A few weeks ago, Cricket did something or another that made me laugh, and I thought about how she really is fun to have around and how lucky we’ve been that she recovered from that bad spell a year and a half ago. She’d been so ill that we actually had made an appointment to have her put down, because she hadn’t eaten in days and it seemed she was just fading away and suffering. At the time, many tears were shed and we finally braced ourselves and made peace with what about to happen as best we could… and then she recovered. As I was reminiscing about this, I thought “dammit Cricket, we prepared ourselves back then for losing you, and mourned you, and then you didn’t die and now someday we’re going to go through it all over again and you will break my heart.”

But sitting there thinking that, it was some distant future event I was thinking about, because after she came back from that bad spell I had sort of decided somewhere in my mind that she’d somehow gotten better and was going to be around for years and years. At her last vet visit about a year ago, I am sure the vet even said that her murmur was a bit better, so I constructed some version of reality where the heart issues were just temporary problems caused by her heartworm treatment. So, while we were concerned about the trouble she’s been having, I mostly just thought the vet was going to explain that it was due to collapsing trachea or some other ’small breed dog issue’ and nothing to worry about.

That’s not what happened… in spite of how active and spunky she is, Cricket is still a very sick little dog. Her heart murmur is worse – a five out of six now, and there’s a strange area on her lungs (which look pretty crappy overall) that could be pneumonia, the start of pulmonary edema from the heart issues, or cancer. She’s on a course of antibiotics, some cough pills (same medication as the sticky pink goo but a much easier way to get it into her) and then in two weeks she goes back for another series of X-rays. If that funny area is not changed for the better, well, it’s not a good thing. The X-rays also showed some pretty significant spondylosis in the vertebrae in her chest area.

Olive’s on Antibiotics for another week and her foot issue may be some sort of foreign body working it’s way out. The plan is to let it go and see if it can do it without surgery. Oh, and when we came home, Simon sneezed blood all over his food bowl. We’ve changed cat litter and are giving it a few days to see if that is what is causing his problem, and if not we’re not sure what the next step is for him. Scoping his sinuses? Did I mention Winter had some sort of incident in the yard yesterday and acted like she’d hit her head? She’s better today but she gave us a scare.

The Cricket thing has really bummed me out. It’s my own fault for deluding myself but I really didn’t expect bad news today.

Two months of vigilance on Olive’s part (sitting motionless for hours along the fenceline) have apparently paid off; she has killed 4 moles in as many days. We feel bad for the little guys… though anything that can actually get caught by one of our inept animals probably doesn’t need to be passing it’s genes along to the next generation, and we suppose we should be thinking about controlling their population, if we are serious about doing a lot of long term gardening.

We had to top our fence with another 1 1/2 feet of wire a few weeks ago to keep a large neighborhood cat out, and Winter in. It seems to be pretty secure now. As I was sitting and watching the birds at our feeder the other day, I contemplated the effect we must be having on the local ecosystem, for good or bad. The cardinals, which at first had no idea what to make of the feeder, now frequent it all day and they have a nest in one of the monster forsythia bushes. None of our cats are either capable or motivated to try and tackle the bush, and the fence keeps the neighborhood ones out, so that is probably one clutch of cardinal nestlings that will have a higher than normal survival rate.

The catbirds, titmice, chickadees, song sparrows, starlings, and thrashers are all feasting upon the suet we put out, and we even get a blue jay here and there at our feeder. We have a pair of towhees that hang out in the yard, and lots of robins. Curiously, the local doves avoid it, not that we are complaining about that. We had to move Lindsy’s water dish because little birds were bathing in it… we’re hoping to get a birdbath for them at some point. So we’ve made a little oasis for the bird population, though the argument can be made that giving them an easy source of food is unnatural for them. Or should we look at it more as a way of balancing out negative effects on their numbers that the huge neighborhood cat population has most likely had?

On the other hand, as I already mentioned above, we have apparently made survival harder for the moles. We’ve not had much negative impact on the ant population, though not for lack of effort on our part.
#wren
Speaking of the large local cat population, we’ve also apparently aquired a part-time fourth cat (she has made it clear she’d be happy to make the situation full time if we’d let her in) who is on the back doorstep waiting for her dinner as I type this. She’s one of the white cats from next door, a tiny little thing that unfortunately also just had kittens, and she’s kind of attached herself to us since we moved in. She spends more time over here than at her house, and they don’t seem to care. We call her “Wren” because she’s got so much spunk for such a tiny little thing. It’s probably a good thing that her and Winter hate each other’s guts, making letting her in the house or yard impossible.

Winter takes the bait…

…and Simon realizes he’s made a tactical error as he doesn’t have room to mount a defense and is bitten through the bag.

“Hey! that wasn’t fair!”

And then Simon stomps off indignantly.

“Haha, I won.”

The evil princess claims her stolen sack.

Not having a fenced yard with a dog who likes to run like a gazelle is nerve-wracking but there’s no way we can justify spending money to fence yet another place that isn’t ours. The fact that some of the neighbors don’t take the care that we do in keeping their animals in their own yards causes us a great deal of stress. We don’t necessarily think that Maggie would start a fight, but she would certainly be able to finish one and would get the blame for it regardless. Especially at this time of year, when we get up in darkness and come home to darkness, it’s scary letting the dogs out the door when we can’t see what is out there. We just have to hope that there isn’t a cat, or a 100 lb German Shepherd standing outside the house somewhere.

So 2008 is rushing towards us and we have this feeling that this is going to be another year of changes for us. Partly because of the animal stuff mentioned above, but maybe more than that as well. We’ve cut down so much on the clutter around here and are still working to clear out even more. There’s no reason to lug around all this junk that we have no attachment to. This year we made even more of a point of recycling everything we can and we now take our own bags into the grocery store, and are buying much less processed food. We’re trying very hard not to buy cheap “made in China” products but quickly discovered that this is harder than it seems. The important thing is that we are trying, and over time it gets easier.

We aren’t sure what the future will bring with our jobs; the small-town computer shop where we work has had to contend with a brand-new Staples store opening in town, with a super Wal-Mart and a Best-Buy soon to come… at the very least, the shop will have to change the way things are done to stay afloat. I’ve had this growing feeling that I am perhaps not quite on the path that I am supposed to be on, that there are talents of mine that are going to waste spending all day running here and there and fixing computer catastrophes, and being in a perpetual state of having to be reactive without ever having the time to think proactively and put my creativity to use is just wearing me down. By the end of the day we are so beat we just come home, feed ourselves and the critters, and go to bed. There doesn’t seem to be any time for ourselves, let alone for writing, working on the website or all the other little projects I used to do. I guess we’ll see what the new year brings.

We’ve settled in comfortably into the house… we’ve made it a very homey, cozy place and really enjoy having the big living room with those patio doors overlooking the mountains. The landlord had a screen door put on the patio and we put up a crystal that makes rainbows dance all over the room when the sun hits it. We have a huge assortment of wildlife that comes to visit every day, titmice and chickadees and cardinals, several squirrels that give the cats a fit by coming up on the deck, and our resident pair of wrens that like too hop around on the deck and peer in the windows. There’s also blue jays, crows, doves, and tons of assorted finches and sparrows. Nadine the chipmunk has been absent for a few weeks, we assume she is hibernating.

We hope that this new year brings good things for everyone and some needed positive changes in the world.

Most of the pages only go to photo gallery links so far but I finished the story about Wednesday I had started shortly before her death, and have posted it on her page.

There have been no further blow fly plagues or other weird incidents at the house, and we re-cleansed it properly the weekend after we posted about that stuff. The cold weather got rid of the ants and I plan on caulking around all the little nooks and crannies they were getting in through, before spring comes. I am not going to temp fate by making any statements about things improving, but they’ve at least calmed down a wee bit.

So we are moved in and slowly getting settled. The weekend we moved we couldn’t use the tub until Monday but the rest of the plumbing was operational and we have a brand new tub. The plumbing is now connected for the washer, but the hot water doesn’t work so we’re using the laundromat for some stuff while we wait for that to be fixed. The old tub and all the other crap torn out of the bathroom is still on our front porch, but we’re trying to be patient about that.

Joy’s recently repaired Jeep seems to have the ‘hiccups’ when accelerating and we still haven’t had a chance to get the Ouchlander looked at. We’ve made at least a dozen trips to Lowes and Home Depot, mostly to buy and return the same couple of items over and over that we just couldn’t find in the right size (stove burner insert pans for the old house and new) and the new house came with both fleas and ants. Hopefully things will settle down soon.

It’s been a huge relief to get away from London Road, which has a speed limit of 30 MPH but has a constant flow of delivery trucks, cars with loud bass, motorcycles, and 18-wheelers, all going between twenty and fifty miles over the posted speed limit. We’ve got one neighbor at the new place who has kids that zoom up the road with an ATV and a dirt bike, which is annoying, but it’s not the constant barrage of noise and exhaust smell we lived with before. We wake up to the sound of roosters crowing instead of sirens screaming now. Running out of milk or realizing we’re missing a recipe ingredient is a bit of a pain; no more quick trip to the grocery store as the nearest one is five miles away — but I suppose it does cut down a bit on ‘impulse munching’ as well. We’ve got a resident chipmunk that lives in a rockpile on the property, and lots of cardinals, blue jays, and other birds. It’s neat to sit on your back deck and hear cows and geese (or ducks? we aren’t sure) off in the distance.

On a sad note, we had put Wednesday to sleep last week. She was in an increasing amount of discomfort from both the rapidly growing tumor on her back, and the bladder stones that could not be treated, and we felt her quality of life had deteriorated to the point where it wasn’t fair to ask her to endure any more. Her passing was as peaceful as we and the vet could make it, and at least her pain is over. Coming in the middle of so much other chaos, I think we’re partly still numb over it, and I half expect to see her come walking into the living room every morning.

We’ve taken a couple of pictures and started a small gallery of the new house. The animals all seem very happy there and are enjoying being able to see out all the windows and bask in sunbeams (we loved the last house, but except for one room, it didn’t get much sun) and we’re slowly putting things in order… We did end up renting an “emergency storage locker” at the last minute on moving day, when it became apparent that all our crap was not going to fit unless we planned to live with boxes stacked to the ceilings. How the heck did we accumulate this much stuff? We’re making a serious stand on clutter and have made several trips to Goodwill with boxes. The idea is that we’ll bring the boxes out of storage a few at a time and anything we don’t need/use/wear on a regular basis just needs to go. It’s ridiculous for two people to haul around this many material ‘things’ – especially as often as we seem to wind up moving.

We had the gnarly little grisly lumps removed and sent off for biopsy, and the results confirmed our fears: fibrosarcoma. The pathologist felt it was an vaccine associated sarcoma. Wednesday has not received a vaccination in that area since 1999 that we know of, however there was an incident in 2003 where we were very suspicious that a veterinarian that we had left her hospitalized with for a day mistakenly vaccinated her while she was there. She has a previous history of vaccine reactions where she vomits violently and repeatedly for hours afterwards (which is why she’s only gotten rabies vaccines, which are given in the right leg, since ‘99) and this happened after that visit. The clinic said they did not vaccinate her, but we still suspected there had been a mixup and she’d gotten a shot. If a vaccine she wasn’t even supposed to get to begin with set this thing off, that would be a sad irony.

This cancer has a 60-80% recurrence rate and the lumps have already returned. The incision site took over a month to heal — We won’t put her through that again so our best hope is that the cancer will grow slowly enough that it won’t impact her quality of life for as long as possible.