The blog for my new kitty! @bastet-thecat - Tumblr Blog

well maybe you should blearily wake up at 5:08 in the pre-dawn light and find the sleeping soft tiny mammal body of your cat just inches from your head like a miracle too beautiful for speech, and you should rustle one hand out from your blankets to rub fingertip circles across the warm eggshell dome of her little velvet-wrapped skull and on the bristly patches just where the cups of her ears begin, and as she inclines her head into your fingers and purrs without ever opening her little eyes you should feel a love so tender that you understand how that love could have reached out from the fireside into the inky spangled nights long gone to reach her, and then you'll feel better

estrogenesis-eeveeangelion

i am at a complete loss as to how to adequately express to you how much this cat throws up yeah

can-i-make-image-descriptions

[Image ID: Tumblr tag from hotTubSharts reading: and then maybe she'll wake you again at 6 to the sound of her puking on the floor. maybe /End ID]

untitledcatgame

sketching some enemies

bastet-thecat

i commented "sad to tell you i felt very comforted" but i'm putting it on this blog too because i do genuinely feel comforted. I miss Bastet very much but she is still alive in videos on my phone and computer. Reaching out to comfort me.

I'm sorry, I know this is not the emotion I am supposed to feel about it because that's not what you meant to portray, but the art is quite nice and I am in fact crying because of it haha. She might be gone, but look - she's still right here.

I'm trying to remember the song I would always sing her. I sang it after she passed when calling my mom but my mom doesn't remember either. I don't know why I can't remember.

I know it ended with lyrics I changed to say I hope you know. About loving her.

It might have been "and I hope you know that"

But searching for it, I did find the "oh darling, please believe me, I'd never do you no harm. Believe me when I tell you, I'd never do you no harm" which I also would sing.

Edit: Looking at lists of lullabies and trying to find them. Adding on that I would also sing: I got you babe. Close to you

OK ! I remembered:

Oh my darlin', oh my darlin', oh my darlin' kitty cat How I love you very much, and I sure hope you know that.

Sometimes "How I love you very muchly"

I was looking through some of the oldest posts on this blog to make myself feel better about how the cats I've adopted are warming up to me (well... two out of the three) but we didn't immediately all necessarily "click." I remembered things going great with Bast but I was sure that I was forgetting some rougher patches.

A few days into having adopted her, and I was posting that "She’s the most perfect cat in the world."

The thing was. And I don't want to be disloyal to the cats I'm still getting to know. But she really, really was. I was (based on my posts) even more ignorant about cat ownership that I remember being, and she was affectionate and kind and patient all the while.

I can't believe she was already that amazing that early.

My posts do say she was 4 when I adopted her even though for a long time my records and I have already said 3. I don't know if I had corrected myself due to her

Okay. I had to stop typing because the next autocorrect word was "ashes" and I just can't

the-new-trio

This is a sort of spiritual successor to my sideblog @bastet-thecat. Bastet passed away a month ago tomorrow. As hard as it is to deal with the grief... I've realized that another portion of the grief is in not being able to be as fully psyched as I should be about the three cats I adopted afterwards.

Having that blog has been a really good resource for remembering her, from the day I adopted her.

I adopted Rumi (previously Roux, large[ish] orange cat, 2-5 year old male), Zoey (previously Shambala, 8 months to a year old, tabby, female), and Mira (previously Pandora, sister of Zoey) on the evening of April 10, so I've had them almost 2 weeks now.

I am a little superstitious about the names, and Roux sounds like Rue (regret) and Pandora implied something negative once we open the box (she likes to hide!!!) and I feel like I don't know enough about the cultural background of Shambala to keep that name if I'm changing the others. And the KPDH CRK crossover was starting right around the same time... and it felt cheesy, but after a few hours of trying to figure out names, it all sort of fit.

After a false start where I considered the names. Rumi already made sense - I like Rumi from JRWI Apotheosis, who presents as male! But I was like, no, no, Zoey for Pandora? Mira for Shambala? Those are their OPPOSITE personalities. And only after I came back to the idea did I go... oh, duh...... Zoey for SHAMBALA, Mira for PANDORA makes perfect sense.

Rumi has all the medical issues right now, and was a favorite of the volunteers at the rescue, so I have tons of pictures of him for the sake of showing them to the volunteers. (Either "this is what's wrong with him" for medical followup with their vets, or "see, he's otherwise doing okay" for their peace of mind.)

But I realized that's unfair because I could and should be documenting the process of getting to know the other two! Rumi was a cuddlebug from the start, with Mira hiding (swiped me pretty bad when we first met), and Zoey being Classic Youthful Kitten Energy. But now Zoey is as cuddly as Rumi is, and Mira is maybe hopefully starting to come out of her shell. (She is willing to lick my hand !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if I am using it to feed her treats. And she is very skittish around people but, as of today, she actually comes to the doorway of my room to watch what's happening when Zoey's in here.)

Easy to identify them - Zoey has a single white stripe on her forehead and an orange tuft on the tip of her tail.

I'll have to write out the whole story of how we met when I'm not on my night meds and put pictures from my visits.

Let me describe the setup in the house right now.

I bought my home like 3 or 4 years ago because I had wanted to adopt 2 kids from foster care as a single parent. I still want to, but it is seeming like much less of a possible dream due to mix of mental health issues and money. New job means money is better but it still seems like maybe I can't do this without a partner.

hence I have 3 bedrooms. (yes i lucked out with financing and timing etc. after over a year of attempting to move across the country.) each is furnished.

2 of them i call the kids' bedrooms. even if there are no kids yet. 1 only has 1 window and no closet/storage (yet) but has a bed.

Cats started out in just the smallest bedroom, all other doors closed, but it is the only bedroom without an air conditioner. and the weather very temporarily warmed up last week for the first time in months, so I had to open up bedroom and my office downstairs to the cats in order to get them access to a/c.

But the story I would write if I had a blog, and therefore the reason I made this blog in order to write it - lemme write it out before I get too zonked out on my night meds:

A few minutes before this took place, I had caught Mira looking into my bedroom doorway curiously, which she hadn't done before.

...oh no the meds are overtaking me augh. uhhh short version

i was gonna go downstairs, but mira was in the way, skittered down to the top steps of the stairs. i held back in my room and tried to motion for her to go in the kid's bedroom but she stayed. tried to buy time by just petting the other cats. rumi circled me, looking confused, then tried to show mira by example (?) that it's ok to walk from the stairs to the bedroom.

yeah sorry for meds ruining the story, maybe i can edit tomorrow

barbelzoart

going through the motions

Tonight, I felt it... The very moment where she had passed from *someone that should still be here* to a memory.

Had a dream just before I woke up, that I could feel that very slight pressure on the bed around me that meant she was hopping on or navigating around me (usually because she woke up first).

I've actually been sleeping in a different bed than usual and I thought that helped, because the muscle memory of sleeping beside her there is rustier, but I guess not.

I reached out to pet her and give her some scritches (not unusual) but I was aware that she was dead and this shouldn't be happening. I cracked my eyes open and she wasn't there, but I could still feel her. So I closed my eyes and kept on petting until my alarm woke me up. Normally I would loop my arm around her to snuggle her but that felt too ambitious.

The only abnormal thing is, she often was sensitive and itchy around the ears, and she definitely was by the time she passed. But she let me scritch there just fine.

Within the dream I was thinking of it as a supernatural experience. It felt very real until I woke up. But of course I doubted once I was actually awake. If that was a supernatural experience then so is every time I dream I wake up to my alarm going off at some weird time that doesn't make sense.

And I really hate the idea of her existing in some kind of limbo state and waiting for me. That's a kind of suffering I couldn't ever help with.

That last night I remember she sort-of woke me up? Or I sort of woke up? To find that I'd accidentally rolled a little on her tail. (Reverse spooning.) She never minded anything like that, but I'm worried that she was really weak then

I keep feeling compelled to write about this as if I'm going to forget, even if I don't know if I want to keep the day in memory.

Last night I'd decided to take her to the ER after work today. Woke up around 3 or 3:30. I'm still not sure if she meowed me awake or not. She couldn't be trusted around stairs these last few days (had heard her fall), and she didn't seem interested in water even if she was having a bit of food. She used to love the sink and tub so much, like, maybe she was drinking too much water but she seemed to just enjoy it.

But the last week or so - no, more than that even - I left the tub on 24/7 and she would drink a little and then ignore it. Just turning the tub on got her attention, but then in front of the water, she would just stare, maybe give it a few licks, then keep staring at it or me.

I scooped her up and moved her into the bathroom and put her in the tub in front of the water, and she only managed a few licks.

I don't remember fully if that was last night or this morning but I think it was this morning.

Also, just trying to eat the little bit of food, she would bend her head down to eat it, then stumble as if she was off-balance. I think when I realized it was probably something in her head, not that she might have twisted her leg, is why I realized I needed to bring her in right away.

The waiting room was almost all empty and had no other animals, so I kept the carrier open so I could loop my hand in. She didn't seem to want to be pet but she was okay with my arm curled sort of around her.

They took her in the back to put in an IV and they brought her out in a towel, and she was so limp in their arms. And in mine when I took her. They said she was like that in the back too. It wasn't like her at all.

Gave her an entire pack of Purina flakes. Started by opening each one so she could pick her favorite but her favorite was whichever was closest. She kept eating for as long as I gave them to her but got excited by the juice, of course, and licked it out of the package like we always do. So she got the entire package's worth of juice.

Kept holding her head and kissing her forehead and telling her that she did a good job, you did so good babe, oh darlin, oh my love, you did it so good, i love you so much, you did so good

She was curled up in my arms/shirt the whole time, with the soft side of the blanket around her too.

I just called them to see if they could get a fur clipping because I didn't think to ask for it, but they checked with a vet tech, who said it was already too late. As in, she has probably already been taken away somewhere...

This morning Bastet passed away peacefully in my arms. I adopted her in 2013 when she was 3 years old. She has been with me my entire adult life and I love her so much. What deserves to be said about her, I can't express in one post. May her memory be for a blessing.

I hate to put this here, but Bast's health has been bad lately, and the news we've gotten from the vet is even worse. We're coping and making do.

But I just spent a fair amount of time trying to entice her with string with no results. I had to go dig up the wire-and-cardboard toy that always gets her, and I managed to get her to at least investigate and paw at it to catch it. Which I considered a success and gave her treats. I am going to try to get in the habit of giving her treats daily. (She can only have one kind that she likes, and I have to tear it into pieces.)

She's gotten more lethargic as she's gotten older but I don't remember having had an attempted play session like that being so rejected. I was gonna cry if she didn't at least paw at anything or twitch her head like she was interested. Maybe she's rejected that kind of play before and I gave up early because I wasn't as worried about her as I am now though.

Bad news at the vet today. We can't test for the big C word it because putting her under for testing would be dangerous, and treatment would not be possible anyway except by doing what we already plan to.

She was so well behaved. The vet was so rude in a weird way where he was focused on teaching something to the tech shadowing him, who was way more sympathetic to me when I was crying the whole time. And people kept telling me that it's normal to be confused when he talks so fast and uses such big words. And I told them, no, I understand what he's saying, and he's saying cancer, which is why I'm distressed.

Trying to make a plan like that was not ideal. He seemed to know what he was talking about, but so do all our other specialist/emergency vets, who all have vastly different ideas of what's wrong with her if anything.

Brings me back to being in the hospital having to tell my mom she has cancer because the doctor who discovered it wasn't an oncologist and refused to. The nurse waffled on whether I should tell her or not but eventually told me to tell her despite mom still being really out of it. Then changed her mind, after I'd told her. It was awful.

I just want to do right by my cat, and love her.

help i wanna get up to get the scarf im knitting but my cat is tucked up against me and is so warm and so soft and my face is against her neck and her fur is so nice

She's had to switch to wet food after her last dental surgery (and she's on a hydrolyzed diet, so there's really only one type available). She has gotten it all over her whiskers ever since. Asked the vet and it's often apparently a thing that older cats are less fastidious about cleaning themselves sometimes.

I'd just gotten in the habit of picking it out of her whiskers when cuddling, and she lets me.

I went on a trip and the folks at the cat boarders were really worried about it and wiped her face every day, which she apparently hated. Oops!!

So I thought about it and got out a dollar store toothbrush (unused) I had. When I notice any dried food there, I brush her whiskers with it. She seems to really enjoy it actually, and it does a better job (and doesn't risk pulling!) compared to me lightly pinching/rolling on her whiskers to try to loosen the food up and get it off. She also will sometimes rub up against it to do the job herself!

Though, and this is true about any brush I've used on her, she does sometimes try to bite and gnaw on it. Not much though. Still don't understand that lol.

Sink time!

Bast has been drinking from the tub for some time, and since my mom visited and had given her more access to the tub, she's been in the habit of going upstairs and meowing for the tub to be turned on.

This does present a few downsides:

I'm lazy and often don't want to go up there, or can't because I'm on a call or something (I do try to indulge her whenever I can!!)

The water's not filtered

I usually have to stand there and wait for like 10 minutes while she drinks

The water stream is erratic when it's just dribbling, so it's not the easiest for her to drink from

She now hops in the shower when I'm in there and gets soaked!!! Poor dear!!

So I've just cleaned out my sink downstairs and introduced her to the filtered tap. Solves all of those! I've stuffed a cloth in the drain to catch any loose litter from her paws.

The only anticipated issue is that the sink would be much harder for her to get down from, especially now that she has arthritis. Hopefully she'll know/learn to meow to ask to get down but I'll have to supervise closely.

Ideally I would clean out and set up her water fountain again. It just was so icky the last time that I'm reluctant... The executive dysfunction man...

She had dental surgery yesterday and has been banned from stairs for the next day. I had to close the door to the rest of our house (have been sleeping on the couch down here with her + took a sick day from work to watch over her - she hasn't been allowed food yet, and is only just now allowed water) bc she went up the stairs when I didn't expect yesterday. She has trouble with those even when sober lately :(

But she keeps going to the window pane of the door and stairing out it wistfully and I'm so so close to breaking and letting her out there. My poor darling :((

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The blog for my new kitty!