I started SCUBA diving back in 2002. Actually, I started back in the 70's but didn't do any diving after I moved to Atlanta in 1985. Then, in 1988 I had my accident and my world changed. Other than taking flying lessons (yes I soloed and without hand controls) and traveling overseas with my mother, my life pretty much consisted of work, work, and more work. I didn't want anyone to think that the only reason I had my job was because I was a cripple. I did not want to be a Diversity (All Hail Diversity!) worker.
Back in 2002, the Shepherd Center Recreation Therapy Department teamed up with Bert Quist at Divers@Sea and started running SCUBA trips down to the Caribbean. I wasn't able to go on the trip to Bonaire in 2002 (Got a skin sore on my bum) but I did go to Roatan in 2003. That is where I met Richard and Ray.
Ray was a sky diver and a SCUBA diver. He had over 1100 jumps. I believe the actual number was 1183. On his last jump, his main chute got tangled and he tried for too long to fix it before ditching it and opening his reserve chute. As such, he hit the ground and received a traumatic brain injury (TBI). When you consider the accident, he was lucky to be alive.
Richard was Ray's father. Richard learned how to SCUBA dive so he could go on trips with Ray. On the Roatan trip, Ray's sister and her boyfriend came along with Richard and Ray.
Richard and Ray both served in the Navy and were both Aviation Electronics Technicians. They both served on carriers. Richard was in the Korean War. Ray was in Gulf War I.
People with TBI have memory problems along with other issues. For example, Ray is partially paralyzed on the right side. He walks with a pronounced limp. Ray and I would have the following conversation on almost every trip.
Ray: Were you in the Navy?
GOC: Yes
Ray: What were you?
GOC: I was an ET.
RAY: I was an AT.
GOC: In retrospect, I should have gone that way instead of ET. I probably would not have gotten seasick.
Over the years we have seen a great improvement in Ray. He used to forget my name from year to year. Now he remembers it.
Richard had a wealth of entertaining stories that he would tell us about his Navy career and how he moved to Atlanta and how he met his wife.
Every time the announcement for the Shepherd Center SCUBA Crip Trip would go out, Richard and Ray would always be the first to sign up. There were only two SCUBA trips that I went on that Richard and Ray didn't go on and that was because these were not crip trips per se.
I just got notified yesterday that Richard died at the age of 76. I'm going to the funeral parlor tonight to pay my final requests. The dive trips are just not gonna be the same without Richard. I'm really gonna miss him.
My cousin Rosemary died last week. Some background.
My St. Louis family is descended from two sisters, Dora and Ella Weber. Dora was my mom's mother. She and her husband had three children, Robert (my Uncle Pump, now deceased) Virginia, and Mom. Robert moved to Oklahoma City and adopted two children, Patty and Bobby. The only time I would see them was when they would come up for weddings and funerals or when we would take a vacation out West and would stop in Oklahoma City. My Aunt Virginia, who was also my godmother, died in the early 70's. That signaled our break with that part of the family. Her husband remarried a lush (after my mother had turned down his marriage proposal) and she, my mother, and I got in a big fight (she was drunk) at a holiday dinner. After that we were persona non grata.
Ella married Fred Strohmeyer and they had two children Russell and Rosemary. Russell was my godfather and he died last year. I was unable to attend the funeral because I was SCUBA diving down in Little Cayman when he died. When I got back, the funeral had already happened. My cousin Steve gave a very good eulogy that really captured the essence of Russ.
Russ had seven children. Rosemary had seven as well. They were all Russell's but they may as well have been Rosemary's. As my cousin Gary said, "Rosemary was a second mom." Russ was my godfather. Rosemary was my sister's godmother.
Before my Aunt Virginia's children got married and had kids, the descendants of Dora and Ella would always get together for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. The hosting would alternate amongst our house, Virginia's house and Russell's house. Eventually the family got too big and we split off and just got together with Viginia's family. As I said, that came to an end after Virginia died. We then started getting together with the Strohmeyer's again. They were more fun anyway.
I always referred to Rosemary as Rosemary the Saint. She was a very dutiful daughter. She lived with her parents. She dated a man named Charlie for many years but wouldn't marry him because he was divorced and the Catholic Church would not allow it. She was a very devout Catholic. After her father died, she quit her job to take care of her mother full time. She would go out with Charlie on Friday nights, and one of Russell's kids would babysit their grandmother. My cousin Gary did it until he went off to college and then the duty passed on to his sister Nancy.
After Rosemary's mother died, she petitioned the church for a dispensation to marry Charlie. They allowed it and she and Charlie got married. They were both in their 60's. The family joke was that the marriage wouldn't last because they hadn't dated long enough. This was also when I knew there was no God since Charlie and I were both atheists and in the same church together and lightning didn't strike.
Rosemary and Charlie were as different as night and day. He was an atheist and she was a devout Catholic. He was a grouchy old bastard (which made him one of my favorite relatives) and she was a cheerful outgoing person. Everyone loved Rosemary. She was that type of person.
She and Mom were best friends. After her mother died and she married Charlie, she and Mom started traveling together. They also hung out a lot. Mom got her to go line dancing with Shirley and her. After Charlie's health started declining she quit traveling with Mom because she needed to stay home and take care of Charlie. After Charlie died, Mom wouldn't let her mope around, but once again got her to go traveling with her.
She sold her house and moved into an old folks facility but she didn't like that place and eventually moved out to Valley Park and into the same complex that Russell and Shirley moved into when they sold their house.
When my mom died was when Rosemary's health started to decline. She quit doing a lot of the things that she and Mom used to do. She just seemed to lose the will to live. She was mostly deaf and seemed to withdraw into her own little world. I knew she was in bad shape when I quit getting birthday and Christmas cards from her. She never forgot my birthday. When I was a boy she always sent me Easter and Halloween cards with money in them with a note telling me to buy candy with the money.
She loved her candy. It really pissed off Mom that she could eat all that candy and never get fat. She always gave up candy at Lent and made up for it on Easter by gorging herself on candy. She loved Peeps (little marshmallow chickens) and would buy them before Easter so they would be nice and stale (like she liked them) by Easter.
She and Russ were the ones who found Mom dead. Mom and I always talked on Sundays and when I didn't hear from her (it was her turn to call me) I called her and got her answering machine. I called Rosemary and asked her to check on Mom when Russ picked her up to go to dinner (which he did every Sunday). They were the ones who found her.
My sister had seen Rosemary last year and told me how bad she was. She would look at you when you tried to talk to her but wouldn't respond. That's why we didn't visit her when we were in St. Louis in May.
The last time I saw her was when my sister and I went on the Roots 2001 Tour. I had just got my 2001 BMW Z3 and wanted to go on a road trip and my sister asked it she could fly out (she lived in California at that time) and come with me and do some genealogy research. We stopped in St. Louis for a few days and went out to eat with the Strohmeyers who still lived there. Rosemary was very un-Rosemary like. She was acting old and hardly said a word and that was definitely not Rosemary.
When Mom had to put Dad's half sister into a nursing home, Rosemary would always accompany Mom when she went to visit her. Rosemary would even go on her own if Mom was out of town. Did I mention that Rosemary was a saint? Rosemary loved old people and they all loved her. When she lived in St. Louis Hills it seemed everyone knew Rosemary. She would walk to St. Gabreil's church everyday, weather permitting, and would always stop to talk to people on the way. She knew all her neighbors. Just like Russ, she never met a stranger.
After Russ died, Shirley took care of Rosemary, just like Mom took care of her sister-in-law. Rosemary was like a sister to Shirley. Shirley has seven children and seventeen grandchildren. Almost everyone was at the funeral. Number 7 child, Tom, couldn't make it. He lives in Guam and the last minute airfare was around $4K so Shirley told him not to come. Rosemary would have approved as she never wanted anyone to spend any money on her, while at the same time she was generous to everyone else. She had a 1967 Chevy that all the neighborhood kids wanted to buy and she sold it for a song because it was "so old". I'm sure she sold her house in St. Louis Hills (a primo section of the city) for less than it was worth because it would be "too much money". This seems to be a Strohmeyer trait since she and Russ sold their parents' lake house at Lake Montewese for less than it was worth.
I hate funerals. I remember as a child seeing my Grandfather, Grandmother, Uncle Fred, and Aunt Ella dead and laying in their coffins. When I go to funerals now, I never go to the coffin and look at the dead person. I want to remember them as living, not as a corpse. I did not go up to view Rosemary in her coffin.
Bill Cosby did a routine on funerals and what people say like, "He looks so good." or "He looks just like when he was alive." He said he was going to have a recording that said, "Don't I look good? Don't I look like myself?"
I realize that funerals are for the living and not for the dead. They are to celebrate a person's life. Rosemary lived a long life and was remembered by her relatives. We will never forget her. She was a wonderful person.
I forgot to ask Gary to send me a copy of the eulogy he delivered. If he does, I will post it. He captured Rosemary's essence just as his brother Steve did with Russ's.
Today I had to say goodbye to my cat Ashley. She had been losing weight and Monday she quit eating. I took her to the vet on Tuesday and the vet said her kidneys were failing. The vet tried for three days to see if she could get her better, but it was no use. I brought her home last night to spend one more day with her before I had to say goodbye forever. I had nine wonderful years with her. She was the sweetest cat I have ever met. She was the Will Rogers of housecats. She loved everyone. That's what saved her life.
It was September of 1998 and I had just moved into GOC Central in Beautiful Dunwoody. I was down to one cat, Doofus, and I wanted to get another. I've usually had two cats, although once I had four. I was looking for a female tabby. Cindy's daughter Maureen found one for me.
Maureen was in Vet School at the University of Georgia. Their research center had this cat that they really loved and wanted to find a good home for. Research cats do not usually make good pets. They spend most of their lives in cages and do not usually have good dispositions. Not this cat. Everytime someone would walk by her cage she would stick her paw out begging for attention. Normally, the cats would be put to sleep after the project they were used for but this cat was so sweet they asked around to see if anyone would adopt her. Maureen adopted her for me so technically, she was Maureen's cat.
They spayed her before the adoption. Unfortunately, they botched the anaesthetic and when Maureen brought her to me she was scrawney and partially blind. Maureen was surprised that I agreed to take her in that condition. I'm glad I did. I had to put an ointment on her eyes. Rather, Cindy had to put an ointment on her eyes while I held her. She was declawed, but she really knew how to use her back claws. Cindy has the scars to prove it.
After two days, Maureen had to take her back to Athens for a checkup. When she brought her back, Ashley, which is what I named her, raced under the bed and there she stayed. She really freaked out. She had escaped Aushwitz and Maureen took her back. She came out from under the bed to eat and use the litter box, and then it was back under the bed. I used to dangle a piece of string to get her to come out.
One day I saw her stalking an ant. That was when I knew she was no longer blind. Scrawney? Not likely. She grew out of that and became a little porker. I remember she had a little fishing pole toy that she loved so much she would drag it all over the house.
She also loved to torment Doofus who was about ten years old at this time. Doofus was an easy going cat and he put up with it. Well, not at first. He would growl and hiss at her but that never bothered her. She just kept on coming. Doofus finally accepted her. Cindy once said that Doofus was the Golden Retriever of house cats. I used to tell Ashley about Karma. She experienced it after Doofus died and I got Scooter. Scooter would torment her. I noticed he stopped doing that about six months ago. Ashley was beginning to show her age.
I think Ashley was five when I got her. She was a mom at least once, maybe more. These cats have a very distinctive coloring which is called Agouti. They use them because they breed true. At least that's what Maureen told me. What do I know? I just know that she was a very beautiful cinnamon colored tabby.
She loved to sit on my lap (She loved to sit on anyone's lap) and be combed. And did she shed! That was the downside of her sitting on your lap. Cat hair. Lots of it.
Over Christmas in 1998 I got a very bad skin sore on my right instep. I required IV antibiotics. Cindy would come over to administer them and Ashley loved to bat at the IV line. If it moved, it was a toy. She also liked to oversee a dressing change. Gotta get some cat hair in that open wound. That's when we started calling her the nurse cat. She was a kitten until about two years ago. That's when she started slowing down.
Her first five years were not so good, but because she was such a sweet cat, she got nine years in a very good home. Every day was a bonus. She gave me unconditional love and was the sweetest cat I have ever met.
I took her back to the vet today and stroked her while she died. She was a great cat and a wonderful friend. I only wish that I could have had more than nine years with her.
Update: Thanks to all of you who have sent me condolences in the comments and by e-mail. I really appreciate it. I will soon be going to a shelter to offer another cat a good home. If I were not going out of town, I would have done it today. The day Doofus died, I adopted Scooter. All of my cats have come from shelters or have been strays with the exception of Ashley who escaped from the death camp.
I wrote this post two years ago. My sister liked it so much she printed it off and showed it to a bunch of our relatives when she was in St. Louis year before last. She also showed it to our cousin, Patty, in Oklahoma City. One of my readers asked me last year if I had a picture of my mother. I'm posting a picture when she was a little girl.
This is my soft side. You won't see too much of it.
This is the picture I write about in the post. My mother is the little blonde girl sitting on her mother's lap. The boy is my Uncle Robert (AKA Uncle Pump because he got a penile implant when he was in his 70's. Medicare paid for it. My tax dollars at work. It must have been good for him since he lived to be 92.) The girl is my Aunt Ginny. She died in her 60's.
Have you ever looked at an old person and imagined what that person was like as a child? With some people it is inconceivable that they were ever children. With my mother, you could easily tell what she was like as a child, because she never lost her childlike love of parades, circuses, parties, and holidays.
I have a picture of my mother sitting on her mother's lap. She looks to be around three years old. As a child she was blond and had rosy cheeks and a sunny disposition. So, she was nicknamed Peachy. To the day she died, everyone in the family called her Peachy.
She was the youngest of three children and the most adventuresome. I always thought my Aunt Ginny and my Uncle Robert were exceptionally dull. Not so my mother.
She was a Girl Scout. I don't know if my aunt was, but I doubt it. There is no way I could ever picture her camping in the woods. When Amelia Ehrhart made a stop in St. Louis, Mom was the Girl Scout selected to present her with a bouquet of flowers.
High school cheerleaders used to be all male. The first year that Roosevelt High School, in St. Louis, had female cheerleaders, my mother was one of them. She showed me the article in the newspaper she had saved.
She had a friend, Janie, who loved to travel as much as Mom did. When they were around twenty years old, since this was the Depression and they had no money, they hitchhiked from St. Louis to the Grand Canyon. These were two young girls. No way they could do this today. They hiked to the bottom of the Canyon and spent Christmas with the CCC workers building Phantom Ranch. Think they had a good time? They were the only two girls there. Mom and Janie also thumbed their way down to Georgia. My sister has two little notebooks that my mother used to record expenses on these trips.
My mother met my father when she and a friend were canoeing on the Meramec River in Missouri. My father was canoeing with one of his friends. He got her number and the rest is history. They got married in 1939. Since my father worked for the railroad he got free travel privileges (like airline employees do today), and they went west for their honeymoon. I have a movie they took going through the Rockies.
My sister was born in 1942. My father went off to war, and when he returned in 1946, they had me.
In 1952, my father had a bad accident at work and sued the railroad company. He won. As a result, he lost his job. He used the settlement money to buy a new car and a bunch of camping equipment. This was before RV's. Everyone used tents or, if they had money, they bought trailers. They were nothing like the trailers of today. In the summer of 1953, we took off for five weeks and hit every state east of the Mississippi and two states west of the Mississippi. We also went as far north as Quebec City in Canada. Even though it was summer it was still cold at night in New England and Canada. I don't know how she did it but she managed to pack all the clothes we needed for the different climates we experienced.
We never had much money, but since both my parents liked to travel and liked to camp, almost every summer we would take off for two weeks and see the country. My dad drove, my sister navigated, and my mother thought of games to keep us occupied. I had been in 47 states by the time I was sixteen years old.
My mother always wanted to go to places outside of the country. My father, having spent WW II in Europe, had no desire to go back. After my sister moved to California, and I joined the Navy, she started her overseas trips. Still loving adventurous things, she went rafting on the Colorado River, through the Grand Canyon when she was in her sixties. When she retired, she, my sister, and my sister's husband hiked the Grand Canyon. Here was this little, sixtyfive year old woman with a backpack hiking the Canyon. At the end of the trip, when she reached the top, there were a bunch of hikers at the top who applauded.
But she wasn't finished. Two days later all of us went sailing in the Virgin Islands. It was a bareboat charter which means we sailed it ourselves. She went on three more sailing trips with us: Greece, the Grenadines, and the Florida Keys.
Fourteen years ago I had a freak accident and broke my back which left me partially paralyzed from the waist down. I had been to Europe a few times with my mother and now in my condition would be unable to travel. Wanna bet? After I had gotten out of a wheelchair and could walk with braces and crutches she suggested we go to England. It was a short flight and since there were a lot of old people on these tours I would be able to keep up. Previously, I had always taken care of the luggage. Now this little old lady in her seventies had to do it. My mother got me to Spain, Russia, Germany, Austria, Turkey, and Egypt. Europe, and especially places like Egypt and Turkey, are not very cripple friendly, but, with my mother's assistance, I made it.
She hated to sit around with nothing to do. Before my accident, on a trip to Italy, we had a free day and, since Venice was not in our itinerary, we took a night train from Rome to Venice, spent the day sightseeing, and took an evening train back to Rome. When in Turkey, we had a free day and she talked the tour guide into setting up a day trip to Troy. Travelling with my mother was always an adventure.
My father was an alcoholic and would lose jobs so my mother had to work. My sister and I also had to work. She had babysitting jobs and I did yard work and worked in the school cafeteria. My mother really knew how to stretch a dollar. My mother taught us self reliance and the fact that actions had consequences. My sister, being smarter, did well in school and won a four year scholarship to college. I flunked out of junior college. My mother welcomed me to the real world and told me I would now have to start paying room and board so I better get a job. This was the 60's. I was 1A, so I joined the Navy to learn electronics and stay out of Viet Nam. One out of two is not too bad. I learned electronics, but both of the ships I served on went to Viet Nam. I went back to college after the Navy, but burned out in my junior year, quit, and got a job with TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name). I moved to Atlanta seventeen years ago to be a technical instructor with TCIDNN. My mother never tired of telling her friends that her college dropout son was now a teacher.
My mother had an ulcer and had surgery to remove part of her stomach. She had had two heart attacks. She had had a tumor removed from one of her breasts and took chemo for that. I remember she was talking to my friend Cindy after the tumor was removed and told Cindy she was not going on chemo because her cousin Rosemary had gotten very sick when she was on chemo. When Cindy asked what medication she was taking and she told her Cindy didn't tell her that that was chemo.
In her eighties, she developed macular degeneration. She could no longer drive at night and was worried that she might soon not be able to drive at all. This not only affected her, but all the other little old ladies she had to ferry around. The last time I saw her, she was blind in one eye.
My mother was the most active person I have ever met. She took aerobics, did line dancing and went on lots of one and two day trips with various organizations. We were at a night club in Egypt and the band started playing the macerena. Up jumped my mother to do the macerena! My sister and I had to buy her an answering machine since she was never at home and her friends could never get in touch with her.
We talked once a week. We alternated calling. It used to be on a Saturday, but we had to change, because she couldn't fit me into her schedule on a Saturday. We changed to Sunday morning. She only forgot to call once. So, one Sunday, when she didn't call, and she didn't answer when I called, I feared the worst. I had her cousins go to her condo and check and they found her dead. She had gone to a movie with friends on Saturday and returned home and died that night. She had dreaded going into a nursing or assisted living home so I'm glad that she was active to the very end. When my sister and I went to St. Louis to take care of affairs we found literature about activities for the blind. We also noted that her calendar was full of events for the next three months. Somehow I never thought that she would be able to ever fit dying into her busy schedule. She lived to be eighty five years old.
She died three years ago. Every Mother's Day I regret that I never told her how much I loved her and what a wonderful mother she was. She was one hell of a mom.
Happy Mother's Day, Mom, where ever you are!
For Father's Day, it would be nice to write sumpin' about my father like I did about my mother, but I can't. My father was an alcoholic. I didn't have too many problems with him, but my mother and sister did. And he was out of work a lot, so we were poor. It wasn't grinding poverty because my mother worked and knew how to handle money. It's a shame about my father because he was extremely intelligent but suffered from a disease, which is what alcoholism is.
And while I'm talking about my father, exactly when was I became him (minus the alcoholism)? I've taken to pulling my pants up like old men do. And I always wondered why my father would smack his lips. I thought it was the false teeth, but no, it's because when you get to be an old fart like me, for some reason your mouth gets dry. But enough of that.
I want to tell you about my friend Rich. When I started with TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name) 30 years ago, Rich was one of my mentors. We used to have coffee every morning and we'd meet for lunch every afternoon, first at a bank cafeteria, until they discovered we didn't work there and kicked us out, and then at Teutenbergs, which was a little lunch place on the first floor of another bank in St. Louis.
We were a jolly bunch then and a lot of the people in our group used to stop after work and take in happy hour at various bars. We always tried to get Rich to stop, but he was henpecked and unless he got permission from his wife, he couldn't stop with us, not even for one beer.
He had three children and his wife didn't work. He treated his wife like a queen.
Four and one half years after starting at TCIDNN I got a different job with the company in another part of St. Louis, so I didn't get to see Rich on a daily basis. I did see him occasionally in the evening and on the weekends.
Rich was a real good woodworker. One Saturday, he, another friend and I got a case of beer and some wood and built a bookshelf/entertainment center. We built it in two pieces to make it easy to move. Assembled it was six feet high and eight feet long. I used it in three different apartments. I still have it. It is in my garage and I use it for storage. It's over twenty five years old.
About two years before I left St. Louis Rich moved into St. Louis Hills, which is an upscale neighborhood in the city. He had a beautiful house in the suburbs but his wife had always dreamed of living in St. Louis Hills. The house they moved into was smaller than the house in the suburbs, but, what Rich's wife wanted, she got.
Did I tell you Rich treated her like a queen? She bitched at Rich that he didn't make enough money, so he took a job in sales. Meanwhile she who was an RN, never worked during their marriage. With the kids in school, she did fun things like take ice skating lessons. For her, life was good.
Somehow she met a doctor who wanted to marry her (Why, I don't know. She was homely as sin) and asked Rich for a divorce. This was right before I moved down here, so I let Rich stay at my flat until I sold it.
So Rich got divorced and his wife married the doctor. And sometimes there is justice in the world. The doctor's exwife took him to the cleaners in his divorce so when he married Rich's wife, she had to go to work.
Rich rented a flat in the city for a year, and then bought a fixer upper house in the city. He wanted to have enough room for when he got his three children. He loved his children.
At this time. I was driving up to St. Louis twice a year, once for Thanksgiving and once for Mother's Day. Rich was always the first person I would see. I'd stop by his house and we'd have a few beers.
After my accident, he got a different job with TCIDNN and came down to Atlanta twice for training. He was too far away to stay with me, but he came up to see me on the weekends.
It was about this time that he met Kay. They got married and Kay, with her three children, moved in with Rich. Kay is a wonderful woman. It was obvious that she and Rich were very much in love, and after what Rich went through with his first wife, I was happy that he had found someone like Kay. She loved Rich's kids as if they were her own and he felt the same way about her kids. Her kids liked Rich and his kids like Kay.
I still saw Rich every time I was in St. Louis, but a few years back (and I cannot say when as time goes by more quickly as I get older) when I saw him he looked like crap. Rich smoked like a chimney. He started having problems breathing and went to the doctor and they found a big ol' tumor. They had it removed and he was on chemo. All his hair was gone. He was in good spirits, but that was Rich. I saw him one more time.
Kay called me right after the funeral. He died peacefully in the hospital with his family at his bedside. I know Kay's kids felt like they had lost their father. After all, he considered them his children.
Kay remarried a few years back, but she kept Rich's last name hyphenated with her new husband's name. I've never been much for hyphenated names but in this case I thought is was touching that Kay did this. She has called me a few times over the years and caught me up with how she is doing. She is one classy lady.
Rich was a great friend and a wonderful person. He was also a great father.
I miss him a lot.
I would like to thank everyone who wrote me and posted in the comments offering condolences over my loss of Doofus. To many of us, a pet is a beloved member of the family.
Yesterday afternoon, Cindy and I went to the DeKalb Humane Society (With one exception, all my cats but two have either been strays or Humane Society. Ashley was a research cat. ) so I could give another kitty a good home. Here is the kitty I picked out.
He's about one year old and reminds me a little of a black cat I had about six years ago named Oscar. I have not given him a name yet. I gave Ashley her name because she is a Beautiful Dunwoody princess. I'm thinking of giving this guy a Dunwoody name, but I haven't come up with a suitable one. Usually, my cats do sumpin' that suggests a name. I had one cat, Tiffany, a full week before I named her.
When we got him home and let him out of the cat carrier, he immediately disappeared. We searched high and low with no luck. This went on for about 45 minutes. Finally, I noticed that Ashley was looking at the wall unit in the great room. On a hunch, I looked closely at the television and there, behind the television I saw one green eye looking out at me. Aha! Found you.
I had Cindy and her husband Michael over for dinner, and the nameless one was all over Michael. And, today he has followed me around the house. At first, he was a bit frightened by my wheelchair, but he's getting over that.
Ashley keeps trying to make friends with him, but he growls and hisses when she gets too close. Doofus did that when I brought Ashley home, but Ashley is a very persistant cat and I'm sure she will break down his defenses.
My sister is arriving tomorrow for a five day stay and I'm sure she'll suggest some names for the nameless one.
Not sure how much posting I'll do for the next few days. In the meantime, here is a picture sent to me by many readers demonstrating the Navy's new Terrorist Catch and Release Program.
How does one say goodbye to a four legged friend? How does one decide when it is time to say goodbye?
I first met Doofus almost 15 years ago when he was a little kitten. He and his brother, who was also black used to come into my yard. Doofus was the friendly one. His brother was shy. I never found out where they came from.
In September of that year, 1988, I broke my back and I was in the hospital and rehab for over two months. When I came home, it was winter so I never saw Doofus and his brother the rest of that year.
Come Spring, when I was going outside, I saw Doofus again. He was now a big cat (If it were really Doofus, and I think it was.). Since I had a cat door, he started coming inside to see me. I had two other cats at that time, but Doofus was just such a friendly cat, he let them push him around. It soon was understood that he would live with me, so it was off to the vet to get neutered.
My friend Cindy, always called Doofus the Golden Retriever of housecats since he would always come down the driveway to meet her when she would come to see me. He would always like to jump up on my friend Wahoo's lap (Wahoo didn't particularly care for cats) and lay on Jeanella's (Wahoo's significant other) coat.
My house was next to a wooded area and Doofus liked to hang out in the woods. He was an excellent hunter and I'm sure that's how he fed himself until he adopted me. Often at around three in the morning I would hear him coming up the stairs meowing with his mouth full of some prize that he wanted to share with me. It could be a frog, or a mouse, or a lizard. If it moved, it was prey.
Almost five years ago, I moved from my old house in the northern suburbs of Atlanta to my current one in Beautiful Dunwoody. Doofus howled the whole time on the ride over. I waited a few days before letting him outside and the first few times he stuck around the house. Then, one day, he disappeared for a whole day. Cindy and her daughter Maureen spent a few hours looking around the neighborhood. They were building houses in this subdivision and they checked all of them. They even drove around nearby neighborhoods looking for him. I finally walked across the road outside my subdivision and walked by the woods calling his name. Soon I heard an answering meow. I guess he thought the woods were his old woods and if he went into them he could find our old house.
The road outside my subdivision is a rather busy one and, since Doofus was black, I could just imagine him getting hit one night crossing the road. From then on, he was an indoor cat.
For the first few weeks he was not very happy. Me neither. He meowed often during the night and I didn't get much sleep. But, after a while he adjusted.
Then, a few months later I got Ashley. He wasn't all that happy at first, but since Ashley is such a sweet cat, he let her live. Ashley loved Doofus. She loved to rub up against him and lick his face and head. When they played, he was always very gentle with her.
Last October, Doofus was diagnosed with diabetes. Since then, I have been feeding him (and Ashley too since she's a little porker) a special diet. I've also been giving him insulin shots. Ever since then, I've realized that Doofus was living on borrowed time and I would soon have to decide whether I was prolonging his life for him or for me.
For the last few months his kidneys have been failing. Last Sunday, he went into insulin shock, and after two days at the emergency hospital they told me that it might be time.
Cindy offered to take him to the vet for me, but I said I should really be there for him. This morning we took him. I did not use the cat carrier. I carried him on my lap on the drive over. At the vet's, I said goodbye, hugged and kissed him and he died very restfully in my arms.
I know it was the right thing to do but that doesn't help the grief I feel. He lived with me longer than any of my other cats. For 14 years he was a very good friend.
Why do they have to live such short lives?
I miss him terribly.
As regular readers know, my cat, Doofus, has diabetes. When it was first diagnosed, we put him on a special diet and insulin. His condition improved so dramatically that the vet took him off insulin to see if we could control the diabetes with diet alone. Alas, it was not to be. So, we put him back on the insulin. Unfortunately, I left the bottle out of the refrigerator one night, and, even though it should have been OK, I don't think it was.
So Cindy and I took Doofus back to the vet on Saturday to get his blood sugar tested. Dammit! It was almost at the same level as it was after we took him off the insulin. Also, the vet was a little worried about his kidney function. She started explaining options to me and said some of them might be expensive. So? Anyway, he got an all expense paid weekend at the vet's for more tests and treatment.
The vet told me, the expense could be three to four hundred dollars. What's a friend worth? A lot.
I've known Doofus for fourteen years. He was a stray who came in the cat door at my old house and decided to stay. I had two other cats at the time. Doofus, who was bigger than both, was a beta cat. He deferred to them. My friend, Cindy, called him the golden retriever of house cats, because he was so friendly. Since he was a stray, he was a good hunter. And, he liked to hunt at night. Many times I would be awakened by him coming up the basement stairs and meowing, with a mouth full of prey. Oh crap! What is he bringing me this time? It could be a frog, or lizard, or a field mouse. If it moved, he could catch it.
When I moved to GOC Central, he became an indoor cat. My subdivision is off a busy street and has a wooded lot across that street. Doofus, upon seeing the woods, thought that was his old home and off he went into the woods. Doofus is black. The street is busy. I could visualize him becoming roadkill when crossing the street at night. He didn't enjoy being kept inside for the first two to three weeks. He liked to let me know about that in the middle of the night.
About two months after my move, I got Ashley, a little cinnamon colored tabby as a companion for Doofus. Ashley has her own interesting story that I'll relate another time. Doofus wasn't really all that happy with Ashley when she first moved in, but Ashley just ignored his hissing, and kept rubbing up against him and he finally relented and they became friends. No one can resist Ashley.
Ashley looooooves Doofus! She woke me up real early Sunday morning with a lot of face rubbing. I could tell she missed Doofus. Even though she is very affectionate, she was even more so, because she missed Doofus and had to give me all of her attention.
The vet called me Sunday morning and told me Doofus is responding real well to treatment. Hopefully, I'll be able to bring him home.
Doofus is fifteen years old. He has only recently started looking like an old cat.
Only four months ago he weighed 16 pounds and not much of that was really fat. He now weighs less than 14 pounds and he is getting boney. He still likes to sit on my lap and purr.
The bad thing about having dogs and cats as pets is you know you will probably outlive them. And then there will come a time when they get old and you have to decide when living becomes a quality of life issue. You love a pet so much that you don't want to see him suffer, but you also don't want to lose him. You then have to ask yourself whether you are keeping him alive for you or for him.
I know that time is now approaching with Doofus. I'm hoping his kidneys are OK. I'm hoping that when I bring him home that the insulin will keep the diabetes under control. I'm hoping that he lives a lot longer. I don't want to lose a dear friend.
Sometimes life really sucks.