy who cares about others, more than himself. The guy who is completely devoted to the people he cares about. While he may have reluctance to open his heart, we all do. It’s scary. But he leans in and cuts through that.

I’m proud of him, but having to face your mom, who you’re not the biggest fan of, day after day…that’s tough.

As the months passed, we both sagged in our misery and raged in our frustrations. We couldn’t travel anywhere together and it was very difficult for either of us to travel on our own. We just worked, did what was asked of us, did our best. We were both fed up, resentful and emotionally exhausted. We prayed for a break, even if it was just a few days away, but Sam’s mother continued to beat the odds (yes, it’s a nice way of saying she didn’t die).

In January of this year, Sam’s mother turned 91. We were in the midst of building an apartment in our basement for her so she could live with us. The plans were done, we had a contractor. With an apartment it meant Sam could come home full-time. The plan had been to start sooner, but we decided to put it off until after winter was over. His mother had been mostly stable (with a few more UTI/septic scares) so we thought we could delay the starting date.

In late February, Sam flew to Denver for a business trip. To say he was at the end of his rope being away from home and caring for his mother was an understatement. It meant I wouldn’t see him for two weeks, instead of the usual week separation.

I told Sam to have a good time, to take a few extra days if he could to just have a break. I was miserable, but knowing he had a chance to be happy made me feel better. He had someone caring for his mother all day long and she had been able to be on her own at night. It would be fine, right?

Sam got sick.

Sam was barely in Denver before he started to feel awful.

He was sick in a way he had never been before. He had a fever, deep cough, terrible body aches, was vomiting. He hurt so badly he could not sleep. Though he laid in bed for 10 hours, he slept for 2.

He complained bitterly about the awful hotel he was in. It was too far from any amenities and he didn’t have a rental car. I started to reach out to friends in the area to see if they could bring him to a doctor, but Sam couldn’t go. There was no time. His flight left at 5 AM.

I asked him to change his trip home and extend it out so he could recover. He tried. The airlines were not cooperative at all. The new flight would be $600 more and be a 10 hour trip instead of 7 hours (and that was bad enough as it was). It didn’t help that the hotel was horrible. Why stay?

I tried to convince Sam to at least not go back to New York City-not go back to the apartment. “Go to a hotel.” I said. “Stay away from your mother.”

It made sense, but Sam was out-of-his-mind-sick and did what we both knew was wrong. The next day he flew to New York. He barely made the drive from the LaGuardia to his mom’s apartment. I don’t know how he made it he was so ill. He knew his health care aide would take care of his mother. He was going to hole up in his room and try to sleep. His mind was spinning. He was so ill he couldn’t deal with “one more thing” and collapsed into bed. I had to wait and hope from afar that I'd hear from him soon. It was torture not being able to go to him and bring him home, but he warned me to stay away.

I know we’re going to get a lot of grief about this, but that was BEFORE social distancing, before COVID19 was spreading across the United States (or so we thought because we now know it was already here in ever-building force). He also knows not to touch things and he stayed clear of other people. He traveled with his hand sanitizer. He did his best to not make a bad situation a lot worse. Let’s not forget, clearly someone else on the outgoing flight didn’t take any precautions because Sam got sick from them.

News of COVID19 was just coming to the forefront. We were both worried about Sam’s mom but initially figured he only had “the Flu.”

Sam refused to come home; protecting me from getting sick. His home health care aide took care of his mom while Sam tried to recover. I begged him to go to urgent care and get tested for flu. He went, complaining that they didn’t take his insurance and that the Doctor would not test him saying that tests were only about 70% reliable and back then there was no discussion of testing for COVID19 at all. He was told he had the flu and go home with some medications and rest. Meanwhile, I was ordering and shipping out everything I could think of to help Sam get better, teas, homeopathy, cookies (of course), cold medicine, vitamins.

We don’t know what Sam had, but his mother got sick, too. Thankfully Sam was able to get her Tamiflu quickly and he felt she did recover a few days later. We thought the worst was over.

March 5, 2020. Sam had a horrifically painful toothache. With his immune system tanked from the flu, his face became swollen and hot from a simmering infection filling the right side of his sinuses with pus. I offered to get him a referral to a dentist in NYC. It was barely two weeks since he’d first gotten sick and it wasn’t really safe for him to come home.

But Sam was exhausted and in pain and missed the cats and missed me and was just “done.” Sam was “done” in a way I never heard in his voice before. I did everything I could to support him from afar-to soothe him and remind him it would be okay. We just had to stay strong. A little while longer. Sam decided to come home. He would see Dr. David, and me, and the cats, if only for an afternoon.

Since his mother had gotten the flu, she had become weakened to the point where she could not make it to her commode. Sam had to hold her over the chamber pot and she often couldn’t aim very well. He got the bulk of her mess on his shoes. Sam was doing load after load of laundry while he was still sick. We both realized his mother needed more care than he and his aide could provide. We knew as soon as he was feeling better that we would have to find a nursing home placement for his mother until we could finish the basement apartment.

So Sam drove home. It was the first time I’d seen him in weeks. His face was grey. It was swelled up on the right side. Though he was happy to see me, I could tell he needed a lot more than a few hours at home. He needed sleep— good sleep, not tossing and turning while having to get up every few hours to tend to his mother. It was the first time I was really worried about him having a far worse medical problem then a toothache. He still had a lingering cough. What was next?

Maybe he would have a nervous breakdown or maybe he’d have a stroke. All I knew was this couldn’t go on any longer. It had been too big of a price to pay-on our relationship, on Sam’s health, on our souls.

The infection was very serious. Dr. David suggested Sam see a dental surgeon so they could sedate him, but Sam knew he couldn’t wait. The tooth had an old root canal repair that finally failed. An infection had spread to the point where Sam would have to be on 4 doses of antibiotics a day for weeks to combat it.

He also had to have his tooth removed.

Sam held my hand during the procedure, but he was too afraid to squeeze it when the pain radiated into his head. Instead he waved his other hand, indicating when the pain was too much. It was awful. The infection prevented the numbing medication from working well. The tooth broke into a few pieces, so Dr. David had to dig and twist and yank the rest out. It took an eternity.

Once the tooth was out, Sam was exhausted. He said the pain was so bad he almost cried. There was no way he could go back to his mom’s that night. She’d have to fend for herself. He spoke to the aide with a wad of gauze in his mouth. She would hold down the fort, at least during normal business hours. I know he struggled so much with the guilt of needing to be there versus wanting to be home and just rest. We both knew that things could go sideways, but with any luck he’d be back in New York soon and all would be well.

The aide took over the next day and Sam, reluctantly left late that afternoon, making the long drive to New York City. The aide was leaving the apartment as Sam arrived. She said things were status quo and that his mom was resting. Okay, maybe things would finally calm down now.

About an hour later his mom woke up. Sam went in to her room to check on her. She was making funny sounds. He texted me about it, saying maybe he should get his mom to the Doctor the next day. I reminded him that when his mother got septic, she stopped making sense and to call 9-1-1 right away. I got a bit bossy with him about it, knowing he was reluctant because his mother was terrified of being hospitalized again and would be reluctant to go.

Sam dialed 9-1-1. Two ambulances and a fire truck showed up. One crew came into the apartment, assessing the situation. They put his mom onto a specialized chair (instead of a gurney because the elevator in the apartment building was too small for a full bed). Sam was right behind them. Just as they got into the elevator, his mom collapsed. The EMTs tried to revive her, then began doing CPR in the entryway to the building. They continued as they loaded her into the ambulance and drove the mile or so to the hospital. I’m not even sure how Sam got there.

There’s a special room right outside the ambulance bay where the EMTs and Doctors could continue their efforts to revive Sam’s mom, so they didn't have to stop doing CPR...but she didn’t wake up.

Sam texted me about 30 minutes later: “She’s gone. No cell service here.”

At 12:05 AM on March 7th, Sam’s mother was pronounced dead from a cardiac arrest.

It was a rough night. Sam was in shock, stunned at how fast his mother died after being stable for so long. He didn't want me to come to New York. He needed time to process what happened. I wanted to offer my support in some way so I stayed up most of the night making a spreadsheet/to do list of everything we were going to have to do. Twisted as it may be, I was glad my parents had died years before because I already knew a lot of what had to happen next and focusing on work kept me from falling apart.

I found a funeral home and contacted them. I began figuring out how we’d have a service, where it would be, who would cater it, what Sam needed to do (get a haircut, buy a suit, call her church…). Sam went back to the apartment in a daze.

The reality began to sink in. It was over. His mother was gone. No more worrying about her. No more criticism. No more uncomfortable silences. Though over the past twenty years she constantly called Sam to race to her side for one thing after another, at all hours to care for her, even after he finally move in with her, she never appreciated it. I know she just died. I should be more compassionate, but a flood gate of other emotions rose to the surface, too.

She never welcomed me into the family. She was friendly and seemed sweet and we got along, but I never felt included. Strangely enough, Sam didn’t feel included either. He had a painful relationship with his mother and it was over now. He was a dutiful son to the very end. No one could have asked for more.

He could come home. For good. Soon.

Sam coming home wasn’t in the way we had hoped. We wanted his mom to be with us, in her own space within our home, but it didn’t happen. We felt badly about it, but mixed in with the sadness was guilt. We felt relieved, and struggling under that was a small, fragile seedling of joy.

We. Were. Free.

We would have a proper memorial service. We would clean out her apartment. We would say goodbye with all the love and respect we could muster, and then we would go on a fucking vacation, soon.

But then COVID19 came to town.

We were able to follow Sam’s mother’s wishes by having her cremated. We were working on contacting her friends and getting the memorial service worked out, but the news was scary. COVID19 was showing up beyond China and Italy. It was in the United States. It was in New York City. Schools were starting to close in NY and our home state of Connecticut. Social distancing wasn’t the norm, but we both realized we couldn’t have a memorial service.

It seemed completely unfathomable, not only disrespectful, to not have a funeral, but most of his mother’s friends were elderly, in the high-risk group. I felt like a horrible person for even suggesting such an idea, but more and more people in NYC were getting sick.

We were probably one of the first families that could not have a funeral service for a loved one.

We just couldn’t risk it. We cancelled the plans for the service and promised ourselves that we would build a memorial web site for her for now. That maybe in a month or two we could have a proper service. We'd have to wait and see.

So we focused on getting the apartment cleared out, but Sam was heartsick and felt rushed. I could tell that he needed time to be alone with his feelings and that meant spending more time in New York to sort through what was left of the 50 years of stuff his mom had accumulated. I offered to go, to help speed up the process, but more and more people were getting sick so he urged me to stay home.

Meanwhile, Sam’s work as a web developer ramped up beyond imagination. He barely had time to grieve. One of his clients is a multi-billion dollar hospital group and of course they had a lot that needed to be done.

We kept at it as best we could. We were two days away from the movers arriving when we found out a building resident had COVID19. Sam had just been there the day before, trying to get things finalized. He came home that night and we talked. We were still allowed to come and go from the city, but social distancing was beginning as more of the tri-state area was tightening travel restrictions. Moving was considered “essential” so we could move, but…was it worth it? The tenant with the COVID19 was in quarantine, but that didn’t mean the rest of the building was safe to be in. At the time it didn’t even occur to us that Sam might have had COVID19 already.

If we didn’t clear the apartment, it meant the contents were in jeopardy. It meant paying a very expensive rent for who knows how long. It meant this wasn’t over, as much as we wanted it to be. It also meant we were risking our lives and the lives of the movers to be in such close contact.

It wasn’t worth it. We postponed the move and let the contents be. Maybe the landlord will cut us a break. I doubt it. It doesn’t matter. We have to be safe, first and foremost. The building Super thanked us for canceling. I think we were all relieved.

So Sam came home, truly home. Our short-lived feelings of freedom and joy have been replaced by frustration and anger. We both know that as crazy as all of this is, at least we’re together again. There are so many ways this could have gone so so so badly…his mother could have survived, but would have had to go to a nursing home where she might have died from COVID alone. She might have been stable, but Sam would have had to continue to care for her, then not not been able to come home AT ALL...FOR MONTHS or LONGER.

Maybe I sound like the most heartless person in the world, but I’m grateful things happened the way they did. If it was her time, then Sam’s mom did us a favor. Neither of us wanted her to pass like that, but if it had been even a few days later, we would have had a very tough time even getting her cremated! I can’t believe we live in a country where that is an issue! I can’t believe we couldn’t have a funeral. It feels as if she didn’t really die. She’s still in Manhattan. She’ll probably call to ask Sam to help her with something soon.

Sam and I went for a walk around the neighborhood not long after his mother died. We were both listening to podcasts, soaking up some sun as we walked along. We reached an area where the unruly road finally flattens out and there being only a few trees, the sky really opened up. Sam touched my shoulder to get my attention. He pointed upwards towards a huge bird soaring overhead. We stopped to watch it for a moment.

The curious thing about it was it was circling us, watching from above. I’ve walked this same path over a thousand times and I’ve never had a bird circle me. We realized it was a juvenile eagle, not yet emblazoned with a cap of white feathers. It began to fly away, so we continued our walk. A moment later it returned, flying lower, still circling. I was amazed by the sheer size of the beautiful raptor. I wondered aloud if it was a sign from his mother. Maybe she was saying thank you for caring for her or that she loved us or that maybe she forgave us for being happy to be together again.

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And what’s life like under “stay home, stay safe” after not even being around each other for nearly two years? I’m cooking. I’m baking. I’m looking after Sam. He’s helping me take care of the cats. We bought a new bed just before the big lockdown, finally trashing our 19-yr old wreck of a mattress so we're finally getting decent sleep. Though we had to give up on our very short-lived dreams of going on a vacation or moving away, we’re together, and we’re friends again, and we learned a valuable lesson. We DO matter to each other. We still want to be together. In fact, I think that’s been the theme of our entire, multi-decade relationship. We want to be together, but the timing has often been flat out terrible, yet somehow we never let it stop us.

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This morning I felt lousy. I felt hot, feverish. I’ve had a mild cough for weeks, but no idea why. I admitted to Sam I was feeling funky and he took a step towards me to feel my forehead, but I stepped back, not wanting him to be close to me if I was getting sick. Fear made my gut twist. We were busy doing our morning cat feeding/chores, but I excused myself to go take my temperature.

It was low, too low, like I have an infection or something else. I took my temperature again and it was about the same. I was relieved that I didn’t have a fever, but maybe a low grade temperature was a concern? Did I have COVID19? Probably not, but how Sam and I are coping was illustrated moments later when he came into the bedroom looking very stressed.

He furiously motioned with his hands, making a gesture as if he was taking his temperature, at the same time he struggled to get the words out fast enough. He finally blurted out; "What was the result? Do you have a fever?" I shook my head no and he quickly came over to me a grabbed my hand.

I’ve never seen him so animated before. He had tears in his eyes as he said; “I’ve dealt with terrible things in my life, I was in New York City on 9|11, the tragedy here in Sandy Hook, I saw my mother die...but this (he locked eyes with me)…you…I could not take it if…

I cut him off. I couldn’t bear to hear the words. There was so much love and grief and sincerity and passion in his words that I couldn’t let Sam finish because I would completely fall apart if I heard them. I felt the same way, too, about him. We’d been on a very long journey, finding our way back to each other, and today we reached that destination.

We’re home, at last. Now we even have to stay home, it’s the law. Through all these trials, we at least made it this far. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I don’t know if we will fall ill or die or if Sam already had COVID19 and is immune. We think that might be the case, and one day he’ll get an antibody test and we’ll know for certain.

Although my day-to-day life still has a hamster-wheel quality to it, it's a good thing. I enjoy seeing Sam every day. We now have a wild turkey that comes to visit when I feed the other birds. He makes me laugh because he "gobbles" aloud and he knows I'll stop what I'm doing and get him some sunflower seeds to nibble on. While I still have to care for my often-annoying cats, I finally have the space in my heart to cherish the comfort they give me, too. I have a great life, even if I never get to go on vacation for another ten years. I have what matters.

For the past few years I’ve been feeling like my life is flowing in too many directions, wild, out of control. I feel guilty. I need to rein it in. I’m always busy, but it seems like a constant state of busyness without a true result. Who am I? Am I a cat-blogger? Am I a cat rescuer? Am I an educator about feline wellness, behavior and nutrition? Am I a graphic designer who designs carton graphics for bobblehead boxes? Am I something else entirely?

It leaves me feeling confused and lost, afraid. I’m wasting time. I’m not young any more. I love to write, but when do I ever do it? I’ve joked about it for years, but it’s not a joke any more. I think I’m going to "die with a book inside me” (as Dan Poynter often was quoted saying). Will I ever get a book published? It doesn’t pay much unless you're a superstar, so why why do I even care?

I’m lost in a way I’ve never felt before. It’s deep and profound. I yearn to accept myself for who I am, my skills, my weaknesses, that ring of soft flab around my middle I can’t seem to get rid of, the ever-graying hair on my head. I don’t like feeling this way. I’m aware of death coming my way with every new wrinkle or visit to the doctor for yet another malady. Whatever it is I should be doing, I better get my ASS IN GEAR AND DO IT.

As a Tibetan Buddhist we call this feeling “groundlessness.” We’re supposed to lean into this uncomfortable feeling of not knowing, stifle the desire that causes us to hope for a specific outcome. Somehow we have to turn it sideways and take joy in how uncomfortable we feel. Step back. Look at it. Yeah, look at how lost and awful we feel. Yeah, it hurts, but shit, we all hurt, baby. So just be a pebble in the stream, and if we get caught up on a rock, we know the flow of life will move us along eventually. Yeah, right.

Where are the Kittens, Robin? Don’t you run Kitten Associates?

Good question.

This is the first May (and now it’s June as I still peck at the answer to this question) in over 10 years I haven’t had kittens in my blue bathroom. By now I’m usually fretting over the runt of the litter, crying that some didn’t make it, or taking cute photos as they first open their eyes or reach other tiny milestones. I’ve been a cat-mama for over fifteen years all said. I’ll never be a “Kitten Lady,” with speaking engagements and book deals and a zillion followers everywhere. Hannah's a bright flame, changing the playing field for the most at-risk animals in the shelter. My hat's off to her. Even though I know a great deal about caring for kittens after all this time, I’m never going to stand out, as much as I think I would like to or be driven to a singular cause. But having a rescue called KITTEN Associates puts a lot of pressure on me to do something kitten-related, right?

The last kittens I had in my home were in July of 2018. The mom, Matilda, and her son, Buzzbee are STILL HERE waiting to be adopted. Ugh. Stripes, Poof and Fluff joined is that Fall, but were in a different foster home and found their forever families last year.

©2019 Robin AF Olson. Buzzbee Bicklefish (and his mom, Matilda) is STILL waiting for his forever home even though his siblings were adopted LAST YEAR.

But there are reasons...

The initial reason I had to stop taking any foster cats after that was because my partner Sam’s mother, Elizabeth, fell, and then my little world fell apart along with it (I wrote about that in detail HERE). Since it was clear Elizabeth wasn’t going to be able to live on her own again, Sam moved out and has been living in NYC to care for her. That was EIGHT MONTHS AGO.

With Sam being gone, all but a day or two a week, it feels risky to take on any additional cats on when I already have fourteen I’m responsible for. It was different when Sam was home. It didn’t take an hour and a half (at least) every morning to clean up, feed and fuss with the cats, then do it all again each night. And this doesn't count time to do Vet runs, give fluids and WORK as a graphic designer.

I don't really feel free of my duties until about 11pm. It's to a point where I can feel the hamster wheel spinning and I want to get off.

©2019 Robin AF Olson. Late night with Pistachio.

I recognized last year that I was getting compassion fatigue. I didn’t care any more about much of anything. I just felt chronically fed up, angry, tired.

The grind of more than 10 years without a vacation got to me. I just wanted everyone to leave me alone and not need me for anything, just for awhile.

I didn’t take on more cats over the winter. Part of me did not miss going to the vet multiple times a WEEK. I kept searching for ways to escape, to take a BREAK, but it’s just not going to happen because who will pet sit for 14 cats?...so I just kept saying “No” to as many things as possible so I could carve out some time for myself.

What bothers me so much is not the effort it takes. I like to work. I love to rescue cats. As much as cats bug me, ruin my stuff, piss me off; they heal me, they comfort me, they are part of me.

I don’t know what to do with my rescue because I’ve finally realized that Kitten Associates is not and never will be like most rescues. I felt like a failure realizing that, but it’s also the door opening to me figuring out what K.A. really is. We're doing things holistically, feeding raw exclusively now. We educate the public, take on tough cases, help others behind the scenes by paying for vet bills or spending hours on cat behavior issues so cats don't lose their home in the first place. If I was going to grow, save as many lives as possible, I would do it. I don’t want to oversee a bunch of volunteers who will flake out on me. It’s too much extra work to oversee that. I know I have the chops to make it happen, but I don’t, because it’s just not for me to do.

I’ve seen what it does to me, to my cats, to do rescue in the first place. I’ve had a virus hit ALL MY CATS at the same time-more than once. They’ve been exposed to ringworm and all sorts of other things that even with the best hygiene and careful handling, they will still be exposed to and possibly get sickened by. Do I want to continue to do that to my cats? Two of them are over 16 years of age. And every cat I take on, means the others get less of me. How fair is that to them to keep doing this over and over again? I should turn away from rescue and just find homes for the remaining foster cats and call it a day with the 8 I call my own.

©2019 Robin AF Olson. Fluff got a wicked URI and was hospitalized for a few days. Not because he was so ill, but because my Vet was scared what rescue has done to me. He wanted to give me a break for a few days. Instead of feeling grateful, I felt embarrassed that it had gotten so bad.

But…I love to help cats and I love to help people. It’s the only way I ever feel halfway happy about my life. I love to watch kittens blossom or a cat learn to trust me so one day they can be happy in a forever home I carefully choose for them. I love it when the light comes on for someone who wants to do right by their cat and because of my help, they finally understand their cat, understand their cat’s nutritional needs, understand how their cat sees the world and it changes their life. That means everything to me. I get so energized by talking to people of all ages about cats. I could do it every day and never get tired.

But I also love doing design work. I’ve been an artist since I was a little kid. Creativity is the fuel that fires my heart. I love doing the carton graphics for Royal Bobbles. To me it’s not even graphic design-it’s art. It’s playtime plus visual storytelling that comes together to create a unique representation of that person whether it be Bob Ross or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Every carton is different and has a different style. For me it’s a joy, not work. I would never want to give that up.

Then, the Wake-up Call

It’s no secret that stress effects all of us and chronic stress can have devastating results. Some people who do rescue for a long time get so distraught they commit suicide, others become addicts. We struggle to find ways to cope when typically our resources are nil. We are givers. We are nurturers. We put others first. We do it with a brave heart and the hope that we are making a difference; we are making it better for others.

Then one day we can’t do it any more. Our bodies tell us in small ways at first. We lose sleep worrying about sick kittens or are simply exhausted from bottle feeding them every few hours, but we find a way to make it happen again and again. We give up time off because frankly if you have more than a few cats it’s not possible to go away for a long weekend unless you board all the cats or you find a miracle-person who will live at your home while you’re gone. It’s just not going to happen.

Maybe you start smoking or eat junky food to excess because there are too many other things pressing on you and you just don't have time to cook or go shopping. Most of us don’t make much of a living. It’s assumed we should not be paid for one of the most emotionally draining “careers” there is. We SHOULD be paid. We should be pampered. We should be taken care of so we can go back and keep doing the hard work most other people can’t imagine doing, but we don’t. We’re broke. We’re tired.

We gave everything we had and we're expected to keep giving.

Then the one day arrives. For me it was three weeks ago. I’d been stressed and tired beyond the “norm.” I complained to Sam on a call one night about the long separation and the stress of taking care of everything on my own was doing to me. I actually kind of pitched a fit about it. The next morning Dood, who I’ve been having serious aggression issues with, attacked foster cat Annie when my back was turned. All the stress I felt bottled up came out. I yelled at him to get into “his room” (he lives in my office behind a baby gate other than for a few hours each morning and was out when the incident occurred). He went into my office, but this time I yelled so loud and so hard, I think I broke my own heart. I began having palpitations. They didn’t go away in a few hours. They didn’t go away when I tried to relax, take deep breaths, go for a walk.

©2019 Robin AF Olson. Annie and Andy. Dood's number one and two victims.

My stomach fluttered like there was a tiny creature inside trying to get out. The fluttering made me cough. It made me feel queasy. I got really tired. I kept hoping it would go away. It didn’t.

With a family history of heart issues I got really scared. Of course, being upset isn’t going to help the fluttering go away. On the third day I saw my G.P. and she said I have PVC (Premature Ventricular Constriction). She made it seem like everyone has it and not to worry. Folks who have to deal with a lot of stress (like performers who are going on stage), will experience this, too. I was told I’d need to start a regime of beta blockers. It was used for the heart, but it was also used for anxiety. Really? Anxiety? Okay, so I’m a poor stressed out white girl or what? This is legit, Doc, not something to brush off.

©2019 Robin AF Olson. Before the doctor began to explain, it was clear something was terribly wrong.

As I always do, I read about what I was going to take before I took it. Beta blockers have serious side effects. I’ve never seen such a laundry list of side effects in my life. Most were very disturbing. I wondered how I’d manage if I had any of them. Even though the beta blocker I was prescribed was created in the 1960s, and had a history of working well enough, I still didn’t feel safe taking it. I don’t even take aspirin. I take nothing other than homeopathy once in awhile.

I was told the palpitations might go away on their own. I gave up caffeine. I tried to re-think and re-act differently to the cats, to stress. I worked on taking it easier. I took more walks. I gave it a few days and decided to take my first pill. I waited until it was a day that Sam was home in case I had problems. I took the pill at noon last Sunday. Within two minutes I got very woozy. I sat down for a time. Fortunately, the feeling went away and I thought I was going to be all right.

Ten hours later I got so woozy I couldn’t stand. I was nauseous. I thought I might vomit. I didn’t feel like my brain was working normally. Cognitive function was impaired as if I was really drunk. It was tough to talk but I managed to tell Sam I might need to go to the ER. The dizziness was severe. It was terrifying.

Supposedly the body adjusts to these symptoms, but I couldn’t believe that. I was due to take a second dose, but HELL NO TO THAT! I tried to rest while the world was spinning out of control, while my heart was flipping around in my chest, while I waited for something worse to hit me next.

Meanwhile the palpitations continued on…worse than ever.

I called and spoke with a nurse the next morning. She said of course not to take the meds and she was sorry I had side effects. The only other thing she offered was if the palpitations continued to let her know and they’d send me to the cardiologist and see if he could “figure it out.”

Great.

You’d think the meds would wear off by the end of the day but they did not. I had cognitive issues and dizziness for a week. I’m still not 100%. What the fu@k is in this stuff?! I only took a one pill at the lowest dose. There are people out there who take this four times a day. How do they function?

So here I sit with palpitations, feeling a bit woozy. A few weeks ago my dearest ex-brother-in-law died from cancer. He was two years older than I am. I can’t assume I can overcome years of chronic stress and what it has done to my body. I absolutely MUST find a way to take a break. I also need to put myself first once in awhile. But mostly I need to find answers. Maybe what it boils down to is more obvious; being cursed to not see your own value, realize the magical things you've done, while you're in the middle of doing them...and it's ok not to know what you should or shouldn't be doing as long as you're bouncing along in that stream.

…and then I went on Facebook and saw this...and everything changed...

…to be continued.

I don’t believe anyone knows how to have a perfectly functioning, completely fulfilling multi-year relationship, let alone one that lasts multi-decades as Sam and mine has. You can decide to make rules to help navigate the rough patches, so things will go more smoothly, as partners often do. You can choose to attempt the cliché commandment of never going to bed angry. Seems like a fairy story to believe that’s possible, because I’ve never been able to avoid that. It’s a great goal, of course, but the reality, I find, is quite the opposite.

©2019 Robin AF Olson. Sam and I a very long time ago at the Brazil Festival in NYC.

There have been so many nights I’ve laid in bed, with my back turned against my annoying-other while an angry silence seeps into the covers. We both pretend to sleep, proving our defiance to the other that nothing bothers us so greatly that we can’t simply fall asleep. My fear: I’m often so wound up as I lay there, at the zenith of anger and anxiety, that the least little thing will cause me to fly out of the bed into yet another rage, my truth (IT DOES BOTHER ME!) revealed. Then he will win. He always falls asleep before I do. This time I will win. I work hard to tamp my feelings down. I won’t lose this round, too. I won’t. I will go to bed angry. I WILL fall asleep!

There have been many horrible words said, accusations volleyed, declarations, and threats made over the years. There have been many times when one or both of us have given up on the relationship, followed by a painful, heavy silence that fills every corner of the house. It can last for weeks.

During this hiatus, we begin a choreographed dance, one that requires no partner. As one person enters a room, the other leaves. The goal is to avoid each other while still in the same house. We can’t afford to move out, so we pretend we just live with a ghost.

If alerted by the footfalls of said shimmering spirit, we linger in place a few moments longer so as not to cross paths with the fearsome “apparition.”

I understand why this happens, but am at a loss for how to right the ship. Yes, we have communication problems exacerbated by stress. The past few years, especially 2018, have been cursed with one thing after another. Last summer, we almost lost our home. The power got shut off once. It’s never happened to me in my entire life. It broke me. We should be better off by this point in our lives.

More than a few times last year, we weren’t sure about how we were going to feed ourselves. Add to that the pressure of operating a non-profit rescue and caring for dozens of cats, with never, ever, a vacation in nearly twenty years, and you can see why this relationship could be doomed to fail. S-T-R-E-S-S.

M-O-N-E-Y

Yet here we are twenty five years later. Sam and I broke up a few times. It wasn’t a perfect run. We dated other people during the early years, but we always seemed to find our way back to each other. I don’t know why. We’re very different. Sam says we have an unbreakable “heart connection.” I’m not sure what to say. Maybe it’s because he never gave up on us, when I have so many times before.

Just as we’ve both been re-thinking what our future might hold, whether or not we care to continue being partners, something happened that slapped us both upside the head. I’m reminded of a line Cher utters in one of my favorite films, “Moonstruck.” She scolds her newly minted lover, Nicholas Cage, to stop worrying about what anyone thinks about their feelings for each other and to go with his heart. In her words; “Snap out of it!”

Well, we got a wakeup call all right.

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“My heart aches badly from missing Sam. I’ve been crying a lot. I can’t even show him my tears. He has too much on his plate. I have to be strong for him.”

Though there has been anger and so many things gone unsaid, there’s always been a basic goodness, respect, a kindness that tips the scale in the opposite direction in our relationship. Perhaps the passage of all these years, all these challenges, has given me a gift of understanding that can be summed up in another cliché: You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.

Mercifully, Sam is NOT dead, but…

Last September, Sam’s mother fell. It was the middle of the night. She was in her New York City, upper west side, rent-controlled, two-bedroom apartment. She passed out for hours after she fell. When she awoke in the hallway, she realized her arm was injured. She was too weak to stand. She wore an alert button on a chain around her neck, but didn’t press it because a month before she’d set it off unknowingly and her door was broken down to get to her. She was fine, but the landlord pitched a fit. She was terrified they’d break in again and she’d get into trouble. So at 5 AM, she called Sam, her only son, who lives nearly two hours away, to come get her.

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This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. She’s had many chances to call for help locally, but always turned to Sam-and it’s not because they have such a close relationship.

Years before “the fall,” she called the morning we were due to visit her. We had planned to arrive early in the afternoon to celebrate my birthday and Sam’s daughter’s birthday. Instead, she called demanding we come now and not wait. She sounded very odd. She wouldn’t say why we had to hurry, just that we needed to get there right away.

We alerted Sam’s daughter since she lived a bit closer, but she had to travel on two subways, then walk a good way to get to her grandmother’s apartment. Odds were that we still might get there first. All we knew is something was wrong.

His daughter arrived a few minutes ahead of us as Sam was parking the car. She called Sam. I could hear speaking, her voice at an alarmed pitch, even though Sam held the phone to his ear. She found her grandmother lying on the sofa in a pool of blood. She’d slit up her forearms, trying to kill herself. His daughter didn’t know what to do.

Once we got into the apartment, I assessed the situation. My mother had been an Emergency Medical Technician when I was a teenager and I’d helped her study for her exams. I ended up learning a lot of basic first aid and I knew that Sam would be too distraught to think clearly, so I took over.

I calmly spoke to his mom and asked to see what she’d done. She was pale as a sheet, her flimsy bathrobe covered in gore. She lifted her left arm. It was wrapped in a blood-soaked towel. I gingerly removed the towel and saw the blood was already clotting. It must have been done hours before, but there was a great amount of blood on her and all over the furniture. I could smell it’s dank odor.

She told us she cut herself to stop the pain. Her hip hurt so badly. She’d broken it a few years before and it was surgically repaired, instead of getting a new hip. She couldn’t bear the pain so she decided to end her life. I don’t know why she didn’t tell her doctor or Sam or any of us she was hurting, or why she let it go on for so long that she felt suicidal. I hate to say this, but after all these years I have to wonder if she wanted attention. Her cuts were bad, but not bad enough to require stitches.

It had been a miserable winter, with towering snowfalls keeping Sam from visiting her. She’d become basically housebound, too afraid of falling on the ice and injuring herself. Perhaps the isolation got to her, but she never said a word about it. While I was tending to her, she said she changed her mind about wanting to die after she made the first cuts and didn’t know what to do.

Again, she never called 9-1-1, who could have been there in moments, she called Sam who was 90 miles away.

So I called for an ambulance. The EMTs arrived shockingly fast, along with 3 cops who began interviewing each of us, trying to sort out if any of us were the culprits-which really pissed me off. They were also talking about his mom as if she wasn’t there. It was terribly rude.

As the EMTs worked on Sam’s mom, they got to the point where they needed to transfer her to a gurney. All the cops were watching. She was in a BATHROBE, that’s it. It had to be removed due to all the blood on it. They had dress her in a clean gown before they left. I shouted over their chatting to be quiet and give the poor woman some respect and to turn away and keep their voices down. They stepped back and gave me dirty looks, but I didn’t care. At the time, I felt it was disrespectful to treat her that way. Now I’m not sure I have the same opinion as I once did.

We were in the hospital for about 17 hours waiting for her to be admitted into the Psych Ward. She didn’t need stitches, just good bandaging. She probably said she was sorry, but by then I was so angry I didn’t want to say more. Happy Birthday to me.

I get it. She’s in pain, but she wasn’t just suddenly in pain and suddenly couldn’t do anything about it. She knew we would be there. She also KNEW my father killed himself. Did she have any thought for what her granddaughter went through finding her? You look at this woman and think she’s a nice old lady, but I’m not buying that any more. You can be a selfish, self-centered person in your youth, just as easily as you can still be one when you’re old.

But still, I was raised to be a good girl. I got to work once we could leave the hospital and spent many days scrubbing down her apartment by myself. I didn’t feel it was right to have her son or granddaughter see all that blood. It was everywhere...in the bathroom, on the sofa, on the table, on the mail, drops in the hallway and on top of that the apartment itself was a pit. So I got to work and cleaned that, too. I never saw such grime in my life, in addition to all the bodily fluids. I wanted Sam’s mom to come home to a nice, clean place. She’d be on antidepressants for a time, during the months she was hospitalized after her suicide attempt and for some time after that, but I knew that a better environment would help her find some joy again. She was also getting a new hip.

I tried to move on from that experience. She apologized to me and thanked me for what I did, but I could never truly forgive her. I also had a suspicion she was pulling these emergencies because her circle of friends and family were dying off and she had few left. She didn’t do her physical therapy so she became more and more homebound and more and more reliant on Sam to take her to the doctor or take her to a museum or take her to the park for a walk to get some air.

All this time she knew we were struggling to pay the bills and find more clients or bigger projects so we could make ends meet. She knew it blew Sam’s entire day to run her to the eye doctor. She lives in NEW YORK CITY. She can get transport anywhere she wants, any time. She has a doorman (a nice lady named Iris). But no. Sam has to take her. At first I never said a word, but it kept going on while poor Sam was struggling to be a good son and risking losing his clients in the meantime.

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So Sam raced to his mom’s apartment once again. He got her up, checked out her injured elbow, and sat her on her bed. He asked her if she wanted to go to the hospital. Does anyone ever say YES to that?

She told him she felt tired. I texted Sam and asked him to get her hydrated. Maybe she had low blood sugar? After over 15 years dealing with sick cats I figured many of the same things applied to humans: check her temp, get her hydrated, check her pupils (did she have a stroke?), can she smile evenly, can she hold out her arms in front of her at the same angle or is she having odd mobility issues, slurring her words, etc.

He decided to let her rest awhile while he got some food for them at a take-out Chinese restaurant nearby. Sam was cross-eyed from lack of sleep, no food and stress. He figured she was all right for the few minutes it took to get lunch and maybe it would help perk his mother up to eat something. She was sleeping when he returned, but a few hours later she woke up. She began talking gibberish. This woman has always been sharp as a tack, even if her body is bent and weak. When he told me what was going on, I strongly urged him to call for help.

His mother would spend the better part of the next four days in the ER before they knew what was going on. Sam would spend most of that time by her side in the same clothes, with barely a bite to eat, or a sip of much needed coffee.

She was septic. That’s why she passed out. It was very serious. They were working on locating the source of the blood poisoning, but in the meantime she had to be on a special monitor that was only located in the ER. She rested as Sam sat in a daze watching groups of injured, drunk, crazy people file in and out of the Emergency Department at St. Luke’s/Roosevelt Hospital.

It turns out she had a Urinary Tract Infection. I’ve had that once. It was so uncomfortable I can’t understand how she didn’t know she had one. It was so bad it was making her body a toxic mess. She’s 89 years old. She only has so much ability to fight this off. Her blood pressure was low and the sepsis was making her breathing ragged and fast. We feared that maybe “this was it.” We had to prepare ourselves for what might happen next. Suddenly I felt bad for vilifying her.

I couldn’t go to the city to see Sam’s mom. I had 22 cats to care for and some of them are sick or elderly. It’s not like I can get a pet sitter and take off. It’s just too complicated and takes far longer than most pet sitters could handle, especially in an emergency with no advance reservation. My job was to hold down the fort for the time being.

And so began a painful, time consuming nightmare for Sam with repercussions that couldn’t help but effect me and the cats, too. Sam travelled back and forth to New York City every other day for the next two months to spend a few minutes visiting with his mother and to get updates on how she was doing. I made sure he was constantly bringing her treats or books to help her pass the time. I don’t know how he did it and still found a way to work.

Except the staff at St Luke’s and, then at Amsterdam House, where his mom was in rehab, were terrible. They never called us even though Sam begged for updates. I don’t know if he EVER spoke with a doctor. His mother wasn’t even sure what they were doing to her. Sam has all the legal documents to oversee his mother’s health care. It’s not as if he was a stranger trying to get top secret medical information. They just were too busy to bother and information was few and far between. One day she was in the hospital, the next at the Amsterdam House across the street (which was a miserable pit-please don’t let me ever go to a place like that!). There was no medical reason to keep her in the hospital after the first month, but she was too weak to go home. I did visit her a few times, but once I saw her in rehab I knew it was unlikely she was ever going to be strong enough to go back to her apartment.

What do we do now? None of us have much money and certainly not anything like what we’d need for her to be in assisted living. What little I could find was $5000 or MORE a month. It all depended on if she needed HOME care or HEALTH care. Home care is general help around the house, cleaning, cooking, laundry. The care-person could give a bath or shower, help with “toileting” (yikes), be a companion. Health care was much bigger bucks.

Sam and I began having difficult conversations. What if she moved in with us? Could we provide for her? Could we do it if someone came in to help her get bathed and check her vitals? I’d have to lose two of my three foster rooms. I’d have to empty out our guest room, which is my one space where no cats are allowed so I can safely store family heirlooms somewhere. Sure, I could get a storage space, but it would take more money that we don’t have, more time away from billable hours having to pack her up, pack up our stuff, move it all, move her in, and we’d lose our privacy completely because we live in a wide open, contemporary house.

My biggest fear of all-would she trip over or step on and kill one of our cats. They always flop at our feet. We step out of the way. She can’t. She can’t do stairs. We could put her in the guest room and she’d have the guest bath down the hall. I’d have to find placements for some of my foster cats, which I really do not want to do. I might even have to shutter doing rescue at all. How much work would it take to provide care for this woman? How much of our lives do we have to sacrifice for her? This is a person who has never treated me like a family member, someone who has been polite and friendly, but that’s about it. Now I have to face she may move in one day.

We had more questions than answers, but there was one thing that was starting to become more clear. Sam and I were working like a well-oiled machine. I made a big “to do” list on Google sheets. We talked and talked and talked about options and how we could make this or that work, all while not having a shred of an idea on what was going on with his mom. Sam made calls, did research. We had meeting after meeting about what to do.

Since Sam had to be gone so much, I took over more of the responsibilities at home. I also tried to help make it easier for Sam to come home and focus on his clients and nothing else (okay he had to give my cat, Spencer, fluids, but that was it). I wasn’t going to be a bitch about this even though it was screwing our lives up big time. I knew it wasn’t forever. We repeated our newly minted motto: “It’s just for now, not forever.”

That’s how Sam worked up enough strength to keep going back and forth to the city even though his car was making loud clunking sounds and he couldn’t afford to get it fixed. He just had to hope it would make the trip (which drove me crazy with anxiety every time he left the house---would he make it there? Would he make it home?).

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Then late in October, the call came we both feared. A social worked called to say that Sam’s mom was being released the NEXT DAY and that could he come get her.

THE NEXT DAY?!!

Once again, I shouldn’t be surprised this happened. The staff at Amsterdam house didn’t give a shit. They did what they were supposed to do according to some bullshit rules we weren’t privy to, instead of be thoughtful or caring or smart. Time was up. We weren’t getting a reasonable warning she was being released. It was THEIR choice. Sam’s mom’s health coverage HAD NOT run out. They didn’t feel they could do any more for her so they were letting her go. Our hand was forced.

With no notice, we both knew that Sam was going to have to move in with his mother until we could sort out what to do next. She could not live alone. We both got to work trying to figure out what Sam would need so he could live and do his work in NYC. Then we had to figure out how we were going to get the apartment cleaned up and ready in time.

The next morning, the social worker called again; this time a reprieve. Sam’s mother had a bloody nose. They were going to keep her for another day or two and run some blood work. They moved her over to the Emergency Department at St. Luke’s. Really? The E.D. for a bloody nose? Okay. We had a few more days. We could get better prepared. She had another urinary tract infection!

So I did a mad shopping trip at Target getting bedding and other items for Sam. The cashier, who had no filter on his thoughts, went on and on about the items I was purchasing as he scanned and bagged each one. He wanted to know what all of it was for. I explained that I was helping my boyfriend move out. He found it very entertaining. I was polite, but behind my stiff smile, I wanted to reach across the counter and smack him for being so inconsiderate.

The next day, Sam and I bee-lined down to NYC and started cleaning yet again. For seven hours I cleaned non-stop and all that I got done was Sam’s childhood bedroom was clean enough for him to be able to move in. Sam got busy scrubbing the grime out of the kitchen and we both handled as much of everything else that we could tackle. The place was a mess even though I’ve periodically cleaned. It just wasn’t enough.

It was good that we were so busy, because every time I had a few moments to think, the realization hit me; Sam was moving out in another day or two. I would have to take care of all the cats alone, including giving my cat, Spencer fluids. Not a big deal unless you understand that I hate sticking my 17-yr old cat and I’m so anxious about it, I feared Spencer would react badly. If I failed him it could prematurely end his life. NO PRESSURE!

I’d also have to take care of the housekeeping, do all the things Sam used to do, plus work, plus try to keep Kitten Associates going.

I was going to live ALONE for the first time in 15 years.

It was going to suck for both of us.

By Saturday, October 27th, we knew that Sunday was going to be the big day. Sam would have to head out to drive to NYC to pick his mother up and bring her back to her apartment. It was the official start to us living apart. That night we held each other tight, while the cats seemed to sense what was going on, most of them were huddled on the bed with us, too. I didn’t know how I was going to sleep without him there. I confessed that even though I’ve lived in our house for over 25 years, it creeps me out to be here alone at night. The cats always seem to get spooked by something I can’t see. I used to like being on my own. I didn’t know how I’d fare now.

Sam admitted that he didn’t want to leave. He was starting to realize that although he’d been mighty unhappy lately, the idea of moving away made him start to see that it wasn’t all bad. A surprising amount of tenderness blossomed between us as we talked about our fears that night. He hadn’t lived in his mom’s apartment for over 30 years. How would he adjust to being back in the City?

It was time. Sunday morning. I kept myself busy, fussing with the contents of Sam’s trunk. Did he have everything he needed? We’d already moved a lot of items into the apartment. This was the last load. He’d let me organize and pack up all his stuff into as few armloads of items as possible. I love to organize things, plus it kept me out of his hair. He’d be stuck using street parking, which meant he’d have to follow the ever-changing rules that required cars be moved every day or so from one side of the street to the other. It was a huge pain in the ass. Even finding a spot near the apartment building was a crapshoot. I hoped he’d get a spot close by so he wouldn’t have to take a long back-breaking walk to get his belongings to his mom’s place.

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There have been many times I wished Sam would drive away and never come back and now he was doing just that. I didn’t want him to go. He promised he’d come visit as soon as he could, but it would only be for a few hours, tops. He was going to be New Yorker now. I didn’t know when I’d see him again. I had to suck it up. I had to be strong.

As Sam pulled his red Subaru out of the garage, I walked up the gravel driveway to the mailbox to get the mail. He was starting to make his way out of the driveway and would pass right by me as I walked back down towards the house. As our paths met, he rolled down the window for one last kiss goodbye. I saw the look on his face, I’m sure my expression mirrored his own grief and heartache. I tried to smile. I gave him a quick kiss. I said rarely uttered words; “I love you.” He said nothing back. (He later told me he was so choked up he was speechless.) I walked away as fast as I could.

I heard the sound of gravel crunching under his tires stop. It meant that Sam’s car was at the top of the driveway, turning onto the paved road. I couldn’t look back. I made it into the house and shut the door behind me before I fell to my knees and burst into tears.

Sam was gone.

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Sam’s been gone for nearly five months. It hasn’t been easy for either of us, but we’re both finding something surprising in all this difficulty: we’ve re-kindled what we lost so long ago. Love.

We can’t get in each other’s hair. We see each other usually once a week. Sam can even stay overnight some times. Our visits are filled with errands, but it’s ok. Sam got a huge project and that took a tremendous amount of stress off us because they pay their bills. His car is fixed. He even got his broken tooth taken care of. Though Sam is worn down from his mother being “his mother” (like using her wheelchair to ram into his bedroom door at 7:30 AM to wake him up so he can get her coffee and her New York Times newspaper), he also has admitted something I never thought I’d hear. He misses our home in the woods. He appreciates our life here and even having a garage to park in. He never was a big fan of living in Sandy Hook because he was used to being able to walk to a café, have coffee, and watch the world go by or pop into a museum or be surrounded by culture. That’s all wonderful and I enjoy it, too, but I always felt he lived here just to be with me. Now he sees his life from afar. It wasn’t so bad after all. He no longer feels smothered by it.

And I’m doing well, too. Okay, I talk to myself a lot. I’m not often around humans, but that’s fine with me. I worked up the courage to give Spencer fluids and now I’m a champ at doing it. A few of our foster kittens have been adopted so I’m down to a more manageable number of cats, but it still takes way too much out of my day to clean, make cat food, give fluids and meds, and just keep an eye on each of the cats, then work, etc.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Petunia and her mom, Gracie were part of the first kitty-family I ever fostered 15 years ago. This is my last photo of her before we had to put her down.

There have been darker times, too. Especially when one night in early December, my 15-yr old cat, Petunia slipped trying to make an easy jump onto her cat tree. She was usually not happy being picked up, but this time I decided to do it. As I reached under her to lift her, the second I put my hand on her ribcage I felt a huge, hard mass. The next day Dr Larry did x-rays. Petunia was loaded with cancer. It was terribly shocking and heartbreaking. She was supposed to see a specialist the following week to have a challenging dental procedure done. She’d just had an exam the month before-no sign of any masses. I had no idea she was so sick, so fast.

I had to put her down. Petunia was too far gone to even try steroids or chemo. I had to help her pass without Sam there to say goodbye. Sam couldn’t make it. I hated his mother for keeping us apart, yet again, as I held Petunia in my arms for the last time.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Goodbye my sweet girl.

But the gift this lesson has taught us is that we do still love each other. Sam has been incredibly sweet and attentive. It’s not like before, when I felt like we were two strangers living in the same place, or worse, just roommates. It’s surprising that those warm feelings are still there. They were always there, we just needed some space and time apart to re-appreciate our relationship.

Sam’s mother just turned 90 years old. We have no idea when Sam will come home again. Part of me is afraid it will go back to the way it was when he returns, part of me wants this separation to keep going. It’s been so romantic. I missed that feeling of longing, but I also miss the warmth of his body next to mine, hugs, the smile on his face when he looks at me. He’s happy to see me again. It fills my soul.

We got to see what life is like without the other one in it. I’m left feeling both terrified and grateful for this lesson. One day we really will be separated forever. I’m not being dramatic, I’m being factual. One day we won’t have another chance or another day. Before that day comes, we need to cherish what we have, right here, right now, and focus on the love we have that has kept us together all these years.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Sam and I take a break to have lunch by Long Island Sound to celebrate his birthday last June.

2017 was a lousy year that followed another lousy year (2016). That I’m alive and have a roof over my head sort of surprises me. I’m VERY GRATEFUL for what I have, so grateful. I’m lucky, even with very serious financial problems because it could be so much worse. I feel for the millions of people who lost their homes this past year due to floods, fire, hurricanes, tornadoes…not to mention all the suffering caused by social upheaval, reports of rampant sexual abuse, and the fears stemming from the actions of the so-called leadership of our precious country.

January

Annie, one of our Kitten Associates fosters, fell ill yet again. She’d been punky after recovering from intussusception surgery in October of 2016. Even though Dr. Larry said she looked good, I pushed to do blood work. It revealed Annie was seriously anemic, to the point of an Internist feeling she might have lymphoma. I asked if we could treat her for my nemesis, Bartonella, because there are some forms of the infection that cause anemia. We couldn’t re-test her so we tried a new treatment. Within a few weeks and some TLC and vitamin B12 injections, Annie bounced back and regained her good health, but just as she was recovering I got a disturbing call.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Fly Free sweet Lady Saturday. We miss you so much.

Lady Saturday was ailing. She was skin and bones. I didn’t know. Our foster family called and said she needed to see the Vet. She’d been pretty weak and eating a lot less. When Dr Larry saw her, he was shocked. She only weighed 4 lbs and was near death. We didn’t know how old she really was, but we knew she’d had kidney issues for the nearly two years she’d been part of our foster program. She’d gotten fluids, a heated bed, good food, supplements, but we couldn’t cure old age. On January 16th we said goodbye to our sweet girl.

With all of that going on, my cat Petunia began having focalized seizures. We didn’t know the source even after taking her to a neurologist. We started her on Phenobarbital in the hopes it would give her some relief, but did she have cancer? Would she eventually have a grand-mal seizure and I’d come home to find her dead?

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Petunia is doing better these days and no longer needs medication to control her seizures.

The year wasn’t off to a good start, but thankfully it was pretty quiet as far as rescue went. After years of saying I was taking a break from taking on kittens, I decided I would really do it. Then I saw a post online about a huge feral colony in Waterbury, CT. Over 50 cats were struggling to survive and were breeding out-of-control. Read about the first cat we rescued HERE along with follow up stories them HERE and HERE) While doing TNR (Trap, Neuter, Return) isn’t my forte, I thought I could help raise funds for these cats and do some social media outreach.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. My first sighting of the Waterbury Ferals.

My mistake…I decided I had to go to the location to see for myself what was going on, to take some photos, then start raising money for the #Feral50 #waterburyferals. Once I saw a horrifically sick cat, I knew I had to get more involved. I had no idea that instead of taking a break, I was going to be busier than ever for the sake of these cats.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. This little sweetie is feral. She was eventually named Tulip and was the first cat trapped. You can read about her story HERE.

February

I pushed the limits of what I could handle and was pushed beyond my limits by another volunteer who worked doing some of the trapping of the feral cats in Waterbury. The things I saw, some cats barely clinging to life…I found placements for 10 cats, but it wasn’t enough. I had to do more and more and more until February 13th when I ended up in the hospital during a snow storm. I was diagnosed with an ulcer, along with an anxiety attack that I was certain was really a heart attack in disguise. The stress was just too much.

But in rescue "too much" always ends up becoming "just help one more." I decided to take on a pregnant feral from the Waterbury colony.

It was very risky, because I didn’t know what I was going to do with her after the kittens were born and weaned, but as so many other rescues, I just took it one day at a time. Solve one problem at a time-that’s the key. The cat had been named Waverly. She was covered with oil and metal dust. She was too dirty to give birth, but we have a great foster mom who is gentle and patient and who was able to wipe Waverly down every day until Waverly was clean enough to give birth-and just in time, too. By the end of the month, Waverly had given birth to three kittens. Sadly only two of the three survived. I knew that if we hadn’t taken Waverly on none would have made it.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Happy Birthday Willoughby and Weatherby!

I’ve come to the understanding that in rescue you shouldn’t try to do everything. Rescue the kind of cats you can handle and do your bit. Other people, who are great at things you may not be so great at can do their part. It all adds up to be much more effective than trying to take on more than you can handle and getting sick from it. What I learned is that I am not cut out for TNR. I want to give every cat a chance to become socialized. There isn’t time or space to take that on.

While I respect every cat who just can’t become social kitties, and I will return those cats to the outdoors, it kills me because I know their future will be very difficult, even with a great caretaker looking after them.

Meanwhile, Spencer had a re-check of his blood work because in late 2016 we found out his kidneys weren’t working very well. The new test results showed us that Spencer might only have a few months left because his values changed for the worse, so very fast. We were to start him on fluid therapy and see how he did in 6 months.

March

Things started looking up. I was a Guest Speaker at the first ever, Cat Camp NYC. I had a blast, made new friends and saw some of my most cherished cat lady friends. It did my heart good to be reunited with them and energized me for Kitten Season, which was right around the corner.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Artist Cathi Marro (left), Me and Jodi Ziskin of Treatibles (right)

We took on #FairfieldCountyGives and had our best fundraising day ever, raising over $3500 in a single day-most of which were $10 donations. We’d be ready to take on kittens, but where were they?

I got an email from a guy who asked for cat behavior help with his 5-month old kitten, Holly. She’d been peeing on the family beds. The guy turned out to be musician and songwriter, Stephen Kellogg. What transpired next even surprised me. You can read about this crazy trip in these stories HERE (including links to all 5 chapters). I’m glad to say that after all the trials and tribulations that Holly is in her home and that Stephen has become a good personal friend and newly minted Cat Daddy.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Stephen visiting Holly while she was here being evaluated for behavior issues.

Weird April

I wasn’t getting calls about kittens. It was very strange. Then I thought about why it might be so quiet. We’d had a very mild January giving intact cats plenty of time to become pregnant, but in February we had a few brutal snowstorms dropping a lot of snow. I didn’t want to imagine it, but I started to believe that perhaps a lot of kittens just didn’t make it and that the “season” would be starting later in the year.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Will Bills was a bit too wild for Bill.

For once I got out on my birthday for a short road trip and lunch at O'Rourke's diner. We stopped at a crazy place called Wild Bill's. The namesake and owner was there as we strolled down the aisles. I didn't think he looked so hot. I guess I was right. He died a few days later. I couldn't help but feel like I better not take having another birthday for granted.

May

Ah, Stormy; a purebred Russian Siberian cat whose owner really was allergic to her entered the picture in May. Her mom, Kim, was sick all the time and though she felt terrible about it, she needed help getting Stormy a new home. The problem was, Stormy was not very nice. I thought it might be due to her being declawed. Perhaps she was in pain? So we did a lot of tests to see if that was the problem.

The bottom line was I promised to help find a home for this 9-year old aggressive cat, but how was I going to pull it off?

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Stormy.

I found what I thought was a good home in Boston, but the people were terrible, fearful, posers. A few weeks later they brought Stormy back to Kim’s where I was under even more pressure to find Stormy a placement because her home was about to undergo a serious renovation and they’d have to put her in a boarding facility if she stayed much longer. I honestly didn’t know if I’d ever be able to find Stormy a home. I even tried to get a breeder from the CFF Cat Show, where I took part as a guest judge, to take her on, but with her anger issues it was a lot to ask.

June and July

I wasn’t going out of my way to find kittens to rescue since I never got a break over the winter, but then I got a call from my friend Joan. She told me one of the shelters down south had 65 kittens. They were going to start putting them ALL DOWN in 12 hours. Could I take even a few? She’d foster for me and even go get the kittens.

I decided to take 6 kittens, which turned into 8, except that they counted wrong and there were twins so 8 became 9 and I got another rescue friend to approve taking 3 and somewhere in the middle of that Moe, our other southern foster mama asked me if I could take just one more to make it 13 kittens.

Yes. I’m insane.

I nicknamed the group, the #SweetSuperheroes. If only they had lived up to their name. I wrote about what happened to them, how it broke me in ways rescue never broke me before, but I never published what I wrote. I may some day reveal all the details when I feel I can tell their story without it wrecking me.

In a few words, it was our first experience with Feline Panleukopenia. Within the first week, two of the kittens were dead and the threat of many more hung over us as poor Joan feverishly scrubbed and cleaned, while I spent thousands of dollars on vet bills, cleaning supplies, cages, food and litter for the remaining kittens.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Some of the kittens we rescued. Thankfully, our offering to take so many inspired other rescues to take kittens, too so a majority of the kittens made it out alive.

Some of the kittens were in isolation at the vet in Tennessee, while some remained at Joan’s foster home. We both did as much as we could to get the survivors healthy for the long transport to Connecticut, but in all honesty I did not want to bring them here at all. I was terrified my cats would get sick.

I’m not a fan of the FVRCP booster vaccination, but we had to make the difficult choice to booster most of our adult cats right away because there is no definite period of time for how long kittens who are exposed to PanLeuk are still contagious. To be safe, the kittens were isolated for 6 weeks, which ruined their window of adoption by a great deal, but I also didn’t want them here if there was any chance at all they’d sicken my cats, too.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. In honor of Super Nibs, who died from PanLeuk. You are forever in my heart. I wish you had a chance to grow up and find your forever family as your siblings did.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. and Major Muffin. He died so fast there was nothing we could do to save him from the ravages of Panleukopenia.

I spent most of the end of June and into July crying, worrying, researching PanLeuk and trying to prepare things here for their arrival. It was the first time in years I dreaded taking on more kittens.

Stormy was proving to be a tougher case than I imagined. The shocker, what I realized much later was that Stormy had reverted to being feral from not being handled for many years. She wasn’t in pain at all.

Because she had to be moved into the in-law apartment in the home and be in close proximity to her family, Stormy ended up getting handled more and sure enough Stormy became friendlier. So friendly that a lovely lady named Annabelle flew to Connecticut from Philadelphia so she could adopt this magnificent cat. They’re doing great and Stormy no longer lives up to her name.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Stormy says farewell to her sweet mom, Kim and hello to her new mama, Annebelle.

August

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Leslie Mayes gets ready to interview us for #CleartheShelters.

My rescue took part in #CleartheShelters, a national program to help pets get adopted in a 24-hr period. We were off to a great start because Heidi Voight, journalist and Anchor on the local NBC affiliate came over to interview me and meet the #SweetSuperheroes. We did an hour-long live Facebook event and I think we were in the news about 10 times over the next few weeks.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Ready for their big adoption day, most of the Sweet Superheroes.

The problem was, we didn’t have a shelter to clear, so that meant doing an adoption event at Watertown BMW. Being surrounded by $100,000 cars and anxious adopters and yet more news media was literally a crazy ride. The folks at Hoffman Auto Group BMW were awesome, but some of the potential adopters left something to be desired…yes, screaming kids, demanding kids who wanted a kitten “RIGHT NOW” and unapologetic parents shocked and angry with me. They asked why I would deny their application to their face when the dad would declare they would let our kittens outside even after the mom hushed him and said “They don’t allow going outside. Don’t you get it?” Followed by "dad" getting so angry I thought I was going to have to call the police.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. The Kitten Associates, associates from left to right: Grace, Me, Sam, Adria, Jame and Frances.

Thankfully, one kid was nice and his parents were just as sweet. They saw a poster of Buddy and Belle, my ex-boyfriend’s two cats. They’d been in our rescue for almost a year with not one application for their adoption and they would be too scared to be at the adoption event so the best I could do was have a poster advertising them.

©2017 Kathleen. Buddy & Belle in love with their new mama.

I told the lady their story and she was smitten. A few weeks later, Buddy and Belle were adopted. Her new mom says it’s like they were home from the second they arrived. They’re doing great and the new joke is her son likes to blame things he did on the cats.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Poor Fluff Daddy!

And then Fluff Daddy got really sick, really fast...Horrible, bloody mushy stool. I was terrified it was PanLeuk. How did he get it? He had to be confined to a cage, then a few other cats got very mildly ill. Tests came back positive for Giardia. How could he get it? Guess what I didn't know? Adult cats can have chronic episodes of it or it can be intermittent! Gah! It's really contagious, but thank God it wasn't PanLeuk.

Shitty September

The brown month. Diarrhea. Kittens with diarrhea. Kittens squirting the walls, floors, bedding, pretty much everywhere but the litter pan, with stinky, pudding poo. I could not get most of the foster kittens to resolve their runs. We did so many tests and trips to the Vet followed by a zillion de-worming protocols and found NOTHING.

Joan had warned me about Tritrichomonous Foetus. It’s pretty much impossible to test for, though we did do a PCR fecal test (negative) and treatment can cause neurological damage and may not even work. I was to a point where I didn’t want to go into the foster room because it would take over an hour to clean it every time I entered it. I was so angry and frustrated that I imagined kicking the kittens outside, but I would NEVER DO THAT EVER. Instead I just cried as I scrubbed the floor yet again. The kittens were oblivious to my suffering. They were not sickly at all, unless you counted them leaking stool out of their rear ends while they were playing.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Yes, it's poop. The poor kittens couldn't have much of anything soft in their room because it would get filthy so quickly. I don't think any of us got any decent rest that month.

I put the cats on a raw diet. They got better quickly, so as the kittens got adopted, their new families had to promise to keep them on the raw diet. So far, so good.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. The good with the bad...de-wormer for the kittens first followed by a freeze-dried chicken heart treat.

The highlight of the month was my play date in NYC with Mario Arbore who is an architect by day and fantasy cat furniture designer by night. I can’t do better than to have a buddy who builds cat furniture, right? His business is called Square Paws (humans measure space in square feet, so Mario’s coined the term “square paws” to indicate how cats measure space).

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Mario putting the moves on Fluff Daddy.

Mario had been graciously helping me design a brand new foster room for Kitten Associates. We’d bounced a few ideas around over the summer that were truly inspired. The main foster room in my home is totally run down and I want to create a showpiece for our kittens and to allow us to increase adoptions and have a safer, more entertaining home for our fosters. Mario is incredibly creative and though our workload has prevented us from locking down a theme, I hope we’ll get there in 2018.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Uncle Mario surprised Fluff Daddy and the rest of the kitty-clan with a hand-built giant mouse trap for our cats! Check out more of Mario's wild designs at Square Paws.

October

The Big Chocolate Show returned after being on hiatus for a few years and boy was I happy it came back. The show was fantastic. I learned that there’s some kickass chocolate coming from Ecuador and that I will eat as many samples of chocolate as the vendors will hand out.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Thank God for chocolate.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Thunder Cake and Wonder Waffles get adopted together!

With Buddy, Belle and many of the kittens adopted, I took time to focus on trying to make a living and for a quick escape to New York City!

©2017 Robin AF Olson. I actually left the house! Here I am at NY ComicCon where I got to meet one of my idols, Bob Camp, who did the animation art for Ren & Stimpy. I also had a chance to get back to work as a Graphic Designer. I love working with Royal Bobbles on their carton graphics for the main cast of Better Call Saul.

I also had the honor of creating the carton for Bob Ross, the afro-hairdo-headed painter who had a show in the 1970s on PBS that’s in re-runs on Netflix even today.

To see more examples of my design projects, visit Ultra Maroon Design.

The biggest thrill was having a chance to design the new cartons for over half a dozen of The Walking Dead figures. Those designs are still in development so I can’t show them, but I’m crossing my fingers they’ll be greenlighted into development in 2018. The only problem with this project was I felt I needed to watch all 8 seasons of TWD so I could do a better job with the design. It’s a compelling and interesting show, but watching the entire program over the course of a month left me feeling a bit paranoid. I had to fight off the urge to strap a weapon to my leg when I did a run to the grocery store.

November

Waverly found her forever home with a retired couple named Molly and Sam. I was thrilled that the cat we feared was feral was really just a sweet, mild-mannered lady. Her kittens, Willoughby and Weatherby were adopted together over the summer.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Dear Waverly with her daughters.

Then one night, just before Thanksgiving, my dear 16-year old cat, the Mascot of this blog, Spencer vomited. It was a lot of food. He sounded like he aspirated some of it. Normally I’d wait it out and see how he did, but something told me to go to the vet right NOW because they were going to close soon.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Waverly on her Gotcha Day with Sam & Molly.

Dr. Mary found a big mass in Spencer’s abdomen and feared it was an aggressive cancer. So began our journey of tests, scans and treatments until we realized that the next step would have to be surgery or palliative care and prepare to say goodbye. We'd already lost 4 cats in 2017. I prayed there wouldn't be another.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. The x-ray that changed everything for Spencer.

December and Beyond

Every time my cats get really sick, I get sick with worry. I try to take a breath, have faith, focus on my cat, but I often find myself not sleeping, not being able to concentrate on work and wanting to bury my head in the sand. But it was Spencer. I had to face whatever it was. I had to face that maybe this was it and I had to face that I couldn’t afford to provide surgery for my beloved cat even if there was a chance it could give him more time.

I almost didn’t ask for help, but in the end I did do a fundraiser. Thanks to A LOT of REALLY REALLY REALLY AWESOME people, we raised just enough to have the surgery done. I still can’t believe it happened at all and am blown away that we got the funds together in just four days.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. What do you mean SURGERY?!

Now that I had the funds, I had to decide for sure if we were going to move forward because there were lots of risks involved and quite a few could happen after the surgery was over.

On December 5th, Dr. Weisman removed a 6cm mass off the very tip of Spencer’s pancreas. The amazing thing was it wasn’t cancerous, but there WAS small cell lymphoma found in other areas. It’s extremely rare that a cat has a benign mass like Spencer’s and I was so grateful, because those sorts of masses often are very aggressive cancers and lymphoma is slow-growing. At the time, I didn’t know if removing the mass would help him, but now, a month later, I can say that Spencer is so much better that he often surprises me.

He’s had a lot of ups and downs and I have to carefully monitor what he eats because he did get pancreatitis after surgery. He’s eating all right, not quite enough. He’s given me some very bad scares, like trying to eat cat litter when he got badly constipated and was battling anemia (He lost a lot of blood during surgery and I read that cats who lick cement or cat litter often are anemic.).

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Doing well and I am oh so very very very grateful to have this extra time with my boy.

We recently did new blood tests to confirm the pancreatitis and anemia and were surprised to see Spencer’s kidney values had improved some.

Today, Spencer’s getting up the stairs to come to bed and tuck me in just like he used to do. He’s also smacking foster cat Andy in the face and chasing after toys. He LOOKS better. His eyes aren’t so sunken. He’s grooming himself more. I honestly am completely thrilled to see him like this.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Naked belly requires a heated bed for full napping comfort.

It’s time to start him on Chlorambucil, a form of chemotherapy that we hope will retard the growth of the lymphoma and help him feel even better. I already have him on CBD Oil, which may also help and will certainly keep him comfortable even if it doesn’t effect the cancer. I’ve decided to put off starting him on prednisilone because it IS a steroid and Spencer’s oncologist is ok with not using it right away. I’m hoping the CBD oil will take the place of the pred for now. Why? Because steroids really do a number on the body and I’d rather help give him vitality and protect his failing kidneys for as long as I can.

Needless to say, with all the vet runs and care Spencer needed, Christmas cards didn’t get printed and I didn’t do much to plan for “the day.” Somehow it was still a really nice holiday, aside from all the guilt I had for not getting everything done and for not being able to buy presents for anyone except Sam.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Our Holiday e-card.

Sam and I have had one thing after another go wrong with our finances and honestly I’m terrified that if things don’t improve we will lose our home. We’re trying to keep the faith and we’re both working as hard as we can. So many people have it far worse off than we do, I can’t complain. I’m happy I have a home, it’s not on fire or swept away by a hurricane. I have my dear cats, as much as they often annoy me, they’re still one of the few reasons I get out of bed in the morning.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Bye bye Sprinkie! I'm going to miss you!

And I’m determined, after nearly eight years of constant fostering, to take this winter off and focus on work and getting funds for Kitten Season. The other cat rescue in town surprised everyone by deciding to close after many years.

Their reason, they aren’t needed any more, which is completely absurd. They spun it into making it sound like they solved the feral and free-roaming cat problem in Newtown so they can look like heroes and get out of doing rescue any longer. It just puts a bigger strain on Kitten Associates so we’ll need to ramp up.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Macaroon is a total goof head who loves to fetch her pom pons. Her new family promised to make sure she has as many pom pons as her heart desires.

I expect 2018 to be very busy for us as we shoulder more responsibility in helping local cats, but in a way I’m excited for the challenge and crazy as it seems, I really do miss having little ones here.

Here’s to 2018. May we all have a safe, loved, prosperous and Happy New Year!

Oh, and the last two kittens from the #SweetSuperhero rescue were adopted just after Christmas. Congratulations to the Mighty Macaroon and Professor Sprinkles!

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Last night Mackie and Sprinkie met their new family. Here's Suzanne and Maddie, totally psyched to have their first kitties ever!

-----------------A few hours later------------------

….I just got a text message…“Robin, I just found a kitten. Can you take him?”

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Uh oh...

(continued from ch. 1 and ch. 2)

For a long time now I’ve had this calming feeling as I take my walk around the neighborhood. I’m enchanted by the wind as it scoops up the dried autumn leaves causing them to swirl and dance, and equally charmed by two squirrels who playfully chase each other across a well manicured lawn. I hear birds chirp merrily along as I see their silhouettes on a sun-kissed branch. It reminds me that I’m part of all these things and we’re all part of something much bigger.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Another day, another walk.

On a deeper level, I feel a state of interconnectedness that has no sense of time. It just is. It is just now, but it also feels like all of it has already happened, will happen, is happening. It’s a very big feeling in my soul that as I take another step I’ve already finished my walk, it’s another day, it’s the first time I tried to take a walk and could only walk to the top of the driveway, it’s years from now when I can’t walk any more. It’s not a sad feeling. It feels full, like I don’t have to worry about Spencer because in each breath he’s just being born or has already passed away or is purring on my lap all at the same time. It’s fluid, not tangents on a path. It’s more like a river with a wild current that curls and froths and bubbles up around itself and back again.

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The other day Sam and I finally moved an old tube TV set out of our bedroom to make a space to add a litter pan, now that Nora is 17. She still gets around fairly well, but we’d like her to have a pan upstairs so she doesn’t have to travel too far. Moving the TV was no joke. It’s awkwardly weighted and there’s nothing to hold onto, just smooth edges. We managed to slide it down the stairs on a big flat cardboard box with a blanket wrapped around it like a sling. I held the sling and pulled towards myself as Sam guided it down the stairs. Somehow we didn’t break the TV or our legs.

There’s a place at the town dump where they recycle old electronics. It’s inside an old semi-truck trailer. I wasn’t certain how we’d get the TV out of the car and make the 12 steps or so trip to the trailer. I said as much aloud as Sam opened the hatchback of his old red subaru. A man unloading his car ahead of us heard what I said and offered to help carry the TV. It was such a kind, surprising gesture and I was so very grateful for his help. It made me less sad that in this moment we were throwing away something that took me many hours of work to earn the money to pay for. There was a time I yearned to be able to acquire a nice TV for my bedroom and it was quite an accomplishment to get one, but now it was junk, maybe salvage for its parts and that's about it. This TV saw me through a few uncomfortable days or weeks when I was sick and had to stay in bed, but for many years it’s only gathered dust in the corner. I haven’t even turned it on. It’s too old to work with a digital cable box.

Sam says for me to think that yearning for something and knowing, even in that yearning, that the object is already decayed and dead is very Buddhist of me. He also said something about a relation to quantum mechanics and atoms but that’s too far over my head. The gist of all this pondering is that if you take a step back far enough and look at the world, heck the universe and beyond, we’re all just made up of stardust in different, constantly ever-changing forms. I suddenly feel like I understand reincarnation in a way I never did before. It’s very likely that the form I was in before I was a cat mom was something else. It may not have been a human, it could have been a little bit of many different things, even an old tv. What happens to my body next is it will become a different form that will become a different form again and again. It makes me feel a little bit less sad about Spencer’s future. He’s already part of me and I of him. It’s all the same little bits of stardust, just in different shapes.

Monday 12/4/17

Somehow I managed to raise $4300 in 4 days to cover Spencer’s surgery. I honestly don’t know how I could be so lucky and so honored to have so much support. The stress, the fear of if I could raise the money in time, did a number on me. I didn't know if we'd make it until the night before his surgery date.

I hate to ask for help, but I really felt that doing the surgery was the right thing for Spencer and I needed to make it happen. With a mass inside him, at least it was uncomfortable and, at most, it was killing him and needed to be removed. I assumed it was carcinoma because there was a mass and not tell-tale inflammation that would make us consider it was lymphoma. Big masses usually mean, big bad things. In the morning we’d have a beginning of an answer when Dr. Deb opened Spencer’s abdomen and took a look inside.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Our last morning together before surgery. Spencer's belly was shaved to do the ultrasound the week prior, but even more was removed later that day.

The night before surgery, Spencer ate well and purred away, as he always does. He came upstairs and got into bed and tucked me in as he’s often done over the years. I had to sleep in a weird position so I didn’t bother him. It was an honor to do that. I didn’t know if it would be our last night together. I didn’t know if he’d ever be able to come upstairs again or if he’d even survive the procedure. I was sick with worry and kept wondering if this was the right thing to do. I could still call it off and just do chemo and hope that did the trick and maybe he’d have a better life, maybe shorter, but less pain…I had to stop over-thinking it. I’d consulted 4 vets and 3 said to do the surgery. In my gut I felt we had to try and give Spencer a chance. I just prayed I wasn’t wrong.

Tuesday 12/5/17

I tried to be cheerful about taking Spencer to the vet, think positive, non-jinxing thoughts, even though I felt sick to my stomach. I wore my brand new Lil Bub Sweater. It’s so colorful and adorable, I felt like Bub was watching over us and would keep Spencer safe. How could anything bad happen if I was wearing something so upbeat, right? I told myself that no matter what happened, my memory of Spencer would never leave my heart. I could still hear his wheezing even if he didn’t sleep near me any longer. Whatever was going to happen, was going to happen. I couldn’t control anything. I just had to remain present, be kind, and be open to however things unfolded. I had to be prepared to say goodbye, knowing I did everything I could, even if one day soon I would hate myself for making a choice that ended in Spencer losing his life. I gave Spencer a kiss and handed him over to the vet tech. I tried not to burst into tears.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Traffic cop, Spencer.

I gave the vet tech a new ziplock bag with a note on it to please save all of the fur they shaved off of Spencer’s belly. I wanted to keep it to make a memorial out of his fur one day. I was embarrassed to ask for such a silly thing when surgery was all I should focus on, but being a realist I also knew I might need that fur sooner than I’d like to admit.

I was told that surgery was going to begin around 11:30 AM. In a way, I wish they hadn’t told me. It was possible that at the last minute an emergency would come into the hospital and that they’d have to bump Spencer’s procedure to later in the day. Alternatively, I knew that if the procedure was quick, they either got the mass out or Dr. Deb decided it couldn’t be removed at all.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. It's time.

I sat with my phone either next to me or I held it in my sweaty hand. The ringer was turned on and turned up. I kept checking the time. Thirty minutes passed, then an hour. My heart started to sink as it approached 2PM. Finally, Dr. Deb called.

“We go it out! All set! His blood pressure went down a bit too much during the procedure but we were able to get him back up. He’s in recovery now and we’ll be keeping a careful watch on him.”

Dr. Deb explained that the mass had been attached to the very tip of one of the lobes of Spencer’s pancreas. She had to remove that tip, but it was only a very little bit. Even so there was concern that Spencer would get pancreatitis, which would be a very hard on him. It’s something that scares the heck out of most cat parents because it can go on and on causing the cat to not want to eat. If it goes on too long, they can get “fatty liver” disease and die unless there’s a lot of intervention on the cat parent’s part, even a feeding tube may be required. We’d have to be very careful.

The good news was that Spencer’s liver, which had shown lesions on ultrasound, was in very good shape-no signs of cancer there. Dr. Deb said she looked at everything else in his abdomen and everything looked as she would expect. The pathology of the mass would take 3-5 business days so I figured it would be the following week before we knew what kind of cancer it was.

The game plan now was go visit Spencer that night and hopefully get him home the next day.

Spencer was alive, for now. The next few days were going to be really hard on him. I needed to stay strong, but first I needed to take a nap. I felt like I hadn’t slept in a decade from all the stress.

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Around 10PM Sam and I drove to NVS to visit Spencer. I tried to prepare myself for seeing him stitched up, wearing the dreaded “cone of shame” around his neck, probably looking a lot older and weak.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Nothing is a worse indignation than the cone of shame.

But before we could see him we had to wait until they could get him ready for our visit. They had a nearly record number of animals being treated-about 18-at the time, so we had to wait for them to move Spencer into an exam room. While we waited, a couple came in with a pug dog. We knew what happened well before they got close to the reception desk-a skunk sprayed their dog. My GOD did the place suddenly stink to the high heavens. The lady kept apologizing, saying she’d changed her clothes three times. Lady, it’s not YOU that got sprayed!

The dog got scratched by the skunk but it didn’t even need a stitch. They needed to update the dog’s rabies shot, but otherwise he didn’t need anything other than about 50 baths. The receptionist shooed them out the door saying they should have called first so they could have treated the dog outside the building. As it was the place had no open windows and we were all suffering. The couple went into the vestibule between the two front doors because it began to rain. It only created an inescapable stink-zone that everyone who entered or existed the building was going to have to walk through. I started to wonder if all the bags of chips in the nearby vending machine were going to stink like skunk, too.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Baby food to the rescue.

We were finally able to go visit Spencer. Thankfully he was too drugged up to be bothered by how badly Sam and I and my Lil’ Bub sweater smelled. His pupils were huge. He waxed and waned between being asleep and being crabby. The tech told us he hadn’t eaten. I offered him a spoonful of chicken baby food. He furiously licked at it, going through the entire jar of food as fast as I could spoon it out. We made a huge mess because we weren’t allowed to take his e-collar off, so some of the food went onto the plastic barrier and some into his mouth.

I took a few breaks to wipe off his face and get the collar cleaned up. Sam held Spencer up so he didn’t fall over. He had an IV line in his leg and the pain meds made him weak. Even with all that it was good to see him eat. I hoped it was a good sign.

Since Spencer got crabbier the longer he had to sit up, we decided to get him settled back in his cage for the night. It would be our first night apart in 15 years, but I knew he was in good hands.

Weds 12/6/17

Spencer pretty much hates being messed with, for any reason. Even drugged up he red-zoned at NVS to the point of them realizing he’d do better at home then be in the hospital for another day. I couldn’t argue the point. I’d set up my home office as his space for the next two weeks of recovery. I’d also be ripping that cone off him the second we got home. If he tore his stitches out that was on me, but he’d be a lot happier without the cone on and hopefully he’d be too tired to do much with the stitches for the next few days.

This is when I decided I better write down everything I was doing with him in case things took a turn for the worse. I made a list of all his pain meds (buprenex, gabapentin, onsior) and when they were to be given. I wrote down what he was eating and how much. I made notes if I noticed he was having side effects-which he did-like diarrhea and extreme weakness. I knew I had to just see this through. I had to support Spencer’s needs, keep him warm and clean. Make sure he ate enough and was comfortable. He might not be himself for some time. I had to have faith he would be feeling better in week or two.

Thursday-Friday

Spencer was a mess. He was so weak he could barely make the trip of a few steps to his litter pan. Once in the pan he would fall over and just lay in the litter. Thankfully I had been meticulous about keeping his pan clean, but seeing him laying there broke my heart. I helped him up, careful not to touch his belly. He strained to pass stool, but could not go. I looked up side effects of all the meds and called the vet. One by one I pulled him off most of the pain meds a day or more early because he was just too sick from them.

Sam gave Spencer fluids every day. It helped him feel better. I gave him an injection of B12 and offered him raw chicken liver. He’d lost 40 mL of blood during surgery. No wonder he felt awful.

Spencer barely moved. He mostly slept. I kept out of my office so he could have peace and quiet. Not being bothered by the other cats was good for him, too, so my door stayed closed.

That night I called NVS. Spencer just wasn’t eating well and I wanted to start him on Cerenia, which combats nausea and could possibly help him want to eat. I started him on the medication that night and prayed it would work by morning.

Saturday 12/9/17

The first real snow fell. It would have been something to enjoy if I could forget the guilty feeling that we didn’t rake the leaves out of the front yard yet and now we’d probably have to wait until spring to do it. Spencer wasn’t eating very well and sleeping a lot. I spent time brushing him because he likes it and he needed it. I hoped the comfort it gave him would help him want to eat, but he had a long way to go before getting back to his old self. I was very worried about his appetite issues so I called our vet and asked for an appetite stimulant if we really needed it-we did.

Sunday 12/10/17

Spencer wasn’t eating more than a few bites of food. I offered him a zillion different options. He’d eat, at most, an ounce of food. I offered him food about 10 times that day. I added it all up and it came to 3 ounces, barely half of what he should have been eating. The good thing was that Spencer was a bit brighter. He was grooming himself and though he still had diarrhea, he was not falling into the litter pan any more.

Now if he would just EAT.

Monday 12/11/17

We gave Spencer mirtazapine, an appetite stimulant. I got varied answers on how long it would take to work-the average sounded like a few days. In the meantime Spencer’s appetite was still lousy and I finally began to syringe-feed him a meal once I’d seen if he’d eaten enough over the day. If he didn’t, I syringe-fed him.

What was interesting was that he seemed basically ok with it. I expected a fight but he almost appreciated it. He even ate something about an hour after I syringe-fed him. I started to wonder if he just needed a jump start to get going.

By now Spencer definitely looked a lot better. The contusions on his belly were starting to fade and though he didn’t move around too much, he was much sturdier on his paws than before.

Tuesday 12/12/17

Dr. Deb called. The results were in. I expected her to say carcinoma, but she didn’t. Dr. Larry, my vet for over 20 years, has this joke about my cats. They’re called “Olson cats.” The reason why is that more often than not, my cats have things go wrong that he has either never seen before or so rarely sees that it’s only because my cats are the ones it happens to. He even knows to look for the weird diagnosis when I bring my cats in for an exam.

It’s extremely rare that a big mass in a cat isn’t cancer, but the mass in Spencer’s abdomen, is NOT CANCER. It’s benign. It’s gone. It’s over and done.

It’s also extremely rare that removing a non-cancerous mass leads to the discovery of actual cancer, but it did. Spencer DOES have cancer. Cells were detected that are “consistent with small cell lymphoma,” so it’s not 100% sure but it’s pretty darn likely.

That said, it kinda IS a miracle because if a cat is going to get cancer, then small-cell lymphoma is the one to get. It’s treatable for a good long time. It grows slowly. It’s not an expensive treatment and Spencer can possibly have a good year or MORE of quality life. That would put him at about 17-18. If it had been carcinoma, we’d be lucky to get 9 months, if that. More likely we’d get about 3 months.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. The power of the Lil' Bub sweater is strong. Good Job, Bub!

And as the day passed, and the fog of the shocking news lifted, I realized that one thing was very clear-doing the surgery was the right thing to do. If we hadn’t done it we would have assumed it was a carcinoma and treated him with the wrong chemo drugs. It would have been a waste in so many ways, but now we know what it is, what to do, and how to do it…or do we?

But this is an Olson-cat, so things may go a little differently than one would expect.

Next up…meeting with the oncologist and considering a potentially cutting edge treatment that could be a game-changer. The only problem is there’s no research on it yet, only anecdotal information for dogs, and even less for cats. Oh yeah and Spencer's eating...cat litter!

Note from Robin: Thank you VERY MUCH to everyone who made this story possible. Your donations, which ranged from $2 to hundreds of dollars, all added up to making Spencer's surgery a reality. YOU are his lifeline, his rescuers, his friends, and for that I am eternally grateful.

©2017 Robin AF Olson Thank you from Spencer, too.

You’re at a shelter or rescue a cat from the street. You don’t know anything about how they’ll behave once they’re in your home. One of the biggest fears is that this new cat won’t get along with the other pets or family members or that they’ll set off a chain reaction of behavioral problems that will ruin your furnishings.

What if there was a way to know exactly what kind of cat you were adopting and what their predispositions were to certain situations? Perhaps that shy cat who was overlooked was really a “diamond in the rough” and with a little time and attention had the potential to blossom into a lap cat? Wouldn’t you give that cat a chance?

What if you knew that by adopting the friendly calico who caught your eye, you’d be bringing home a cat who will thwart all attempts to rub her belly?

Problem Solved!

DNA testing has evolved, going beyond what can be learned for humans or what breed of dog you have. A new company, CDNA (CatDNA), is using emerging technology to intelligently discern actual emotional and situational traits in cats and kittens (as young as 6 weeks old).

With a simple swab and quick swipe along the inside of the mouth, your cat’s sample is sent to the CDNA lab in Whynot, Mississippi for testing. In 4 to 6 weeks the test results will be delivered to your e-mail inbox.

Below is a listing of the initial group of traits that can be tested. If all goes well and there’s enough interest, there’s talk of capturing more data points and expanding into other areas like food preferences, ability to wear "Cone of Shame" and how intense your cat's drive is to "make muffins" on you (especially when their claws need a trim).

Data Points

• Always Hovers Over Litter (A.H.O.L.) Cats who stay in litter pan while it’s being scooped out.

• Cognitive Reaction to Audible Stimuli (C.R.A.S) Positive or Negative reaction to being told to get off the counter

• Diarrhea or Other Poop Explosions (D.O.P.E.) Cats who need pro-biotics

• Belly Rub Attempts Thwarted (B.R.A.T.)

• Pees Everywhere Soiling Things (P.E.S.T.)

• Belly Up Remains in Place (B.U.R.P.)

• Has Underwear Moving Predisposition (H.U.M.P.) Cats who will take their human’s clothing and move it to their stash area, usually a basement or closet

• Inappropriate Mounting of Stuffed Toys (E.W.W.)

• Meowing with Toys in Mouth (M.T.M.)

• Eats Greens Almost Daily (E.G.A.D.)

• Purrs in Tones, Annoying (P.I.T.A.)

• Definitely Effective Reasoning Powers (D.E.R.P.)

Thanks to CDNA for sponsoring this post, I was able to test my cat DOODLEBUG (the DOOD) free of charge.

Here’s Dood's chart. As you can clearly see, DOOD is a few fries short of a Happy Meal because his D.E.R.P. score is not even calculable. Clearly DOOD is a freak about vegetables and don’t go near his belly. Huh. I guess I already knew that, but it’s good to have confirmation. Would it have stopped me from adopting him? No. There’s no test (YET) for adorability and DOOD has that in spades.

In closing, I’d say the cost of CDNA's test could be worth it to new cat parents. Perhaps it would inspire them to give their cat more greens or to realize they really can’t ever rub their cat’s tummy safely and to stop trying.

As far as I'm concerned, I'll love DOOD test results or no test results, and in the end maybe that's what really matters.

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If this tickled your funny bone, I hope you'll check out these very special April 1 blog posts from years gone by.

Product Review: Flunette

Product Review: GLITTER CAT LITTER

Product Review: PetBit

and my favorite: Pebble Associates

continued from Ch.1

It astonishes me how resilient cats like “Waterbury 1” can be, even with a mouth full of slowly dissolving teeth, infected gums and with burning sores on and under her tongue. Somehow through all of this, W1 has made impressive progress since I discovered her in a parking lot barely alive a week ago.

Her vet said she’d never seen anything so bad. W1’s teeth were either falling apart or were fused to her jaw from years of untreated stomatitis. If it was a human, the fragile gums would have been packed with gauze, but with the delicate bones of the feline jaw it wasn’t possible. The vet had to gently suction mucous and bloody pus out of the cat’s mouth before she could even intubate the cat and begin the difficult procedure. She had to remove the roots of teeth that were long gone and separate the teeth off the jaw bone. I don’t want to think about how much pain W1 must have been in and for how long.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Sweet W1 before rescue, waits her turn to eat.

Every single one of W1’s teeth were removed. My guess is the root cause was bartonella gone unchecked for years, but it could also have been from other issues; we’ll never really know.

Her matted fur was completely shaved off. I asked if she got a bath, but they only needed to rinse her paws off because they were filthy.

I can’t help but imagine her wanting to use her front paws to wash her face before she gave up on trying. She had to have been rubbing dirt from her paws into her already infected mouth if she could manage to clean herself at all. I feel sick thinking about it.

Oddly enough she had no fleas, but does have ear mites for which she’s been treated. She’s on very heavy duty pain medication and is on an IV because she’s anemic and has an elevated white blood count.

With all her challenges, W1 still ate food barely a day after her procedure was completed. This remarkable girl wants to live. Though she shows no signs of being friendly, she has only been fearful with the staff, no hissing, no aggression so far.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. W1's sister with a few of the other colony cats.

We’d gotten W1 medical attention, but the “what do we do now” question returned. There was discussion that W1 would come to me. We’d reunite her with her nearly twin sister, who was just trapped yesterday. I’ve read that relocating ferals is more successful if they’re paired. Thankfully, the sister is not sick AND to our surprise she was spayed a long time ago. We discovered she has a very badly done ear tip, so all she needed done was her vaccination updates. After vetting she was ready to be released back to the lot, but because we wanted her with her sister, we’re holding her for a few days. Maybe she’s friendly and we can work with her. We’ll have to see how it goes.

Or maybe we won’t…

Meanwhile…

…one of the Vet’s clients had come to the clinic to drop her cat off to have a dental cleaning. She saw W1 in surgery, then heard W1’s story, and was so moved she offered to adopt the cat if she needed a home.

Wait. Adopt a FERAL CAT? Would she live outside?

No.

W1 would live INSIDE her house, even if she was feral. The woman has a lot of experience with both feral cats and cats who have suffered the same dental issues as W1. W1 would want for nothing, ever. She would get the best care possible. It would be a far better situation than I could give W1, but what about her sister?

I try not to be jaded and maybe I’m afraid that telling you now will jinx it from really happening. That this amazing woman came forward at all turns W1's story into a fairytale of epic proportion. She added when we spoke this morning that she would consider adopting W1’s sister, too.

What I’m learning and finding terribly difficult is this is an extremely fluid situation-more fluid than my brain can process. Day and night I get emails, texts, calls about what to do, who I should call, who told me what, trying to track what everyone is doing or needs and sorting out where each trapped cat was going to go (though I am thankfully not in charge of that). One minute I have a feral cat in my garage (as I did last night). The next minute I find myself signing up to take on two feral cats that may not be a good fit to even live as ferals! I’m asking my foster homes if they can take on a cat or two, or maybe even a pregnant feral if we come across another one. Not to be a complete whiner, but I REALLY wanted to take a few months OFF from rescue and just REST. What have I gotten myself into?

Between work, the #Feral50 craziness and finding my cat Petunia having focalized seizures last week I am fried. (and very sadly it looks like Petunia may have brain cancer-which I will write more about later)

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Petunia mid-seizure. We lost her mother, Gracie just over a year ago.

There’s a great divide in my head about what I expected and what I’m experiencing. I realized tonight that it’s akin to dealing with a totally different kind of animal rescue. Getting a litter of kittens to foster takes some vetting and fussing and cleaning and de-worming and such, but with the ferals, it’s all about logistics. After trapping: where do they go? where do they get spayed/neutered? where do they spend a day to three days recovering? where do they go after that? Are they dumped-strays who are friendly and need a home? If so, is there a rescue to take them? If not, how can we get a rescue to take them or should they go back to the parking lot where we assumed all would go but may not be the case now. YIKES!

©2017 Robin AF Olson. A few of these guys have already been trapped.

I’m surprised that of the first eight cats trapped we discovered a few of the cats were either already vetted and may be friendly and not feral at all. The people who have done a lot of trapping and working with ferals seem different, too. Maybe tougher in some ways and better at going with the flow. I can’t quite put the words together yet because it’s so new to me, but they seem okay with the constantly shifting tasks we need to accomplish times 50+.

And further surprises…

The gray cat with the strange fur was in my garage last night. I didn’t try to touch him, thinking he needed peace and quiet after being trapped. When he went into his foster home tonight he was head-butting his foster mom, soliciting pets! He didn’t even come out of his cat carrier the 24 hours he was here. I assumed he was scared and to leave him be, but he really wanted love.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Gray kitty needed help, too, so he was high on our list to be trapped.

Some of the others are not feral either. I don’t know how common this is that there are more friendlies than true ferals in a colony, but it’s heartbreaking. All these cats getting dumped for whatever selfish, thoughtless, heartless reason. As a cat behavior counselor I know there are many reasons cats lose their homes that are fixable behavior issues, yet here these poor creatures are, fighting for their lives in difficult circumstances.

Last night we had an ice storm followed by pounding winds and rain. I kept thinking about the cats, imagining them hiding under the blue tarps near the warehouse, huddled for warmth. It makes me even more anxious to get all of them whatever help they need. I know they were all getting fed and that goes a long way to keep them alive. Some of the team have begun putting out shelters and I hope the cats will start using them soon.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. They got him and now I've got him!

Tomorrow there will be more trapping. Eight cats have been trapped and maybe eight more will get grabbed. I thought we were going to have a game plan and do a big trapping all at once, but the folks in charge are just going for what they can trap with the traps they have. I don’t know what is the best way or if it matters how it’s done. It’s just amazing that it IS being done so fast when the donations are barely coming in the door for the spays/neuters. They're finding vouchers from other rescues or calling in favors. They’re just getting it done and I need to learn how to move as fast as they do, but I think I need more caffeine first.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Temporary lodging, gray kitty is hiding in his cat carrier. He ate 9 oz of food over night. Glad he has a full belly.

Waterbury1 is resting in her cage at the vet. She’s clean and beginning her life anew. Her vet wants her to stay at the hospital for the full week so she can continue to monitor her recovery. We raised almost enough for the high end of the estimate. If a few more donations come in we’ll be all set until we trap the other cats who are sick or injured.

This experience is all about how to face something difficult without having any idea beyond step number one about how you’re going to get to step number two. It’s about finding faith that you’ll get there¬—that it will all shake out just fine. If you don’t have enough faith, you’re going to fantasize about sitting in a darkened room with a big box of chocolate chip cookies on hand and plenty of time to eat every single one. Don’t ask me how I reached this hypothesis, but I just know it to be true.

As I’ve written in the past, a majority of the rescue process is about having faith that everything will be okay one day no matter how bumpy the path might be.

The tough part is believing it.

And lastly, W1’s adopter liked my choice of a proper name for her instead of W1: Hyacinth, but then, after some discussion, she added that perhaps she should name the cat, Robin.

NOTE: If you'd like to make a donation towards W1's care, there's complete info on ways you can help on the previous post. Stay tuned for even more news about the #Feral50.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Such beautiful creatures.

I’m not certain if there was some weird alignment of stars or something funky in the water, but 2016 was the worst year ever, not just for me, my rescue, my cats, but for a lot of folks. Do I want to look back over the year? Not really. Honestly, I could easily sum up the year in a volley of expletive-deletives and leave it at that.

January

Sick cats. Lots of sick cats.

Winnie and Barry, the big lug who had bitten me four times, had to be medicated for a month, each. Yes, to treat good old Bartonella. I’m constantly discovering Bartonella positive cats, and witnessing the mayhem it causes. At least they both responded well to treatment.

Bright Side

Winnie, Laney and Piglet got adopted TOGETHER! It had been a VERY VERY LONG road (well over a year) to find the right adopter, but I was so thrilled they went to a nice home in Boston. Sure, it meant me taking them ALL to the vet one last time to get their Health Certificates so they could travel out-of-state, but it was so worth it.

No, it wasn’t.

A week later, the adopter gave up on the girls, forcing me to drive to Boston while she was out of town, to bring the girls back home. It was six hours of miserable driving conditions, three of those hours spent listening to the cats hiss and growl at each other. Read more about the “fun time” HERE.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. After a year and a half, the girls finally get adopted together...or do they?

February

My beloved washing machine crapped out…for two months. It cost $1000 to fix it (6 visits from different techs) and the whole time I’m pretty sure it was because a part wasn’t plugged in properly (vibration pulled it apart?), but I will never know for sure. I've come to detest laundromats as a result. Also, yes, I know I could have bought a new washer, but when this misery started I only thought it was going to require a few hundred dollars in repairs.

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After a few months of wondering, and being too scared to talk to them about it, it was clear that I’d managed to lose my biggest design client or, at best, had been downgraded to getting work very rarely instead of being counted on for everything. It resulted in the rest of 2016 becoming a financial nightmare. I’m not great at replacing clients and I mourned the loss more than I can write about here.

Bright Side

Larry and Louie get adopted together by a very nice local family. My faith in humanity was restored!

©2016 the McCubbins. The boys in their new home.

March

Something was not right with Jelly Belly’s leg. Was I imagining it or not? Vet said he had a luxated patella and, surprise, he needs surgery and 8 weeks of cage rest and his other patella isn’t in such great shape, either. Ka-ching!

Bright Side

A couple was interested in adopting Jelly and Lollipop, but since Lolli was so shy they decided to come over ONCE A WEEK and hang out with the cats until they were ready to adopt and had their house completely cleaned, repainted and prepared for their new cats to arrive. The guy was a chatterbox so their visits went into multi-hours long, including me setting them up with carafes of tea to sip while they visited the cats. It was okay they stayed, but they kept putting off deciding even though they brought treats and toys for the cats each visit. They had multiple conversations with Dr. Larry about their patella issues-and I even had to bring Lolli in to get him checked. BINGO! He had the same issues, too, but not as bad. Hey, do you want to adopt two cats who will need surgery?

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Poor Jelly, home from surgery, feeling lousy.

I jumped over and under and through every hoop to make the adoption happen, but in the end the father-in-law of the chatty guy showed up with a pair of kittens and, of course, they could not say no to him and make him feel bad. Instead they wasted my time, resources and tea!

April

I decided after having the worst birthday ever, I was going to treat myself and finally dye my hair MAGENTA, ORANGE AND YELLOW. DO NOT DO THIS. REPEAT. DO NOT DO THIS.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Looks cool, right? Don't do this to your hair.

My stylist told me that you have to strip the color out of your hair first or the color won’t be vibrant. What I didn’t realize is it causes your hair to get so brittle it will break off and fall out in clumps after awhile. The only solution is to chop your hair off. This began THE GREAT HAIR FAIL OF 2016 (that I'm still recovering from).

Also, no one but Sam even saw it because right after that…

…there is no bright side….

I got the flu from being at the salon. I got it so bad, I had a high fever and violent headache for over a week, followed by vomiting for six hours, laying on the floor in the bathroom, praying I wouldn’t die, then passing out cold. Followed by being so weak I could barely stand for another month. I had to miss out on my one scheduled trip to a conference given by the New England Federation of Humane Societies and I got way behind on everything else. All I did was sit in bed and feel lousy.

I was so ill, I didn’t pay close enough attention to Jelly after his surgery. He got at his surgery incision and it got infected from him licking at it. He almost had to have another surgery because of my poor care of him. Thankfully, we both recovered, but I still feel guilty about Jelly.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Sweet Cricket.

My sweet boy, Cricket got sick. He tested positive for Hyperthyroidism. We began treatment, hoping he would feel better soon.

May

A couple came to visit Laney, Winnie and Piglet. I was so resigned to them never being adopted together that I was surprised when they had a connection to the girls. They both had that “glow” about them that told me this might be the match I’d been hoping for, but I didn’t want to get too excited about it.

The home visit went great and the girls got adopted. I began waiting for the email or call saying they couldn’t manage all three cats, but the call didn’t come.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Lap full of love with Laney, Piglet, Winnie and Jelly.

Meanwhile, a superlative lady named Hallie, came to visit Jelly and Lolli. She knew about their issues and was appropriately cautious about adopting them. She was going to Yale to get her Masters to become a Midwife. She understood their health challenges and wasn’t turned off by Lolli being shy. She was going to move soon so we agreed she would come visit every week (sound familiar?) until the time was right to decide about the adoption once she had moved.

©2016 Hallie M. They boys in their new home.

She decided to do the adoption. There’ve been some rough patches along the way but Hallie and the boys are doing great. Lolli came out of his shell and loves his mom. Hallie had to be patient for a long time, but I’m glad to report it was worth it.

June

Rescue Month was in high gear: Izzy and her four kittens arrived. A week later the six “Bee” kittens came up from North Carolina, then I took on four kittens from Bridgeport, CT. The Bees were full of fleas (surprise!) and so begins “THE MISERABLE FLEA OUTBREAK OF 2016.”

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Izzy and the McFarlands.

ALL OF OUR TEN CATS GOT SICK, REALLY REALLY SICK. Spencer and Nicky got pancreatitis, all the others were vomiting, not eating. Cricket didn't respond to treatment for hyper-t at all. Something was terribly wrong. Spencer was so ill we almost have to put a feeding tube into him, but thankfully at the last moment he began to eat a very little bit.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Resting after one of many flea baths.

I think all I did in June was go to the vet about a zillion times.

July

Some of my cats began to improve, but Cricket did not. Juggling over a dozen sick cats (some foster cats) was taking its toll. We didn’t take a day off or celebrate our anniversary (sam and mine and the 6th anniversary of Kitten Associates). Nicky had to be hospitalized for five days on an IV. I was terrified, wondering when things were going to get better.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. My poor 15-year old cat, Spencer barely moved or ate.

On July 6th, Cricket had to be hospitalized and placed into a oxygen chamber while we frantically tried to sort out what was wrong with him. Thank God for one of my friends. She knew we were drowning financially and she threw us a life-preserver so we could afford Cricket’s care.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Cricket looked so beautiful, but he was terribly weak and could no longer survive outside of the oxygen cage.

Cricket, who was just 12, somehow suddenly seemed to have lung cancer, which is usually a secondary cancer. It meant he had cancer somewhere else, but we didn’t have time to find it. Cricket couldn’t leave the chamber or he’d die. It’s called Oxygen Cage Dependent. On July 14th, we had no other choice but to put him down.

©2016 Robin AF Olson.

Sam and I were shell-shocked. We’d lost Gracie just nine months before. We hoped we were done losing cats.

August

The Bee kittens were passing around an upper respiratory tract infection so my vet visits became almost a daily occurrence. They were jammed in the blue bathroom and I was anxious to move them into the bigger foster room, but Barry was still with us and I was afraid he wouldn’t get along with the kittens.

Bright Side

As fate would have it, a great family contacted me asking if Barry could be with young kids. They had a 4-year old daughter and they were just in love with Barry’s photo, but I’d put on his Petfinder page that he couldn’t be with kids because he’d bitten me so many times. He’d come a long way and hadn’t bitten me in months but I didn’t want to take a risk. The mom said that’s how cats teach kids not to be idiots. Her easy-going attitude made me decide to take a chance. It was a love connection from the moment they met Barry.

Barry loved this family. It was as if they’d been together forever. Barry was featured on their Christmas card, along with a note that made me cry. Barry sleeps with everyone, gets belly rubs and hasn’t bitten anyone. He had been with us for two years, but I was glad I worked with him. It really paid off.

September and October

Things were finally quieting down a bit. Spencer and Nicky had their appetite back and we were working hard to get them to gain weight. Annie and Andy got sick from being in the same room with the Bee kittens, but I could finally start getting everyone spayed/neutered so they could get adopted. Annie and Andy would wait until they got better.

The Bee kittens adoptions happened fairly fast once they were ready to go. Slinky and Beanie are first to find a home, then two of the McFarlands got adopted. Aunt Bee and Mrs Beasley were next to find a home. That left Mr. Peabody and Herbie, Annie and Andy and Noodles and Oodles (Molly).

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Mr Peabody, Slinky, Beanie and Aunt Bee.

Since we had space in our program, I agreed to take on a 2-yr old deaf cat I named Pippin. Pippin went to our foster home with Linda, where he remains today and for good. Linda was so smitten with Pippin she decided to adopt him (even though he loves Linda’s daughter, best).

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Aunt Bee & Mrs Beasley, boy was this almost a foster fail!

But something was wrong with Annie. She was vomiting, lethargic, not eating. She had a 105°F fever and had to be on an IV. Her blood work showed an infection, but we couldn’t determine the cause. She came home after a few days but she REALLY vomited this time-a huge lake of watery vomit. Annie was in a crisis.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Annie's boo-boo belly (all healed up now).

Turns out Annie needed emergency surgery. It was life or death for Annie and it forced me to go on Facebook LIVE and CRY and BE EMBARRASSED and have to BEG for $5000 so we could get the surgery done that day. Thankfully you guys saved Annie with your generous donations AND Annie’s surgeon is a rock star. Annie recovered well from her Intussusception repair. Things were good again, right?

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Felling better? Maybe not quite yet.

November

I was done with vet visits and sick cats. Turns out my cats had fleas. I had been cleaning and scrubbing down everything I could to prevent that from happening, but it happened. So began “The MISERABLE CLEANING and RE-CLEANING of the HOUSE” to get rid of the damn fleas.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Belle eventually lost 15 teeth she was in such bad shape when she arrived.

We’d done enough adoptions where I finally felt like the pressure was off, so of course one of my ex-boyfriends contacts me out of the blue, says he has terminal cancer and then begged me to take his cats.

Ugh.

Belle and Buddy (more on them HERE) are 6-years old and never went to the vet. Buddy needed emergency surgery for bladder stones and Belle’s teeth were FALLING OUT OF HER MOUTH they were so bad. My ex didn’t help with funding nor would he respond to me begging for some financial support for his cats. Both cats had to be at the vet at the same time. Meanwhile our 16-yr old cat Nicky didn’t look so good. He had a seizure at my feet so I raced him to the vet about an hour after I’d just gotten home from dropping Belle off there.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Buddy before sugary.

Nicky’s kidney disease had progressed to the point where his kidneys were failing. It was causing the seizures. He was severely anemic. We had three cats at the vet, but only two returned home with us.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Final moments with our boy, Nicky.

We had to make the painful choice to put Nicky down. It was shocking, unexpected and completely shattered us. We’d lost three cats in a year. Our heartache was immeasurable.

©2007 Robin AF Olson. Nicky with sister, Nora, who is mourning her brother's passing.

December

By now it was clear 2016 would not end joyfully. I had a quick break, judging a CFF Cat Show in Fairhaven, MA. I brought Annie and Andy with me, just for fun, but something was bugging me about Annie. She seemed thin and was a little bit off. One of the Judges mentioned it to me, too and that pushed me to get Annie to the vet the day after we got home.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Andy kicks butt at the cat show, but is something wrong with his sister, Annie?

Annie had non-regenerative anemia and an infection. We repeated her ultrasound and words like neoplasia (cancer) and FIP were mentioned. We started Annie on a questionable treatment for Bartonella that could harm Annie for life if she had a bad reaction to it. There were many phone calls between myself, Dr. Larry and Dr. D (our Internist). I began the treatment and right away Annie started to perk up.

Bright Side

Annie is responding to treatment. Her anemia is beginning to resolve and she gained a full pound in the two weeks between vet visits. We’re still observing her and she had more blood tests done, but right now things are looking up for this adorable girl.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. It's been a very tough road for Annie, but we're hoping she'll have a full recovery soon.

A gal named Danielle came to meet Mr Peabody and Herbie. It was another love-match so the boys got adopted. They’re re-named Simon and Theodore and they have their own Instagram account. You can keep up with them HERE.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Last day with Mr. Peebs and Herbie.

Final Words about 2016

After six years of running Kitten Associates and of losing a tremendous amount of potential income by doing so, the ramifications are clear. I need to make changes in 2017. I also need to take care of myself. My heart has been broken over and over again and the stress of running a rescue has aged me.

2016 took a lot out of me and Sam. We’ve had no chance to recover and if we don’t build our business back up, we’re going to lose our home. We can’t live like this, but we have to sort out what our next steps should be. It may mean moving away. It may mean doing less rescue. I know I have compassion fatigue, but not so bad that I don’t care at all and I’m not turning to drugs or booze (okay maybe carbs though).

Helping people, educating them about feline wellness, nutrition, behavior, saving the lives of little kittens and adult cats, makes me happy. It’s something I NEED to do, but I need to find a way to do these things and still have a roof over my head (that doesn’t also leak), and where I don’t have to fear the phone ringing and the bank asking where the mortgage payment is again.

I don’t know how 2017 will unfold and I'm glad I don't know what lies ahead, but I'll try to have faith that with the New Year comes a fresh outlook and fresh start.

May we all have a loved, peaceful, Happy New Year and may we do right by the next cats we rescue.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Goal for the New Year, meditate more. Freya knows best.

Maybe it was the big paws, the “mits” that look like baseball gloves, that did me in. When I first met Annie and her brother Andy, they had recently been rescued off the streets from a rough and tumble town south of here. It only took a look at Annie’s curious markings, her kohl lined eyes, her “tail light” white-tipped fluffy tail, and her extra toes, to capture my heart.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. My first meeting with Annie.

There was something else about Annie, a gentle sweetness that is rare in kittens. She didn’t fuss or fight. She didn’t hiss or growl during her veterinary exam. She was relaxed and calm. I couldn’t believe it. I thought maybe her true kitten-nature would come out once she had time to eat some good food and relax in the safe surroundings of her new foster home with me, but she remained as-ever, relaxed and at ease.

I admit I love Annie, and Andy far beyond how I feel about most of my foster cats. They are very lovely animals. I knew they’d get adopted right away so I made sure to spend a lot of time with them, knowing we’d only have a short while together.

I got many applications for the kittens. Most of them I turned down for one reason or another. One of them was from a VERY affluent senior citizen who lives in a multi-million dollar home overlooking a lake. She and her husband could provide anything they wanted, but, during the home visit I didn’t see anything for the cats other than a very old, ratty cat bed and some well-worn toys and a poisonous plant I warned her about. Her reaction was that the last cat never touched the plant so it wasn't an issue and I had to insist it be moved or removed from the house. Judging by her reaction I felt I was getting lip-service. She had no intention of moving the plant. As I spoke with the woman, she went to great lengths to show me her amazing home and tell me the history of it, but when she began to tell me about her former cats I began to have serious doubts about her as an adopter.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Never far from each other Andy with sister, Annie.

Thankfully, I was with one of our dear friends, who also is an amazing artist and volunteer for our rescue. She heard the same things I did about the woman putting her cats down after either not providing care for them, even though she knew they were sick (because apparently in her mind that’s what you do, just let them decline and die in pain) OR she spent a lot of money only to give up on the cat when the cat needed further care for a few weeks to a few months. She acted as if she was a Saint, when she was heartless and cold. I thought perhaps I was misjudging her, weighing too heavily that she was also 74 years old and I wasn’t sure any of her adult children (one had 6 kids of his own and is a busy physician) would even step in should something happen to her.

No sooner than we left the opulent grounds of the estate, my friend said; “No f-ing way.” I agreed. You can’t have cats, then not provide proper care when they were in bad shape. You can’t let them just die especially if you can afford to provide whatever care they need. If it takes effort and work, you do it. You don't just kill your cat. She was cruel.

I got a lot of flack from the woman because she was not used to anyone saying no to her. I’m sure she just threw money at whatever she wanted because she’d hinted to me at a big donation to my rescue at adoption. Money doesn’t buy me or my kittens. Now, I’m even more glad I said no because surely Annie would be dead right now if she was in that home.

Not long after the failed adoption, Annie got sick. She had a soaring fever, was slightly anemic, had high white cells. We did tests and put her on an IV. She got somewhat better, but not truly well. We later found out via ultrasound that she had an intussusception, a folding in of the intestine into itself causing a blockage, which is a life-threatening emergency.

©2016 Robin AF Olson.

I got on Facebook, crying, and begged for help. So many of you jumped at the chance to provide a precious gift so Annie would get the surgery ASAP. It was one of the most difficult, but amazing days of my rescue-career because Annie did great. The surgery went smoothly and she recovered very well. The surgeon was thrilled. We all thought she was out of the woods. Next stop, find Annie and Andy a forever home.

But something still wasn’t quite right.

Annie seemed thin. She also seemed a bit too quiet. She was always a quiet cat, but…

I compared Annie to Andy. Andy is bigger, more robust, but kittens often aren’t the same size. Annie was eating. She wasn’t vomiting. Didn’t have diarrhea. She just seemed to be a bit limp. Was she really sick or was I imagining it?

Last Friday I was to drive Annie and Andy to Fairhaven, MA, to attend a cat show where they would be our Kitten Associates representatives. For fun I was going to have them judged, too, in the Household Pets Division. The night before we left I thought Annie was a bit flat, but by morning she was perky and eating like a champ. I decided I was being too protective and thought she’d be healthy enough for the trip.

©2016 Robin AF Olson.Chillin' in the hotel, but sadly no room service.

Annie did great. She and Andy were superstars at the Cat Show. Out of 20 cats in their division, they always made the top 10 over the 5 times they were judged that weekend. I was so proud of them. They had fun in the hotel room. They ate well. They used the litter pan, but…one of the judges thought she felt a bit thin and that set off alarm bells.

I decided to get Annie checked out. I found a good adopter for her and Andy, but I wanted to make certain she was all right first.

We visited Dr Larry yesterday. He did an exam and thought Annie looked good. I told him my gut feeling was that she was not well and he told me that 18-25% of the time the only way a Vet can know if a pet is ailing is because the owner is very observant and knows when their pet is not right. That’s when he knew we needed to do some tests.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. First time in the judging ring Annie scores 4th place!

We ran blood work. Annie is anemic and her white blood cell count is up. There are other issues with her blood, too, but her kidney function and other organ function is good. Dr. Larry thought the IDEXX machine was not working right and wanted us to come back the next day to re-run the test. If Annie truly had these issues, something concerning was going on and we would need to get to the bottom of it fast. Kittens don’t get anemic for no reason.

We returned to the vet this morning and after the year I’ve had, I was not happy to be there. I was scared. I was scared for Annie, that it was going to be really bad news. Our cat Nicky just died a few weeks ago and the health scares with our new foster cats Belle and Buddy did a number on me. Here we are at the cusp of the Holiday season and I am terribly behind in my work and holiday planning. I have too much on my plate, but nothing is more important than the well-being of our cats.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Ready to go home. Annie jumps into my suitcase as I pack the last night of the cat show.

The second round of blood tests showed Annie IS sick. She does have an infection somewhere and is anemic for some reason. They did an x-ray and saw nothing, but x-rays aren’t the best diagnostic tool for a situation like this one. Annie needs to have an ultrasound done as soon as possible. Dr. Larry couldn’t say what was wrong, but it could be a result of the surgery she had or sadly, it could be something that has been going on, undetected for a long time.

We looked back over Annie’s medical records and saw that she was anemic before her surgery and now she's worse. She had a high fever and responded well to antibiotics back in October, but maybe she had TWO things going on…the intussusception AND some sort of infection that we didn’t get a handle on 100% and now it’s coming back…or does she have a chronic type of anemia? We just don’t know right now.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. On the way to the vet this morning.

The only thing I do know is even though we just raised money for Annie, then for Belle and Buddy, we need to raise more. We are down to our last few dollars and between Annie’s two vet visits and tomorrow’s ultrasound with a specialist, we need to raise $1500 by TOMORROW afternoon.

We may need more than that if Annie needs additional care, but I don’t want to ask for more until I know we need.

Annie is the dearest, most lovely kitten I’ve ever rescued, but now she needs ALL OF OUR HELP so she has a chance to get better. Please consider a Tax Deductible Gift of any size. It all adds up! If you can't help with a gift, then please share this with your friends because that helps, too.

It's easy to donate just use these links:

To donate $5: https://www.paypal.me/kittenassociates/5

To donate $10: https://www.paypal.me/kittenassociates/10

To donate $25: https://www.paypal.me/kittenassociates/25

To donate whatever you wish: https://www.paypal.me/kittenassociates/

Please note: We choose not to use fundraising web sites because they charge a fee on top of the fee PayPal charges us so we get less of a donation. Some of the fundraising sites also take a LONG time to relinquish the funds and we do not have the luxury to wait. If we reach our goal I let you know so that we can close the fundraiser.

To mail a check, make it out to: Kitten Associates, P.O. Box 354, Newtown, CT 06470-0354

Your gift is tax deductible. Kitten Associates is a 501c3 non-profit. Our EIN Tax ID is 27-3597692. Thank you for helping Annie!

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Can you help save my life?

UPDATE 12/15: We are $500 short of our fundraising goal. We did further testing today and it looks like Annie has some sort of infectious disease. We're to start antibiotics and shore her up wtih Vit B12 injections and iron-rich food as she has non-regenerative anemia and high white blood count. We REALLY need funds so we can continue with vet care costs. We're praying for a holiday miracle that we can still get help for this sweet girl.

Erin Ross, in her recent article Kitten Conundrum: Cat-Scratch Disease is Making People Sicker, suggests that if you want to stay healthy, it would be wise to “avoid kittens”, citing a recent report by the CDC about Cat Scratch Disease (CSD) or Bartonella henselae. The article warns that CSD may have the the potential for causing serious illness, particularly in children and those who are immune-compromised.

But let’s take a closer look before we start euthanizing more kittens because they won’t be getting adopted due to irresponsible fear-mongering.

While I agree it is vital to provide information to the general public regarding zoonotic disease (illness that can be transmitted between humans and animals), it is equally, if not more important, to take a common-sense approach when reading information about such findings. Yes, it’s possible in a very few cases to become very ill from CSD, but if you look at the numbers, it’s so low I have to ask myself if it's certainly worth all the fuss the press has been making about it. If you're immune compromised, of course you're at a higher risk to get ANY disease. You might not want to share your home with a pet at all, not only for the CSD risk.

Again, common sense must prevail. Wash your hands. How many times did your mom tell you to do that? If your cat or kitten nips or scratches you, WASH the wound to prevent infection. DUH. Really, people, do you have to be told this?

©2013 Robin AF Olson. Pizzelle, wondering what all the fuss is about.

I have fostered over 500 kittens in 15 years. I have NEVER gotten ANY illness from my cats or kittens. Okay, wait, I did get a spot of ringworm once. I kiss the kittens. I give them baths. They bite and scratch me, some times by accident, and some times on purpose. I’ve been to the ER once for a bad bite that was my fault. Did I get CSD? No.

What my concern for articles like the one found on NPR's web site and many others across the globe is that it can take a toll on the most innocent of creatures – kittens. It’s hard enough for shelters to find a foster home or a forever family for their most fragile residents and with this biased reporting it puts how many more lives at risk?

Kittens are euthanized every day in shelters across the country because they catch a cold or get a treatable skin condition like ringworm. Now with families afraid there’s a hidden disease in seemingly healthy kittens, that their kids are going to get sick enough to require hospitalization from being in contact with them, they're going to give up on adopting cats. Clearly there is little concern that the article could send a shock-wave of panic resulting in needless death, and cause rescues to lose foster homes and adoptions, just to make a buck on a click-bait headline.

Let’s look at some facts:

• Number of owned cats in the USA 85,800,000
• Number of people sickened by CSD per year 12,000
• Number of those people seriously sickened by CSD per year 500
• Highest average annual CSD incidence for outpatients and inpatients was among children 5–9 years of age (9.0 cases/100,000 patients and 0.4 cases/100,000 patients, respectively) …and, by the way, DOGS can also transmit CSD so maybe you better get rid of your dog, too.

What About Kids? If You Want to Get Sick, Kiss a Kid.

While everyone is panicking that little fluffy Puff is going to kill their kids from CSD, what about the other way around? Want to get SICK? BE AROUND KIDS!

This is from Pinkbook, the CDCs guide to routinely used vaccines and the diseases they prevent regarding Influenza:

"Healthy children 5 through 18 years of age are not at increased risk of complications of influenza. However, children typically have the highest attack rates during community outbreaks of influenza. They also serve as a major source of transmission of influenza within communities. Influenza has a substantial impact among school-aged children and their contacts. These impacts include school absenteeism, medical care visits, and parental work loss. Studies have documented 5 to 7 influenza-related outpatient visits per 100 children annually, and these children frequently receive antibiotics"

What Does This Mean?

9 out of 100,000 or .009% of people get sickened by CSD and 5000-7000 of 100,000 people or 5-7% get sickened by KIDS.

GETTING SICK FROM A KID IS 550 to 770 TIMES MORE LIKELY THAN GETTING SICK FROM A KITTEN.

Even the CDC study mentions its own failings:

"Our study has several limitations. First, the case definition relies on diagnosis by clinicians and subsequent coding by clinicians or billing specialists, both of which are subject to error. For example, the 078.3 code could have been inappropriately used for care of a cat scratch wound but not actual CSD. Also, in some cases, the 078.3 code may have been recorded as a rule-out diagnosis when CSD was not actually confirmed. To our knowledge, there are no data on the sensitivity and specificity of the 078.3 code for CSD."

They also state that they expected the results to be higher! So what are they telling us? Hey, maybe it’s not that bad.

"The lower incidence of inpatient admissions found by our study is surprising, given that the number of US households with cats has increased in recent decades to an all-time high of 45 million." (there are now 85.8 million “owned” cats in the USA alone)

©2013 Robin AF Olson. Minnie with her kittens and what would have become of them if they'd been in a shelter effected by a drop in adoptions and foster homes?

The last point that chaps my ass is the one that’s missing from the article. There is no mention on the toll CSD on the cats themselves. My rescue, Kitten Associates, now routinely tests for Bartonella and we DO find positive cats and kittens from time to time. We do this not only to protect our adopters, but because bartonella can mimic other illness. It might end up being overlooked while the cat ends up suffering for years, secretly sick. I’ve even randomly screened my own cats and was surprised at how many were positive, even though they were indoor-only cats and didn't have fleas. My Vet suggested that up to 20% of cats could have some level of infection (from mild, suggesting exposure but not needing treatment, to strong positive which requires treatment) and most people don’t even know it.

Ross ends the article saying not to kiss your cat until they are flea-free, which ignores the fact that if the cat has CSD, treating it for fleas is NOT going to fix the problem. You need to keep your cat INDOORS, keep him or her flea-free, test for bartonella, treat with antibiotics if there’s a strong positive, then run a titer in 6 months to make sure that cat is free from the infection. In my opinion, during the entire process you can KISS YOUR CAT all you want (I wouldn’t tongue-kiss though because that is GROSS). Let them lick your face. If they bite or scratch you, do what your mom told you to do and stop worrying about getting sick, especially if you're not immune compromised.

And get out there and adopt a kitten; better to adopt a pair. We have plenty ready to go right now!

But stay away from KIDS!

Sheesh.

©2016 Robin AF Olson. Which kitten is going to infect you with a horrible disease? Adopt one to find out. (top left: Slinky, top right: Herbie, bottom left: Aunt Bee, bottom right: Mr Peabody).