Welcome to the new Saturday Chat Link Up where you can share a post about your week or a post you want to get more eyes on. The post went live late today, on its debut, but normally, the post will go live Saturday morning
Last week we thought summer was here, so The Husband bought a small, inflatable pool for Little Miss.
It didn’t fill well because we didn’t do all we needed to do to make the bottom of it flat, but Little Miss and her friend had a ton of fun playing in it last Sunday anyhow. They slid down the Slip N’ Slide The Husband bought, jumped up at the end and flung themselves into the pool over and over again.
Sadly, we hadn’t gotten the air conditioners in yet, so we sweated a couple of days and then managed to get one in Tuesday night in Little Miss’s room, which is the hottest room in the house. We have those weird rollout windows so we have to use portable air conditioners with a window cover and a hose pushed out through it.
Before we put them in, they have to be washed out and this year the covers we previously used were wearing out so we had to order new ones.
Little Miss and I do not do well in the heat so we were very cranky the night without AC.
Once we had the AC in, we were much more pleasant to be around.
We only needed it a couple of nights, though, because our temperatures plummeted the next night and as I am starting this post (on Friday night) it is 53 degrees outside. I like being able to cuddle up under my blanket so I am enjoying the chillier temps for now.
I spent a lot of my week not knowing if there would be a good outcome with our oldest cat, who came home last week after being missing for three days but then continued to be very sick. We took her to the vet on Wednesday but are still waiting to see if she will improve. She ate some food and drank after she came back from the vet (where she was treated for a high fever and dehydration) but Thursday and yesterday she refused to drink and eat again.
Then this morning, she found a burst of energy and jumped up on the bed with me and laid on my side. I fell asleep with her there, afraid to move and disturb her, and she stayed with me for an hour and a half before I had to get up to use the bathroom and stretch out my tightened sciatica.
When our second-oldest cat, Scout, was treated for this same virus a couple of weeks ago, she was also very tired and lethargic for about another week, so I am trying to remind myself of that.
Pixel is even more stubborn than Scout. There is a reason I consider her my spirit animal after all.
Our youngest cat, Cass, wants to go outside today but it is 44 degrees and raining and we’ve decided we’ve had enough sick cats for a while so he’s not being allowed out.
All of this drama with our cats had my mom and I reminiscing about the time one of the cats my family had when I was a child got hit by a car.
I should start this story by explaining that my mom is allergic to cats so all of our cats had to live outdoors. (Unlike our cats, who are indoor/outdoor cats). Because of her allergies she thought she really didn’t like cats, but I knew she did because she would talk to them in a sweet Southern accent, and encourage us to pet them and keep an eye on them.
She also realized how much she cared about cats when one of our cats came to her for help.
His name was Marvin, and he was one of two brothers. They used to sit on either side of our front door like two little, cute gargoyles.
The one brother, Morris, had been hit by a car years before, I believe, and now Marvin had been hit and he’d dragged himself home.
My mom saw him suffering in the backyard, and since my brother and I were at school and dad was at work so she found a rug to wrap him in, somehow got him up and to the car and drove him to the veterinarian in the town I now live in. It was just one man (his son is now our neighbor) and when he saw Marvin he told Mom she should try the vet hospital in a town 45-minutes away (the same place we take our pets now and in the town where we used to live). Mom thinks he didn’t want to tell her Marvin wasn’t going to make it. So Mom drove 45-minutes, crying the whole way over this cat she supposedly didn’t like, her face probably itching like crazy.
Marvin ended up having surgery on a broken leg and it cost my parents $300, which is an amount they never could have afforded so I don’t know how they did it.
I would like to say that Marvin survived, but, sadly, he lingered at our house, in the sunroom, for a week or so before contracting tetanus and passing away. My dad cared for that cat and faithfully put medicine on the leg and gave him antibiotics but still felt like he failed him.
Even though Marvin didn’t make it, I’ll always remember how hard Mom fought for him, and how it showed me, and herself, that she truly did love our cats, she just couldn’t pet them because of the terrible itching they caused. When I say itching, it is more like torture for my mom. She’s always had an itching issue, possibly caused by some autoimmune issues, and she just doesn’t itch in one spot, she itches everywhere, including in between her fingers and toes, in her mouth, nose and ears, and even inside her chest. She has to permanently take allergy medicine to make it stop.
One other part of this story involves how Mom always forbad me from telling my grandmother, her mother-in-law, how much we spent on Marvin. My grandmother grew up during the Depression and they used to drown cats so they didn’t have to feed them. (I’m not going to speak on how horrible this is…it was a difficult time and it was apparently kittens they put in a pillowcase and threw in a pond one time. I don’t think it was Grandma that did it…she just knew it happened.)
Still, I have a feeling that if Grandma had been faced with the same situation, with Marvin asking her to help him, she would have done the same thing.
During the uncertainty over our cat, the kids found some joy one night by going outside to look at the tiny sliver of the moon. For some reason it was very bright that night and it caught The Boy’s attention. He called out his sister and they oohed and aahed over it for a bit. It was nice to see them enjoying it together and having a bit of a break from the stress of the week.
Some good news has happened in the midst of all our cat drama — my sister-in-law saved a couple of lives in the last couple of weeks as a 911 dispatcher in a small county near ours.
Over a decade ago she saved the life of a newborn when the baby was born in a bathtub. The baby wasn’t breathing and she walked the father through helping the baby breathe while the ambulance was on its way.
She won a state award for this call and while she didn’t want the attention, her boss asked her to speak about it after she won the award so it would remind people to not simply call 911 and hang up but instead stay on the line because the dispatchers can help them while the ambulance is on its way.
My sister-in-law is a former EMT so there is a lot she can help someone with when they are in an emergency.
Anyhow, recently, another mother delivered a baby at home and my sister-in-law helped the woman until the ambulance could get there. This time the baby was already breathing on his/her own.
In another situation, my sister-in-law helped a young woman in a mental health crisis.
Our family is quite proud of her and what she does.
I hope you are all having a nice Memorial Day weekend (even if it is raining like it is here), if you are in the U.S. and just having a nice weekend if you are not.
How was your week last week?
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Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.
You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
