• Tuesday, June 25, 2013: Cricket, the Cat of My Life


    Note: Continuing the perusal of the old blog archives.

    I love Nancy, and Bess, and Mow. They are good cats.
    Not a single one of them are Cricket. She still has a big, big corner of my heart despite being gone now nearly 13 years. She was beautiful, she was just my level of antisocial, she was elegant, aside from the single necklace she did not destroy my stuff.

    She helped me grow up and she kept me company in times when I felt like the rest of the world was falling apart in my young adult years.

    And, I still miss her very, very much.
    ________________________________________________________

    In July of 1996, I worked at Six Flags.  It was my first job.  That summer, my parents and I were in the process of moving to a new house and I had my first taste of freedom:  I had a car.   I had a boyfriend.  I had great — really great girlfriends.  It was before symptoms of my bipolar disorder had manifested.  I was 16 years old.  To this day, that summer remains one of the best of my life.

    We had a dog — Daisy — and over the years we had hosted multitudes of outside cats.  However, I’d never been allowed to have my own cat inside.  With the money that was rolling in from my little job, I petitioned my parents to let me adopt a cat.  I promised to pay the adoption fee, all vet bills, and to pay for its food.  They agreed that when we moved into our new house, I could have a cat.

    I started watching the local cable station animal shelter segments; you may have seen them — at the time, they posted photos of animals available for adoption from our local shelter.  The day before moving day to the new house, I saw her… a photo of a beautiful Calico cat with yellow eyes.  That was her!  That was the one I wanted!

    So, I drove down there when they opened that morning.   To my surprise, the cat wasn’t a full-grown cat like she appeared on TV.  She was a little kitten, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand!  I was smitten from the start.  So, I went to the desk and asked what I had to do to adopt her.  The attendant asked my age, and I was crestfallen when he explained that I had to be 18 before I could adopt an animal myself.  I explained that I had my parents’ permission, but there was nothing to be done.  I couldn’t take her home with me.

    I panicked.  She was gorgeous.  She was a kitten.  I couldn’t imagine how the next person walking into that shelter wouldn’t want to take her home with them.  She was going to get adopted and I couldn’t do anything about it!

    I called Mother at work and while she sympathized with me, she couldn’t leave until 5 pm to come with me to adopt the kitten.  She promised that we would make it to the shelter, though, before they closed at 5:30.  That’s all she could do.  I continued to panic and obsess all day long.

    We got there as fast as legally possible after 5 pm.  Driving up that long drive to the shelter, I was biting at the bits to get there to see if my precious cat was still available.   In the distance, we saw a light blue truck coming the opposite way…it was my Daddy’s truck!  I smiled big once I realized what had happened.  My Daddy had taken off work a few minutes early to come adopt the cat for me.  Both cars came to a stop in the middle of that drive, so that I could get the cat.  I don’t remember now if I got in the car with Daddy or if he passed the cat over to Mother’s car.  It was one of the happiest and most memorable moments of my life to that point.

    She was so little!  I’d never seen a kitten that little that didn’t have blue eyes, but hers were already bright yellow.  It took me a little while to name her.  After spending some time with her, we discovered she had some ridiculous traits, even for a kitten, like trying to jump way up high for the ceiling fan cord.  She could jump at least a foot and a half up in the air, too — pretty high for a small little thing like her.

    I named her Cricket because she jumped.  She got to spend the night in our new house her first night with us — the night before we even spent the night there ourselves.

    Cricket was a good companion.  That’s an understatement — she put up with some crazy antics on my part.  Later that summer, I decided I wanted to train her to walk on a leash like a dog; I’d read somewhere that some cats could do that.  It lasted maybe a week and then I gave up.  But she had crazy antics of her own.  Her entire life, she LOVED marshmallows.  When she was younger, she’d bat them around for ten or fifteen minutes before finally eating them.  There’s no telling how many marshmallows my parents cleaned out from under their refrigerator when they moved away from Carrollton.  And her whole life, she loved to get in the shower after anyone was done and lap up the leftover soapy water.

    I only got mad at Cricket one time in my life:  my boyfriend had given me a beautiful sapphire and diamond necklace that September of 1996 for my birthday, with a dainty chain that was perfect for my crooked neck, not too long.  Cricket, that first Fall, found my open jewelry box on my dresser and found that chain and chewed it to bits.  She didn’t actually eat it so she didn’t get sick, but she destroyed the chain.  I was livid.  Eventually, the chain was replaced, though, and I forgave the cat.  We decided she liked “pretties” too, so they were kept out of her reach from then on.

    Cricket was there for me during one of the most trying times of my life, when my boyfriend of six years moved out of the apartment we shared together, in 2001.  Mother brought her up to Atlanta to my apartment and I remember that large two-bedroom apartment being so big and lonely by myself.  But I was so glad to have my precious cat with me as I began the healing process after that tumultuous relationship ended.

    When I moved back home with Mother and Daddy, she found her long-time home.  She loved going out and sunning herself on the big deck.  She loved the big windows.  And she still loved marshmallows.

    In 2005 when Jared and I married, Cricket and I had to separate for a while.  Jared had his cat Murphy and Cricket had proven herself to be an only sort of cat.  We introduced other cats to our new household.   I was fairly sure Cricket would live out her days with Mother and Daddy.

    But over the years, the other cats found other homes for various reasons.  Last summer, we lost Murphy at a fairly young age.  My first thought was to bring Cricket home and we did just that.  She was 16 years old and I wanted her to live the rest of her golden years with me.

    She was a social kitten but not so much as an adult.  I liked her so much primarily because she liked to be in the room with me but she wasn’t clingy like other cats I’ve experienced.  This last year with her, though, she became more and more kitten-like.  She slept in the bed with us.  She slept more and more during the day.  And when she wasn’t sleeping, she was insistent on drinking both the water out of her dish and shower water.  These past few months we’d gotten to where we turned on the shower even when we weren’t using it, just for a few seconds, just to humor Cricket so she could have her precious soap scum water.

    In March of this year, she separated the nerve cluster in her shoulder jumping from top of the couch to the floor.  She howled in pain and surprise for a few hours and I just knew our time had come, suddenly and too soon for me.  I wanted her ending to be in her sleep, not in pain and fear.  I was in such a state of upset that Jared had to take her to the vet for me.  I couldn’t deal with it.

    There was talk of amputation of that entire leg and shoulder.  An impossible surgery for a cat of that age.  I mean, possible, but recovery and quality of life in a 16 year old cat are really, really difficult to predict and the odds were against Cricket.  I refused to consider amputation.  I promised that we would watch for signs of infection and sores in the bad leg, as she dragged it around the house.

    May 2013 came around and one day, she started putting weight on that paw again.  She started grooming it again.  She started jumping up on our bed again.  She was a cat that had come away from the brink.  She still slept a lot, but she was a happy cat and seemingly not in pain.  A miracle for a now 17-year old kitty.  The vet who had seen her two months before admitted how against the odds it was when we took her in for her annual shots.  She sent us home happy to have seen a good ending to that ordeal.  I was so proud.

    This past Sunday morning about 5:30 it started.  Cricket vomited 15 times in the span of less than 30 minutes and that was just the start.  I got out my camera and took this picture when it had subsided and she had, shaking, climbed back in bed with us:

    Cricket

    I hoped it was just an isolated episode, but it started up again.  I called the emergency number for our vet.  The doctor on call just happened to be the one who had treated Cricket in March and May and she remembered us. She met us at the clinic twenty minutes later.

    By that time, Cricket was all but foaming at the mouth as she yowled in discomfort.  The vet said her digestive system was really tense but that there was no sign of any foreign bodies that she could have gotten into her system.  No masses.  She was a drooling mess and hobbled around, unsteady on her feet.  She wasn’t a happy camper but she let me hold her still as the doctor gave her a shot of anti-nausea meds and got some fluid into her.  That’s how I really knew it was time:  Cricket, letting someone hold her peacefully while she was treated?  The doctor had to sedate her to the point of sleep to get her treated each time we’d taken her in for the past year.   But in that office, Cricket let me hold her head and look her in the eyes.  She seemed unaffected by it all, just overwhelmed with how bad she felt.  The drooling continued to get worse.  I kissed her and told her that I loved her and that she was the best cat I’d ever known.  I was there until she went to Heaven, around 7:30 am.

    What else can I say about the cat that I knew for over half my life?  She was ageless; a beautiful soul.  It was a privilege to care for her and to know her for nearly 17 years.

    She’s joined Daisy, Tinkerbell, and Murphy in Heaven.  I hope they were ready for her.

  • February 3, 2011

    Detail of a 2011 Blogger template by Skincorner, featuring artwork by Amai, from the header of my blog at the time.

    “I’m determined to salvage the comfortingly wonderful customs from my heritage while, for lack of a better term, “taking out the trash,” so to speak. Example: Karo syrup makes a really good, easy topping for breads when mashed up with butter on a fork. Fantastic taste to that. However, eat too much of it, and I know I’ll have a heart attack. It’s all in the moderation. I have bipolar disorder and PTSD and I struggle with massive doses of anxiety. Generally, though, I am a pretty happy person. Except when I’m not. :) It’s pretty much just like that. And then I feel like the world is caving in. But the good news for you is that if you know me, unless you spend a lot of time and I really let you in, you won’t have to deal with any of it. Because I put on a really good cover and generally don’t let many people close. I’m slow to trust people right now. Otherwise, I’m mommy to two really funny little boys. They keep Jared and me really busy. My living room is overrun with matchbox cars and little boy-sized desks and chairs.”

    This was the “about” box on my very first blog.

    I finally got up the courage to go scouting through archive.org to look at old blog posts that are now defunct. I pulled this “about” quote from my blog as it was on February 3, 2011.

    And I can unpack quite a lot that goes unsaid between the lines now, 15 years later.

    And it is still, indeed true, 15 years later, that despite living what appears to be a fairly transparent existence online, it is true that I let remarkably few people close (pretty much 1 to be exact), especially in person, and I have learned indeed to put on a really, really great cover.

    In that paragraph, I hear the angst in my writing. I hear the quiet despondency and horror of having had my social sphere knocked out from under me just the year prior.

    On February 3, 2011, Porter would have been four and a half and Liam would have been not quite three. We were indeed in the thick of it with two very funny little boys. I was in no way prepared to give them the attention they deserved.

    In 2011, the world was falling apart in just about every way possible.

    And so, in 2011, the boys went to daycare despite me not working.

    Jared kept all of us going, day and night.

    I had visions of a “Mommy Blog,” and was not-so-quietly desperate to get back to some semblance of a professional life.

    And for sure, whatever beginnings of a social life we’d had the year prior was long gone. Church was kind but most people were distant.

    I was taking on the full identity of “sick Caroline.” And, quietly dying, horrified and terror-filled, inside.

    And in that paragraph above, I was trying to not betray that any one bit of that was actually happening.

    Over the next little while, I’m going to revisit some of those old posts, with updated commentary.

    February of 2011 was the quiet beginning of a new sort of lifestyle: a different kind of childhood for my boys than I imagined, a different sort of marriage dynamic than I’d imagined.

    A different kind of life than I’d grown up dreaming about.

    And it’s been beautiful in its own way. Arguably, my boys had a more present mother because of that season of life.

    And if I could go back and tell the girl, who probably drafted that “about” paragraph in between sobbing episodes, anything at all, it would be this:

    Those two little boys that you worry about: they will grow up to be stellarly wonderful men in spite of whatever shortcomings you have. That man you married, that man that you feel growing ever distant with the stress of life right now: this marriage that is being tested is going to find its own comfortable peace and that man is your safe haven. And the career days may very well be done, and that will always hurt. And you, dear girl, your tears are not in vain. There’s a beauty in the growth going on right now. Do not lose hope.

    That is what I would tell my 15 years’ younger self today. Because it is the same thing I can tell myself today, in 2026.

  • The Sting of Rejection

    Atlanta nature photographer

    It’s been a week and it’s only Wednesday.

    Sunday I felt the sting of a 16-year old mortification-friend-rejection again in Costco. Jared is right: there are people who cannot handle me in my more fragile states, and this person was one more of those. It doesn’t hurt any less, though. Jared assures me that I am not crazy but knowing there are people in the world who have rejected me due to my mental health does not exactly engender confidence in that area.

    My life has taken twists and turns due to various mental health episodes, some more public than others. It’s affected every aspect of my life, but especially friendships and employment prospects.

    And I’m nursing my ego wound by plunging my energy back into jute bag making. I’m over halfway done with the current one though it means figuring out the invisible join again because one spool of 6-ply jute is not quite enough to make two bags and this is the second bag I have made with the original spool.

    On the topic of bags, I am sad because my original sourcing for the leather straps has inflated their prices, I am 100% certain due to the unfortunate tariff situation in this country. I found an alternative but it will mean the bags need to be smaller to accommodate the strap.

    I confessed to Jared that this morning it was awfully hard to not bite the bullet and buy a Fuji X-H2….the old compulsion to spend to make myself feel better. It won’t solve one little thing and will only create other problems, so it is not happening at all, of course. Thankfully I have developed the discipline to say no to myself.

    At any rate, this morning I found myself wallowing in the bed, texting Jared to say that I am worthless, that nobody wants to be my friend.

    Which is of course objectively not true: I have a wide circle of wonderful friends.

    It doesn’t make the stinging tears of shame over broken relationships due to the past any less painful at all, though.

  • The Girl in the Basement Apartment

    25 years ago today, I survived psychological torture and likely real physical danger.

    And the particulars don’t matter anymore; I am safe in February 10, 2026, not February 10, 2001.

    But I have to wonder what my neighbors of the time thought. They had to hear the screams; I screamed for my life that night. No one responded. It was a 55+ community probably not used to domestic violence issues.

    I don’t have to wonder about why it took that precise incident for me to decide to have the boyfriend of the time move out. It took precisely that sequence of events to upend our lives like that.

    And I don’t have to wonder because I know: I reclaimed his old room as my own, and rechristened the energy of that space the very day my Mommy came to clean up the trashed apartment he left in his wake on the last day of February when he moved out. 

    My Mommy brought my baby cat Cricket to live with me that day, and Cricket and I went on to live there a good while longer.

    And that day, that lowest of lows, was a turning point. It was the day I decided no man was worth my safety. No man, no matter how long I’d known him, was worth giving up my self-respect.

    I was done settling after that night.

    Thankfully, mostly good men followed that purging of my life.

    I am so grateful that I got to marry the best one.

    Jared is the one who has tolerated living in the light 24 hours a day for years on end.

    Jared is the one who answers the ghosts that aren’t there when I hear noises in the night.

    And Jared is the one who wants nothing from me other than my happiness. He doesn’t ask me to be anything other than real, he doesn’t ask me to perform for him. 

    He only asks me to accept his love as a gift. And that it is: a gift.

    And 25 years on: I know for a fact karma is real, as sad as that is to say in this particular instance.

    Tonight I will go to bed safe, having worked on a new jute bag for most of the day.

    And I will go to bed grateful for the new lease on life I got in 2001.