Great Christian Diaries

2003-12-12 - 12.13pm  previous entry  next entry

Thanks Alison for your guestbook entry :)

Not much to report. Today's the day that Percy will be put down (or hopefully not), and I'll find out whether that happened later this afternoon. Granny and Grandoug are coming round for dinner tonight so I have a serious ton of housework to do today. I put the curtains up last night (hooray!). I can't believe we have waited over 2 years with skanky curtains that were here when we moved in, on a temporary rod squished up next to the net curtain in the window alcove! Now we have a big chunky wooden curtain pole OUTSIDE the alcove, with gorgeous curtains hanging from them that match our sofas and walls - yay! It was well worth the effort of altering them.

I have had soooo much eBay stuff in the post these last couple of days. I've been going a bit crazy there methinks. But it's fun to get things in the post. Especially when they're really really nice and I got them for like a pound :)

Neil got home late on Wednesday evening - after my last entry. He had a good time but some stupid work person was taking the pee out of him and generally picking on him all evening. I would love to go and smash a few immature heads in at his workplace, but that would be terribly unChristian of me. Which is how I seem to feel a lot anyway at the moment. This guy keeps finding his weak spots and laughing about them to other people. He even picked on his clothing, said all he needed was a bowler hat and he'd be Mr. Benn (British 70's children's TV character), just because Neil happens to have a black umbrella that he takes with him because - hello?! - it's rainy, and he wears a nice suit that makes him look gorgeous, and has a long black winter coat. He's so self-conscious about his looks and what he wears, and I've been working on making him feel good about those things for years, and some idiot has to somehow see that he has a weakness in that area and make fun of him for it in front of his other work colleagues. Did I mention I want to smack his head in? Well I do. He made fun of how Neil takes a change of clothes with him to work on Thursdays so he can "fit in with the scummy university students" (as this guy put it). He takes jeans and a casual top with him because otherwise he'd be the only bloke in a suit at his lectures. I hate people who pick on others and make them miserable.

Anyway.

I told him about Percy when he got home. He loves Percy too so he was sad about that.

Thursday (yesterday) I felt like a brick, just soooo heavy and numb and sad. I can't remember what I did in the morning. I couldn't sleep till 3 or 4 the night before but the next door neighbours starting building a kitchen or something equally noisy (!!) at 9am on the dot, so up I got. I really can't think what I did - maybe I pottered around or something? Anyway, Neil came home at lunch time to bring the car back and head out for his lectures at Uni. I took a bath. At 2.45 I went to Judith's (I put her off on Wednesday) to do this typing for her. I rehearsed in the car all the way there, how to move quickly onto the typing or anything else for that matter, without being asked how I'm doing. Because if I was asked, anything other than "not well" would be a complete lie - I couldn't even say I was okay or not so bad, because the truth was I felt absolutely awful, and I did not want to talk about it, or even mention it, incase it made me feel worse. Which isn't like me really, I usually like to talk about myself! ;)

But anyway, it was okay in the end, because I managed to ask how Judith was first and then fortunately she was just watching the end of a movie as I turned up, which she really wanted to see, so we sat and watched that and by the time it was done, it was easy to steer the conversation without it being about me because it felt like the "Hello, how are you doing?" bit was done earlier.

It took much longer than I thought to do the typing, because we had to decide how we wanted the application form (for next year's summer camp) to look, and what should be on it, etc. Then Judith had to show me how to use Access which I've never used before, and make tables wiht checkboxes, etc. Sometimes she phoned Sue to ask about data protection and things like that. I just sat there feeling like I wanted to leave. I felt heavy like I weighed 50 tons, and my whole torso had a dragging ache in it. The skin on my face felt to heavy for the bones, and I didn't bother with any expressions because of it. If Judith went away to make a phone call, I just sat completely still waiting for her to come back, I didn't move an inch. It's weird. But I just feel like I am shutting down and I don't want to move ever again, like maybe if I slow down enough the rest of the world with catch up and be slow and maybe even stop, and then nothing can hit me again because nothing is moving or happening anymore.

I didn't particularly want Judith to start asking if I was okay, so I sort of made sure I was all interested in the screen and what I was doing, and that avoided chat or quiet moments. Sometimes there were quiet moments anyway but that can't be helped.

Anyway by the end things were better, because we started to pick fun at each other a little, just in a mutually jokey way. It started because I was getting increasingly frustrated with the stupid tables and text boxes (!!) and Judith was on the phone. I pressed something that did something bad (!) and when she came back she said, "What have you been doing while I've been on the phone!" So without any feeling I just said I hadn't done anything and I was offended that she thought I had, but I meant it cheekily, you know. She found that terribly funny for some reason and her laughter seemed to wake me up somehow. She said something cheeky back and I countered it, and off we went. So I felt quite a bit better after that. By the end she was laughing so much at me getting cross with the boxes and things - she knows just how to use the system, but has RSI so her arms can't take typing or clicking the mouse, so I was there to do that part. Very amusing for Judith, with all my mistakes and frustrations! :) At the end I told her it was a good thing she had me round to do it at this point in my menstrual cycle, otherwise I'd owe her about £1000 worth of damages by now! Hehe.

It was good to laugh, I really needed it. But not the type where someone knows you're down and tries to make you laugh. The spontaneous type is soooo good, it makes a world of difference. Great medicine.

Anyway then I came home and Neil was already back from Uni, clearing the house up a bit - he has been wonderful. I phoned my parents and chatted to them for 40 minutes mostly about Percy. He was doing okay yesterday, but they don't know whether to get their hopes up or not. He ate a bit of food that they fed him by hand, and he took 9 teaspoons of water that had had fish soaking in it. They have been pampering him as much as they can because they think it was his last day yesterday. Mummy said he seemed to be sleeping a little more comfortably yesterday which is good, but I don't know if it will change whether he's put to sleep or not today. He did a wee in the litter - can cats do that if their kidneys have stopped functioning? I wouldn't have thought so. But I daren't get my hopes up. Mummy said they had been out to the butcher and got slices of cold roast pork with garlic for lunch. While they were eating it, Percy came over, and they put a couple of tiny bits down for him incase he was tempted by them, and he ate them ravenously! So Daddy got straight in the car and went back to the butcher and bought more of this pork for Percy, bless him. You can see how we love these cats. They are absolutely on a level with the humans in the family, and always have been.

He ate some little bits of it anyway.

Paddy is being so sweet with him. He watches him at night when my parents go to bed. Every night Mummy tells him to look after his brother (we got them as kittens together - they are from the same litter - because the lady told us they were inseperable), and she says he sits in front of her, looking up at her with big wide eyes, like he's really taking in what she's asking of him. So sweet. Paddy sleeps with Percy now that he's ill. He curls himself around Percy, or sometimes lies over a part of Percy that might be in a draught. He licks the top of Percy's head a lot and just generally stays very close to him. He stops and greets him if he passes him in the house with a little growly meow that we haven't heard him use before. He is genuinely taking care of him the best way he knows how. Part of my sadness is knowing my lovely Paddy will be so unhappy if Percy dies, and we won't be able to explain it to him or take away his loneliness. I love my cats so much.

Anyway, Mummy and Daddy say they've been giving Percy lots of cuddles. He finishes his course of antibiotics today, and he's finally stopped being sick so they reckon they have finally nipped the original infection in the bud at last. But they don't know if they did it in time to prevent fatal organ damage. Poor Percy :*( It took so long to control the infection because Percy was allergic to the antibiotics, and when they realised that, the vet sent them home with a 10-day course of injections to give him, so they've been injecting him each day. But Percy has always been such a big cat with plenty of weight on him, and now Mummy says his backbone is like a string of pearls and his tummy caves right in behind his ribs :( I can't bear that he's like this. His eyes aren't a good colour, but his fur is still glossy. The vet said his kidneys have shrunk and they only do that when they have collapsed on themselves in complete kidney failure, which there is no way he could survive. The last cat we had put to sleep died of kidney failure as well :( The injection of cortisone he had on Wednesday was a last ditch attempt, because if you give a cat a LARGE dose of steroids, it can re-inflate collapsed kidneys. But you're still talking "miracle", apparantly.

They said that sometimes Percy is uncomfortable and doesn't want to be touched or to have them fussing around him, and the only thing that settles him when he's like that is music. Paddy HATES music, he gets up and leaves the room straight away, but Percy is really cultured! :) By his responses to different music we can easily see that he has favourites. He likes classical music. His particular favourites are baroque music, and he likes Chopin. So they have been playing baroque music a lot, all his favourites, and that has made him a lot more calm and settled. When I was on the phone, Percy was sleeping next to Mummy, and I could hear him making squeaky noises in his sleep, which just about dragged what's left of my heart right outside my body. I am so sad that I can't kiss his little head and look in his eyes and tell him I love him SO much and cuddle him. When he woke up, they put some baroque music on straight away, and he seemed happy with that. Of course this doesn't thrill Paddy but oh well! Percy needs pampering, especially if it's his last few hours alive :( My baby cat.

If he dies they will bury him under the rose bushes in their garden. They have a lovely rose garden that they made - two large patches of earth with rose bushes in them, surrounded by little box hedges, and a path in between the two so you can walk among them. If the vet lets them take him home after he's been put down (IF he's put down), then they will bury him under one of the rose plots, and when Paddy dies he will go under the other one. Which I think is lovely. But I can't bear going at Christmas and there just being Paddy, and knowing Percy is under the ground where the roses will grow. When I think of it I see Cameron's grave in my mind and the hurt doubles. My loved ones being under the ground hurts such a lot when I want them here ABOVE the ground with me.

After the phone call we had dinner, which I couldn't eat till we watched some bland rubbish on TV. I sewed the curtains and we put them up. Must have done more than that but I can't remember. I felt wrung out by the evening and just wanted to lie down all the time.

Neil went to bed before me, but when I came to bed I couldn't sleep at all for thinking about Percy, and I tried really hard to push him out of my mind, but when I did that Cameron was there, and I started to feel nauseous and then more nauseous, and then got kind of scared, so I got up and rubbed my tummy till I felt better. But it just started again when I lay down because I couldn't stop thinking about Percy and my heart felt like it was breaking. I woke Neil up with crying and he was so lovely. I cried for an hour and told him all how I was feeling, and how much I hurt, and how it was scary because I kept thinking who was going to be taken from me next, and how was I ever going to cope with losing my parents or Neil if it was this unbearable already with Percy and Cameron. I don't know how I can ever manage that. My chest and tummy hurt soooo much, it was so painful. I think I remember it was like that when Cameron died? I'm not sure. But I am sure I remember physical pain.

Neil was lovely. He held me and listened and said it would be okay. He went and found tissues for me when I used our box up. He helped me hunt the house for Vicks vaporub, which I sure needed afterwards! He was so fast asleep when I woke him that he told me afterwards he didn't know if I had woken him for parsnips or not for a while, even though his mind was telling him I was crying!! Hehe! Sweet thing. Ahhh, what he has to put up with! :) He is the most lovely and loving husband in the world. I told him so. I love him so much. I told him that too :) He tells me the same and I know it's the truth. He doesn't even have to say it really. But it's so nice to hear.

Well I went to sleep after that, around 2am, though the crying didn't really make me feel better like I'd expected it to. I woke at 5am, nauseous out of my brain, and paced the downstairs rubbing my poor old emotion-wracked tummy until it calmed down a bit, then I went back to bed. But woke just after 7am from a dream about Percy, where he was tiny again, just a little kitten with a tiny little stumpy triangley tail like he used to have, and big wide kitteny eyes. I knew he was ill, but then his jingle ball came rolling down the stairs - that was his favourite toy when he was a baby until it hit him on the nose when it bounced once, and then that was the end of it. And I saw him leap up and run to play with the jingle ball. He was patting it around the hallway and it was jingling so merrily, and I was so happy because I thought, "He's well, he's well, he's WELL!!!" But then he came into the living room with it and he started throwing up, and he couldn't stop. He was such a tiny cat in the dream, only a bit bigger than my hand, like when we first got them. And it was scaring me that he was being sick that much. My brother was there too. Percy was so sick, it was all over the walls and curtains and floor and ceiling and he couldn't stop (just like my worst fear for myself I suppose), and he started to be so distressed and I was telling him, "Good boy" just like I used to when Cameron was sick, and trying to calm him down. Then he became a dog with pleading eyes, and right after that, a human boy who tried to run out of the room because he was so scared of being sick and not being able to stop. He thought if he ran away from it he would stop being sick. Which is sort of like Percy because he always did run away if he had an injury, he always tried to run away from the pain, bless him. And it's like me too, in a way.

Me and Bennie both grabbed an arm and said no he had to stay till it was over, and it would be over soon, and it was going to be okay. It was so much like when I was throwing up FOREVER in hospital when I was 2, and my parents had to hold me like that, well, Daddy did anyway. I couldn't stop throwing up then either, and I was so scared I wanted to run away from it.

Sorry Nicola :(

Anyway I woke up from that dream all out of breath, and then the neighbours were bumping around till 8ish, but I slept till 10.30 after that.

Now I need to make the house ready for Granny and Grandoug's visit. They know about Percy because I told them on the phone. And I also told them that we have been trying for a baby for a while, so now the whole family knows at last. And it was okay. I didn't feel any pressure for having told them, but we'll see how tonight goes!

I will update when there's news of Percy. I hope it will be good news. I don't know if I'll get the chance to write later today, because I have soooo much housework to do and then G & G will be here from about 5 or 6pm for the rest of the evening. Granny is going to trim my hair, hooray! It needs a good 2 inches off, as it's getting really split. I can't believe it was resting on my shoulders in January, it's a good 4 or 5 inches below them now. Anyway that's it for now.

Recent entries.....

Cameron's first anniversary - 2004-09-24
Update - 5th Anniversary and other stuff! - 2004-08-16
Church picnic and being happy and things :) - 2004-06-27
Barbeque at Cameron's house... - 2004-05-18
To Tara... - 2004-04-19