Baby Love, My Baby Love

I do not blog about the parrots a lot on here because they are about as un-green a pet as one can imagine. They have demanding and diverse dietary and housing needs and they are a huge drain on the sacred budget. What can I say? Oh well. Love is what love is and it all began with Baby.

Baby came to us through a high school friend back in the days when I was still a rabid facebook user. I had posted a drum set on line for sale. She wanted the drum set for her daughter. My friend had recently lost her husband and their family was in turmoil. She knew Fred and I had rescued our fair share of animals and she asked if we would be interested in a parrot.

“A parrot?” I though.

Wow, they are load of work and on top of that this one had just suffered a huge trauma. I did not know. I told her I would have to talk to Fred but the more I thought about it the more I knew this was not one of those animals to which I would be able to say no. I called our vet, told her what I was thinking. She told me to bring in the bird as soon as I got it and we would go from there.

“What’s her name?” I asked my friend.

“Baby.” She said. OH GREAT. What a name.

Later that week I went to get Baby and all of her paraphernalia. She had a gigantic cage, loads of toys, a book of instructions and a bad attitude. She was also pitiful looking. What few feathers she had left were chewed and shredded and her abdomen and legs were mostly bare. She looked like a plucked chicken with a tiny green parrot head.

As soon as we got in the car she shrieked at me in the piercing way that only a macaw can and then she screamed “WHERE ARE WE GOING?!” I thought oh sweet heaven what have I gotten into. She continued to scream the entire way home alternating between ear piercing shrieks and bellowed questions and commands. I considered how painful my death would be when Fred finally decided to murder me after this latest acquisition. At least my friend said she would take her back if we could not handle her.

I need not have worried about a return policy. Fred fell madly in love with her at first sight. Within a week she begun to call him Daddy kiss him goodnight in the evenings, goodbye in the mornings and pepper him with questions throughout the day. She was 143 grams of pure personality.

She was mostly healthy but she needed some dietary changes and an antibiotic to combat a persistent crop infection. I cannot begin to describe for you how unpleasant it is to medicate a bird. Those first few weeks my fingers were covered in bites and welts and at one point she even bit me on the end of the nose punctuated with a loving “SHUT UP!” It is humiliating to be yelled at by a bird.

That was two years ago.

We grew into each other and together as a family. Baby goes everywhere with us. She goes camping, on vacation, to the drive-in, to the Dairy Queen, etc. She is our darling and obnoxious toddler with a can opener on her face. Hahn’s macaws as a breed can be nippy but they are loving and clever and oh so smart and Baby is the perfect specimen.

Eventually Baby stopped picking her feathers and became even more loving and endearing. We began to consider a feathered companion for her and when our vet offered us a quiet and unassuming Senegal in need of a home we snatched up Simon Peter. I would not say SP and Baby are the best of friends but they are much like any other brother and sister duo. And of course you know, from several blogs ago how Trinity joined our flock.

A few weeks ago we notice that Baby had begun to indulge in some feather picking again. Not horrible just a couple little spots but we took her to Dr. Stephenson anyway. She was pronounced healthy. We thought maybe she begun to pick again because of Trinity’s arrival and her severe picking issues. We wrote it off and kept watch over her.

Monday of this week Baby’s picking got worse. We took her back to the vet where they ran all kinds of tests and again could find nothing wrong. We took home a five day antibiotic just to be safe. Thursday morning when I went to clean the cages I noticed a bloody protrusion from Baby’s vent. I rushed her back to the vet. They ran a bunch more tests, did blood work, took an x-ray, still no obvious cause.

Friday Baby and I drove three hours to a specialist. He did not think Baby was a candidate for surgery and agreed there was no obvious cause for her distress. We came home with more medications and instructions to watch her closely.

Today she is worse.

She is lethargic, barely talking, she has fluffed her feathers and acts unsteady on her feet. She is still eating and drinking. In addition to her meds, via the specialists orders, we are giving her pedialite, honey in milk and yogurt. We have raise the temperature in her cage to 82 degrees. Her abdomen is swollen and there is a slightly hard spot in it. We are praying that is an egg. If this is all just an egg we will be so thrilled, especially if she passes it normally.

All we can ask for now is your prayer. Please, if you have a moment, lift up a prayer for Baby’s healing. I know some people believe it is silly or selfish to request prayer for an animal but I do not. Baby is a small feathered child to us, she is part of our family and even if she were not she is still one of God’s creatures and he loves her. We love her desperately. Pray for her. Pray for Fred and me, pray that God heals Baby and pray for wisdom and grace for us and the doctors. Thank you.

Much Love,

Autumn

UPDATE: 2/21/12

Saturday morning Baby seemed to take a turn for the worse. She was listless and not talking and she acted as though it pained her to climb around her cage. After consulting with Dr. Mohan (the specialist mentioned earlier in the post) he said he would meet us Sunday morning at the clinic in Columbus. He said it was very important that we get the temperature in her cage up to eighty-five degrees before then and that we monitor her closely. We wrapped her cage on three sides with sheets placed a heating pad and thermometer inside and a heater and heat lamp near by.

This meant that Baby was confined to her cage for the rest of the day and night. Baby's cage is humongous, it would be quite suitable for a much larger bird, but still she is in no way used to being confined and was extremely unhappy with us. It was for her own safety and well being, though. We could not have her climb out and fall, nor could be keep the temperature in the whole house at eight-five. We were already boiling (goodbye electric budget).

We got up before dawn Sunday morning and packed the car. The threat of snow was imminent and we had borrowed my dad's little Sion for the long trip. Our Honda is very old and our truck would have cost a bazillion dollars to drive all the way to Columbus. We were nervous about the road conditions and built an extra hour into our drive time just to be safe. Dad's car is great on gas, not so great in snow. Although our worry was for naught, we had beautiful weather all weekend.

We bundled Baby up in her travel carrier and loaded the car with her camping cage, food, medicine, toys and water. I had packed an overnight bag for ourselves. Dr. Mohan had warned Baby would probably need to be hospitalized but at this point we were still hoping for an obvious and easy solution.

Baby, who normally likes to "go" was leery of us and another car ride so close on the heels of Friday's long and strenuous journey. She seemed to be acting somewhat better. Still straining a little when she went to the bathroom but without the horrible crying that had accompanied it for the last few days. She still wasn't her normal gregarious self but she did talk to us a little on the trip.

We got to the clinic about thirty minutes early. We beat the doctor there and so we had to wait. The doctor arrived shortly after we did and we rushed Baby in to start an immediate plan of care/intervention. (I cannot say enough nice things about Dr. Mohan and the staff at the Avian Health Clinic. They are wonderful people who met us on a Sunday to do their best and save our feathered child. They are kind and caring and patient. If you are in need of avian care outside your normal vet's skill set please make the trip they are worth it.)

They put Baby in an incubator, which looks something akin to a microwave with a sliding glass door, and gave her medications and vitamins. Fred and I spent most of our time alternating between the lobby and the sick room until it was time to leave, then we spent one very long night pacing the hotel room floor. We drove past the clinic several times that evening, even though we could not be with Baby we wanted to be close to her.

Monday morning Fred had to take an emergency vacation day from work and we went back to the clinic bright and early. The plan for the day was to give Baby barium in the morning and then take a series of x-rays through the day to see if there was an obstruction in her GI tract. I will not lie. It was terrible. I know it was a horrible experience for Baby but it was almost as traumatic for Fred and me. I will not go into the details of just exactly what has to happen to a bird so that she might have an x-ray but I will say it is unpleasant and there was much crying on both her side and mine.

The tests took all day. The upside was that we were allowed to stay with her at the clinic and that in between tests and incubator time we were allowed to hold her and comfort her (and us).

The test showed no obstruction in her GI tract, upper or lower. Dr. Mohan said based on that he did not want to do an endoscopy. She had not presented blood in her droppings or shown the prolapse in 24 hours so he did not want to further traumatize her vent area. He believed that her problem may be originating from a hormonal source. Even though she had not passed an egg and did not have an egg internally he thought all her symptoms probably originated hormonally and then led to irritation which led to infection and became a cycle of worsening pain and bleeding.

She was given a hormonal implant subcutaneously on her back (Norplant for birds!) and we are to continue the medication regimen for several more days. We got home late last night. The three of us are mentally, emotionally and physically drained. Baby's cage still looks like a birdy hospital ward and it will for a few more days. Since she is so weak and beat up from all the medications and procedures we have to keep her extra warm and confined for a few more days.

We are not out of the woods yet. If she worsens or her symptoms return we will find ourselves back to the road and back at the clinic.

We are so thankful to have Baby home and hopefully on the road to recovery. We give praise to God and we thank you all for your prayers. Please if you think of us, and our non-human family, continue to remember us in your prayers.

Much love and feathered kisses ~a

Helga, my sweet

You all are familiar with Helga and her story of triumph against the odds, her lovability and quirky personality, her stint living in our bathroom, her charming attempts to become a house chicken and her inability to keep a secret. It is with a heavy and broken heart that I come to tell you, Helga is no more.

My precious, sweet, charming little weirdo was killed by a hawk Tuesday afternoon, in broad daylight, while she ate in the yard. I am bereft. She cheated death so often I am sure she cherished her time as borrowed but still I mourn.

Helga was a chicken like no other. Rescued with Momma, the two of them were the last of my aunt’s formerly large flock. The only two to survive a malicious dog attack, my aunt could not stand to leave them as fodder so she brought them to join my flock. Helga was barely grown but obviously possessing of a massive dose of personality. She loved people. If you were in the yard you must obviously have come to see her. She would follow you around clucking and talking, if you bent down to pet her she would hold her wings out and chortle. If you stood still long enough without paying attention to her she would try to leap into your arms.

After her reintroduction to the flock she would come to the back door and peck on the glass for attention. She’d stand on the porch railing to eat from the wild-bird feeder and she loved to lay eggs in the middle of my oregano pot. She was as unique and charming of a chicken as you could ever hope to encounter. Adorable and quirky with a large red comb and waddle and beautiful red blond feathers trimmed in black. She grew into a magnificent bird despite her scarred head which she wore without discomfit.

She loved treats, raisins, oats, biscuits but especially French fries. When grandma would send her twice weekly bag of chicken treats Helga would grab as many French fries as she could and would then charge about the yard maniacally, swallowing them whole, while trying to escape her sisters snatching beaks.

She was lovely and charming and I miss her terribly. It is horrible to walk to the coop in the mornings and not see her silly little head bobbing to greet me. I am so distressed to think she died scared and in pain. It breaks my heart because she was such a sweet creature without malice. Chickens can be peckish and grouchy and can be especially hateful with each other but Helga never was. She had a Rastafarian countenance that allowed her to roll with the punches never seeming to take a slight to heart. She never even held her almost-scalping against Momma, instead cuddling right back up to her as soon as she rejoined the flock.

I will miss her so very very much. I know people think it is silly to be so attached to a chicken. Thousands of them die every day in horrible slaughter house factory conditions but this is yet another reason I scorn and deride our modern day food system. It is so easy to walk into a restaurant and order that chicken sandwich and never make the connection that it was once a living breathing thing with feelings and emotions. People will tell you that chickens are stupid and dirty but this is what they tell themselves to make it ok to leave these animals in a world of pain and cruelty.

I tell you, they are not. They are neither stupid nor dirty, if properly cared for, they are not without feeling but are instead clever little charmers. I am not saying you cannot eat them, you are a creature of free will and can make your choices. Most humans eat animals it is the way of our world. What I am saying is that you have a responsibility to the animals you consume to ensure them a healthy and cruelty free life. If you believe you have no responsibility to the animals then I say to you: YOU HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO YOURSELF. Your body is comprised of the things you eat, if you consume fear and pain and suffering these things will manifest in your life.

I know everyone will not raise the food they eat and some people like us will only raise chickens as pets with benefits, we do not eat our flock I do not eat chickens at all, but everyone can say no to the corporate farming greed that has so poisoned us today. Even a small step will help. You do not have to eschew fast food forever but think before you order. Choose it less. Choose somewhere local that locally sources their free range meat. Say no to the fast food even one time a week when you would have said yes.

Fred and I are not perfect. We still occasionally eat fast food. What I am suggesting is that we can all be more mindful. I loved Helga, she was a beautiful piece of God’s creation so how can I then deny that all the animals churned through our corporate food sources have the same value she had? They do. Ignoring them or pretending they do not exist does not lessen their suffering.

Dear Helga, I love you. I hope your short little charming life will be a lesson in humanity that never leaves me and I hope through this blog you may live on to teach others that kindness and forgiveness are quality to which we should all aspire. I hope heaven has a big farm and you have all the treats your little heart could desire.

Peace, love and sadness,

Autumn

Dominion

Dominion: noun, Control or the exercise of control; sovereignty.

(Here is the disclaimer: This entry will probably fall along the lines of a rant so if you are not in the mood, do not read past this line.)

Everyone knows how I feel about my animals. They are my additional children, fuzzy, feathered or reptilian. I care for them as I would want someone to care for my child and I believe that God ordained and commanded us to do so. In Genesis God gave man dominion over the earth. Yes, dominion implies some kind of entitlement and control or rule but dominion also confers responsibility. Allow me to follow this thought process through with some examples.

Good leaders rule with benevolence. They care for the people who are entrusted to them. They provide shelter, safety, food, comfort and security. Bad leaders abuse, use, coerce, rape, pillage, mistrust and mistreat their citizens.

Kings and queens have dominion over countries as do dictators, presidents, czars, etc. Some are good and benevolent some are wicked and cruel but all have a responsibility to the people over which they rule. Whether they choose to acknowledge that responsibility and do right by the people or whether they ignore it and serve their selfish goals instead, they were still mantled with that responsibility and will at some point be accountable for it.

If they choose to mistreat those people be it physically, fiscally, through spiritual or racial oppression, or if they mistreat those people based solely on their own ignorance or poverty, at some point they will be held accountable. Whether by the people themselves or from outside forces pushing in, or ultimately by God eventually something must give so that things may come back into balance.

In the Psalms David writes “For thou hast made him (mankind) a little lower than the angles, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet; All sheep and oxen, yea and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea. (KJV)” This clearly does not state that God gave man the right to pillage the earth and take without recompense but instead He gave us “dominion”. There is that word again!

I believe pet owners and people in general are responsible to animals in the same way leaders are responsible to the people they rule. This is not a vegetarian/vegan rant, so do not get your knickers in a twist, this is instead a call to responsibility. If you want to eat an animal that is your choice but you have a responsibility to make sure that animal did not live a life of cruelty and abuse. The same goes for animals in the pet trade. They have no voices and we, as good stewards of this earth, have a responsibility to be their voice. To speak out for their health and welfare, to ensure they are provided with proper care, attention and nourishment and to report when those things are found lacking.

I would go a little further to say sometimes reporting is not enough. I know it clears our collective conscience to think we took that extra step and reported the witnessed abuse or neglect but animals are not legally children and, often times, even though a report may be followed up on by the appropriate official, there may be little to nothing they can do on the animal’s behalf. Especially if a less than thorough or less than honest party is involved and clears the animal as healthy when it is obviously not. The “buddy system” which is alive and flourishing in my beloved West Virginia is notorious for allowing atrocities based solely on the so-and-so-is-a-good-guy-give-him-a-break school of thought. Meanwhile animals languish in pain and fear without proper veterinary care or basic necessities.

Fred and I have recently run up against a desperate situation. We have rescued a very very sick parrot from what we deem a horrible environment and certainly an impending, slow, painful, lonely and frightened death. We have named her Trinity because she is our third and because we believed God intervened on her behalf when she most needed us and when I most needed her.

At this point Trinity’s health is so poor that we do not know if she will recover. She is very sick, she has a severe infection and she is undernourished, she has an enlarged liver and she has plucked her feathers to the point where some follicles may be permanently damaged and may not grow back. But she is beautiful, she has a kind and loving, gentle nature and she is safe now. I wish I could say the same for all the other animals suffering right now in the under regulated pet trade.

I by no means think that pets should be outlawed or that animals should be taken from good kind owners or even from breeders who love and nurture and cherish them but I do believe this industry should be HEAVILY monitored and regulated with independent veterinary assessments made a stringent requirement. Fred and I are going to get involved. We want to see change, we want to see animals treated with compassion and we want to see pet stores and breeders held to a high level of quality and accountability. If you want to get involved email me I will let you know what I learn as I learn it.

You have been given dominion, what will you do with it? I choose to use it gently and kindly. I am sure I have never and will never use it perfectly but I pray to use it wisely.

Also if you would like to help with the cost of Trinity’s mounting medical care please contact me. She deserves a second chance and so do all the others who will sleep tonight in uncertainty.

Much love and thanks for reading,

Autumn

Henry, a Life Interupted

Many of you will read this and wonder what it has to do with the general theme of this blog. I can save you some trouble and tell you absolutely nothing, however, I cannot let Henry “go gently into that good night” without at least pausing to honor his life and the importance he has in mine. I have many things backlogged to blog about but none as important to me as this.

In 2001 I was newly married and desperate to channel my maternal instinct into some childless path. My husband at the time had one cat, Sophie, but Sophie was solely his and solely a one person animal. I wanted my own cat, something I could love and baby, something all my own. In looking back I realize that this all consuming desire to love something and to have that something return my love unconditionally obviously reflected on the frailty of, and the seismic flaws in, a marriage that should never have been.

What I really wanted was a child but that was not to be and, as hind sight is always twenty-twenty, I realize now the marriage was doomed from before we said “I do” so it was better that we had no children. It is much easier to maintain custody of a cat then it is a child. These later realizations did nothing to quell the almost all consuming desire to mother something. We argued about the merits of another pet. I had an overwhelming desire to save every animal I saw and my then husband had a much more pragmatic view of taking good care of the one pet we had versus struggling to feed more animals or our combined minimum wage salaries.

I whined, I cried, I moped, I threatened, I wheedled, I argued, I pleaded and eventually I merely wore him down. He conceded to one more cat, but that was the limit. I could choose the cat but he would have the privilege of naming the new addition and that new addition must be declawed, spayed/neutered and vaccinated before entering Sophie’s world. These were terms I could readily agree to so off I went to the Kanawha Valley Animal Shelter looking for a cat of my very own.

When I arrived at the shelter, just like every other time I had visited, I found myself overwhelmed with the sights, smells and sounds of a small venue filled to the brim with terrified, lonely, confused and unwanted little creatures. (I applaud the shelter, the workers and the volunteers for taking on a monumental task that involves so much heartbreak and so little reward. I could not do it. I can barely stand to walk through the door. I would gladly give my last dime, all my worldly possessions and the clothes on my back to save everyone of those little souls but even if I took home each one there are countless others awaiting their spots. It is heartbreaking, it is always heartbreaking.)

I wandered into the cat room and found myself face to face with numerous pairs of pleading eyes and countless tragic little faces. I wandered from cage to cage as paws reached out to touch me and warm fuzzy bodies threw their purring weight against the bars of their confinement. You cannot put your fingers in the cages for fear of cross contamination, so I laced my hands behind my back, and stopped at each door to talk to the little prisoners. Their eyes tell sad stories of loss and abandonment, of heart break and hope, I desperately wished I could save them all.

I was pretty sure I did not want a tiny kitten for fear Sophie would make mincemeat out of it and I was afraid an older cat might already be too set in their ways to blend well into a family where the position of alpha female was already well secured. I was leaning towards a tom and had pretty much decided I would need to choose a bigger kitten when my eyes locked on a half grown waifish looking hair ball meowing at the top of his adolescent lungs from behind his bars. I walked towards his cage and he immediately set to wailing at me, reaching through his confines with arms that seemed two-times too long for his spindly body.

He looked distinctly like he had been standing at the end of the line when God was handing out the cat parts, and had gotten the very last scrapings from the bottom of the barrel. He was mostly a dingy white, with a half grown half starved body, he had very long legs, a very long tail, and a very large head quite in disproportion to his slender trunk. His head looked as though someone had placed a tabby helmet on it and cut out ear holes, his back and tail continued the tabby motif making it look as though he were a white cat dressed in costume for the tabby ball. I was in love. He had a spot on one ear which lent him a flair of quirky charm and when he rolled on his back his belly sported a single tabby spot above his navel which would forever be referred to in Seuss-ical fashion as “stars on thars.”

Like I said, I was in love. I thought him charming in an awkward and gangly sort of way. He was very much a four legged representation of the type of man I was attracted to, poised and intelligent, trapped in an uncomfortable and ill fitting physical structure. I paid his bail and had him shipped to the local veterinarian we used for his surgery and vaccination. I was over the moon. When he came home several days later I was disappointed to be questioned as to why I’d “picked the ugliest kitten in the pound?” I did not care I was in love, he was not ugly, he had potential.

I was advised his name would be Henri Cartier Bresson after the famous French photographer who specialized in quirky black and whites. That was fine by me, Henry was a perfectly suitable and charming name and he soon grew into a lovely French accent and haughty French attitude as his personality blossomed. I do not know whether cats take on the traits we believe them to have, or if we shape their personas around the traits they naturally exhibit, but either way there could not have been a more fitting name or pseudo-heritage for my Henry.

He was odd, as all artists should be. He hid his feather-tailed mice in the food bowl. He was fast and vicious with the “fuzzy-mitton” strike, he could thunk Sophie or Pablo so hard on the head you could hear the distinct sound of plunking a ripe cantaloupe and never see a thing. He tattled on his sister when she fell out the bedroom window by nonchalantly pointing with his nose. He preferred his treats on the carpet because the linoleum was too cold. He snuck into the kitchen at night to chew the stalk of my Christmas amaryllis and let his sister take the blame as he sat innocently washing his face. He loved David Bowie and many Bowie lyrics were slightly altered to suit his name and personality and, most importantly, he grew into the child I so desperately wanted.

The marriage stalled and eventually failed. I moved out, but by this point Pablo and Sheva had ingratiated themselves into our family and the cat limit had been abandoned. We divided up the children. He took the girls, Sophie and Sheva. I took the boys, Henry and Pablo. The three of us packed our belongings and moved to an apartment across the river from my parents. It was an adjustment. We were not used to living on our own but we had each other. I cried myself to sleep many a night with a cat on either side of my pillow offering wordless comfort and creating a little fuzzy family nucleus, just the three of us.

Henry would sit on the table and watch me intently as I ate my solitary dinners for one. He would give me his attentive poochy face, his mouth would purse and his whiskers would come forward and if he had opened up his mouth and begun pelting me with advice in a thick French accent I do not think I would have been in the least bit surprised. He and Pablo were my companions, my family, my therapist, at times it felt like they were all I had and at time they were the only ones standing in the gap between me and the pits of despair. Our little family grew to include Dorian, and Henry begrudgingly made a spot for him on the bed. He continued to wear the mantle of “first-born” with an air of dignity and an iron “mitton-paw” of authority.

We moved several times. I fell in love, I fell out of love, we moved some more. At one point we moved back in with my parents the four of us descended on the five of them (my parents and their three cats) like an extra, unwritten, biblical plague. We moved back into my high school bedroom. We made do. Pablo and Dorian have Rastafarian countenances, they roll with the flow. My precious Henry was slightly more high strung, with more discerning tastes and was not at all pleased to share sparse quarters with grandma, grandpa and their brood but eventually he forgave me my bad taste in men, and my inability to function normally, and we made the best of our situation until we could once again move back into our apartment.

Henry never abandoned me, he never tried to run away. Through all my bad decisions and all my lack luster choices he remained faithfully mine. He never shunned me for another, he never made me second pick. He never cared how fat or thin I was he always, faithfully treated me the same, every day, for almost ten years.

Eventually our lives settled down. We found Fred, and in Fred we finally found unconditional love and stability. Fred’s love for all of us is a lot like Henry’s love for me, it is without failing and it is faithful. He took us as we were, a motley, bedraggled crew of rejects, and he loves us without the desire to change us. Shortly after Fred came into our lives our merry band of misfits expanded to include Bettie and not long after Fred and I were married Johnnie was thrust into our lives. Henry as the patriarch of this crew took each addition with grace and aplomb if not a small measure of disdain.

As our lives settled into a more normal routine Henry seemed content. He could still cut you down with a look or dole out the “fuzzy-mitton” of judgment as necessary, but he spent more time curled on my pillow asleep or nestled deep in the covers of our bed. He never missed the opportunity to snag a treat and occasionally he would feel his inner kitten well up and be smitten with the desire to chase a toy, wrestle his brothers or dance with the string.

Cool mornings had begun to find him with a slight limp on his way to the food bowl or the litter box but nothing alarming and nothing that seemed to slow him down. I assumed he, like me, was beginning to feel the effects of age settle into his bones. His attitude had not changed and his lust for life remained the same. I still awoke in the mornings to “needle feet” massages and opened my eyes to a giant cat head peering into my face and white whiskers tickling my nose. His high pierced “meow!” would still greet me when the bottom of the food bowl was visible or when the litter box was not cleaned to his satisfaction.

He was not ill, ten is not old for a house cat.

This past Sunday, when we arrived home from church, I found Henry’s body lying in our bedroom floor at the foot of our bed. I screamed his name. I checked for breathing and a heartbeat, I found none. His eyes were open and his stare was vacant and my heart was torn asunder. I picked his body out of the floor and cradled him to my chest as I ran out of the house screaming for Fred. I fell in the yard with my beloved baby in my arms and I wept. He was gone.

I feel heartbroken, I feel robbed. I know many of you will read this and find me and my grief ridiculous. I have lost my child and there is no solace for the bereaved of another species. People say things like “he was just a cat” or “he had a good life” and while those things are true and logically and I understand them it does not ease my heartache and it does not “fix” my grief. Ten years was not long enough and describing Henry as a “pet” does not even begin to encompass everything he meant to me. I am heartbroken.

REST IN PEACE HENRI CARTIER BRESSON FURBY PRITT HOPKINS
Beloved fuzzy child, Mommy loves you. I will never forget you. I hope all kitties go to heaven because you have taken part of my heart with you.


I will endeavor to wrench this blog back on topic but I am not making any promises.

Much love & sadness,
Autumn