…like a hellhound out of some frozen Hell. That is what a friend jokingly said about the above picture, and that description seems to fit the weather of the past month rather well. It’s a shiny new year, but that’s because of the glare bouncing off all the snow and ice. We’ve had four snows – three of them significant, the last one still with us. Each time the snow was followed by days of bitter cold. Yesterday morning, it was four degrees outside when we got up. It’s very unusual for NC to get weather like this, and with this being the second year of it, I think we’re beginning to suffer from snow fatigue.

The dogs, on the other hand,  (Cricket being the exception here) are loving the snow. They frolic in it until they are exhausted. Paddy eats it, snorts it, digs in it gleefully. Gwen bounds through it and ends up coated in snow, looking like some sort of miniature yeti. At least someone is enjoying it, right?

If you click on either of the above pictures it will take you to a gallery of their “Fun in the snow” from January 10.

Last year wasn’t the greatest one, but I am thankful for everything we have. These are hard times, a lot of people are struggling hard, facing incredible losses, and we’re fortunate to have stable jobs and a roof (of our own, yet!) over our heads.  We lost Lindsy this past year, and it’s still weird and sad to have her gone. She was part of our lives for what felt like forever. We had Paddy and Gwen (who I still haven’t properly introduced here, that’s coming) join the family, and the little kitten we adopted in December of 2009 blossomed into the most wonderful big hunk of orange cuddliness. We adore our Calvin.

Cricket – amazingly – is still with us and thanks to some advice from our vet, her stomach trouble is better than it has been in years. Olive reached her fourteenth birthday! Simon is nine – nine! Holy crap, how did that happen? Winter, the ‘baby’ before Calvin came, will be six this coming June. Time just seems to go faster and faster.

This year ahead is going to be a tough one, I think; we have family members facing serious health challenges and it feels like there is some uncertainty and change possibly in the wind with other parts of our lives. But I also feel that these are all things that everyone could emerge on the other side of better than before. We just need to buckle in for the wild ride, and remember to be grateful for all the good things in our lives.

In the meantime, she grows more and more fragile, less aware, less all the things that made her Lindsy. She teeters around on legs that barely hold her up and sometimes can’t get up at all. She forgets when she’s already eaten. She follows us around like she wants attention, then ducks and runs away if actually approached. She has a myriad of weird nasty growths that ooze and tend to get infected — one even abscessed and the area where it had been isn’t really healing.

She usually gets very excited about her meals, but sometimes doesn’t finish the food, which isn’t like her at all. She’s very paranoid about someone stepping on her or trying to touch her. Her breath is atrocious and her teeth are nasty now that she no longer chews bones.

She leaks urine, sometimes loses control of her bladder entirely. The rug in the living room makes the house smell and totally grosses us out but we can’t do anything about it as long as Lindsy is still wandering around leaking… we can’t even tear up the part that’s over hardwoods because she would slip and fall and hurt herself on bare wood, and already does in the bedrooms.

It would be a lot easier around here with her gone, and yet that makes it harder instead of easier to take that final step — I don’t want it to feel like we’re just putting her down for selfish reasons, getting rid of an inconvenience. But am I being selfish in not wanting to be selfish? Does that make sense? Am I putting my guilt over what’s actually best for her?

We went through this with Lilly, and more recently, Wednesday, but it’s been a few years… unless you count the periodic drama we have when Cricket goes through one of her bad spells, then bounces back. We even made ‘The Appointment’ once, only to cancel it again. (If Cricket does ever pass away, she’ll probably have to decompose for a few days before we’re convinced she’s really not just ‘off her food’ again).

Our friends Chris and Paul just went through this with their Tika, who was about Lindsy’s age or a bit older… we’d joked morbidly in the past that it was a race to see who’d go first. Chris wrote a very moving post about Tika’s last days and how she finally came to the decision and it helped me realize that we have to face this. It’s not fair to her, and it’s not fair to us because it’s painful to watch her toddle around, panting and confused, stumbling and falling if she encounters something as small as a dog toy in her path. We have to just brace ourselves and do the right thing.

But it sure does suck.

Poor Paddy, I had to pick up a stainless steel cat bowl we’d ordered (for our thrift-store cat feeder, details will follow) and a prescription for Lindsy and I brought him with me to our vet’s and a local pet shop. Not a single person acknowledged his existence no matter how much he looked at them hopefully. He even tried to sit politely (major self control for him) but it’s like he doesn’t exist, or worse, they literally run the other way. He finally got his wish when the tech who brought the second prescription said hi to him and gave him a pat. Paddy was over the moon.

Cricket, who wants nothing to do with strangers and makes herself as small as possible (not hard when you’re only 5  pounds to begin with) always attracts a crowd of people wanting to pet her. Personally, I’m with Cricket — social interaction is not my strong point. But we’re trying to make sure Paddy grows up well socialized and it’s hard when he’s carrying the ‘Pit Bull’ stigma, that’s one of the reasons we didn’t really want another one (another reason is the rampant health issues that plague purebred dogs, a few of which he suffers from) and had hoped he was the mix he appeared to be when we adopted him.

If my job schedule would actually let up on the 12-14 hour days, I’d like to enroll him in a class. He loves people so much he gets really excited, so we need to get him around more social situations so we can work on his training. He’s really good at home with the commands he knows but needs to have more exposure to distractions. We had a bit of a setback with what I call ‘parkarrhea’ (excitement-induced diarrhea) that’s kept us from taking him many places lately but he seems to be getting better with that. Maybe next week he can go visit his friends at Wag! – there’s an Orbee soccer ball there we know he’d love.

Paddy would like me to add that he is happy to report Joy’s training is going better. He finally managed to weasel his way onto her lap, after months of working on her…

Anyway, here are a few highlights and the full album can be found in the gallery. There’s even a few rare pics of the critterweb humans.

Simon appreciating the chilly day from the comfort of a lap.

The mini roses all survived the winter and are getting leaves already.

Cricket also subscribes to the ‘sunbathing is better on a lap’ ideal.

Last year’s parsley, still going strong.

Unbeknown to her, the huntress (Winter is on far right of pic) is also the hunted.

A photo op goes awry.

Lindsy, Chris, Simon, and Paddy

When I was taking this, I wondered if Joy was having a creepy sensation of being spied on?

Calvin had a great time outside.

There are  21 more pictures in the full album.

Today it’s dark and rainy, and there’s rumor of snow on Tuesday, but winter has lost it’s grip on us, I hope.

Pepper, parsley, basil and oregano seedlings (the big bushy stuff is a batch of store bought cilantro I was keeping in water until I could get the dehydrator out)

Lindsy turned fifteen this past month. The picture above is of her eating the last of the Pfeffernusse Christmas cookies from Trader Joe’s – we bought her a doggie cupcake from a local petshop but it was hard as a rock. She loves Pfeffernusse so that was probably a better ‘birthday cake’ for her.

She’s not doing real great these days. There have been several incidents where she couldn’t stand up, and she’s losing control of her bladder sometimes as well. She spends most of her time in a confused fog and it’s really sad to see that. She’s covered in huge lipomas and papillomas that keep getting infected and bleeding. Her appetite isn’t what it used to be, and we have World War Three with her over her ProIn pill (for the incontinence) every day. But she does still eat, and enjoys her bedtime cookie… I think we may be coming up on a hard decision soon, but we aren’t there just yet.

It just occurred to me that since we usually count our rescued animals’ birthdays from the date we adopted them, that Cricket had a birthday in January. Which one, is anyone’s guess. When we adopted her five years ago, our vet said she was at least ten — so I guess that makes her fifteen, as well. She’s doing pretty good, she got past that last bad spell and though her eyes are filming over now, overall she’s pretty spry, bad heart and all.

Simon will be nine this year… Olive will turn thirteen… how did everyone get so old?

Lindsy at a park in Garland, TX six years ago.

As I mentioned in the first post, we were a little hesitant to be optimistic about a new addition to the family, with as bad as things went with Arthur… and adding a cat was particularly dicey, given the aggression issues we’ve had with Olive, and between Olive and Winter. We’d hoped the right one would kind of balance things out, but it could just as easily have been a total disaster.

I’m happy to say that things have gone better than we could ever have hoped. By the end of the first week, we had him intermingled with the rest of the gang. The only problem we did have was him giving his upper respiratory infection to Winter, but that may have helped the transition in a way, funny as that sounds; she was feeling too bad those first few days to worry about being hostile to the ‘intruder’ in the house.

Now, over a month later, Winter treats him like a little brother – sometimes she finds him amusing and she actually plays with him, other times he’s too much for her and she gets angry. He does pay attention when she gets mad and backs off. Simon also gets along well with him — we were worried he was being too rough with Simon but Simon seems to initiate the wresting at least as often as Dandelyon does. They sleep together and Simon even grooms him sometimes.  Olive… well, Olive is Olive. She is OK most of the time but we have had some issues with her jumping on him when she’s having one of her off days. Still, overall things have gone well.

Cricket was initially kind of snarky with him (in her defense, he does treat her as a chew toy) but she’s gotten over that and he’s showing a bit more restraint with the flying tackles. Lindsy snapped at him a few times, but she hates all of the cats and we didn’t really expect she’d be any different with a new one.The unfortunate thing is we now have two cats that love dogs, and no dog that likes cats, but we’re still hoping to find the right dog to add to the family some day — though ideally not until after Lindsy’s passed on.

One thing I do need to explain is that Dandelyon is now his middle name, and we’ve been calling him “Calvin.” It just suits him more, most of the time. His full name is “Calvin Dandelyon Weasley.” Yes, not only have we confused things by spelling one name weird, but now we’ve given him a name from “Calvin and Hobbes” but not named him after the cat in the cartoon. At least the Weasley part is pretty straightforward, if you’re familiar with the Harry Potter books. His personality is very Calvinish, he’s funny, inventive, mischievous, and cheerful, but can put on a good pout when he gets tired. And he has yellow hair that sticks up all over the place.

He has been so much fun to have around, he really is like a little ray of sunshine. We really love him. He makes us laugh constantly with his antics, and he’s blossoming into a beautiful cat. The five AM wake up in the form of a five pound kitten suddenly pouncing on your face we could maybe do without, but I’m sure he’ll outgrow that.

How could anyone resist a face like this?