In a Perfectly Shitty World. Returning Home in One or More Pieces.

Thu, 2016-03-17 14:21 — Robin Olson

(continued from part 1)

I just couldn’t get my mind or body to feel settled as I began the drive to Boston. My pants felt too tight. My jacket was bunching up in the back. My sunglasses had smudges I couldn’t wipe away. I had to use Sam’s hands-free dohickey because my old one doesn’t hold my new iPhone. I really needed something that worked in case I got a call. Add to that problem was just figuring out which car to drive. My car has a seal that’s broken along one door so the interior temperature isn’t great and there’s a windchill advisory here. With the uneven temperatures inside the car, it often fogs up as a result. My only other option was to borrow Sam’s car and it’s a lot bigger than mine is and I don’t drive it very often. I figured I’d have enough on my plate just getting to the location. Adding feeling awkward driving didn’t make sense either so I took my ol’ beast and hoped the windows wouldn’t constantly be fogging up.

It was a bright crisp winter morning, but no sooner than I got on the road, my thoughts drifted. Lady Saturday was back at the vet getting her urine re-tested. She has a very bad, very dangerous bladder infection that the antibiotics may not cure. Add that to her poor kidney function and this is a cause for concern.

The hope was that 3 weeks of meds would have kicked the infection down, but would it?

My phone rang and I couldn’t answer it. The Bluetooth was acting up, or the phone was acting up, or I was just crabby and trying to drive in heavy traffic and not get into an accident answering the phone. I pulled over and listened to the message from my vet; where was Lady Saturday? No one showed up for the appointment. No one is answering their phone.

I texted Saturday’s foster dad, really chapped that I had to deal with this on top of everything else. There are a lot of terrible things going on that I can’t even talk about, but they are BAD things that require lawyers, so at this point I really didn’t need “one more thing” to go wrong.

I called Betsy, my buddy at Dr. Larry’s office. She assured me it would be okay, but I said I was very sorry. I don’t want our rescue to be the cause of issues with their practice. It’s not professional and it’s rude. I can’t risk losing my vet-not that I would over this, but still. It’s not cool.

I got back on the road and tried to keep a good pace while I couldn’t get settled. I knew most of the trip by heart since it meant basically driving to Boston. The problem was where it stopped being the usual trip-it meant going against the way my GPS would route me and I had to memorize the last 30 miles, until I got close enough that it got me on the track I intended in the first place.

Getting lost on the crazy roads with crazy drivers in south Boston is not my idea of a good time.

I got to exit 14 off the Mass Pike. This is where the drive was going to get hairy. The traffic thickened up. There was construction. I was paying careful attention while the GPS was telling me to do something else. I made it to 93 heading north without ending up on Cape Cod. By just after noon I pulled into the icy driveway next to the home where Laney, Winnie and Piglet had been living for the past 11 days.

Laney on the Bed
©2016 Robin A.F. Olson. Laney waits forever for a family to call her own.

I was greeted by Michelle, the pet-sitter, since the adopter was still out of town. She was very nicely dressed and had carefully applied lots of make-up. She had a thick Boston-accent and I found myself unable to understand all the words she said. It was like a phone call with a spotty connection where every so many words drop out of the conversation. It was enough so that I understood, but if there were any nuances I missed them.

I’d never seen the home in person though I most often do home visits before adoption. I’d seen photos so it wasn’t much of a surprise. It was a cute 1940’s era bungalow. All the heavy oak trim had been painted white. Most of the walls and furnishings were white and there were a few very nice period pieces of furniture, but there wasn’t much of a sign of anything for the cats other than a very tiny, short cat tree that wouldn’t stand up to much more than a kitten.

Winnie and Laney 400
The only image I have from their adopter, before she left the girls.

I looked down and Laney came over to me, tail up. She looked much as she had before, only a bit thinner and she had dandruff, which alarmed me. It’s usually a sign of diet issues and I wondered what she was being fed. Winnie and Piglet were nervous. They knew something was up.

Michelle and I filled out the Surrender form, then we discussed how we’d get the cats in their crates. I had hoped to lure them into the bathroom where I’d have easier access to them, but it didn’t work. Only Laney went after the treat and I easily put her into the bigger of the two carriers. I’d noticed a few weeks before that she seemed to like being with Piglet so there was room for her inside the crate, too. We just had to get her.

Winnie was tough to wrangle, but eventually I was able to get her crated. She began to cry and so did Laney. I knew getting Piglet might be nearly impossible. She would certainly know something was going on and she'd already dove under the sofa to hide.

We tipped the sofa back and it surprised me but Piglet shut down emotionally when I reached for her. I quickly scruffed her and lifted her into the crate with Laney. Laney, her devoted grandmother, immediately hissed and swiped aggressively at Piglet.

Great. Just great. I had no other place for Piglet. We’d just have to deal with it. Maybe they’d calm down?

There was no fanfare. No goodbye. It didn’t look like a home that had cats. It looked like a home that was going to be in a magazine and it didn’t have room for messy cats. Part of me wanted to do something mean. Break something. Say something cruel, but what would be the point? In the end, Michelle gave me directions to the highway and instead of following her, I just left. I wanted to put this behind me as fast as I could. I’d been in Boston for 30 minutes. That was enough time for me.

Winnie was upset. She cried. She cried ALL THE WAY HOME FOR THREE HOURS. Laney flipped out and attacked Piglet. There was nothing I could do. I had to drive safely. I wanted to scream. At one point I did. I yelled at them to shut up, but that didn’t fix anything. I quickly realized that if I drove over 65 mph, the cats would cry even more and Laney would lay into Piglet again. I couldn’t even try to get home fast. I had to balance driving with the nutjobs who were focused on getting out of work on a Friday afternoon and getting to somewhere better. With the constant shrieks from Laney, I had even more pressure on me to get home before Piglet was gravely injured.

I knew I could stop to check on them, but again, it would just drag out the trip. I wanted to get this over with. I was already really tired after driving the first 165 miles of the trip. Now I had to do it in reverse.

I had planned to stop at a deli on the way home and get some treats for Sam and myself. Sam was going to place the order ahead of time so I wouldn’t have to wait, but I was already in such a bad mood I called him and said not to do the order. I had to get home. No stopping. Just driving. It was bad enough that I pulled over at a rest stop to call him because the hands-free thing didn’t work very well. Stopping didn’t soothe the cats. Three more hours and I’d be home.

I hated my life. I hated the crying, fighting cats. I hated that they were going to be messed up from this experience. I hated that they were going back into a small room. It wasn’t fair to them. I hated that I would have to cancel my plans on rescuing some kittens because they were taking up space that could go to them. I hated that it seemed like all I had in my life was bad news, heartbreak, stress. Nothing was good any more. I was probably gaining weight back, too. The thing I fear so much after giving up everything I loved to eat was that I couldn’t maintain the weight loss. My pants felt like they were strangling my waist.

And then I looked up. It was a sun dog. As I drove along the Mass Pike, I realized it was a full sun dog. I’d never seen one before. As the cats cried, I whispered; “thank you,” not sure to whom or what being, just a general thank you for the reminder that there is good and beauty in the world. It’s all around us. In our darkest hours it’s there. We just have to open our eyes to see it.