CATS AND DOG: THOSE WHO CAME, THOSE WHO WENT, THOSE STILL AROUND

ONE: THE DOG

My Old, Old, Old, Old Dog (Written March 2009)

We got the old dog back in 1992 from the Humane Association, the same year my son made the 10-Year-Old Little League All-Star Team.

It wasn't my idea. I was against the idea. Not that I disliked dogs, but we had some cats and my wife was often annoyed by the barking of a neighbor's canines. I had lived with dogs all my years growing up and knew their ways and needs. She had never had a pet as a child and only our Iguana, hamsters, gerbils and cats up to the point she said we should get a dog. She had already announced this decision to the kids and I was voted down along with the standard agreement that she and they would feed, care and walk the animal. You know how long that agreement lasted - about as long as peace treaties in the Middle East or a politicians campaign promise. The dog may have been my wife's, but I was the dog's. Oh, it didn't just happen overnight. It was an insidious, but unstoppable process. It began with the request I walk him, because he was too rambunctious and strong for anyone else to control, she feared he might get loose and run into traffic. Thus it began and soon he was mine and I was his.

I walked him twice everyday (sometimes three times) for eleven years and he was a good dog. He never went to the bathroom on his walks so didn't force me to carry plastic bags of his leavings. This was good, but had an occasional downside. If he felt the urge for either bodily function, he would turn and hightail it for our home and yard. This was hard on me, keeping up and hanging on and expecting a heart seizure at any moment.

Labs are old at eight and after eleven years he slowed down and walks were hard on him and grew shorter and shorter, and when he sighed at the mere thought I gave him rides twice a day in the car. I'd take him around the countryside and he would watch the scenery and nod to the other pooches we passed with a "look at me" wink.

He is too old for even that now. He can't climb up into the car anymore with his bad hips and poor feet. He hobbles across our floors and we must aid him out to do his business. We live in a home with no ground level entries. There are always steps to get up and down and sometimes he manages, but most times he doesn't. We help him do that, sometimes with a towel beneath his belly to support him, sometimes just holding his sides because he has loss enough weight we can lift him now.

I don't know how much longer he will be with us. He was always the good dog and he obviously wants to stay. He sleeps a lot. He doesn't complain. He dreams a lot about running, I think, for his feet go during naps. He is happy for our attention. He trusts us.

I'm getting old myself. Sometimes my legs ache when I go up and down those same stairs as he. And just as he trusts us and depends on us to hold him up and guide him in his weakness, I trust in God and depend on Him to hold me up and guide me in my weakness. I thank God that he brought such a wonderful animal into our lives. The Wolfer may be old and decrepit, but is a puppy at heart.

(The music on the slide show is "Old Dogs", written and performed by Bill Stains, copyright 2007 by Red House Records.)

Click on the title of this post to see where we got this old dog.

We Interrupt this Series for a Sudden Interruption... (Written April 7, 2009)

Let me say, this has been a trying couple of weeks around a couple of days of relaxation. My wife and I spent last Wednesday through Friday at the Inn on Canal Square in Lewes, Delaware, the fine inn where Retired on Delaware works.  We

 certainly needed the time away just to unwind and have some peace.

The day before we left was not a good one, nor was the morning before we left.

On Tuesday we had our dog, Tucker, put to sleep.

He was a yellow lab who reached the grand old age of 18, although it wasn't so grand for him. He no longer could stand up, let alone walk. We had to carry him outside several times a day and he needed someone to stay with him through the night.  My son and I took turns with these tasks, but a couple of weeks ago, while taking him in and out, I torn something in my upper leg and could no longer lift him.  I am still having a great deal of pain and can't really bend down and lift anything.  My oldest daughter, who works for the SPCA, talked to the vet there and he felt it was best for the dog to bring him in and put him down.  besides his inability to stand, he had some tumors and I could see he had cataracts in his eyes.

It was difficult to do.  All five us had our moments of crying.  My two daughters and my wife took him to the SPCA, where he was attended to. The Delaware Pet Crematorium director met them there and took the body.  

We got him back this past Monday in a nice little casket with his ashes and a tuft of his fur. He is gone, but we still keep looking for him in the room or listen for his bark.

On Wednesday a week ago, the morning we left for Lewes, I went to edit a post and when I clicked view, a strange site came up, a kind of product search engine.  Someone had taken my domain name. Now, I had registered the name a year ago and my subscription did run out on March 29, the very day I found this other party grabbed the name. I had no notification that my subscription was ending or renewal notice. Not much I can do, I guess.

I thought I had no choice but to rebuild my site, which I did. Then I discovered I could retain my old site as is by just changing it to nitewrit.blogspot.com.  By that time I had sent an email to my followers asking them to change to the new site called nightwritinglem.blogspot.net.

I now think I will use nightwritinglem as my 2008 postings and do my 2009 postings on nitewrit.blogspot.com.  I have a link between the two.  I hope you will bear with me on this and continue to read my posts.  My regret is directories, both on line and in print, will now be directing people to this other site and not mine, but it is what it is.

This has been a bad year for me on the Web. Last year someone breached security and took over my email to send out spam and I lost my original email address. Then my PC crashed and I had to transfer everything to a new Mac. Now this.  Perhaps Satan is trying to shut me up.

But like an old Timex, pain or stolen web sites will not stop me from keeping on ticking. I'm just sorry I must put you thought this trauma with me.

Tribute to Tucker (Written April 10, 2009)

Thank you who have expressed your sympathy to us on the loss of Tucker.  Tucker did not not start life off under good circumstance.  I don't know the reason, but as a puppy he ended up in the Delaware Humane Association shelter.  Perhaps he had been born with show dog hopes and because he had some red in this nose instead of all black, he wasn't considered good enough and was discarded. I really don't know. But we saw him there and adopted him.

He was a very smart dog, very friendly and loyal, and tolerant of our cats. It was sad to see him deteriorate in old age and hard to make that final decision, very hard. But I think we gave him a very great life. he lived very long for a lab, that must say something. 

TWO: THE CATS

Hobo Joe (Written June 8, 2010)

Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— (Isaiah 58:7a)


It has been quite hot lately, high temperatures, too early August like and summer hasn't even officially arrived. Well, remember earlier this year we bemoaning the lack of a little heat as we became buried in several feet of white chill snow.


During this blizzard season there came a wanderer. We have no idea where he came from, he just showed up one day during this fierce winter and found some shelter about our house.


Perhaps he had just strayed from a neighbor's place and by the morrow he would return to his home. But on the morrow he was still there, and the morrow after that and he just stayed. So we put some food out on the back steps and he found his way there each morning and night through the next several months.


When the warmer days of spring came and the snow melted into memory, he would come and sun himself up in the yard near where the old oak had been taken down the other year. In the space where the trunk had been ground away some grass has sprouted and also a new little oak is growing. Generation's past generating generations anew. And this became his spot, just under the new oak.


I guess one assumes it's just another feral stray living  a wild life. We began calling him Hobo Joe. But he didn't act too afraid of us. He knew when the food would arrive by now and he would be there waiting and meow at us. 


On May Twenty I went out to move one car so my son could get out the drive to go to work and we discovered someone had egged our cars. They had hit his side door and on my car, the lower center of the windshield.  A random act of youthful pranksters, perhaps, but  I reported in to the police nonetheless. Better to get it on the record in case it reoccurs. I was also curious if there had been a rash of egg throwing, which apparently there was not.


It did occur again. On May 31 we found another egg had been thrown, but it had hit the drive between cars. All these egg tosses had come from the same general point, up near the corner of my neighbor's house. Again, I called the police.

My wife then told me someone had thrown bottles into the back yard. She offers an opinion that boys are trying to hit Hobo Joe.  (Picture of beer bottle in our yard on right)


My wife went out the other day and sat on the front stoop and Hobo Joe came to her and let her stroke him. Then this weekend, she did the same and my daughter and son arrived at that time. My daughter works for the SPCA as a VetTech and she scruffed the hobo.


Hobo Joe was obviously once someone's pet. He had been neutered and he is affectionate. My other daughter, who is also a VetTech for the Humane Society, says he is five to seven years old. 


We can't know his story, but his ordeal is over. He now has a home again.

 Hobo Joe

 His new bed.

John (Written October 16, 2010)

Animals are not people, but when you have them close they can become much like children to you. We have over the years rescued many cats who would have lived precarious lives as feral creatures otherwise.

Often these found friends were new born kittens. So it was a dozen years ago that we took in Amber, Ridge, Thorn and John. The first three were named after characters in a soap opera. John was named after John Lennon.

That is John sitting comfortably in the rocking chair.

John died last night at approximately 10:30 PM.

He had been in the hall earlier wanting to go in the bathroom, which was unusual behavior. (I believe he knew the end was near and wanted some private space.) I let him do so. We have been keeping the kitten there overnight and there was some of the kitten's food and water in there. John ate a bit of the food. The next time I looked in he was sleeping peacefully in the little basket-bed my wife had gotten for the kitten.

Later I was in the bedroom watching the playoff between the Rangers and Yankees. Around ten o'clock I heard some strange sounds from the bathroom and went to check on John. He was laying on a small rug and it was obvious he had thrown up a few times. He was kind of whimpering and didn't make any move to get up.

My wife came and took him into the living room and held him in her lap until he finally passed about a half hour later. (Yesterday was my wife's birthday, not a very pleasant ending.)

We were glad he didn't hang on any longer for something was paining him.

John was a very sweet and gentle cat. He was suffering from cancer and had developed a tumor on his right hind leg that rendered that leg somewhat useless. But he persisted to get around. He would often look for me to come into the living room in the evenings and then would lay in my lap as long as I stayed. He was getting very thin, but he ate well until the end.

This is always the hard part of caring for animals. They live much shorter lives than we and you constantly go through these departures. It is hard every time.

We loved you, John. Rest in peace.

Wave to Uncle Ron (Written January 29, 2011)

Retired in Delaware found himself visited by the Black Dog of Depression the other day. That can be almost as bad as being hounded by the Hounds of the Baskervilles I understand. Such beasts have tracked down The Little Woman many times in her life. It isn't a pleasant thing.

Ron seems to be recruiting cats to hiss and claw away the Black Dog, so here is another cat trying to cheer him up.

This little guy, Kerouac (yes, named for the "Beat" writer), a few months ago was on the road himself. Do not know his history, but my son and his co-workers found this tiny kitten huddled beneath the carts outside their store.

He had apparently been hiding out there a couple days. My son brought him home and here he is.

 If he wasn't here, he would have probably died, either from starvation, because he was skinny and famished when we took him in, or run over by the many cars in the parking lot of that mall.

He is the cutest little rascal, who nows likes to sleep in the crook of my arm when he isn't finding something new to play with.

Last year about this same time in similar conditions, that is much, much snow, this other cat showed up here. He was the opposite of Kerouac, being very large and black. Where he came from we do not know either and we assumed for a long time he was feral, but it turned out he wasn't. We were putting out food for him through two blizzards and the entire winter, finally luring him close that May. Now he is not out in that stuff this year, but cozy and warm and happy to snooze in a bed too small.

He had headed to this bed when we took him in and I guess he considers it his and compared to sleeping beneath a house in freezing weather, who cares if it is a bit snug.

The cat in the new Profile Picture is Mark. Mark came here (just for overnight) five years ago when he was a kitten. My middle daughter brought him home. He had been found wandering the road in front of St. Marks High School by a shelter worker, who rescued him and brought him to the shelter. My daughter, also a shelter worker, brought him home because there was no room for him at the inn. "Just overnight," she said. Mark made a beeline for my chest as I lay watching TV and nuzzled up against my chin. So much for this just overnight nonsense.

Cats always know who the big softie is.

Laid Up (Sorta) (Written May 8, 2011)

Back on Saturday, April 30, last day of that soggy month, I was coming up the trail through the Tulip Poplars of the state park. I thought there was something sitting in the middle of the path, but as I neared it turned out to be a rock that had rolled out of place. Then I saw movement beyond this big stone that I first mistook for a dog, then realized it was a fox. He saw me and stopped. We stared at each other. He then trotted off the trail, through the brush and into a field just beyond a stone wall. I didn't have my camera out, so I missed taking his picture.

He was a beautiful specimen of a fox, too. I was a bit flummoxed by the encounter; that is, coming upon a fox in daytime, especially coming down a path so near the parking lot. But he crossed the field, then stood in a picnic grove looking back at me looking at him.

I do not know if meeting a fox in the morning is a bad omen, but that was my last walk for a week. By Saturday night I was limping in agony as Mr. Arthur Itis came on the attack.

I had been free from any severe arthritis for quite awhile, but suddenly it seemed determine to make up for loss time. It had actually begun its assault earlier that week, with a constant burning along the side of my left foot. It was annoying and caused me to list over with a limp, but I could endure that. I was still making my regular walks on my off-from-work days and not suffering too greatly at work.

That quite changed that Saturday night. Besides the remaining burn on my left, I now found my fingers somewhat frozen, meaning they creaked and ached when I tried to make a fist, but worse of all, the broken-glass grinding of arthritis settled hard into my right ankle and top of foot. I was in deep and constant agony. I could not get comfortable in bed to sleep, I could not bear the pressure of stepping down on that foot.

Life does not call time out for the afflicted. Despite my suffering I had to work on Monday, even though I thought for a bit I would have to go barefoot as I attempted to press into my shoe. Somehow I managed, somehow I survived and came home to collapse and moan and groan about my fate.

Thus it was all this week. I was either in agony or groggy with lack of sleep. I felt like doing nothing, thus no writing got done on this blog for several days now. I worked on my genealogy, for it took the less effort.

So I missed all my walks, although I missed no work.

I kept my cat company as Kerouac, the youngest, is also laid up this week. Yes, he had reached the age when he faced the fate of such cats -- neutering and vaccinations. It seemed a routine thing, he being a male. A bit of snip-snip I suppose, but it became complicated.

First they found he had a heart-mummer, just like the Old Goat. I was born with a heart mummer. They nearly didn't do the operation because of this, but in the end they did.

The real problem was one of his testicles was inside his body, thus they had to perform surgery, cut him open and go after it. Now he is home, with some stitches and a tattoo and an inverted lampshade on his head for two weeks. He must be isolated from the other cats, no running, jumping, roughhouse or swimming. Well, the swimming isn't a problem.

At any rate, he doesn't understand this being kept alone in the computer room, let alone this silly collar about his head.  I feel for him as he tries to groom himself and can only lick the inside of the plastic or tries to scratch his neck only to come claw to collar and get no satisfaction.

As for me, most of the pain left me this morning. I had two walks today. Maybe I will sleep well tonight.
Meanwhile my little buddy must wait another week for his own renewal of freedom.

Goodbye Little Man (Written June 4, 2011)

This has been a sad year. John and Ridge both died earlier, Ridge only a couple weeks ago, and now Little Man passed away yesterday.

Little Man was in a litter of kittens left in our storage area behind the house by a feral cat over a decade ago. He became a favorite of my eldest daughter and she took him with her when she moved away three years ago. Of course, with the poor economic times she moved back with us this spring, and Little Man came with her.

Unfortunately he took sick about a month ago and began losing weight. The vet thought he might have a heart condition and twice each day we would give him medicine using a syringe (squirt it into his mouth, not injected).

He was mostly staying in the computer room with me these two weeks past. I got him some special food, because he was having problems eating the regular food we use. He sometimes ate and sometimes didn't because it was a struggle for him.

A couple days ago his eyes began to water and actually seal shut. Now we gave him eye drops and cleaned his eyes so he could open the lids and see, poor fellow.

My wife found him dead in the entry way between 11:00 and 11:30 AM yesterday, not long before I got home from work (there was nothing to do so they sent me home early). He had seemed okay when I left earlier and in fact when I first got up and gave him medicine, his eyes were open for once. He licked at his food some and kept changing where he lay, walking out into the hallway.

From where my wife found him, I think he may have been trying to get to my daughter's room. However, my daughter was at work all day and all the night before (she has two jobs) and so wasn't there. She got home at eve-time. She was upset, but took it well, although she regretted no one was with him at the moment when he died. I suppose she will have him cremated now and keep the ashes.

We are saddened by this, this hardest thing of caring for pets, but relieved too that whatever suffering he may have been experiencing these last few days is over.

So Goodbye, Little Man, Laurel loved you very much. And I'm crying now.

Oh, Whitey Gone to Rest (Written August 23,2011)

Whitey was one of our earliest. The name was hardly witty or original, for as you can see she was totally white and statuesque. Some people who saw this photo thought this was of a ceramic cat, not a real one, but it was very real. She was a pretty girl.

How old was Whitey? None of us know. The earliest picture I have of her is dated 2000, but she wasn't a kitten when we got her. She was two or three at best, maybe somewhat older. She had to have been at least 13 now. My middle daughter believes she was closer to 16.

Her early life was not easy. Somewhere in those beginning years she ended up out on the streets, on her own and not doing well. When she was rescued she was pretty beat up with a hole on the back of her neck from being attacked. She was so damaged, as it was, that she was considered non-adoptable and was about to be shipped off to be euthanized.

But The Little Woman couldn't let that happen. She told her fellow shelter workers that she would take Whitey and did. As I say, my oldest picture is 2000, so we have had her eleven years now.

As you can see, her old wounds and scars were healed and she cleaned up real purrty.

My son basically took her then as his own. For some reason she always got grief from the other cats, with the exception of a few. Reno and Christy Cat got along with her. Hobo Joe when he came also did. But most of the time she shared our son's room.

She died last night. He sat with her through the end, kept her cleaned up the last couple of days as she sank and was there holding her when she passed.

She is lying behind me in repose, as if merely asleep. Rescued from an early grave when in grave condition, she lived a good life in a loving home for the last 11 years of her life. And now she is where good cats go when they leave us.

Whitey ? - August 22, 2011 RIP

Purrs and Tears (Written September 2, 2011)

She was a sweetheart. She loved my oldest daughter the most and came to her when ever called. She was not large, not long anyway. She was a bit pudgy. She was very soft. And she was a purrer. You just looked toward her and she purred.

She was in a litter of a feral cat who bore her kittens in a storage space under our house. Five little fur balls that we took in a decade ago. Amber, Asta, John, Ridge and Thorn. They were the "Bold and the Beautiful"  Bunch, three named for characters on that show. John was named after John Lennon by my son.

Now only Asta and Thorn remain for Amber died today.

She had begun to act differently last week, wanting to be in the bathroom. Cats often seek out a place to die. At first I thought she was remembering her kittens. She was the only one of our cats who ever gave birth to a litter. We thought all the males had been neutered, but one must have either escaped the snip or something. Those are her kits pictured on the right. They were all adopted out.

She was a good mother. She watched over her little ones faithfully, staying with them in our bathroom until they were weaned and old enough to be put up for new homes.

It was kind of sad to see her look for her children for some time after they were gone. But it was necessary.

So maybe she was remembering during these her last days, I don't know.

She began crying intermittently and the other day I noticed she couldn't quite jump up as she used to. Now she wanted to drink a lot. She was different. She wanted to drink from the spigot in the kitchen sink and I would lift her up to the sink and turn on the water.

My oldest daughter took her to the shelter vet this morning. They found Amber had cancer, a large mass in her chest and so they put her to sleep today.

Perhaps tonight she is with her brothers, John and Ridge. If cats go to heaven, then the Angels will her purr  and perhaps someday in the future I will hear her again myself.