WTF?!

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.

What the Hell was I going to do? I used to depend on Sam. He helped out when the kittens needed a claw trim (my close-up vision sucks) or he’d hold a kitten so I can give them medication. I needed to de-worm Pistachio again, but Pistachio was fussing around and wouldn’t hold still.

I was too proud to ask for help and even though I went slowly, right after I gave the liquid de-wormer, Pistachio coughed furiously.

I feared the meds went into his lungs which can cause aspiration pneumonia. When it happened the next night, too, I got very scared I screwed up big time.

I took Pistachio to the vet the next day. The kittens were due for their first FVRCP vaccination anyway. I forgot to mention the coughing when Pistachio was examined, but Dr. Larry didn’t hear anything troubling during the exam. It didn’t help that the kitten was purring so loud it interfered with what he could hear. Because I didn’t say anything about the cough, he didn’t know to listen extra carefully.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. One of over 2 dozen trips to the vet. Here Pistachio is being examined by Dr. Mary.

Over the weekend, late at night, Pistachio would cough, a wet cough, not unlike a hairball type cough, but there was something off about it. I called Saturday morning and talked with one of the vet techs. She said if it got worse to come in but that maybe I was over-thinking it. I agreed. Lack of sleep, maybe giving it another day, since Pistachio was bright and running around, would be okay.

By Monday I was sure there was something terribly wrong and thank goodness I went back to have Pistachio checked. On x-ray you could see his lungs looked terrible. If it was aspiration pneumonia, Pistachio could DIE. No joke. Maybe I just killed one of the cutest kittens I’ve ever fostered.

©2018 Robin AF Olson.

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I was to give Pistachio antibiotics because, as Dr. Larry told me, the bacteria in his mouth was pushed into his lungs, if, indeed I forced the de-wormer liquid into his lungs. It made sense, but I didn’t want to give him the medication because I knew it would throw off his gut bacteria.

I’ve been learning about homeopathy and I’ve seen some amazing things happen for my cat, Spencer, but I didn’t know what to do for Pistachio so I followed Dr. Larry’s advice.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Feel better!

The next day Pistachio didn’t cough that I know of. He seemed to be doing really well, though his appetite was worse than ever. He’d never been a great eater, which is very unlike kittens, who will usually eat anything and everything. Something didn’t add up. I just couldn’t figure it out. I know I’d seen kittens get a cough after being de-wormed. The dead parasites can cause a mild allergic reaction that effects the lungs. I’d seen it a few times but it always went away after a few days. Pistachio was skinny. I could feel his ribs. His wormy belly was gone, but he wasn’t chunking up.

©2018 Robin AF Olson.

It was very difficult to stay strong and keep Pistachio’s symptoms tracked I was so stressed out. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t write. Words failed me. One night I saw Sam sitting in the living room typing onto his laptop. Facebook was open. I could see he was talking to someone in Messenger. It was late at night. Who was he talking to? I NEVER EVER SNOOP. I’m not that kind of person, but he was saying a lot to whoever it was. He got up and walked into another room. I tiptoed over to his laptop, but I couldn’t tell who he was talking to because I had the wrong glasses on. All I know is he saw me looking and he quickly walked over and closed the laptop, then walked back into the kitchen. That’s when I felt the gut-punch of fear well up inside me. Was Sam cheating on me? Would he really do that? For over a decade we’d lived together and I never worried about him having something going on with another woman, but now this? I understood. We’d been under tremendous stress for too long. No fun. No laughter. Lots of hardship. Why wouldn’t he look for love somewhere else? Why wouldn’t I? I couldn’t ask him about it, but I could let the fear fester inside my gut and add to my sinking depression.

I returned to my self-imposed jail, the foster room, and tried to read a book as I sat there trying not to throw up. I didn’t want to be on social media, but I wanted to look at Sam’s posts. Maybe there was a clue there, but I stopped myself. Instead, I made a list about how we would separate the cats. Which ones Sam would get. Which ones we’d have to re-home (yes, re-home). How I would live if I cashed out whatever I have left, sell the house in its poor condition and move. I couldn’t live in an apartment because they’d restrict me from having more than a cat or two. I’d have to buy something, but what? Where would I live? Where could I move where it’s affordable? How would I make a living?

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Off to the vet again.

I realized if Sam and I broke up for good I’d have to shut Kitten Associates down, at least for a year or two, or maybe forever if I couldn’t get back on my feet.

I tried to be positive. Maybe it was time to realize a dream I’ve had for over a decade. I’ve wanted to move to Lunenberg, Nova Scotia since I visited there in 2004. I looked up what it would take to get citizenship in Canada and I’m A) too old, B) don’t have any skill set they need, C) don’t have a $600,000 (at least) business to bring into the country. I think I could live there, just not as a citizen, but I’d have to keep residency here in the USA, right? How could I do that?

I was hit with a crippling sense of failure. I'd waited too long to try to move. Add that realization to depression, well, it wasn't a good mix. I started to have very dark thoughts about maybe I didn't even want to live any more.

My father took his life. I know what suicide does to the surviving family and friends. When my mother was still alive, I had to promise her I wouldn't follow in my father's footsteps. She knew of my struggles. We made a plan. If I ever went into the dark place I could call her. Then my next goal was to get to my next breath-that was it.

I knew if I could just hang tight, I'd feel different in time, but without the support of my mother, I didn't know how I was going to manage to be strong enough to keep going. I had to find some grain of faith and trust that I really didn't want to die. I just wanted the pain to stop. I could find another way.

I started looking around for things to sell. I have a lot of items from my parents estate that I don’t want and that they didn’t care much about. Nothing is particularly valuable but if I sold it all off it might help with a few bills and paying bills would help me feel better. I have an old jewelry box of my mother’s. Inside it I found my father’s wedding ring. He took it off after he had an accident fixing the garage door and spilt his fingers open. It was when we lived in Ohio back in the 1960s. He never put the ring back on after that, though my parents stayed married the rest of their lives. But now the unworn ring gave me a clue about the truth of their relationship.

A few months ago I found out my brother is only my half-brother, that my mother had had an affair with a lawyer just a few years into my parent’s marriage. Maybe my dad found out some time around the accident and that’s why he never wore the ring again. For his sake, I hope he never knew the truth.

It made me sad to see the ring, I missed my daddy so much. I would never sell it, but oh to have one of my parents around to confide in during this time would have been a great relief. My mother’s been gone for over ten years and my dad, nearly twenty.

I put my daddy’s ring on and inside the next small box I found a necklace he gave my mom. It’s a jade heart surrounded by tiny pearls. I love this piece and won’t part with it. On the back it’s inscribed to my mother and dated Feb 14, 1959. 59 years later I held it in my hands. It just happened to be Valentine’s Day 2018. I put the necklace on. It fit perfectly. Through the pieces of jewelry I could feel both my parents with me. I hoped that they were out there somewhere helping me find my way out of a very dark place. I felt so alone. It was unbearable.

I went downstairs and found two Valentines cards from Sam on the kitchen counter. I was shocked. I figured this would be a Valentine’s Day with no celebration. I was too scared to open them, but once I did I was sickened, because one card basically said he wished me happiness and peace. In so many words, goodbye, then he added, I don’t wish you anything bad. In the other card he made a comment about the artwork on the cover; heart-shaped sushi. We went out for sushi the first time we met 25 years ago. It was the first time I ever had it and I loved it.

Inside that card were tickets to a comedy show he knew I wanted to go to. I felt totally messed up and distraught. What was going on? Why wouldn’t he talk to me but yet here was this offering. Was it a goodbye gesture or something else? By then I didn’t have the confidence to imagine it was anything good, so I slunk back into my room and sat with the kittens.

Later that night I went into the master bathroom to brush my teeth. Sam was in bed reading, not looking up at me. I was so sad and broken. I don’t know how I worked up the nerve, but I slipped into the bed next to him. He was startled, silent. I lifted his arm and got under it. Even if he loved someone else, maybe he still had a little bit of love left for me? He didn’t say a word. He put his book down. He didn’t adjust his position. He didn’t hold me any closer. He stretched out and turned the light off. Neither of us spoke. We barely moved. I didn’t know if he wanted me there or was too stunned to do anything. I squeezed his hand. He didn’t squeeze back. I laid there quietly for a few minutes. We were like two corpses, we were so still. The only sign of life was our breath. I didn’t know how long to wait or what to do next. I felt resigned to my fate. After a few minutes I got up and quietly went back to the foster room to sleep. He didn’t stop me. He didn’t come after me. He let me go. It’s amazing how much can be communicated without words and how much it hurts.

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A few days passed. More tension. Continuing inertia on my part. I couldn’t take the stress any more, but I also feared if I said anything to Sam we’d have a knock-down (not literally), drag-out fight. I just didn’t feel like I could do that and I was too down in the dumps to even try. I went out to dinner with some of my cat-rescue lady friends, but it did little to cheer me. I didn’t want to get into a bitch-fest complaining about Sam. I just wanted to go back to my ratty bed in the foster room.

And I was worried about the kittens, yes the kittenS. Cassie started coughing. That meant two things, one: I DIDN’T GIVE PISTACHIO ASPIRATION PNEUMONIA because that’s not contagious and two: whatever was going on they BOTH HAD IT. Was it viral or due to their common health issues regarding parasites? Mia was in the room, too and she seemed unaffected.

I couldn’t keep ignoring my problems. I had to get back on my feet. I had to talk to Sam, so without any agenda, I sat down next to him and started to talk. Thankfully after all the weeks of not talking we’d both calmed down enough to have the start of a conversation. We didn’t fight at all, but we expressed some of what we were feeling. We acknowledged we have a long way to go, if we go together. We need to make a lot of changes but we weren’t going to try to solve it all in one sitting or say everything that needed to be said all at once, too, but at least some of the pressure dissipated.

I asked him about if he’d stepped out on me. I looked him in the eye when I asked. He said no. Nothing was going on. He was surprised I asked him that, but I told him I had my reasons. Yes, I understand people lie to each other, but I had a choice. I chose to let it go. If there was something going on or still is, it will come out eventually. Since Sam never left home much during the past few weeks and even before that, he couldn’t be hooking up with someone nearby. It would have to be via online, or it was nothing. Part of me was too beat up emotionally to fight about that, but the other part still wasn’t 100 percent certain I wanted to fight for him at all.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Late one night we get silly.

Pistachio was doing all right, other than a rare cough, but still wasn't eating well. Cassie hadn’t coughed again since the first time days ago. I thought they were getting better, but without warning, Pistachio started up again. The kittens were a bit quieter than usual, not playing or eating well. To make things worse, Dr. Larry go the Flu and wasn’t in the office for most of the week while I was getting suspicious about the kitten’s health.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Catshew finally learns she can relax around me.

Yesterday I took them both in to see Dr. Larry. The night before they’d been quiet and had actually eaten a meal. I thought maybe I was nuts, the stress of the past month, severe lack of sleep had gotten to me, but I wasn’t wrong.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Pistachio's x-rays.

Dr. Larry took x-rays of Pistachio’s lungs. They were no better than two weeks ago when we last did the rads. He told me if Pistachio was an adult he’d think it was cancer. It did not look like asthma, but perhaps it was P.I.E. (Pulmonary Infiltrates of Eosinophils). Yet another disease I’ve never heard of before. I swear all my cats have weird things wrong with them that my Vet rarely sees. IF that’s what it is, it basically means a severe allergic reaction to some sort of parasite. The problem is it may be a CHRONIC problem, not a curable one.

Dr. Larry asked me if we could x-ray Cassie. I had no reason to believe she was in trouble. I almost said no, but I was glad I agreed.

Her lungs are as bad as Pistachio’s. I almost fainted when I heard the news. What the Hell was going on with the kittens? How would we find out what was wrong?

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Cassie's x-rays.

We decided to do a PCR test on Cassie’s saliva since she had never gotten antibiotics, which would ruin the test results. Dr. Larry said it would rule in or out “some bad things,” (which it ended up doing) but this time didn’t go into detail and I didn’t ask, which is completely unlike me. The tests, the x-rays, the over 10 vet visits have taken a toll on us…and Pistachio’s testicles haven’t dropped. This is called, Cryptorchid.

It’s either one testicle doesn't drop or both sides don't drop, and in his case, it’s both sides which, again, is very rare. This can also be very painful and cause a lot of problems. It complicates his neutering because it turns it into exploratory surgery unless we do an ultrasound first.

It also means Pistachio can’t go anywhere-be adopted-for another two months. If at 6-months of age he still doesn’t have his little nuggets, then we have to do the procedure and surgery and we might as well wait to re-test him for FIV while we’re at it (we did re-test and he was found to be negative for FIV).

It was a real kick in the teeth. So many people want to adopt Pistachio and now no one can. I don’t know when or if the kittens will be able to find their forever homes. First, I have to find a way to get them healthy if it’s possible, and right now I have more questions than I have answers.

If there’s something to be learned it’s to follow your gut with your pet’s health. Even though Pistachio’s cough isn’t every day, it sounds terrible. He still plays and purrs, but his lungs tell another story. He and Cassie have come a very long way in the weeks they’ve been with us and I’m determined to find an answer for them.

As for me, it’s one day at a time. At least my words are back and I have so many more stories to tell.

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August 2018

It was February when I wrote about Pistachio and Catshew, but as the year dragged on, things got worse for me and Sam, for the kittens, too. Spencer just turned 17, which was the highlight of the past few months. Somehow he’s still with us. I haven’t done chemo, just homeopathy and good food. It was a very difficult decision to not give him chemo, but now I feel more comfortable with my choice. Hearing him purr and having him gain back weight he'd lost last year has given me hope he may be with us a bit longer.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Spencer & Freya curl up together. I'm so grateful Spencer is still with us.

But Pistachio. My God. For MONTHS he coughed. MONTHS. I tried homeopathy with both kittens for about 6 weeks and their lungs got about 40% better. I was tracking every meal, if they ate, if they coughed, I timed Pistachio's coughs since he was much more severely effected, even if it was 3 AM. I wrote what kind of cough (foamy or dry-harsh, etc) into the notes app on my phone.

I finally had to give up on homeopathy (which I found out later is fine to do. You don’t have to do all homeopathy or all “traditional” treatments. You can do a bit of both, but that sort of fine-tuning is not something I'm comfortable with yet.)

Meanwhile, Pistchio’s testicles didn’t drop. He frequently goes in and out of the litter pan, but doesn’t always pass urine. I got an ultrasound done to find his testicles and they only saw one. It was pressing on his bladder. The longer we waited to do surgery, the more uncomfortable he would become, but you can’t sedate a cat and do surgery on a cat who has lousy lung function.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Guess where they're going? Ugh!

We tried antibiotics. Nothing worked. I asked about lungworm, but was told it was too unlikely and his symptoms would be different. We did more tests and talked about doing a trans-trachael lavage (basically they sedate the cat, infuse his lungs with a small amount of sterile saline, then remove the fluid and test it to get answers about what the coughing was from). The problem, not only was cost, but THE CAT CAN’T BREATHE very well! Is this wise to sedate him? Okay, it would be a “twilight” sort of sedation since they needed him to cough as part of the procedure, but it was still risky.

I took Pistachio to see a specialist. We talked about lungworm again. We decided to do a Baermann fecal test. It’s $200. It’s also VERY TOUGH to do because they require a FRESH stool sample..I mean like “right out of the pipe” stool sample. If I didn’t see Pistachio pass the stool, it would be too old. Also, I needed to get the sample on Tuesday-Saturday between 8AM and 6PM. Really? That meant ideally I should be in the foster room ALL THE TIME. Yeah, that’s not going to happen. I have to work!!!

It took a few weeks, but I finally lucked out and got a sample. Guess what?

LUNGWORM POSITIVE.

Lungworms are rare here in the northeast, but common in cats in the south. It meant he had to have come into contact with a secondary host somehow. I read it can be from a slug or drinking out of a puddle a slug passed through, but in the winter? Or something else was the culprit because it could be transmitted through him eating another prey animal. Whatever it was, clearly both he and his sister had been infected because they both had a terrible cough.

The treatment was a de-wormer! No biggie. We’d do it for 2 weeks. You can bet I did not miss one dose of that de-wormer!

At last, Pistachio and Catshew stopped coughing so often. Cassie was fine very quickly so I was able to get her spayed. I opted to have it done with Dr Larry just in case her lungs were an issue, but it was very expensive. Pistachio still had a lingering cough now and then, but I could finally get it set up to have him neutered.

It was July. I’d been trying to find a cure for SEVEN MONTHS.

The first week of August we set the date for his neuter. The neuter is really exploratory surgery to find both of Pistachio’s nuts. Dr. Larry said we had to repeat the ultrasound, which dashed my hopes at not having to spend yet another $500 on more tests. I’d taken him to our vet over 20 times and spent over $4000 on his care to date. His surgery was going to be about $750. Normally it’s less than $100 to neuter a cat. His care was breaking the bank.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Still coughing.

The day arrived for his surgery. I couldn’t wait. For months I’d been suffering from the stench in the foster room. His urine smelled VERY STRONG-a mix of ammonia and male-cat-stank since he still had working hormones. I couldn’t do much to clear the smell out of the room and I was trying to sleep there each night. Yeah, good luck with that. A few weeks after surgery his hormone level should drop and the smell would go away. I could finally put Pistachio and his sister up for adoption.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. At least Pistachio can get some rest.

Around 6AM Pistachio started coughing again. I had to cancel the surgery. It was too risky. I didn’t know if the de-wormer had failed or if something else was going on. The next time we could do the ultrasound and the surgery was a MONTH later (August 31). I was devastated.

This cat was uncomfortable. The smell was terrible and he continued to cough from time to time. I contacted our specialist and she said we should repeat the Baermann test before trying any surgery. Here we go again…

Meanwhile, Pistachio was growing up. The sweet little kitten got “stud tail!” It’s when an intact male has overactive hormones that create an overabundance of oil in the sebaceous glands. The base of his tail got greasy and it could get full of blackheads and become infected, so back to the vet I went with a new bottle of specialized shampoo for his tail. Pistachio was so fearful he hid under a towel on the exam table.

He no longer trusts me to come near him because of all the vet visits. It breaks my heart more than I can describe to lose his trust. I love this kitten so much, but I have to get him healthy and that means taking him for car trips to the vet whether he likes it or not

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Growing up fast. Pistachio's tail floofed, while the rest of his coat is silky and smooth.

We didn’t wash his tail. It can actually make it worse and because we plan on doing the neuter I HOPE, it’s a temporary problem (and he didn’t have an infection).

He’s a man-cat now, too. I’ve NEVER seen this before because we ALWAYS spay and neuter our kittens at a reasonable time. I would never wait 9 months to neuter a cat unless he had health issues, as Pistachio has, but now, my little guy has a BIG JOWLY HEAD (often called “Apple-head” here in the northeast or “Biscuit-head” down south). He probably weighs 10 pounds. We used to be so close. He loved to sleep on my chest and now he whines if I come near him.

I hope that in a few weeks, after his surgery, he’ll feel better and want to be close again. I don’t know if anyone will want to adopt him and his sister since they’re no longer kittens, but I can’t keep him as much as I would like to.

I’ve spent most of this year helping a cat I thought I’d have adopted out so long ago. It was supposed to be a quick rescue, not one that broke the bank, my heart and my back. I don’t regret rescuing Pistachio and Cassie. I know they would probably be dead if I hadn’t fought so hard to find out what was ailing them, but now I really need help for the final hurdle.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. One and a half 'staches.

Thanks to our friend Chris, she will match up to $1000 in donations. We need them BADLY. This year has been the toughest on us. Donations are at about 1/10 of what we normally can raise. We just took in a mom and 5 kittens and we still have Daphne and 2 of her 4 kittens to find homes for. Chanel, who came from a hoarder, is still with us too. It’s been a tough year in so many ways, but I can’t provide for the rescue cats we have without support.

Our goal is to raise $1000 to earn the matching $1000. It won’t even come close to getting us out of the hole, but it will make Pistachio’s surgery possible. If we raise more, then it will go to any and all of the other cats in our care. Ideally, we need to a lot more to cover everyone (at least $900 to do the spay/neuter surgery for Matilda and her kittens). It’s very hard to have to ask for help, but we really need it.

Here’s how you can help:

DONATE

Give a gift of any amount over $1 to Pistachio using our PayPal.me link (you don't have to have a PayPal Account to give a gift) HERE.

Quick shortcuts to donate a specific amount :

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

VENMO https://venmo.com/KittenAssociates

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.

If you wish to write a check, Please make out your gift to: Kitten Associates and send it to: P.O. Box 354, Newtown, CT 06470-0354 and add a note that it’s "For Pistachio."

Your gift is tax deductible. Kitten Associates is a 501c3 non-profit. Our EIN Tax ID is 27-3597692.

Please think good thoughts for Pistachio and for me, too. I made a promise to this kitten a long time ago-that one day we would be friends. I kept that promise to the best of my ability, but I can’t help but feel I have failed him, and that doesn’t sit right with me at all.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. So adorable, yet so very sick.

Sam and I have waxed and waned in our ability to get along. Sometimes I’m sure the heart-connection we have is gone and other times it feels unbreakable. We almost lost the house a few weeks ago, but a family member stepped up and helped us with a temporary loan. Our path has been rocky for so long. I'm praying we find a way to overcome these issues and find a way to take a break to recover from the stress we’re under. We’ve got to be able to buy groceries without being scared the lights will be shut off while we’re at the store. I feel like I’m in a pit of despair that I can’t get out of, but I keep trying.

I do it for the cats. I do it because they need me. I do it because I can’t fail and lose everything.

Prologue

Every time I take on a rescue-cat I always get to a point where I realize this cat or kitten came into my life for a reason. Maybe I’m just looking to make sense of it, to connect random events, or maybe there’s something cosmic going on that I’m responding to. I’ll probably never know for certain why, all I know is that it’s starting to add up with our latest rescues.

It’s been over a month [guess what…it’s been 6 months now] since I wrote what follows. A lot has happened, not all of it bright or cheery, but the puzzle pieces are fitting together. I know that these kittens needed to be here. If they had been given away, it’s very unlikely they would have gotten the care they needed. It’s not to say those people are unkind, just not as experienced caring for kittens. As often is the case, what seemed to be a straightforward rescue has turned into a complicated, expensive journey to get two kittens on the right track.

January

A text message appeared on my iPhone. “Help needed for a kitten…can you take it?” I get these requests for cats of all ages, all the time. Dozens a day. I refer some, hope-for-the-best for others, network a few, take on ones that will fit into my foster home network when funds allow. It happens so often it becomes a blur of endless anxiety, frustration, and heartbreak for me.

“I’m really tired. I’m on a break…first time in 7 years. Was going to take the winter off from fostering.” was my reply.

This is where I thought the story would end. My soul felt empty from the ravages of years of acute stress without the chance to have a day off, to feel peace again. My cat Spencer has lymphoma. I need to focus my attention on him, not another kitten who needs de-worming and 100 trips to the vet…who might have a contagious virus that will sicken my cats.

Karen, a lady I’ve known for years, works with the place where I get my old car fixed. We’ve talked cats many times. Her husband owns a business where there’s lots of heavy machinery and concrete forms. They have a small feral cat colony and from time to time they rescue the cats and find them homes. This time they couldn’t find a place for the kitten they just found and wanted me to take it.

She sent me a photo. The kitten was black and white, dirty, probably feral, probably full of fleas and mites and worms. I explained I just couldn’t do it. Later that day she told me she found a home for the kitten, but if I wanted to stop by the next morning, I could see him. She said she was already eating solid food and had eaten 3 cans she was so hungry.

First glimpse of the little kitten. I was so tired (probably had compassion fatigue) that I didn't even notice how cute it was.

I felt like she could have told me anything about this kitten and I wouldn’t have cared. I don’t know why I agreed to stop by. I guess I felt guilty. I worried that if the kitten wasn’t going to a rescue, that at least I should make sure it gets de-wormed and make sure it was in good enough shape to go to a home. Why I put a cat carrier in my car before I left the house is beyond me. I just had a feeling I better do it in case there was more going on than I was lead to understand.

I heard the kitten before I saw her. She was crying, backed into the corner of a small dog crate that was placed on the floor in Karen’s office. Karen explained they had bathed her a few times, but you could still smell the odor from burnt engine oil coming off her. Her fur was caked and spikey. She was hunkered down, terrified. That’s when I learned she was found under the hood of a big truck, on the block heater of a diesel engine. Too scared to move, one of the employees grabbed the kitten. It had been so cold outside that the only source of warmth anywhere was under the hoods of the trucks since they were plugged in when not in use to keep the engine fluids warm so they’d start each morning.

I asked her to take the kitten out of the crate. She really stank. Her belly was so big I could barely see her legs. She shuffled over to a stack of papers and pressed herself against some file folders. Her pupils were huge. She was definitely feral and I said as much to Karen.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Filthy, stinky, adorable.

She was skin and bones under all that swelling. She might have other health issues. Her eyes were watering, then she sneezed. I asked about the person who was going to adopt the kitten and was told they had a cat and dog, but that was about it. I asked if they were going to make sure the kitten got spayed and I didn’t get a firm answer.

I looked at the pitiful fur-blob and told Karen that I thought I should take the kitten. My inner voice was yelling at me at the time, but my heart won out. I knew what this kitten needed would be too much for someone who doesn’t work with kittens to deal with. That the kitten would probably turn into one of those kittens who always hides under the sofa because it didn’t get socialized properly. I worried that it wouldn’t get the vet care it needed. As a rescuer, it was against everything I do to leave this kitten’s future up to fate.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Oh yes, I AM the cutest kitten, ever.

I carefully inserted a syringe of de-worming medicine into the kitten’s mouth, then quickly turned her upside down and looked between her back legs. She was a HE. Karen was sure it was a girl, probably because the kitten has a very girlie looking face, if that makes any sense. I saw little nubs, no question in my book of it being a "him", but the next question was…

Oh shit. Now what do I do? Karen agreed it made sense for me to take the kitten and perhaps he could be adopted later by this lady once the vetting was all done.

I called my vet. They could see us right away. I packed up the kitten into my oh-so-conveniently-ready-cat-carrier. As I placed the carrier onto the front seat of my car I said to the kitten; “You don’t know this, but we’re going to be good friends one day. I promise I will take good care of you. Don’t worry.” The kitten replied by crying all the way to the vet.

I had ten minutes to come up with a name for the kitten. He has a little black moustache just under his nose so I named him Pistachio.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. A very filthy boy.

A winter storm was due later that day and I had planned to go to the store and grab some supplies, instead of rescue a kitten. My vet had to examine Pistachio between other appointments so I went to the store while they took care of him.

The store was crowded and it took a long time to get everything on my list. So long that I’d forgotten about the kitten when my phone rang. It was Dr. Mary.

She told me the exam went well, but Pistachio looked like he was coming down with an upper respiratory tract infection. They were going to give me antibiotics, but I wasn’t sure I was going to give them to the kitten because they estimated he was about six to eight weeks old and weighed just 1 lb, 9 oz. I knew some of that was fluid build-up from parasites and I didn’t want to harm his immune system right away. As I was thinking about what sorts of digestive support I could give him, Dr. Mary’s normally cheerful tone, dropped a bit.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. After the bath, a forlorn Pistachio.

“It looks like Mr. Pistachio is positive for FIV.”

My heart sank, but then Dr. Mary reminded me that due to his age, it could be a false positive and that we’d re-test in a few weeks. Although I knew it would make finding this kitten a home a lot harder, I also knew FIV wasn’t contagious as long as he didn’t end up being aggressive with the other cats.

“One day at a time. One step at a time.” I thought to myself.

I couldn’t freak out now. I had a long way to go with this kitten. Next thing was to get him home. Get him clean and get him a place to live. I hadn’t worked with a feral kitten for years. I’m not exactly the most patient person. Ugh…what have I done? What if I make it worse and I fail at socializing him?

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I got Pistachio home and set up a medium-sized dog crate where he’d be staying until I felt he was socialized enough to let him have free reign of the infamous blue bathroom, the smaller of my two foster rooms.

I was lucky. Even though he’d never been handled much before I got him, Pistachio was willing to put up with my awkward attentions. I did a few things wrong, like cover his crate. I should have put his crate in the living room so he’d get used to the sights and sounds of us and the other cats, but I was worried about spreading illness and stressing him out. Thing is, that’s what would have worked better to start.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Sizing me up.

I remembered using a baby spoon at the end of a long stick. 1. Put chicken baby food on the spoon (warmed up food of course), 2. offer it to scared kitten, 3. encourage kitten to come forward after a taste of food, 4. repeat as necessary.

OR

Do what I did which was get frustrated, then just pick the kitten up, stick him on a towel in my lap with a plate of food, and have him eat while sitting on my lap. He was not too happy about it, but he wasn’t hissing or growling at all. He was just scared.

I kept him hungry and only fed him off my fingers or in my lap. He had a very bad load of roundworms come out of him (both ends) and it caused his rectum to bleed and get swollen. We went back and forth to the vet about 5 times that first week.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Roundworms. Lots of them.

I bathed him over and over again, trying to do it quickly, but also trying to get at the deeply embedded grease that was on his chest and back. He was a good sport, but still looked like Tribble; all fluff and no shape. He was a sorry mess.

The tip of his tail was hairless and frostbitten. It later fell off (Dr. Mary said it was OK and we didn't have to do anything since it was a clean break).

But then I found the thing, the one thing he loved more than food, he loved to be brushed.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Sam brushes 'stache into a blissful state.

A few days after taking him on I got a purr as I brushed his winter-thickened fur. I knew then we’d be okay. I encouraged him to play and that helped him forget to be afraid. It only took a little over a week to get him where I felt it was all right to put the crate away and let him have some freedom. The poor kitten was alone, though, so I made myself a nest of blankets alongside the washer and dryer. It was the only place I could stretch out other than inside the bathtub. Each night I stayed with Pistachio and we watched Netflix on my old iPad after I fed him and played with him. I tried to sleep but I had no chance of success. I was terrified of crushing him in my sleep or if I did fall asleep he would stick his wet nose into my ear, startling me awake. He’d pounce on my face if the nose-in-the-ear thing didn’t work.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Our first week together.

My new schedule was to join him around 11 PM, then stay ‘til about 3 or 4 AM. It was difficult to get in and out of the tiny space with the blankets in the way. My back was so stiff I could barely stand to fold up the blankets so I could open the door to get out and to get into my real bed. I was worried Pistachio would have behavior problems being alone so much, so I stayed with him as often as I could.

Meanwhile I’d been hearing there were possibly two other kittens related to Pistachio who were on the property that needed to be trapped. In for a dime, in for a dollar…except that I don’t trap, nor do I have a trap.

I asked on social media for help and I lucked out when one of my best buddies said she’d come help. Katherine runs Animals in Distress. We help each other out from time to time and she is a terrific trapper. I told her I’d get all our snacks and cat food for trapping if she brought the traps. She squawked: “This isn’t brunch. We have work to do!”

Hey, if I’m going to freeze my ass off waiting to trap a kitten or two, I might as well have some good snacks and tea so I ignored Katherine, as usual, and loaded up on treats.

It was about 20° F that bright Sunday morning. I had the key to the gate so we could enter the property where the cats had been seen. We set traps, drizzled stinky food all over the lot, but it was so cold the food froze in a few minutes.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Find the feral kittens here! Good luck with that.

Katherine stood by one of the trucks where Pistachio had been found and began to meow. It was so realistic a cat replied to her! There WAS a cat under the hood of the truck. The problem was…how to get it out? How to get it into a trap? The hood opened towards us, not away. It was about 8 feet high and no way to reach the hood to open it anyway. Katherine continued to meow, but the cat wouldn’t come out.

We had to keep going back into my car to thaw out after only a few minutes it was so bitter cold. I kept thinking about the kittens trying to live in this environment. All over the lot were huge concrete forms. There was no way they’d stay warm inside any of them. We didn’t see any signs of life. It was so different from my experience just the year before in Waterbury where everywhere you looked there were cats.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Inside the engine where Pistachio was found.

I didn’t want to think that failure was an option, but we had to give up. We were there for six hours. Katherine was great, offering to come back the next weekend when it was supposed to be warmer. In my heart, I wished we didn’t have to wait that long, but we needed the lot to be quiet and reduce the danger of trucks coming in and out of the lot. I’d also made contact with the caretaker of a second feral colony nearby. She’d given me a lot of information that made me wonder if our kittens were even on the lot at all, but somewhere else.

A Week Later

This time I got fried chicken as a trap bait. I’d heard that Kentucky Fried Chicken was the best, but it was too early in the morning and they weren’t open yet. I opted to hit Stew Leonard’s, a huge local grocery chain, on the way to the trapping location and got fried chicken there. Okay, I got mini-chocolate croissants, too (for us).

The temps were in the 40's and there was freshly fallen snow on the ground. Katherine and I scanned the lot, looking for paw prints and found quite a few. We made a plan to drop bits of chicken near the tracks, hoping we’d stir up some activity. Crows saw the food and started cawing loudly. I put out some dry food to encourage them to come closer. I figured if they put out the call there was food, the kittens would hear it, too.

Katherine and I sat in my car once again, thankfully not shivering as we stuffed mini croissants into our mouths and gulped down hot tea as we waited. An hour or so ticked by, then, in the distance I saw her. It was an adult cat, followed by a tiny kitten!

We were about 50 feet away, too far to see detail, but there was Pistachio’s sibling. I hoped to see a third kitten, but we didn’t see one. They were not near any of the traps. They were just eating the morsels we’d left on the ground. Katherine said that mom was probably trap savvy, which meant the odds just took a nose dive that we’d get any kittens.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Poppy and her little kitten, soon to be our Catshew.

The cats vanished soon after we saw them, but their image burned into my soul. I couldn’t just sit there and know they needed us and no do anything. We decided to move the traps further into the lot, closer to where the second colony was located.

As we crossed the lot, I saw the kitten again. I called to Katherine, but I didn’t want to yell. She couldn’t hear me clearly and started crabbing at me (as we always do to each other). I was trying to get her to head left towards a small concrete form. I was on the right. We could have cornered the kitten.

I walked as fast as I could, pointing and motioning to Katherine but she was carrying a trap and didn’t know what I was doing. I got within a few feet of the kitten but there was a huge mound of snow covered dirt in my way. I clambered up the side and the kitten dashed left, but before she did she, she waited a beat and looked me straight in the eyes, daring me to make a move. She turned quickly, then vanished. I was so upset I started to cry. I was ready to pounce on this kitten, get bitten or scratched, just to get her into my coat and off to safe harbor but she was gone. Then I saw her mom run across the street. I called out to her not to go and silently prayed she wouldn’t get hit by a car. Thankfully the road isn’t a busy one and she made it safely across.

I told Katherine what happened. We were both bummed out. We decided to set the traps where we were because to me some of the area looked like good hiding spots for the cats. There were more concrete forms but grasses had grown around them and it looked like a good cubby hole was along the base of one form. There was nothing more we could do other than go back and sit in the car and wait.

We’d waited a few hours, checked the traps, then decided to go meet the caretaker of the other colony since she was coming to feed her guys soon. We thought we might get some good intel on what was going on, but I didn’t expect what I saw next.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Listen carefully!

Turns out our guys were also part of her colony. She had named every cat. When she called out to them most of them showed up. There were half a dozen cats or so. I gave them some of the chicken and some of the other food I had. The cats were either black or black and white, similar to Pistachio but short haired. The caretaker told us that the kitten’s mom was named Poppy and that she’d had Poppy spayed a month ago and had to quickly return her because the vet said she was still nursing. I don’t know how she managed that or how the kittens survived without their mom for a time, but they did. As the caretaker talked about Poppy, a delicate little tuxedo ran over to the feeding station. It was Poppy. I wondered if mom was here, maybe the kittens were nearby, too. The caretaker said that mom would bring her the kittens when she was ready and she’d never seen any kitten this winter. Poppy ate, then took off. We decided to go check the traps and head home, thinking we’d have to come back again as soon as we could, but also grateful to know that most of the cats had been TNR’d already and had a loving caretaker looking out for them.

I drove us across the lot and parked behind a small hill in case the kittens were nearby. We got out of my car and walked over to the traps and then I saw one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen.

There was a kitten inside one of the traps, frantically trying to get out. A few feet away, sitting on a concrete block, was Poppy. She was sitting very still, statuelike, while her kitten cried out for her as she banged her tiny body into the wire bands of the trap. I called to Katherine that we’d gotten a kitten and we both ran over to the trap feeling a mixture of elation and misery. I called out to Poppy as she turned away and ran back towards the colony across the street. I told her I was sorry. Katherine said the same thing to the fleeing cat. I called out to Poppy saying we’d take care of her baby. I said I was so so sorry again and again. I didn’t want to break up this little family. The image of the little kitten flashed in my memory, her tail curled up high, chasing fearlessly after her mama just a few hours ago and now that was over, forever. How could I do that to this poor creature?

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Heartbreak and joy and wrapped up in a big knot of guilt. Our first look at Cassie.

It was twilight so I turned my iPhone light onto the trap. The kitten’s nose was bloody from struggling to get free. She was quite small and short-haired. I took off my coat and put it over the trap. I made her the same promise I made her brother. She’d be ok one day and one day I hoped we’d be friends, but for the moment a familiar thought came to mind: what the Hell am I doing? What mess have I gotten myself into now?

Katherine and I hugged, finally feeling like we got the job done. We’d heard there might not have been a third kitten, but everyone knew to contact us if there was. In the weeks since we did the trapping no other kittens have been seen. I fear that the others just didn’t make it, but I’m glad, at least, we got these two. Now Pistachio will have company once his sister was socialized enough to be reunited with him.

IF she gets socialized…

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Girls! Why are they so difficult? It seems male kittens usually socialize fairly fast if they’re young, but the girls, fuggetaboutit! I named the kitten Catshew (Cassie). She didn’t have her brother’s big wormy-filled belly. She wasn’t covered in grease. She was petite, had her brother’s silly ‘stache markings (though she only has a half-stache), but none of his long fur. Her tail was very crooked at the tip like a waded up ball of paper. I thought perhaps it was from a birth defect but later found out it was broken and already set. She wasn’t in pain so it was okay to leave it be.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. We love you even if you hate us.

She hated my guts; hissing and withdrawing any time I got near her. At least she wasn’t striking me. Clearly she was fearful, but I didn’t think she was going to bite me. Once again I did the wrong thing, putting her in the foster room with Mia. Her crate was partially covered, I thought to help her de-stress, but I found out later I should have kept the cover off.

I approached Cassie slowly, tried a few tricks like baby food on a long-handled spoon, but she wouldn’t go for it. I knew if I kept her hungry she’d have to come to me sooner or later and lick food off my fingers if nothing else. It was very slow going.

Someone suggested I wrap her in a towel and hold her on my lap for at least 30 minutes, petting her and touching her gently so she’d get used to me so I did that. She froze up, whined, shivered. I felt terrible and lost about what to do.

Then Pam came to visit.

Pam’s cat, Frida, was the reason for me deciding to help Pistachio and his sister. I’d learned about Frida on Instagram. She was a tattered, dirty, freshly-trapped, rescued and quickly adopted. She looked like Hell, but was also completely captivating. I fell in love with her sweet demeanor and gentle nature as I watched all her videos and waited for her next photo to appear on Pam's page. Frida had been living a rough life on the streets. She had an injury to her face. She needed a lot of TLC. Pam had seen her photo and offered to adopt her right away, not concerned that Frida might have a lot of health issues or behavior issues. She just wanted to give Frida the life she deserved.

Pam was doing everything she could to help her recover, but in barely two weeks after her rescue, it was discovered that Frida’s swollen cheek was not due to an abscess (infection), but to cancer that had ravaged her jaw and was going into her brain. There was nothing that could be done other than to humanely euthanize the sweet girl.

I never met Frida, but there was something about her that made my heart break when I learned she died. It was the day I was asked to help Pistachio. The next morning I decided to funnel my grief into helping this kitten, to honor Frida. I had no idea my simple gesture would turn into something much bigger.

You see, I contacted Pam and told her about Pistachio and how sorry I was about Frida, that she would live on by another life saved. Then she posted about what I did and the news took off. I was contacted by another gal who said she adopted a cat because of what I did, to honor Frida, too. Then more people stepped up, either naming a newly rescued cat Frida or rescuing more cats in honor of this special girl.

Pam got so fired up she decided to use social media, as I have done for over a decade, to help cats get out of kill shelters and get rescued. She started a new IG page TeamFridaFries and has been highlighting the tough to rescue cats who need a helping paw. In just a few weeks Pam has already started saving lives all over the country, to honor the cat she loved so dearly.

…And Pam had a crush on Pistachio, so I invited her to come and meet him.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Pistachio, meet Pam. Pam, meet Pistachio!

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What I often notice is when someone comes over to adopt a cat that the cat has a say, too, and some times it’s clear the cat doesn’t want that person to adopt them. That was the case with Pam and Pistachio. He just didn’t want her to hold him or pet him. It was so odd. I felt terrible because perhaps I’d been with him too much and I needed to have other people visit with him. Pam was a good sport about it and frankly it was way too early for anyone to adopt Pistachio anyway. I asked Pam if she would like to meet Cassie and of course she said yes.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Pam + Catshew = 4Ever.

That’s when I saw a love-match. Pam didn’t hesitate to purrito Cassie, then hold and kiss her, while she Cassie whined and fussed. The little kitten was confused about what this human was doing to her. Pam lit up. Her energy changed. Cassie settled down and all I could think was “PLEASE TAKE CASSIE!”

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Kitten purrito.

Pam offered to foster Cassie and I said YES right away, but I had to get Cassie to the vet and get her vaccination done before it was safe for her to be near any of Pam’s other cats. Unfortunately, the timing wasn’t great and Cassie never got to visit Aunt Pam, but just seeing her with Cassie gave me the inspiration to keep trying to socialize her.

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I kept at it. I got some good advice from a few rescue friends. They said to put Cassie’s crate into the living room with no cover on it. Get her desensitized to life around humans. The second I did that she perked up, happy to see other cats. She still growled and whined every time I went near her, but she would allow me to pet her, always keeping one or both ears flattened down, not sure she trusted me yet.

Meanwhile I was going back and forth to the vet with Pistachio. His rear end was in bad shape from the parasite load. Then he tested positive for coccidia, too. I worried my cats would get it, but I read that they can become immune to it as adults. The last thing I needed was 10 cats to have diarrhea!

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Poor Pistachio. You've just got to get better!

Pistachio was becoming aggressive with me since he had no outlet to interact with other cats. I knew he needed, what I call, Kitten Bootcamp. He needed to be with other cats who would let him know he was biting too hard or being too rough, and that meant he had to be vetted enough so that it was safe to put him into the big foster room with Mia. If Cassie would turn around I could put her into the room, too, but it seemed like it was going to take months for her to be stable enough to move.

When the time came to give it a try, I realized Pistachio and Cassie had been apart for too long. Cassie was very aggressive the few moments she’d seen her brother. I decided to do site swapping so they could learn each other’s scent, while staying safe. I let them have time together, but only while I was in the room because Pistachio was so rough with his sister. It took a few weeks, but I finally got Cassie to purr and I finally felt that it was safe for both kittens to move into the foster room together.

©2018 Robin AF Olson. Reunion.

What I couldn’t know was that I was going to be moving into the big foster room, too. Sam and I had not been getting along for months and things finally came to a head during the time I trapped Cassie. We stopped talking, eating together, being anywhere near each other. We figured out how to do this horrible passive-aggressive “dance” while we shared the same living space.

If I was in the kitchen, Sam would wait a few feet away until I left before he’d enter the room. At first I was so angry and fed up I didn’t care, but as the days wore on with no changes, I got hit with a depression that was one of the worst of my life. I tried to make a home for myself within the four walls of the foster room, but living with hyperactive kittens running around, who were fighting half the night, trying to sleep on an old hard mattress with a lone spring that poked my hip when I tried to sleep, was robbing me from getting any peace, any rest, any relief.

Things go from better to worse...will Pistachio EVER get BETTER? ...oh, then Catshew gets sick, too. Find out the good, the bad and the ugly next...

I’m not the only person who had a challenging relationship with their mother. I get that, but a few weeks ago something happened that changed how I think of my mother. It left me with so many unanswered questions, mixed with a frenzied desire to know the truth. It gutted me, shocked me, uprooted the foundation of my entire life. Now I find myself going back and thinking about so many moments, having to re-write them, now flavored with different meaning. I am so angry, hurt and confused. I’m not sure how I go on from here knowing that my life has been a lie.

April 7, 2018

My birthday is April 3rd. It fell on a Tuesday this year. The weather was dreadful but Sam and I planned an afternoon away from home. We’d walk around New Haven (ended up being in the rain), visiting a museum, a cheese shop and get cupcakes. It was fine, nothing special, kinda damp day.

Saturday the 7th was set to be “family fun night” with my nephew, Ryan and my ex-sister-in-law, who I consider to be my sister (but who is very private so I’m not even going to say her name). These are the two, most cherished members of what’s left of my family.

©2002 Robin AF Olson. It would take all afternoon to make these pies but it was always worth the effort.

My mother died in 2010 and my dad in 1999. I have a brother, sort of, but we had a falling out after my mother died. I haven’t seen or spoken to him in 10 years. It’s not a big surprise, but we never got on that well as kids, either. For my part I tried to get along and tried to love him. It hurt me that I never could find a way to feel close to him except when we were joking around. We both have a great sense of humor, but other than that we are very opposite. After thinking about it a lot, he scares me. I find myself trying to please him, be a good older sister. He lived with me for a time, after he got divorced. He was supposed to look after my cats so I could go away for a few days. I came home and a cat was MISSING. He hadn’t paid attention and let her out when he was busy with his young son. He never told me she got away and got mad at ME when I yelled at him for being so irresponsible.

The cat had one eye and was very old and didn’t know the area where she was since I’d only recently taken her into my home after my mother refused to provide vet care for her. Sure, she’d feed a friendly stray but when the cat showed up one day with one of her eyes bulging out of her head, she withdrew, dug her heals in and demanded that the cat was FREE. FREE to do what she wanted, go where she wanted to go. That what happened to it now was mother nature. I don’t know why my mother said this about the strays she fed, but she said it more than once. I think she felt trapped in her life and was somehow living vicariously through the strays. It made me sick.

It left me feeling furious to the point where I could no longer have contact with her.

My mother had plenty of time and money to take the cat to the vet. Instead, the burden was on me to provide for the tiny gray cat I named Sasha.

When I confronted my brother about Sasha, he shrugged his shoulders, uncaring. I told him he was my brother and I loved him. I couldn’t understand why he’d do this to me. He just stared blankly at me as if I was speaking another language. After that point I began to realize I was stupid for trying to be kind to him. I think his heart is made of dollar bills because that’s all he ever cares about…that and being an all-about-me-drama-queen.

I eventually found Sasha and got her back home.

--------------------------------------------

There are so many things that go on behind closed doors that never are spoken about. There are so many tiny events that only add up to something much later. I never understood why my mother made me feel bad because I wasn’t as cheerful as my brother. I suffer from clinical depression but she labeled me as being “crabby” and make a joke of it.

She always urged my brother and I to get along, yet she played favorites. Only until the last years of her life did she realize my value. It was Dan she favored and that was a bitter pill for me to swallow.

I just wanted my mother to love me.

She never said as much, ever. She was often cold, distant. She manipulated me by telling me a shocking story about her first (then ex) husband Donald, who murdered her new sweetheart in a jealous rage in the lobby of the apartment building she lived in. He was a guy nicknamed, Kaz. Yes, she told me this, crying. Unburdening herself of decades of keeping this guilty secret, then denied it days later after I’d lost my temper and demanded we contact someone and find out if this was true, maybe even the police.

After she changed her tune, saying she did it to get a rise out of me, I stopped answering her calls and wrote her a farewell letter. I didn’t want to have such a toxic person in my life. I was separated from my husband and I needed support, not more drama and lies.

I didn’t speak with her for nearly a year and I was never able to find out about her Ex or Kaz.

This is the same person who I would defend when my father would say nasty things about her when she wasn’t around. He got so mad he tried to kill me when I protected her. He said something really bad about "Jews" and I couldn't stop myself from pushing his buttons, saying; "You married one." He flew into a rage unlike any I had ever seen. I ran upstairs and locked myself in my bedroom and somehow shoved a wall unit across the door before he could reach me.

He got his rifle. Yelling at me to come out of my room. He hit my door with the butt of his rifle, cracking the door in the middle. He eventually realized he couldn’t get in and left me alone, stomping off enraged.

Meanwhile, my mother wasn't home. She was the Crew Chief at the EMS in town and wouldn’t be home until after 6AM because she volunteered during the night shift.

I snuck out of my room around 5AM and hid on the neighbors back deck. I was taking care of their house while they were on vacation but forgot to bring the key. I shivered in the early May cold, waiting for my dad to go to work and my mom to come home. I knew she would comfort me and be proud of me for having her back, but I was wrong.

Instead she shouted at me “Why did you do that? I don’t need you to protect me.”

I was floored, betrayed. I was 16. I wanted to run away, but I had nowhere to go. I went back to my room and tried to move the wall unit to its original location. I couldn’t. It was too heavy.

I never knew how she was going to react, I just knew it would not be what I’d expect from a mother. She even told me, more than once, to never have kids, to never marry. Instead, regarding men she said; “love ‘em, lay ‘em, and leave ‘em.” I thought it was a joke, but looking back I fear it wasn’t.

She was brilliant, a genius with photographic memory, but born too soon because she lived in a world where women couldn’t achieve what they can now. I’ve written about her talents before, but I’ve never said much about the dark side of her icy behavior and her secrets. Most of the time I felt inadequate around her or that I didn’t please her. I wanted to feel the comfort of a hug, but she didn’t want to be touched, especially after my father took his own life.

Years after she died, I found a diary entry saying she could have stopped him, but didn’t. She’d seen him do it and after that shock, she didn’t want anyone near her ever again. She never told us.

She alluded to having a lot more secrets, but by then I didn’t want to know.

Yet, I still tried to make her happy and give her something to laugh about after my dad died. We had our moments where there was a true, clear connection, but it wasn’t very often. I was so stressed out about wanting to make her happy, I would end up failing or her reaction would just gut me. She hated getting gifts, but she liked to push me away when I tried to offer her something. It was about as far from what I would dream of as a relationship with a mom than I could imagine and it still hurts me to this day.

But who really was my mother?

April 7, 2018 2PM

My family fun night was going to start early, at 2PM, so we could bake Easter Pies. It was a family tradition from the Italian side of my family (my dad’s side), though it was ironic that my Jewish mother took over the care and sharing of the recipe. She wrote directions a few times so I’d be sure to continue on after she was gone. Making those pies was one of the few happy memories I have. We’d cut up the meats and slice the hard cooked eggs. We’d catch each other up on what we were doing and make lots of jokes. We’d drink tea and soak up each other’s company.

©2006 Robin AF Olson. The making of the last Easter Pies. My mother died a few months after this photo was taken.

After the pies baked we’d have the annual discussion on whether they tasted better cold or hot (mother liked cold, daddy liked it heated). This year I had anxiety about making the crust. The last time I tried it didn’t work out. My mother always made the dough the night before so it was the missing piece of how to make the pie great. I’d try again. I found a recipe online that was very close to what I remembered. I made so much extra that I knew I’d have plenty for the top and bottom crust, but wasn’t sure it would hold together once I rolled it out. Even if it failed, it would be fun having my family there. We’d have a little celebration for my birthday and some cake and that would be good enough for me.

But then the doorbell rang.

I opened the door, wondering why Ryan didn’t just walk in. He’s family. He can come right into my home. It wasn’t Ryan. It was my brother and his second wife. I just stood there wondering what to do, what to say. Was he going to pull a gun on me or have a happy reunion? I squeaked out “Hello.” They said hello back. I started to cry. The pain of a decade-long separation got to me, even though I knew I shouldn’t care any more. Seeing my brother suddenly 10 years older was a punch to the gut. I didn’t care what he was going to do. I reached out for him. He gave me a hug. I continued to cry. I wondered if they knew about his son and ex coming over. Maybe they were going to join us and make pies? I should have known better they weren't there to celebrate.

He said he had something important to tell me and thought it would be ok to stop by since he knew I was having company. I thought he was going to tell me he was sick with cancer and was going to die. I was literally shaking as I invited them into the house.

I offered them tea. He said no, his wife said, yes if decafe. Then she didn’t believe me it was decaffeinated so I showed her the container. My brother stood in the kitchen looking ashen. He began to tell me about how his wife had taken a DNA test. We all knew she was adopted. She’d met her bio-family, but wanted to know about her health markers and what issues she’d have to be concerned about (so she listed all her worries over and over again “macular degeneration” “parkinson’s”…she’s all about ME ME ME). My brother decided to take the test, too.

I didn’t know what he was going to say next. I’d done a DNA test years ago and it was pretty much what I expected: lots of eastern European and some southern European DNA, no American Indian as I’d heard rumors about as a kid. My brother took out his phone and brought up the app. He showed it to me. Something was missing.

No Italian DNA.

I’d just read that siblings don’t necessarily match in their DNA and I told him as much. I was about 25% Italian, but maybe it was fine that he wasn’t? Then he dropped the bomb. 23&Me showed him family matches of other people who take the test. He didn’t see my results since I hadn’t taken that particular DNA test, but it did show him something shocking.

My brother has a half-brother none of us knew about.

My brother also has a FATHER that is NOT the same father as I have.

My brother is only my HALF-SIBLING. (I have no other siblings)

I almost collapsed, shocked to the core. I couldn’t believe it. My brother said he’d pay for me to take the 23&Me test and of course I agreed right away. This had to be a mistake, right? Because if it wasn’t it meant some terrible things.

It meant that my mother had cheated on my father barely 3 years into their marriage. Some guy, who still lives and is in Florida, is my brother’s dad. This guy has a SON who is my brother’s age so that means…THIS GUY fathered his son and my brother AT THE SAME TIME.

©1957 Feminella Family. My parents wedding day.

So much emotion settled into my heart that I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath. It was too much to consider being possible. So many questions began forming in my head…WHY? Who was this GUY? Was she in touch with him over the years? Did he know? Did my father KNOW? Why did my mother LIE TO US? She had 6 years after my father died to tell us the truth without him knowing. WHY DID SHE LIE? I could not stop thinking about it.

My brother asked me point blank-Did I know?

Without missing a beat, I looked him straight in the eye and told him I would never keep something like that from him, even if he hated my guts and vice versa. I had no idea, but then I realized that was why he came over, to see my reaction.

And meanwhile all this is going on in front of my nephew and my “sis”…who had no idea, either. What a way to drop a bomb, with no concern for how anyone would take the news. It could have been done in private, out of respect for me, for his son, for his ex, but no, it had to be a big drama-filled event.

I asked if he contacted his bio-dad. He hasn’t yet. He reached out to his half-brother, but there hasn’t been any reply. I told Dan I’d go through my mother’s papers and search for clues. She left some journals and letters behind. Maybe I’d find an answer there. There is no one living, other than my brother’s father, who knows what happened.

After that they hugged me and left. They didn’t want to make pies or eat them. They were going out of town for the next week. If I had any info I’d text him, but other than that he didn’t have more to say to me.

My family.

My precious sis handed me a bottle of vodka. She grabbed a can of cranberry seltzer and asked me if I wanted a drink. She doesn't put up with anyone's shit, especially my brother's...err half-brother's. She was furious at his behavior and said as much. She was kind and understanding and said she was very happy my nephew didn't get his DNA test back first. It would have made it appear that my sis had cheated on my brother and that Ryan wasn't his son. She laughed because it's crazy to even consider, but I was glad that wasn't even a issue. I don't usually ever drink but went to my cupboard and selected a small glass silkscreened with pink elephants. It's a cocktail glass from the 1950s. I figured if I was going to get drunk, I was going to do it right. I handed my sis the glass, then said "Fill 'er up" as tears slid down my cheeks.

The next few days I was in a trance, obsessed with going through my mothers old letters. There was a journal started from the day my brother was born. She wrote about me and how much she loved me, that she didn’t think she could love anyone more and felt badly about that. I don’t remember ever feeling love from her so this was a surprise.

She noted that my brother had a “weak chin.” Those words shocked me. Why say that about your newborn child?

She also wrote about me staying with her friends on their farm while she was in the hospital. How I was so happy being surrounded by cats. That I was in my element. I was only 2 ½ years old.

Later she penned a rather plain description about moving away from Fulton, NY to Westchester County, NY, about how she was happy to put the last 18-months behind her. She hinted there were dark days, but I have no idea why. I have many letters from my father written to my mother during those days. He was devoted as ever and his tone was loving and affectionate.

What happened?

I don’t know.

Though I still have more letters and some journal entries to read. I don’t think I’m going to find the answer I’m looking for. The small pile of papers has sat untouched for a few weeks. I think I need to move on, even though I don’t know how.

I keep looking over my life and feeling like it was a lie. I don’t have to feel badly any more that my brother and I don’t get along and that we will never be close in a way I dreamed of. I doubt the doorbell will ring again and he will be standing there, with a sad awkward smile on his face. We never got along because we’re not completely related. He has another family whose blood runs in his veins.

I am the only child of my mother and father.

And I think of my poor father, how he was cuckolded, how he was proud of “his son,” who is not his son. How devastated he’d be. I don’t think he knew. He would have brought it up as a weapon to hurt my mother at some point, but he never did.

My father loved his family and was completely devoted to us, even though he and I had a very few, very bad days. Most of the time I was “daddy’s girl” and felt protected and cherished and now I realize that I really was his one and only child.

With every memory of my past, it’s now colored differently. This is the first Mother’s Day since I learned the terrible news. I find myself wanting to say “F--- you” to my Mother on this day of mothers and get rid of those mementos of hers I used to cherish, but more than that I want to free myself from trying to be a good daughter to someone who clearly did not deserve my devotion.

And my brother? I checked on him via a text when he got back from his trip, asked how he was doing. "Good" was his reply. Any news? "No." I told him I'd always be his sister and if he wanted to go out for coffee, just us, to talk, I would be happy to do that. I wanted to be there for him. He did not reply, but maybe that was his reply. He got what he wanted from me and was going back to his fancy life where I am the poor relative, now half-sister who is not worthy of being in his life. I had already mourned losing my brother so many years ago, before he showed up at my door, and now he was probably gone from my life forever.

©1969 Judith Feminella. Big sis and little bro.

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.

-----------------------

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.

The semi-truck appeared over the crest of a hill on a curve in the road. For a moment our vehicles faced each other as I travelled in the opposite direction. All I had to do was stay on my side of the lane and all would be well, but I couldn’t help but feel the desire to turn the wheel hard left. It would take a flick of the wrist to put me into the truck’s path. The impact would certainly destroy my little car and end my life. I was so distraught that the idea of ending it all gave me a momentary reprieve from overwhelming, gutting heartache. I was desperate to stop the pain. As that moment ticked on to the next and the next, I steadied my hands and stayed true, a thick slab of yellow dividing paint on the road the only thing keeping me from making a fatal choice.

A few days later I sit here in my office and try to write. My words have failed to come for so long. I’ve thought over and over about what I would say, how I would let you all know that my love, my friend, my little shadow is going to leave me. I didn’t even want to think about it, I was so shocked at the news. The discovery was revealed so simply, really, but perhaps it was intuition that guided me to do something out of the norm, this one time. Or, maybe my guide was something more divine?

Spencer, the 16-year old mascot of this 12-year old blog, my first “foster fail” 15 years ago, is terminally sick. There is no cure. There are treatments. There may be some things I can do to keep him comfortable for a time. How much time I may have with him has yet to be determined.

This is what I know…

A week before Thanksgiving, one of the cats threw up. Not usually a dire situation, but then Spencer vomited, so I worried there was a virus going around the cats. It was a great volume of food. Spencer has had life-long breathing problems, stemming from scar tissue in his right sinus after suffering from what must have been a terrible infection that occurred a long time before I ever fostered him.

I spent two years doing different tests and treatments thinking he had asthma or allergies, only to find out the most simple answer was the right one. As a result of the scar tissue, Spencer wheezes. I’m always very careful about when he has to be sedated and sadly, because he also can get VERY stressed out in the car (he hyperventilates) and VERY stressed at the vet, I try to limit his trips.

That’s why it was strange that when he vomited, my first reaction was to run him to the vet. He sounded quite bad. I worried he might have aspirated food into his lungs or sinus cavity. I could have opted to wait an hour or two, but my vet was going to close in less than an hour and if I rushed over they could check Spencer out. I was planning on bringing him in for his bi-annual exam in December because his kidneys have started to go downhill and we needed to update his blood work. Something in my gut to told me to go now and not wait. It’s not like I have funds to throw around, but I imagined they’d do an exam and we’d come home and all would be well.

The fates must have aligned that night because Dr. Larry couldn’t see us. His partner, Dr. Mary was the one who examined Spencer not long after we arrived at the clinic. Dr. Mary doesn’t know that examining Spencer is a difficult task. Spencer “red lines” quickly, often hissing and snapping with Dr. Larry. He has to be quick about it or Spencer can require oxygen he gets so upset.

But Dr. Mary is always upbeat and cheerful and speaks so sweetly to all of her patients. She’s very soothing for all of us to be around. She didn’t know about Spencer’s history. I even warned her not to do too much, but she cheerfully continued her exam, while Spencer’s pupils began to dilate with rage when she palpated his abdomen.

“I feel a mass!” Dr. Mary exclaimed.

Dr. Mary's cheerful veil fell for a moment. Sam and I both said that maybe it was stool she was feeling. We’d just brought our senior girl, Nora, in the week before for the same issue-raw fed cats often have very hard, crumbly stool. Dr. Mary shook her head no. She couldn’t break up the mass. Something was wrong. Very wrong. She asked if she could do blood work and an x-ray as my knees went weak with fear.

I agreed we should do the tests if Spencer would allow it, while I tried not to cry. Maybe it was just constipation? Maybe he was just fine. Maybe she was wrong.

Spencer’s blood work looked ok. His kidney function was a bit better in one area and a bit worse in another. Mostly he was doing all right, which was great, but then she showed me Spencer’s x-ray. It was very clear there was a big mass in his abdomen. She explained that it looked like it was in Spencer’s omentum-it’s like a net that holds the intestines in place. She felt it was likely some sort of cancer, but that we should get an ultrasound done right away to learn more.

All I could think was “no...no…not CANCER…not my baby!”

Dr. Mary was very kind and stayed late, even though the clinic had closed for the day. She got Dr. K on the phone to find out if she could come the next day to do the sonogram. Thankfully she could, but it would have to be first thing in the morning. I couldn’t be there. I’d injured my knee over a month ago and was starting physical therapy. Sam said he’d get Spencer to the appointment, but I wanted to skip my therapy and take him. It was a mess trying to juggle Sam’s busy schedule along with feeding all the other cats and foster kittens, while I tried to figure out how to maneuver rush-hour traffic to get to my appointment.

Somehow I managed to keep it together, thanking Dr. Mary for staying late, being polite to everyone and thanking them for helping Spencer, but the second after we left the clinic and the door closed behind us, I burst into tears, nearly howling with anguish.

The next morning, as I drove to physical therapy, I started adding up how I was going to pay for all of this, get Spencer what he needed, and hopefully find out this was all just a big scary monster and that everything was going to be okay.

Except that it wasn’t okay.

Dr. K had to sedate Spencer he was so upset. She found small lesions on his kidney and his liver. The mass in his abdomen might be connected to the “tail” on his pancreas or his bile duct. They called me during the test to ask if I wanted them to do needle biopsies of these organs and the mass and I answered yes right away. We couldn’t waste any time, even though I knew that needle aspirates don’t always provide a definitive diagnosis. We had to try.

But the needle biopsies caused Spencer to have internal bleeding. He couldn’t come home for now. He’d have to stay for the day. They would do a PCV (packed cell volume) test on him every few hours to make sure the bleeding was stopping. I thought I was going to faint from stress. After the shock of the bad news, now I had to worry that the test was going to kill Spencer before I even knew what was going on.

By closing time, Spencer was allowed to come home. The bleeding had slowed and it looked like he would be all right. We were to keep him comfortable and give him time to recover. The test results might take a day or two so there was nothing more to do for now.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. The setup in my office for Spencer.

I have a huge dog bed in my office that has a pet safe heated pad on it. I set up a litter pan not far from the bed and a water dish nearby since Spencer drinks water due to his kidney problems (he gets sub q fluids too). I didn’t want him to have to go too far for anything. He needed to rest and get the sedation drugs out of his system. He walked around like a drunk, but thankfully was very hungry after his ordeal. He ate well, then retired to his bed.

Spencer stopped coming upstairs to “tuck me in” as he has done so many nights over the years. Spencer barely left my office, though in all honesty I didn’t give him much reason to. Spencer would join us in the living room once a day for about an hour but then would wobble back to his heated bed. His appetite was okay, not great. He was still Spencer, but in those days it seemed like he aged a million years.

During those next few days I had terrible anxiety wondering when the test results would come in. I started to pace around the house during the time when Dr. Mary might call-usually either when she first got in for the day or at the end of the day. Around those times I had my phone in my hand, a pad of paper and a pen nearby so I could take notes. I knew that whatever she told me, I’d probably blank out. Better to write some things down so I could look everything up later.

But there was no call Thursday or Friday.

I felt like a zombie. I couldn’t concentrate. I did some research and talked to a few friends. I played a guessing game with Sam about when and how and why I wasn’t hearing from Dr. Mary (an asteroid hit the lab and Spencer’s samples were destroyed…she had an emergency come in and would call me tomorrow…she’d call when I was going to the bathroom).

I imagined we were probably dealing with an aggressive cancer because Spencer had a mass, not thickening of the intestines or lymph nodes, which would suggest a more treatable lymphoma of some kind. I wanted to know how the Hell this could have happened. I prayed to God that it was just some weird benign thing, not something that was slowly killing my cat. Every time I checked on Spencer my gut hitched with fear. I didn’t know if he was slowly declining…did the needle hit something bad? Was he still bleeding internally?

As Spencer slept, I could see his bubblegum pink belly where he’d been shaved. I saw the tiny round red scabs from where the needles entered his body. I wondered if the fur would grow back before Spencer died. I wished I didn’t think things like that.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Spencer dreams while I have painful thoughts.

Saturday I took Annie, one of my foster cats, to the vet. I didn’t want to bring up Spencer’s test results. I didn’t want to talk about him. I didn’t want the staff to give me that look, the one I’ve seen too many times, the one that says “I’m so sorry I know your cat is going to die. I’m sorry I can’t do something about it. I’m not sure if I should talk to you about it or not so I’ll just not ask out of respect because I also fear that you’ll burst into tears…“

Annie checked out all right. She’d had a cough for a few weeks and I wanted to make sure it was nothing serious. I couldn’t handle any more bad news. I spoke with Super-Deb, the vet tech and my friend. She talked to me about Spencer after I asked her to review his ultrasound report. She explained that because it was a mass it was probably an aggressive cancer. I was right in my thinking, but I wished I was wrong.

She reminded me that what comes next will partly be due to how Spencer handles being at the vet. He won’t sit still for an IV full of chemo drugs. He might not be a good candidate for surgery, even. She surprised me by saying that Spencer was the top 5 angriest cats she’d ever dealt with—and she’s dealt with a lot of cats in her over 20 years as a tech.

So I went home, heartbroken, wondering when I’d get the news. The weekend passed and so did Monday. I started to get angry, wondering what was taking so long. Of course the call came when I didn’t expect it-when I was just leaving my second physical therapy appointment. When I was alone in the car.

It was Dr. Mary, sounding as cheerful as ever. Somehow the word CANCER didn’t sound so bad when she said it. Even when she said she was sorry, her voice softening ever so slightly, as she suggested I take Spencer to an oncologist I didn’t get upset. I’d already made an appointment for him with Dr. McDaniel since it was Thanksgiving week and I worried that if I didn’t move fast we’d lose another week. I didn’t cry. I already knew it was carcinoma and I was resigned to this truth. This news was just sealing Spencer’s fate.

The day before Thanksgiving, when so many other people were racing around, doing their final errands before celebrating with their family the next day, I was sitting in a waiting room with my beloved cat waiting to talk to an oncologist. I never want to be an ungrateful person, but I honestly did not feel thankful for anything this year. It’s been financially the worst year ever-with my poor fatally sick foster kittens nearly bankrupting Kitten Associates, too. I wrote a very very long blog post that I’m not sure you’ll ever read, but it talks in great detail about how very broken I am and what this year took out of me.

I’ve sacrificed the past 7 years of my life to saving lives and I’m exhausted. My family, for the most part, is gone. I’m very lonely. Holidays have lost their joy. They too often feel like just another day. It shouldn’t be like that for anyone.

And now, after all that, I discover my dear boy Spencer has a heartbreaking secret. I don’t know how I missed it because I watch my cats like a hawk. I try to keep thinking things will get better, but they don’t. I’m a rat in a maze with no way out. It’s hard not to turn the wheel and make it all stop, but I have to find a way.

Spencer needs me. I can’t let him down.

….to be continued….

next up…difficult choices and hopefully how to make good ones...

©2017 Robin AF Olson. A bit worse for wear, my precious boy.

(continued from Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.)

I’ve been writing in my Stephen Kellogg embossed journal every day since Holly arrived five weeks ago. Today I made the final entry.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. My cat Mabel with my journal. Keeping a diary REALLY helped a lot. I was able to track how many times Holly peed, but more importantly what I was doing to change her behavior. I tried feeding her on the spot where she'd peed before. It worked for a few days, but then she still peed on the bed. That was a good data point to help me decide what to do next.

DAYS ON PROZAC 19

GOOD DAYS 14

It was time for Holly to be reunited with her family. There weren’t any more tests I could put her through. The next one would be to see how she does once she’s home with her family and without the companionship of other cats. I warned the Kellogg’s that Holly might need more time before she completely stopped peeing. We couldn't know how much stress she’d experience making such a big change. I felt she should not start off in a small space, but just come home with access to her usual places so things didn't seem different to her (all of which had been steam cleaned while she was gone). They'd have to monitor her carefully and remember that it takes at LEAST 4 weeks for the Prozac to take full effect-more like 6 weeks.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Stephen did come to visit Holly after he returned from his Tour and she was very happy to see him again.

I wrote the Kellogg’s a letter from Holly and sealed it into an envelope, along with a personal note that I'd leave with them to read after I'd left. Here's Holly's letter:

“To My Dear Family,

My name is Holly Ivy. I may look familiar to you on the outside, but inside I’m a different kitty. While I’ve been away, I’ve been on an adventure. I met some terrible beasts, but they became my friends because of my inherent good looks and charm.

I also met some people, who, at first I wasn’t so sure about, but guess what? They became my friends, too. One of them, I call her Aunt Robin, was super nice to me and because she is so squooshy, she made a nice bed for me to sleep on.

Another new friend is Dr. Larry. He has a pretty loud voice and where is his fur? It certainly is not on his head. That is weird. Anyway, Aunt Robin and Dr. Larry said that I was a wonderful kitty, but to unlock my magical powers I needed a little bit of help so I could become the best kitty ever, a Kellogg-kitty.

I told them that sounded good to me, but how would these powers be unleashed? Honestly, I still don’t know, but whatever they did must be working because I don’t get scolded any more and no one is tense around me any more. In fact, everyone can finally see me for who I really am…the super-prettiest, the pom-pom-fetcher, the smile-maker, the love-bug, and fifth Kellogg daughter.

I missed you all so very much and I am so glad to be home. I hope I never have to leave you again, because even though everyone was really nice to me, there’s no place better than with my family. I hope we can forget the past and move forward with joy because that’s what life is all about.

Love,

Your Holly-girl”

I wanted the Kelloggs to have a clean slate and start fresh with Holly. I knew it was a lot to ask, but I’d also shown them that Holly could go a few weeks without resorting to her old habits. I’d come to understand that cats can learn to outgrow their inappropriate behaviors while on Prozac. It could take six months to a year. She might always need to be medicated, but at least we have something that worked for two weeks. Now comes the true test.

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Stephen met me at the door in his loungewear (PJs?). I guess he felt comfortable enough around me to be himself. I wasn’t trying to be cool any more, no longer worried about what I was wearing, either. We were at ease as he bent down and nonchalantly opened Holly’s cat carrier. She walked into the kitchen, tail up, excited. Within seconds we could tell she knew she was home. She gently rubbed her cheeks against a toy filled basket on the floor and again on the corner of the kitchen island. She was a busy bee, refreshing her scent around the main rooms of the first floor.

Stephen was busy filling up the litter pans and sweeping up some loose grains from the floor. I kept an eye on Holly, tossing her a pom pom, which she ran after, or following her into the room where she’d often peed on the sofa. This time she was exploring and though her pupils were rather large, she still had a confident, happy air to her.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Holly-girl with her daddy.

Kirsten returned home from dropping the children off at school. She was clearly happy to see Holly again. I’d suggested they didn’t tell their daughters that Holly was going to come home today so they kept it a secret. Their second oldest daughter, Adeline, had asked before leaving for school if they could visit Holly this week, anxious to see her again. I was grateful there was still a connection even after all this time and wished I could see her face once she realized Holly was home.

I was grateful, too, that although Stephen has been clear he does not have the bandwidth to go a crazy distance with Holly (again), he is willing to give it another try. I’m guessing because of how hard I worked to solve this problem he's willing to continue…and I think, too, because he trusts me (and that is a great gift).

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Two normal and cool people with Holly and...yikes.

I showed Kirsten and Stephen how to hide Holly’s magic pill into her food. It’s a bit of a fussy thing to have to do, but it’s only once a day. We gave Holly a snack and she ate it right up. It was a good sign that she was adjusting to being home after only a few minutes. It gave me hope.

Holly returned to her favorite spot next to the vent under the refrigerator. The warm air was soothing and the Kellogg’s often found her there. We gathered around her in a semi-circle, all sitting on the floor. Stephen took a selfie of all of us together, but I didn’t realize I should sit up so I looked like an idiot laying on the floor while they sat up, smiling for the camera (so I sort of fixed it in photoshop!). I really wanted this last image of us together to be the one that would bring this story to a close, perfectly, but as so many things go, events unfolded in ways I never expected.

©2017 Robin AF Olson. Ha ha ha...photoshop!

Three months ago, a guy sent me an email asking for help with his cat, Holly and I never could have imagined where our paths would take us. Today my heart is full. I’m fighting back tears, but it’s a losing battle. I worked so hard to save Holly from having a terrible future. I gave up a lot of my time and resources. I asked so many of my peers for help. I pushed and begged and cajoled, and in the end, at least, so far, knock wood, it was completely worth it.

A few hours after I got home, Stephen texted me a photo of Adeline. Although I can’t share it (because I respect her privacy). I can tell you what it looked like. He took it the moment she realized Holly was home. She’s crying. Her expression is a mixture of pure heartbreak and joy. Kirsten is holding her tight, comforting her, but you sense that in another moment Adeline will be reaching towards Holly so she can hold her again and tell her the words she never thought she’d be able to say: “Welcome home my Holly-girl, welcome home."”

…12 hours later...

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Holly peed on the eldest daughter’s bed.

[yep, one more part to go then...we'll see.]

©2017 Robin AF Olson.