I still miss her

I can't tell you all how much I miss little Winnie. While I was sick, she started sleeping next to my pillow so the first thing I saw every morning was her little face looking back at me, little sleepy slow blinks to let me know she still liked me.

The day before she died, I took a long hike up into the hills behind the town, looking for a good place for her. She had seemed a little stronger that day, but the next day she was obviously sinking very fast. Dr. B came that evening and I took her up to the hills the next day and built a little cairn of big stones over her.

People don't think cats are important, or they think they don't get attached to us, but it's not true. They don't show it the same way, but the attachment is just as strong.

It's getting to be pretty springy around here now, and the kitties are having a ball in the garden. They're pretty awesome, but I can say that I haven't really bonded with them the same way I did with Winnie. She was my alter ego. We understood each other.

God is more kindly and delicate about our feelings and hurts than we could ever be. He gave us pets, and for a lot of us who are going through life with a little more damage than we can handle, attachment to these little creatures is more helpful than we usually think.



~

For the English Cats are the best in Europe

For I will consider my cat, Joffrey

a fragment of a fragment,
by the mad poet, Christopher Smart

For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness when God tells him he’s a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him, and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.

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What's next

Well, maybe never mind hiatus. I kind of feel like chatting with y'all.

~

Woke up late this morning, and realised that I had been unconsciously waiting for my little furry alarm clock to come in and walk on my head and demand her breakfast. The first moments of waking up are going to be confusing and difficult for a while.

Am I being dumb that I can't stand the idea of putting away her food dish?

For the last few months, Winnie had been having trouble jumping up onto the armchairs and sofa, so I built a little cat-ladder by piling cushions next to her favourite spots. I had become so used to straightening and restacking the cushions next to the chairs that I just found myself doing it again. I've put them away now.

Honestly, I feel terrible. And I feel dumb for feeling terrible. Not very British all this maudlin mooning about over a cat. (Though I think most British people would agree that cats are usually nicer than people.)

~



So, I've had quite an offer. The monks have said that I can sell my saint-paintings in their gift shop, and have even offered to let me collect some of the old (five hundred year-old) ceramic tiles from the ruined monastery they own and are slowly renovating and use them as the canvases for extra value-added awesomeness. I'm told the tourists will eat them up like chocolate pancakes. I am not going to call them icons, since icons are a very specific process and style that I know next to nothing about. They're just paintings of saints. With local wildflowers in the margins, like a manuscript, and maybe some local landscapes... with monks.

The fact that I haven't actually painted any saint-paintings seems not to have deterred Fr. Directore Spirituale one bit who seemed to be quite enthused about the idea. He said he'd seen my drawings and had every confidence. (And of course, if I can't do it or they're dreadful, they have the option of not putting them in the shop.)

Maybe it will just be tourist kitsch, but I'll do my best to make them nice. And if I practice long enough, and learn enough skills as I go along, maybe some of them will be thought of as art some day. But they will at the very least be genuine devotional items. Really made by an oblate of the monastery while praying and thinking about the saints and God and whatnot. He said that we can pitch them as being "by an oblate of the monastery who came to Norcia to live a more contemplative, semi-eremitical life." The tourists/pilgrims all have very romantic notions about monastic life, and think of hermits in the way you and I think of fairies and elves. I hope the reality doesn't disappoint. I'm working on my levitation skills.

I've been looking at and copying the saint-paintings of some of the medieval and early Renaissance masters. I think I like these better, for all their technical primitiveness, than the later polished glories of Leonardo and Michelangelo (and who has time for the silly overthetopness of the Baroque?) so I'm sticking with the medieval frescoes, of which, fortunately, there are quite a number all over town. Frankly, I see nothing wrong at all, at least at the beginning, with straight-up copying them. I've always loved miniatures and the lively and bright little paintings in the old manuscripts. I don't expect I will ever rise to the heights of the sublime Daniel Mitsui or the incredible technical prowess of Randy Asplund. But the thing is to get started. To paraphrase Bilbo, you never know where the road is going to take you.

I'm not sure what sort of materials one uses on ceramic and terracotta tile, but I figure I can try a few different things with what I've got in the art-cupboard and just see what works best. I've been up to the old monastery a few times, and the tiles are all over the place there, half buried in the soil, so there's no shortage of them to work out the details. But of course, I'm ready to hear from the experts. Now that I've not got Winnie to care for, I can take a little trip down to Florence to visit the Greatest Art Supply Shop in the World. I'll take a tile with me and just explain what I want to do and buy whatever they tell me to buy.



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Little Winnie

My darling little Winnie left this world this evening. She had been falling fast in the last couple of days, and today could no longer walk. Towards the end of the day she only lay very still in my arms, hardly moving or even holding up her head. Dr. B. came over and gave her an injection and she hardly seemed to notice.

I'll miss her terribly.



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Winnie update

She's been a bit peaky in the last week or so, being a bit more wobbly than usual, having trouble jumping up onto the bed and the sofa, so I called Dr. B. and asked if he could please come and take a look at her. He gave me some surprisingly good news. Yes, she's a little low right now, and he gave me a prescription to help with her blood pressure which is low, but overall, she's actually a bit better. Her gastro-intestinal distress seems to have cleared up and she's put on a teeny weeny bit of weight.

She's not going to recover completely, of course, but I think we might be over the worst. He said she's found a steady-state.

The difference came when I started feeding her chicken livers and hearts, minced up fine and mashed into her special veterinary food, three times a day. Chicken livers are good food for anyone. I've loved them forever, since my mum used to make them into curry when I was a kid. They've been a staple. They're jammed with iron and vitamin A and probably all sorts of other stuff.

It seems to have made a huge difference for my ailing and ancient cat. Imagine what it could do for you.



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Winnie update

Winnie and I are just finishing our supper and watching a little TV before bed. She's doing that adorable thing again, sitting behind me on the chair and butting her head up against my shoulder while she falls asleep. I've had to push her back onto the chair cushion twice now before she slips off entirely.

Last Sunday she was in such a state, that I was once again sure we were looking at her last day, or at least last 48 hours, but Dr. B. came again and saved the day. For the last few days she's been almost bouncy. I've been feeding her with her all-time favourite thing, chicken livers, which I mince up fine and mix with her special diet food. Every time I feed her, she runs over to the dish. So I guess she's not quite ready to give up yet.

Today, as I was puttering around the garden and watching the eclipse, she came out of the house and nosed around, sniffing the new grass and sat for a few minutes in the sun. I was going to get a pic, but the camera batteries chose that moment to crap out.

As a friend said, we're on her timetable and when she's ready to go, she'll go. Until then, we hang out.



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Little Winnie's back from the edge

She's still very thin and has slowed down a lot, but the palliative treatment seems to have had the desired effect. She's eating again regularly, meows in my face in the mornings to get her breakfast, and is much more lively. Dr. B said that this therapy has worked well before and can sometimes extend an animal's life for quite a while.

Anyway, we don't know of course, but she does seem much better. For a while there, I was giving her a poke every few hours to make sure she was still alive. But now she seems not only not distressed or in pain, but a little lively as well.

Thanks to all the nice people from all over who have sent little notes and emails. I really do appreciate them.



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Winnie update

Dr. B. thinks she has bone marrow cancer. Her red blood cell count is way down, and her organs are failling.

This would be the explanation for why none of our antibiotic therapies have worked.

He's going to keep her for another night and try some palliative therapies, but that's the final word.


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Update to the update:

Walked up to the vet's this afternoon to pick her up. She is very weak and has trouble walking. But Dr. B. has given her a palliative therapy of cortisone and antibiotics and she doesn't seem to be in any pain or distress. She isn't producing enough red blood cells. The tests showed her number is half of what it was two weeks ago. Anaemia is leaving her very weak and her temperature is down, so I've got her favourite big white blankie and she's curled up in it.

She's very still right now. She had a little something to eat and drink when we got home, and she wandered around a bit as though reasserting her home rights. She sat in my lap for quite a while, and rested her head on my arm, very quiet and still. Dr. B. said that he doesn't think she will last very much longer. The cortisone treatment may slow the advance of her symptoms, but I think we both expect her not to last more than a couple of weeks.

I think I'm OK with this now. She's had a good long life with me, and I know that, medically, there wasn't anything I could have done. I missed her terribly when she was in hospital, and I knew that it was going to be very, very difficult to adjust to her not being there any more.

He gave me some more of the same stuff and we walked home. She's back in her spot on the chair again now, and I have to admit that it is a relief to have her home. What a strange feeling it was to be so used to her presence and have her suddenly not there. Every time I was in the kitchen I expected her to come in and bug me for something to eat. Whenever I sat in the living room, I kept looking up expecting her to be on her cushion.

The other day a friend suggested that I go ahead with my trip to England, which was to start on Monday, and the vet can cover her last days, to spare myself the pain of watching her go. But I just can't carry that. The world has become a horrible place mainly out of people indulging their desire to do anything to avoid suffering. I can't go there.

Dr. B. did, however, say that there is a spare cat ready for me as soon as I'm ready. He mentioned that perhaps it would be indelicate to talk to Winnie about the new cat, though. He's been great about this too. He said, "If anything happens, if she goes up, or down, call me. If you wake up one morning and she's died, call me. I want to know."

As I was carrying her home I said, "You're a world-famous cat. People from all over have sent us nice notes."

Thanks, everybody.



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Loss and pet-love

The first picture I ever took of Winnie, about two days after she came to live with me. She had refused to come out from under the bath tub. One evening, she crept downstairs while I had the fire on, and hopped onto the back of the sofa cushions, and that has been her Spot ever since. 


I feel guilty. I've been distracted, out of sorts and unable to concentrate (more than usual), emotionally fragile and whatnot.

Every night that I've spent at home for the last seven years - which, of course, has been pretty much every night, since I hate to leave the house - I have had the same routine. I feed the cat her dinner, make sure there's water in her dish, power down the house, and say, "OK cat, time for bed." We get in, she walks on my head a few times before she either takes up her spot in the crook of my knee or burrows under the covers (depending on the time of year).

Every morning is also the same. She walks on my chest and meows in my face for her breakfast and I wake up and say, "Oh, hi Fur-face."

If I stay up too late, she starts meowing and circling the furniture: "Go to bed, Monkey. Why are you still up?"

All through the days, we have kept each other company in the kind of companionable and understanding quiet that I think most old married couples aspire to. Cats aren't complicated creatures. You feed them, pet them, play with them and give them a warm, safe place to sleep and they bond with you.

Unfortunately, as soon as you decide to get any pet, you are taking on the future inevitability. One day, and sometimes not too far off, the hard days will come. You will be emotionally and psychologically attached to the pet that is bonded to you. Your life will have revolved to some degree around looking after it for years. Your routines will have your pet integrated with them in a very intimate way.

And the day will come when all that structure will have to be abandoned.

Winnie doesn't like sudden noises, or loud noises. We've had a very quiet life, and she has made it clear that loud music of any kind is unacceptable. If I have dropped a pan or closed a door too sharply or made some other noise, I have fallen into the habit of automatically saying, "Sorry, cat."

I've sometimes thought about what these habits are going to do when there is no longer a Winnie to hang them on.

Tonight is the first night Winnie has slept over anywhere but home in the whole time I've had her. I've been away sometimes, but she's always been here. When I was moving over to Italy, she had to stay for a short while in a cattery in Cheshire. I found myself talking to the empty room in the same way I would have if she were there. For seven years, every time I've opened my front door, I've said, "Hi sweetie!" (like a girl, I know.)

I don't know what to do with myself. And though I know she will probably come home from the hospital tomorrow and we will carry on, it will, I fear, not be for much longer, and this feeling of being uncomfortably alone and at loose ends, will become a permanent state.

Add to this discomfort the feeling I have that this is inappropriate, that I am somehow transgressing in the moral realm by having allowed myself to become so attached to a pet that the thought of her death is distracting me from work and other important things. I keep saying, "She's just a cat." Cats aren't people. We do wrongly to become inordinately attached to them, and the whole of our civilisation has done wrong in trying to replace our children with our pets.

This hyper-sentimentalisation of pets is something I have struggled against. I've had conversations with friends who refer to their cats as "my babies". They're not your babies. They're cats. I know that farm people don't have such attachments, even though I know that they do become fond of their animals.

I've been struggling with this for some time, and all the while Winnie has been sick. How much money is appropriate to spend on vet bills and medicines? How far is it appropriate to go to save her life? Dr. B. told me about a couple who brought their cat to him. The cat was suffering kidney failure, and as he put it, "was already more on the other side than this one." He mentioned that in Paris they are actually doing kidney transplants on pets. He was shocked when the husband pulled out his phone and started looking up flight times to Paris for the same day.

I got Winnie at a time when I was very keen to become settled in life. I wanted to become more involved in life and with my family and community. I had felt, since the death of my friend John Muggeridge, that I needed someone to care for and be responsible for. And having Winnie has certainly made me a better person. It's going to be very difficult to let go of all that.

Anyway, I've been reading a bit of theological stuff about the affections and how they are to be correctly ordered by the intellect. Thomism 101. But I keep looking up in the midst of this and not seeing little Winnie perched on the back of the arm chair, and it all falls apart.

One thing I have decided to do is not wait. When the day does come, I'm going to give it a few days, maybe a couple of weeks at most, then ask Dr. B. for a new cat.



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Winnie's off to the kitty hospital

Well, that's it, Winnie's off to spend the night in the kitty hospital, and I'm suddenly horribly lonely and rather weepy, I have to admit. The nice doctor has come and fetched her and said he'll sedate her and do some tests, and get a good bit of food into her through a tube, and we will see if she's responding to the therapies. After that we can decide what to do.


But honestly, I think the answers won't be very good. She's been quite fragile. Some days good; some days really bad. She's eating, but only barely, and still having ... ermm... gastrointestinal distress, which is a very bad sign. That didn't clear up at all from the antibiotics, so he says it's probably a result of kidney trouble.


She's got high blood pressure and I've been giving her the pills for it (which are not expensive) by crushing them up and mixing with a teaspoon of tuna (so she thinks this is the best thing evah!) But the big worry is her kidney function.

The vet is really the nicest guy in the world, and I know he'll be straight with me about her prospects. I've told him that as long as she isn't suffering unduly we'll just let things take their natural course if her condition isn't improving. She was horribly distressed on Friday and kindly came over and gave her a bunch of shots of various things and after that she was much better. Able to rest and eat something and slept the whole night.


And I've been thinking a lot about life and death, and the meaning of happiness.



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Little Winnie's much better

Thanks to the people who sent messages and said little cat-sized prayers.

The vet gave her antibiotics, IV drips of saline, glucose, vitamins and other kinds of super-nutrient supplements. He gave me special food for her, and at first it was a bit of a struggle to get her to eat it. But now she's just yumming it all down. We went back tonight for a follow-up and she's strong enough now for the next stage in the special diet. We've moved from "recovery" diet, to "renal" diet, which she will have to have for the rest of her wee life. But it's not going to break the bank. And neither is the vet bill, because... Norcia! where things are just... well... sensible.



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Winnie' sick

Well, you never really know yourself until you're challenged, I guess.

Winnie has been getting alarmingly thin for a while now, and it's been getting harder and harder to get her to eat anything. After New Year's I just couldn't deny it any longer: she's sick, and it's serious. As a 14 year old cat, she's been doing pretty well all this time, and though she's been up and down a bit in the last few months, she's been bouncing back. Trying to coax her to eat anything at all had become impossible. I'd tried mixing her food with all sorts of her regular stuff, and it would work for a while, then she'd turn her nose up at it and refuse to eat. But on Friday I started getting really alarmed. She started vomiting and then just stopped eating all together. Still drinking water, but not a bit of food.

A nice local friend her recommended a good vet, a German who does nearly all the town's pets, farm animals and hunting dogs. She drove us over on Sunday evening, and he did blood work and other tests, including an ultrasound, and she's got a chronic infection in the junction of ducts that connect her kidneys, liver and pancreas. She's also got two really bad teeth that will have to come out once we've got her a little stronger. After two days with no food, she was very weak, so he gave her intravenous glucose, shots of vitamins, digestive enzymes and antibiotics and gave me a tin of special medicated food and told me to come back the next day. We went back last night and got m ore glucose and more antibiotics plus some drops of something for three times a day.

He said that it is pretty serious, but not untreatable. He told me that her recovery is dependent upon her eating the medicated food he gave me for her, but, being a cat and not feeling well, she was absolutely refusing to eat it. She'd taken a few little licks, and then walked away.

Finally, I figured I'd done enough polite coaxing. So I grabbed her, sat her on my lap, forced open her mouth and started just spooning it in. I guess, realising that I was not going to let up, she relented and licked up the rest of it off my finger a little bit at a time, but we got a full dose down her.

We'll try it again this evening before bed time, but I can see it's already making her feel better. On Sunday night she started sleeping better, and last night she slept through the whole night, (under the covers and cuddled up to me, which was lovely). Just now she came up to me demanding a bit of my toast, which is normally one of her favourite things but that she hasn't touched in weeks.

Fingers crossed.



~

First photos

Out the front door, looking down into the garden.



S. Mar balcony garden transported. Looking rather forlorn.



Out the sitting room window.


Door to nowhere. I think there was supposed to be a balcony outside this door, but it opens onto the terracotta tiled roof. Never mind. The view is wonderful, and it will make a nice place to have tea when I've got another table.


Sitting room, piled up with boxes.


New sink as of Friday morning!


This was a few days ago. It's much tidier now.



Out the sitting room windows. Morning in the mountains seems to follow a pattern this time of year. At night the clouds sink down and settle in the valley like a huge, mountainous bowl of milk. By one o'clock they have gone back up to the sky again and the sun shines down.

Norcia, out my bedroom window, dreaming its ancient dreams.

Little Winnie's favourite activity: worshiping the oil radiator, the only source of heat until the gas gets turned on by Eni.

The fireplace works but the chimney needs cleaning. I tried lighting a fire, but the only way to keep the smoke from filling the room was to open a window. The smoke trailed happily up the chimney then, but it rather defeated the purpose.

Never mind. All shall be sorted in time. Piano-piano, as the Italians say.













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Trouble

Little Winnie is showing some very bad signs today. For some time now she has found it more difficult to jump up onto her chair and to her favourite spot in front of the window, but today she almost can't do it at all, and seems to be having trouble walking. Poor little thing is 13 now, so it's not surprising, but still very hard to watch.

I'll be taking her to the vet, but I fear a bad diagnosis. Do say a little cat-sized prayer today, if not for her, then at least for me. Not looking forward to what might be coming next.



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Winnie approves the new monkey

She likes Kathleen.


Who feeds you?! Huh?


Ungrateful animal! Who?



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Cat in love

Winnie meets her true love... the space heater.



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Cats

I've been thinking of making Winnie her own Facebook page.



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Decisions... decisions

I've decided to get another cat. Well, a kitten, really. I think you can get them pretty easily from the cat shelter at Torre Argentina. It's for Winnie. I'm starting to really worry that she's bored and lonely and doesn't have enough cat-things to do.

When I first got her, about four years ago now, I think she had been exclusively an indoor cat. We lived in my little cottage in Tattenhall and even though the place was tiny, and I left the kitchen door open a lot, she wouldn't go outside. She would sort of sidle up to the door and put her little nose out for a minute, then run back into the cottage. It was a big deal the day she went outside for a few minutes. After a while she would go outside pretty regularly through the bathroom window. She would run around on the rooftops and then back. She never stayed out at night.

Then we moved to Italy and we got a place with a really huge wrap-around terrace and she was pretty happy to go out on the terrace. Then we had a flat for a year that had a garden and she loved it. She would go out every day and prowl around the wood pile and chase the big grasshoppers in the garden. Sometimes she would just sit in the sun in the flowerbeds. I was vaguely worried she'd meet with the wrong end of a scorpion, but that never happened. After a while she got into a big thing with the local feral cat. The Mean Cat we called him. He would bully her and she started being scared to go out. One night the Mean Cat actually came into the flat and beat her up. While I was there! I had to chase it out. I think this really upset her and she would only go out when I was there in the garden digging.

Now we live in this really nice flat, but it's a story up from the garden and she can't go out. I've taken her on supervised visits to the garden a couple of times and she seemed to like it, but I'm afraid to let her out into the garden alone because it would be quite hard for her to ask to get let back in. The street outside is also quite busy, more than she is used to, and I'm really afraid that if she went out she would get hit by a car.

Sometimes she likes to go into the stairwell and run up and down the stairs, but she's pretty dumb and the floors look all the same, so she sometimes mistakes the upstairs apartment for ours and sits outside the wrong door yowling to get let in. Then I have to go rescue her.

But she's really looking quite lassitudinous; I think she sleeps too much, even for a cat, and she spends too much time trying to get my attention. She needs someone to play with who's more her own size. Someone fun and energetic to beat up on and boss around. For a while, I thought I should get her some mice, just let them loose in the apartment so she can have something fun to chase and then kill, but it turns out it's pretty hard to buy live mice. Don't know why.

I thought an adult cat would just be too much for her, since she's been an only-cat for so long. So, it's a kitten.

Also, I've decided to get a total hysterectomy to get rid of the cancer once and for all.

We tried really hard to keep all the important and useful bits in there, but it turns out that I have a "chemo-resistant" tumour and there were micrometasteses in the margins, which means the entire aparatus could be infected. The doctor said there was a 2 per cent chance that there were micrometasteses in the ovaries, but that there was really no way to test for this. The only way to know whether there was cancer there would be to wait until they developed tumours, by which time I'd be in pretty big trouble. I consulted my nice English-speaking GP and he said that with the flu or something, 2 per cent is no big deal, but it's way too big a risk with a disease that will kill me. WAY.

They said I could have radio-chemotherapy but this would (probably) have the same effect ie: premature menopause, anyway. Frankly, I didn't really even bother looking up the possible side effects of radiotherapy. It just seemed obvious that the only way to be as close as possible to absolutely sure is surgery.

So, life is about to change, permanently. I was really hoping that I would be able to deal with the cancer and have things go back more or less to the way it was before, but that hope is over.

So are a lot of other hopes.

But that's the way life goes.

More later on my Third Decision, which you guys might be able to help me with.

Now, I'm going to the beach to sit around and look at the water.



~

They're sending me home today

so I'm attempting to adjust back to life in the outside world (where no one brings you a giant bowl of tea in bed every morning :< boo) by watching kitten videos on YouTube.

I've had a lot of cats throughout my life, and they've all had their own personal food-quirk. I had a cat once who would go nuts over honeydew melon. If you were eating some, you had to eat it fast or she would try to steal the bits off your spoon before you could get it to your mouth.

Winnie likes toast and potato chips, but she won't eat the latter unless you crush them up into little bits.



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Cats are cool

I've got to get Winnie one of these feather-on-a-stick toys.

Winnie and I have been experimenting with rolled-up balls of newspaper lately. She likes them better than the string because when I toss one to her, it keeps moving and makes a cool mouse-like skritchy-skritchy noise. And the lightest touch on her part sends it skritchy-skritchying across the marble floors. Much better than the string-and-clothes-peg toy, though she still appreciates a little cat-angling now and then.

The rolled-up paper balls are such a hit that I woke up in the middle of the night the other night to hear her scampering madly down the hall after one, and when I come home from work I often find the latest one torn into little shreds and scattered all over the floor. It's the best use I can think of for the International Herald Tribune.

I was worried for a while that she wasn't being lively enough now that we don't have access to a garden for her. She's taken to sitting in front of the bay window and looking longingly out into the umbrella pines in the back garden and watching the birds. I think she thinks they're mocking her. I feel so guilty.

I love my apartment, and I love my cat, and I know it would be the height of nuttiness to move just so she can go out and catch birds...



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