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11:29pm November 26, 2014

Heeee! Cats and rocking chairs.

Fey is scrutinizing the rocking chair. She keeps jumping up onto it, sharpening her claws on the seat pad, being bewildered by the movement, jumping down again, and walking slowly around it, staring at it like it has a secret she wants to know.

This is a cat who can get used to remote-control DVD players opening and closing without any apparent source. At first she is confused but she rapidly adjusts.

And here she is being confounded by rather old technology.

2:07pm November 2, 2014
Fey looks completely worn out. She fell asleep and her head plopped down in front of her.

Fey looks completely worn out. She fell asleep and her head plopped down in front of her.

3:49am October 30, 2014
This is Fey in the bathroom of the new place. We’ve moved her into that room because the movers won’t be coming in there, and we’ve got a sign on the door not to open the door and let her out. She’s not happy, but she’s got everything she needs, and I should be over there tomorrow night or the night after to actually live with her. I can’t wait until my bed gets set up, that’s the really big thing that I want. Bed and Internet access. The funny thing was when we set her up in the bathroom, the very first thing she did was go for the food, she didn’t look around, she just immediately started eating. Of course for her, dry food is a treat, she gets it once a day but never in these quantities. (Although we’ve been feeding it to her more often lately because she’s been losing too much weight and it entices her to actually eat something.) I won’t feel right until I’m over there too, like until my bed is over there. Even if I have to wait for Internet. (I know they are trying to get me hooked up tomorrow or Friday given my family situation, but still.) The first thing I did was move my shrine over there, because to me that’s central to what the household is, and it sets the tone for the entire rest of the move. My old apartment feels really weird without the shrine, like something’s missing and not in a good way. It’s like the place is empty, and like it’s not my place anymore, like the heart of the apartment has gone to live somewhere else, be the heart of some other apartment. Which tells me my instincts were correct to move the shrine before anything else. Then I moved all my wheelchairs over. They’re going to serve as living room furniture unless I actually need one of them for something. Then I moved Fey over, because I want her to have time to get used to the place before the movers come banging around. She’s in the bathroom with a sign on the door telling people not to go in there because of the cat. The apartment is smaller than this one, at least, the rooms are smaller, it may overall be slightly bigger. But unlike this one, they went out of their way to make it feel light and airy. It’s also got these amazing real wood columns that I have no idea why they’re there but they look cool. Some are painted white and some aren’t. Somehow the place reminds me of stuff I’ve heard about Scandinavian decor, and my Swedish great-grandmother’s house, using light colors to make a place look both brighter and bigger. (My great-grandmother had a tiny tiny house but you wouldn’t know it to go there. I loved her house, it was like she and the house had grown together so long they were part of each other. And she was a total Hufflepuff, always kind and generous and caring, despite also having to have been really tough to raise seven kids in poverty during the Depression, and to travel from Sweden by herself as a child. Nothing about Badgers that contradicts tough, I guess.) It would be cool if I could somehow decorate the place in very pale yellow or something in keeping with that tradition, but I don’t have an interior decorating bone in my body. The most I can do is hang posters on the wall and crap. Vermont is far enough north though, at least for America, that the same tricks Scandinavian decorators have been using forever to make their houses look lighter even in the winter, could work here. Choosing between the bedrooms isn’t hard, exactly, but it’s difficult. By which I mean… I only have one choice – the bigger one, or taking part of the living room as my bedroom. That’s because I have a lot of really large medical equipment, i can’t fit it all in the smaller bedroom. But if I had a choice, I might want the smaller bedroom. It’s got two windows instead of one. And it’s just got a really nice feel to it. I’d love sitting in the windowsills and stuff. (All the windows have sills big enough to sit on, Fey will love it once she gets over the shock.) Anyway I’m having the movers put the boxes mostly in the smaller bedroom, because I’m not going to use it until I find a roommate. And that way I can unpack from there into the rest of the house. The one thing that’s exciting me more than most, though, is that houses and apartments have personalities. They just do. Don’t ask me how I know this, I’ve known it since I was a kid, I’ve always been good at sensing the personality of a place. (Unfortunately the house I grew up in had one of the worst personalities I’ve ever seen in a house. It was like Gruumpy McGrumpy Pants 24/7, only worse – I’d take any excuse, from an early age, to be out of there.) Anyway, this place has a very good personality. And I feel very fortunate to have been assigned it, because I only got it from my name coming up on a waiting list at the right time. My current apartment isn’t exactly good or bad, it’s just kind of meh. But my new one is definitely good. And it’s really beautiful, it doesn’t look as institutional as this one does. This one looks like the same architect designed the interior as whoever designed the local hospital. Which may be accurate for all I know. Anyway, enough babble, sending this.

This is Fey in the bathroom of the new place. We’ve moved her into that room because the movers won’t be coming in there, and we’ve got a sign on the door not to open the door and let her out. She’s not happy, but she’s got everything she needs, and I should be over there tomorrow night or the night after to actually live with her. I can’t wait until my bed gets set up, that’s the really big thing that I want. Bed and Internet access.

The funny thing was when we set her up in the bathroom, the very first thing she did was go for the food, she didn’t look around, she just immediately started eating. Of course for her, dry food is a treat, she gets it once a day but never in these quantities. (Although we’ve been feeding it to her more often lately because she’s been losing too much weight and it entices her to actually eat something.)

I won’t feel right until I’m over there too, like until my bed is over there. Even if I have to wait for Internet. (I know they are trying to get me hooked up tomorrow or Friday given my family situation, but still.)

The first thing I did was move my shrine over there, because to me that’s central to what the household is, and it sets the tone for the entire rest of the move. My old apartment feels really weird without the shrine, like something’s missing and not in a good way. It’s like the place is empty, and like it’s not my place anymore, like the heart of the apartment has gone to live somewhere else, be the heart of some other apartment. Which tells me my instincts were correct to move the shrine before anything else.

Then I moved all my wheelchairs over. They’re going to serve as living room furniture unless I actually need one of them for something.

Then I moved Fey over, because I want her to have time to get used to the place before the movers come banging around. She’s in the bathroom with a sign on the door telling people not to go in there because of the cat.

The apartment is smaller than this one, at least, the rooms are smaller, it may overall be slightly bigger. But unlike this one, they went out of their way to make it feel light and airy. It’s also got these amazing real wood columns that I have no idea why they’re there but they look cool. Some are painted white and some aren’t. Somehow the place reminds me of stuff I’ve heard about Scandinavian decor, and my Swedish great-grandmother’s house, using light colors to make a place look both brighter and bigger. (My great-grandmother had a tiny tiny house but you wouldn’t know it to go there. I loved her house, it was like she and the house had grown together so long they were part of each other. And she was a total Hufflepuff, always kind and generous and caring, despite also having to have been really tough to raise seven kids in poverty during the Depression, and to travel from Sweden by herself as a child. Nothing about Badgers that contradicts tough, I guess.)

It would be cool if I could somehow decorate the place in very pale yellow or something in keeping with that tradition, but I don’t have an interior decorating bone in my body. The most I can do is hang posters on the wall and crap. Vermont is far enough north though, at least for America, that the same tricks Scandinavian decorators have been using forever to make their houses look lighter even in the winter, could work here.

Choosing between the bedrooms isn’t hard, exactly, but it’s difficult. By which I mean… I only have one choice – the bigger one, or taking part of the living room as my bedroom. That’s because I have a lot of really large medical equipment, i can’t fit it all in the smaller bedroom.

But if I had a choice, I might want the smaller bedroom. It’s got two windows instead of one. And it’s just got a really nice feel to it. I’d love sitting in the windowsills and stuff. (All the windows have sills big enough to sit on, Fey will love it once she gets over the shock.)

Anyway I’m having the movers put the boxes mostly in the smaller bedroom, because I’m not going to use it until I find a roommate. And that way I can unpack from there into the rest of the house.

The one thing that’s exciting me more than most, though, is that houses and apartments have personalities. They just do. Don’t ask me how I know this, I’ve known it since I was a kid, I’ve always been good at sensing the personality of a place. (Unfortunately the house I grew up in had one of the worst personalities I’ve ever seen in a house. It was like Gruumpy McGrumpy Pants 24/7, only worse – I’d take any excuse, from an early age, to be out of there.) Anyway, this place has a very good personality. And I feel very fortunate to have been assigned it, because I only got it from my name coming up on a waiting list at the right time. My current apartment isn’t exactly good or bad, it’s just kind of meh. But my new one is definitely good. And it’s really beautiful, it doesn’t look as institutional as this one does. This one looks like the same architect designed the interior as whoever designed the local hospital. Which may be accurate for all I know.

Anyway, enough babble, sending this.

5:18am October 21, 2014

I tried putting the heating pad inside the cat bed, because the heating pad isn’t very padded. Apparently this is a formula for kitty heaven or something.

For those who don’t know, Fey is 15 years old, has been growing increasingly stiff and seeking out warm places, so I’ve been trying to find ways to bring the warmth to her. I got her a heated cat bed that automatically warms to 15 degrees hotter than the cat. And I found a heating pad while housecleaning.

And she absolutely loves anything heated that I give her, to the point she gets territorial about it and tries to keep me away, lest I steal it from her or something. I just figure… she’s in her eighties in cat years, she’s earned a few creature comforts by now. Especially since I’m sure she has arthritis. I’ve seen her stand up from lying on the floor and be so stiff that she walks sideways a bit before she can stretch, straighten out, and walk forwards.

I’m planning on getting more heating pads and putting them around the house in her cat beds and favorite sleeping spots, so she can always find a warm place this winter. With all this death and potential death going on all around me it makes me wonder how many more winters she has. But surviving a Vermont winter as a desert animal is tough. She sometimes has been known to burrow under all seven quilts on my bed and curl up in my crotch because it was the warmest place she could find. And as she gets older and loses her subcutaneous fat layer, I think it’s getting harder and harder for her to keep warm.

Rick, the staff person who just retired, said that as he gets older it’s definitely harder for him to keep warm. I think he’s in his late fifties or early sixties. He looks a little older than he is, I think, but I’m a terrible judge of age. Especially since I grew up with women in my family who look young for their age and men who look old for their age – everyone thought, growing up, that my brother was my father, and my father was my grandpa.

And while it’s technically possible to have a father only 14 years older than you, that’s definitely not what happened with my brother. It’s just that he was 14 years older than me, he looked old for his age, and he was big and tall in both dimensions. Meanwhile I was skinny and short – shorter, according to growth charts,than I should have been given the height of everyone else in my family. (My mom was 5 feet 7ish inches before she started shrinking, my father was a quarter inch shy of 6 feet, and I’m 5 feet 2 inches. My brothers are tall, too, although I don’t know their exact heights at their tallest or whether they’ve shrunk at all the way my parents have. (My mom started shrinking early in life, my dad only later.)

Until recently, my mother showed barely any signs of aging, and she could still pass for 10 or 20 years younger than she is. My dad on the other hand just looks old, and always has, with his wrinkles and his grey beard that’s been grey as long as I can remember. And now even his regular hair is white. Weirdly, he hasn’t lost any hair to the chemo, even though other patients in his chemo group are completely bald. My dad still has hair, aside from the ordinary bald spots of an old guy. I’m glad. I’m wholly irrationally attached to my father’s beard, and wouldn’t want to see it fall out. Of course I’d be fine with it if it were extending his life, but the chemo isn’t even doing that.

So anyway, with guys in my family who tend to look old for their age, and women in my family who tend to look young for their age, I think that makes me an even worse judge of age than I normally would be.

I think I’m starting to show subtle signs of approaching middle age, though. Close up to the mirror, I see fine wrinkles beginning to form that don’t go away. I definitely have the starts of permanent vertical worry lines on my forehead, because I have two default facial expressions – one blank, one with my forehead scrunched together. (Kristina Chew is an autism mommy-blogger who has a son whose forehead does the exact same thing mine does. I bet he’ll get permanent wrinkles there too as he ages.) I’ve also got these very thin, fine wrinkles that stretch across my forehead. And I’m beginning to get grey hairs, have been for a few years at least.

Lots of people dread these things. According to a friend of mine, they’re reminders of our mortality. I guess that might be true if you’ve always been relatively healthy, at least never had your life endangered on an ongoing basis for years, never had to prepare yourself for never reaching the age of 35. (I used to say 40 just to not alarm people, but I honestly think my lifespan was closer to 35 pre-diagnosis. I had begun waking up too weak to press my Safety Connections bracelet or hold up my head or breathe properly without my bipap, and passing out a bunch of times before it would finally go away. It always happened during the lowest cortisol time of day, suggesting that even though my sleep has no circadian rhythm, my homones still do. Some of them anyway.

I can’t tell how I look to others, though, age-wise. I know that when I was in my mid twenties, I still got asked “Is your mommy or daddy home?” if I answered the door. Which, while some people might find it degrading, I was more pragmatic: it gave me the perfect excuse to shake my head and shut the door, without having to run for my keyboard to talk to anyone. But these days, to myself, I actually look 30-something. And Anne is less 30-something-looking than me despite being two years older, but she also seems to be beginning to look 30-something.

Anyway, I was going to say, to some people, wrinkles and grey hairs are a symbol of mortality, so they fear them Some people even go so far as to dye their hair its natural color again (or some natural-looking color), or even to get plastic surgery. Which never makes people look young, to me, it just makes them look surgically altered.

Me, I see aging as the exact opposite. Signs of aging don’t show me I’m mortal. I already know I’m mortal. I’ve spent the last three years quietly preparing myself for my own death. i’m not a stranger to Death and not afraid of Her. But I like Life even more, at least until it’s my time to die. And each grey hair, each wrinkle, each laugh line or worry line, tells me I’m still alive. It tells me I may reach old age. And nothing would make me happier than being old people with Anne living nearby Doing stereotypical old people stuff that we already love doing, like sewing and crocheting and knitting, just sitting there next to each other and crocheting or something. That’s my best-case scenario – grow old as my best friend grows old. Every visible sign of aging is a promise that I might grow old before I die, and therefore a good thing, for the most part. Plus I like the way old people look, and keep trying to imagine how I will look if I grow old. Whether I’ve inherited my dad’s side of the family’s rapid greying or my mom’s side’s taking forever to grey. Things like that.

I still think i may not grow old, though. It’s still easy to die from the sheer number of health problems I have that make my health precarious. But I could easily make my forties or fifties now, so I could live into late middle age with no regrets. Really I already try to live my life with as few regrets as I can. I’ve said many times that the only question Death ever asked me was, “Have you Loved enough, and have you acted on that Love?” (I’m experimenting with capitalizing Love to differentiate the spiritual version of Love from the emotional of love. Of course in the best senarios, the two go hand in haand, but one does not guarantee the other, and lots of people get sentimentality (an emotion or set of emotions) confused with spiritual Love (not an emotion, but can provoke emotion).

The Love that Death asked me about was not sentimental love, but spiritual Love. You know how you can’t direct Hate? I’d quote the person who said it recently if I remembered who they were, because while I’ve heard it put in those exact words before, people are always rediscovering this fact. You can’t direct Hate because hate isn’t an emotion, it’s a state of being. It’s not an extra-strong version of anger, it’s a way of looking at and responding to the world. You can have all the sentimental love in the world and still behave Hatefully to a person or group of people, even the same people you sentimentally love. But the thing is? You can’t direct Love, either. You’re either in a state of being, perception, thinking, and behavior that is Love, or you are not. You can direct sentimental love, romantic love, friendship love, sexual love, and all the other kinds of emotional love out there. And some of those kinds of love are echoes of different aspects of Love, and may come up while you’re in a state of Love. But they’re still not the same thing. Love is a state of mind, of perception, of being, of action. It is hard to measure up to the demands of Love, because they often go directly against what our egos want us to do. But it’s still important to Love, and to act on Love, whenever you can

Someday I need to try to write down all the different things that are all lumped under love in the English language and cultures that speak it. But I’m too tired right now.

Love is the single most important thing in existence, though The kind with the capital L. It doesn’t mean being nice all the time, it doesn’t have to mean being nonviolent, it doesn’t lend itself well to…. is the right word prescriptivist?… notions of ethical behavior. Because the world is always changing, and so are the proper expressions of Love in any situation. You can’t work out a formula for how to behave from Love. That’s why I can’t be SJ, or anti-SJ, for that matter. They tend to think you can make Love (and real Justice is an expression of Love, too) into a set of rules. And you can’t. You just can’t. It’s not that I’m saying this for theoretical or ideological reasons, I’m saying it because it can’t be done and all attempts will backfire. That’s why I’m always urging people to step outside their respective echo chambers and embrace the wild, untamable thing that is Love. It’s a hard road, but when you have to face yourself at the hour of your death, you will find it much easier to answer that question “Yes.” And it’s the only ethical question that matters.

Anyway, now that I’ve rambled about every possible topic besides cats, I am so happy to see Fey enjoying all her warm spots. I want to make warm spots for her all over the house. There’s nothing I like better than seeing her comfortable and in less pain. She’s had a chronic pain condition in her back right leg since she was quite young.. But we don’t know what it is – only that you can touch her anywhere else and just get grouched at, but if the vet presses anywhere ennervated by this one nerve, the grouching turns into hissing and biting and snapping. The vet said she’s never seen another cat so able to communicate precisely where her pain is located. And by now I’m pretty sure she has arthritis too by now. We used to give her Prednisone for the pain, but the effort of getting it into her wasn’t worth the benefits.

But the heating pads seem to be working extremely well. Especially since the cold weather has been starting, she’s gotten stiffer and stiffer. And one good thing about having chronic pain is I know how it feels, I know how to spot otherwise subtle signs of pain in other people, and that includes Fey. So anything I can do to make her life less painful, I will do. And heating pads are a relatively easy thing compared to struggling to give her meds (she is an expert at horking up both pills and liquiids, and anyone who thinks you can disguise meds in food has obviously never had to take crushed up meds mixed in food… the taste is unmistakable and it doesn’t take feline superpowers to know it tastes disgusting.).

TL;DR: Fey likes her heating pad. I contemplate mortality and Love and aging.

5:39pm October 20, 2014

So Fey has three sleeping spots now. One of them is the heated bed I got her, one is the floor in front of the oxygen compressor, and one is a pile of clothes behind the oxygen compressor. I decided to put down a heating pad on the floor to see how she likes it.

The good news is she loves it.

The bad news is she’s become incredibly territorial about it. If she is even sitting on it, as in these pictures, and you walk past her, you’d better watch out. Because she will swat at you if you get too close. She gets this look on her face like “This is MY heating pad and you don’t get to have any!” Even though you haven’t shown the slightest interest in the heating pad.

But she does love it. And she looks less stiff when she gets up after sleeping on it. So that’s good.

3:39am October 19, 2014

Return to sender: No longer at this address

My mother is a wizard with plants
I kind of knew it already
But when my father was upset
Because he’d never see the morning glories
Bloom again in his life
My mother secretly coaxed
A morning glory vine
Out of season
To bloom, and climb, to bloom, and climb
And she took him outside
To show him the magic she’d done
And that’s how much my mother loves my dad

My flowers are my poetry
I coax the words to bloom and grow
And climb and climb into his heart
Even out of season
I use words to express the wordless
And that’s one kind of magic I have
And that’s how much I love my dad

But one of these days
I’m going to write a poem
It will be full of obscure mountain lakes
And treks across the mountains to the sea
And forest floors that were so much more
And owls hooting up in the trees
It will show him every place
That I could feel his love
Without the emotional bombardment
Of living in the city

And it will be a perfect poem
For that time and that place
It will certainly be better than this one
It will show him that I care for him
(As if he doesn’t know by now)
It will show the depth of love
That death can dredge up when you’re lucky

And then i will get a phone call or an email
It will start out:
“Go and take your dexamethasone right now.”
And I’ll have a sinking feeling
But I’ll take the syringe of steroids
And put it in my feeding tube
Then go back to the phone or the computer

Then they’ll say
“The news is bad
Your father has passed away
He was far too tired this morning
To check your blog today.”

And all that’s left of my magic
Will be words on a screen
Words he may have understood
But will never hope to read

From that point on forwards
We’ll be separated by time
We both will have existed
But from that point in time onwards
I will be here and he won’t

I wonder how much dexamethasone it takes
To avoid adrenal crisis when your dad dies
I wonder how much magical love it takes
To stand the pain you feel when you realize

That you will never talk to him again
You’ll never hug him again
You’ll never sit next to each other
With an elderly cat spread across your laps
You’ll never ask the questions
You forgot to ask when he was alive
You’ll never play with his beard again
And there’s so little time
There’s so little time

But I’m wrong
Like people are often wrong about time
Eternity is all around us
That’s all the time in the world
Eternity is where love exists
Outside of time and space
So even if he never reads my best poems
He’ll feel the love that went into them
Just as he feels the love
From that morning glory vine

He feels the love from his two pet dogs
He feels the love from his wife
He feels the love from his three adult children
He says he’s lucky to be surrounded
By so much love

So I’m terribly sorry, Ron
If some of my poems don’t reach you in time
And i’m terribly sorry Ron
If I try to Skype you and it turns out you’re gone
Just know I love you more
Than even the best poet can convey
I love you more than I could ever say

And love is the magic that made my mom
Able to grow those morning glories
And love is the magic that makes me able
To write poems daily after years of dormancy
And love is the magic that connects you to me
It’s the way we can feel each other’s love
Without any form of contact at all

I hope the place I built for you outside of time
And filled to overflowing with my love
Will see you through

And I hope that I’ll continue
Writing poetry to you
Long after you’ve gone

And I hope it reaches you in Eternity
Or wherever it is you’re going

And I hope that even the worst of it
Conveys this message:

I love you
I love you
I love you

[This is also posted in my main poetry blog, which has a comments section.]

8:11am October 7, 2014

Fey has three main sleeping spots now.

1.  The heated cat bed

PROs:

  • Always heats to 15 degrees above her body heat
  • Padded and cushioned
  • Comfortable for old, arthritic bones, especially as the weather gets cooler
  • More thoroughly relaxing than any of the other sleeping spots
  • Cozy to curl up in, you can feel the walls of the bed around you
  • Privacy hood on one end
  • Can rest your chin on the edges

CONs:

  • Can be seen very easily
  • Can therefore be interacted with very easily when one does not want any interaction
  • Have to feel people’s eyeballs on you
  • People think you’re cute, which makes you want to shred their face
  • Not quite as warm as having the air from the oxygen concentrator blasted in your face

2.  In front of the oxygen concentrator

PROs:

  • There’s always a constant level of heat blasting out at you, and if you want more than 15 degrees above body temperature, this is the place
  • You can stretch out further on the floor

CONs:

  • You can still be seen very readily
  • Lying on the floor makes your bones stiff and achy
  • The heat is coming from in front of you, not under you, so you don’t get its full relaxing effect
  • You’re so stiff when you stand up from this that sometimes you have to stagger sideways a bit to get your balance
  • The heat may be warm blowing at you, but the floor is cold
  • The heat isn’t controlled to your body heat, and this can make it too much at times, too little at others.

3.  Behind the oxygen concentrator, on a pile of clothes

PROs:

  • Nobody can see you unless they’re poking around looking for something behind the bed.  But you can see them.  (Being seen vs. not being seen is critical for the cat game of hauissh.  The best position is one where you can see everyone and nobody can see you.  In real life, of course, there’s no game by that name.  But it’s still sound self-protective strategy and cats all over the world use it.)
  • There’s a nice cushy layer of clothes to lie on, so it’s about as padded as the bed.
  • If you want to be left alone, people are unlikely to find you here by mistake, and often they’ll also forget to look here even if they go looking for you
  • You can stretch out as far as you like

CONS:

  • There’s not a lot of warm air coming back here.  There’s a little, maybe, from the oxygen concentrator, but nothing like the other side of the concentrator.  So all the warmth has to come from your own body heat and the clothes.
  • Harder to get into and out of
  • You’re still kind of stiff getting up, because while you’re padded, you’re still not warm.  And it seems to take a combination of warmth and padding, to make your bones less stiff.  One or the other won’t do.

So that’s a short description of why I think she rotates between those three sleeping spots.  I’ve seen her get up, stretch, and meander her way over to another one, only to curl up and sleep again right away.  And she can repeat this for hours.

12:28pm October 6, 2014
Cat-Proofing my Feet So I’d been sleeping with my shoes on, but that was getting uncomfortable.  I have new sympathy for my father – there was a period of my adolescence that I’m less than proud of, where I was always trying to run away from the house, day or night. So my dad slept in his running shoes, figuring he’d need them to catch up to me if I got past him and took off running.  He was right. Between my disregard for pain, my tendency to head-butt my way past him in the hall, and my adrenaline-fueled running speed, it took a lot out of him to catch me (despite him being a seasoned runner and me having no particular athletic training), and the shoes were useful.  I think of things like this when I think “Wow, I wouldn’t want to raise me.”  But apparently to both my parents I was worth it even when I was doing stuff like thatl Anyway sleeping in shoes, never taking them off day or night, gets uncomfortable.  It cat-proofs your feet, but at a cost. So I’m trying the next best thing:  Knitted slippers.  I never use these things, they’re a weird shade of purple that I don’t like to wear.  But they’re very comfortable.  It’s basically a cable-knitted tube, attached to some knobbly soles with yarn.  Very comfortable, but very purple nonetheless.  But almost perfect for my objective here. Almost perfect?  Neither the denim on my jeans, nor the thick knit fabric of my slippers, actually fully deflect cat teeth.  Denim is uncomfortable for her to bite through – when I wear denim, I see her sizing me up before a bite to figure out whether it’s worth the discomfort to bite me.  It depends on how mad she is, whether she feels it’s worth it.  And the socks are less sturdy than the denim of m jeans.  She can bite through them and cause serious pain. But. The point is a psychological effect on her. She sees that my skin is totally covered. She sizes up the fabrics and notices that the silpper fabric is flimsy enough to bite through. She bites through the slippers. I don’t react. She bites harder. I don’t react. She bites as hard as she can. I don’t react. She starts growling and grumbling to herself, but she quits biting.  By not react, I mean:  I don’t flinch, I don’t make a sound, I don’t stop whatever I’m doing, I don’t do anything to show her that she’s getting a reaction.  No, this is not about “reinforcement”.  She’s not a lab rat.  This is about showing her that my slippers are tougher than she thinks:  She tries to bite through them and gets no reaction at all.  So she thinks that she’s not actually injuring me, and decides the socks aren’t worth the trouble of biting through. Which leaves her with the option of walking around grumbling and harrumphing and being a grumpy stick, but less biting and scratching of my feet and legs.  I still have to figure out why she’s pissed off, but it’s much easier when she’s not attacking me every few seconds.

Cat-Proofing my Feet

So I’d been sleeping with my shoes on, but that was getting uncomfortable.  I have new sympathy for my father – there was a period of my adolescence that I’m less than proud of, where I was always trying to run away from the house, day or night. So my dad slept in his running shoes, figuring he’d need them to catch up to me if I got past him and took off running.  He was right. Between my disregard for pain, my tendency to head-butt my way past him in the hall, and my adrenaline-fueled running speed, it took a lot out of him to catch me (despite him being a seasoned runner and me having no particular athletic training), and the shoes were useful.  I think of things like this when I think “Wow, I wouldn’t want to raise me.”  But apparently to both my parents I was worth it even when I was doing stuff like thatl

Anyway sleeping in shoes, never taking them off day or night, gets uncomfortable.  It cat-proofs your feet, but at a cost.

So I’m trying the next best thing:  Knitted slippers.  I never use these things, they’re a weird shade of purple that I don’t like to wear.  But they’re very comfortable.  It’s basically a cable-knitted tube, attached to some knobbly soles with yarn.  Very comfortable, but very purple nonetheless.  But almost perfect for my objective here.

Almost perfect?  Neither the denim on my jeans, nor the thick knit fabric of my slippers, actually fully deflect cat teeth.  Denim is uncomfortable for her to bite through – when I wear denim, I see her sizing me up before a bite to figure out whether it’s worth the discomfort to bite me.  It depends on how mad she is, whether she feels it’s worth it.  And the socks are less sturdy than the denim of m jeans.  She can bite through them and cause serious pain.

But.

The point is a psychological effect on her.

She sees that my skin is totally covered.

She sizes up the fabrics and notices that the silpper fabric is flimsy enough to bite through.

She bites through the slippers.

I don’t react.

She bites harder.

I don’t react.

She bites as hard as she can.

I don’t react.

She starts growling and grumbling to herself, but she quits biting.  By not react, I mean:  I don’t flinch, I don’t make a sound, I don’t stop whatever I’m doing, I don’t do anything to show her that she’s getting a reaction.  No, this is not about “reinforcement”.  She’s not a lab rat.  This is about showing her that my slippers are tougher than she thinks:  She tries to bite through them and gets no reaction at all.  So she thinks that she’s not actually injuring me, and decides the socks aren’t worth the trouble of biting through.

Which leaves her with the option of walking around grumbling and harrumphing and being a grumpy stick, but less biting and scratching of my feet and legs.  I still have to figure out why she’s pissed off, but it’s much easier when she’s not attacking me every few seconds.

10:17pm October 4, 2014

A convincing theory.

Fey has lived with me since she was six months old and I was nineteen years old.  I was nineteen when I started showing severe signs of myasthenia gravis or mitochondrial disease or adrenal insufficiency or whatever it is (possibly a combination).  If I walked around, I collapsed, my legs would give out, and I would be lying on the floor useless for quite some time.  She could get me out of an autistic-catatonia motor freeze, but she could not get me out of the loss of muscle strength I was encountering.

(It was sometimes heartbreaking to watch her.  I’d collapse, and she’d do her entire “get me moving from a motor freeze” routine, running back and forth on top of me nudging my arms and legs and face more and more frantically, until she couldn’t anymore and just sat there looking sad and bewildered.)

She started giving me the “You are my big, stupid kitten who doesn’t know enough to come in outta the rain” looks when she was barely more than a kitten herself.  They happened more and more frequently as I would go on my walks down Highway 9 to the antique stores, falling frequently on the way back and having to stop and rest until I could get up again, and turning into an immobile lump on the couch for hours afterwards while she paced around me and looked worried and tried to alternately poke and snuggle me.  She looked like she felt impotent and worried.  I think she’s always seen me as her kitten, the kitten that doesn’t know what’s good for hir and needs constant guidance, sometimes physical.

This is the first time in her entire life that me getting up and moving around is a good thing.

Maybe she’s upset that I’m “endangering myself”.

I mean… this seems like a potentially self-centered explanation.  But it would be in character for her – she takes care of me, she always has, and she’s always done it in as gruff a way as she possibly can.

So this is one among many possibilities, but it’s a possibility where everything fits very neatly into place.  So I have to consider it possible that in her own messed-up way, Fey is actually trying to help me, not just to torture me.  (And she does find very messed-up ways to “help” me at times so all of this is very much her style.) 

In the meanwhile, I’m wearing shoes to bed.  When I get out of bed with shoes and jeans on, there isn’t a lot of biting surface.  I’ve seen her size me up, look disgusted, and turn the other way.

But I really hadn’t thought about the fact that I’ve been severely ill most of the time I’ve known her, and housebound or bedridden for a large portion of that time.  So my ability to walk around and go places might feel scary or even threatening from her perspective.  She’s 15 years old and she’s spent the entirety of that time, except for her first six months, with me.  And with all that being with me entails.  I hadn’t thought how that might have shaped her view of my behavior.

11:58pm October 3, 2014

Anyone who thinks I have some kind of ~mystical cat whisperer knowledge~ think again.

I mean, I am better than usual at reading cat body language and communicating with cats.  I like sitting and resonating with rooms full of cats all doing the same thing, communicating with small flicks of ears and tails, nothing else needed.  I’m good at that kind of cat thing.

But Fey is attacking me.

Every night, any time I get out of bed and she’s awake, she starts following me around yowling and sometimes growling aggressively.  She then starts pouncing at my feet and biting them.  This is not playful behavior.  Most cat people I know see this as playful behavior.  No.  This is angry behavior.

She is very angry at me about something.

It’s been going on for weeks, nonstop.  I mean she snuggles me sometimes, but at night, if I get out of bed… my legs are all scarred up from the bites and scratches.  And she’ll corner me on the toilet where I can’t defend myself.  Or right before I’m getting into bed, when I have to turn my back on her so I can swing a leg over, she’ll get one or both legs at that point even with my full attention on avoiding cat bites.

Everything I do to either fight back or run away only makes her madder.

I feel so totally helpless.   I feel like she’s trying to tell me something important and I’m missing it, so she’s resorting to screaming and utter meltdown-level frustration.  And I can’t do a damn thing about it.

And no, it’s none of the “obvious cat things”:  She has food, she has running water in both faucets, she has stairs up to one of the faucets so she doesn’t have to chance falling off the slippery sink (as she did once and then refused to use sinks for months until I got the stairs), her litter box is clean, her bed is tidy, she has a nice warm area by the oxygen concentrator that’s all set up for her use, I play with her, I give her fish flakes, I give her catnip.

Those are all the things most people think of when they think of what a cat could possibly want.

The problem is, cats are more complex than that.  They are not little furry machines.  They are people.  They think.  They reason.  They love.  They have desires.  They have wants.  They have values.  They have a sense of duty.  They have jobs they take very seriously.  They are emotionally complex.  They are intellectually complex (more so than some humans – and I’m taking that from humans who used to be less intellectually complex than cats, by their own reckoning).  They are not automatons with fur and tails and cute faces.  They are not Tamagotchi.  

And I have no idea what she wants and it’s breaking my heart.  My cat is complicated.  I think she’s more complicated than most cats, even.  I want to do right by her and I don’t think I ever will.  Oh also, while she’ll get mad at other people and give them death glares, I’m the only person she goes after physically unless the person is actively hurting her.

TL;DR: My cat is attacking me. It’s not for any of the usual reasons people bring up like food, water, play, cat litter.  Cats are more complicated than that.  I can’t figure out what is going wrong.  I feel horrible.

4:21am September 30, 2014

theubermenschthatmakesyoucry replied to your post: So… Fey has been lying in front of the…

Thank you for posting the link! My oldest cat would love a bed like that.

I hope you can somehow get hir one.  There are lots of heated cat beds on the market, and also heating pads designed to be placed under existing cat beds, under piles of blankets or padding, etc.  Just be sure not to get one thats’ a fire hazarrd.

4:01am September 30, 2014
So… Fey has been lying in front of the oxygen concentrator a lot lately, because it’s the warmest spot on the house.  But even putting down my clothes for her to lie on, it’s obvious that she feels stiff when she gets up.  Sometimes she even walks sideways a little bit before she gets her balance.  She’s fifteen years old and her joints have to be getting a little creaky, in addition to the painful nerve damage she’s had in her left back leg since she was little. So I bought her this cat bed.  It’s heavily padded, which is one plus, I hope it makes her less stiff than the floor.  The other thing is that it plugs in.  And it has a thermostat.  And it always keeps the temperature 15 degrees hotter than whoever is sitting inside it.  So it warms up past her body temperature and heats her from below. I am hoping she figures this out soon.  This is the first time I have seen her lie in that bed at all.  I put a used shirt of mine in it because she likes old clothes of mine to lie on, and I sprinkled some catnip right in the middle because she usually finds that irresistible.  But her response to the catnip was to bite me in the leg as hard as she could before running away looking like a massive grumpy stick.  I think it was ¼ “You put the catnip where I couldn’t reach it without going where I didn’t want to go,” and ¾ “You’re really fucking condescending to think you ought to persuade me to try this bed, when I’ll do it in my own fucking good time thank you fucking very much <CHOMP> <CHOMP> <CHOMP> <RUN-AWAY>.” And yes I think she’d be about that foul-mouthed if she could talk.  She’s certainly sworn at me before by shitting dead center on my pillow.  You can’t tell me that’s not swearing. The thing is, I really want her to know that the bed is heated, and the only way for her to know that is to lay in it for long enough for that to take effect, and that takes time.  I also want her to know it’s soft and cushy and probably much better on her sore bones than the floor is.  But mostly I want her to know it’s heated.  And for that, she has to actually use it.  She once took three months to even sit on a new cat bed, so I was trying to speed things up a bit by associating it with what she likes.  But she (somewhat rightly) perceived that as manipulation and got furious with me.  Especially since she’s older than me and by all rights ought to be the one telling me what to do, as far as she’s concerned.  (And in some areas, she’s absolutely right.) And she does have age-related wisdom.  Age-related wisdom has less to do with the number of years someone has been alive, and more to do with where they are in their species’ developmental lifespan.  So a 15-year-old cat is way wiser than a 15-year-old human, and a 60-year-old human with a developmental disability is way wiser than a 20-year-old human without a developmental disability, and people fail to grasp both of these facts on a regular basis.  Note that I’m talking about people who actually gain wisdom as they age.  There are plenty of people who don’t.  I’m only discussing those who do, for ease of discussion. Fey is very wise and sometimes I wish I could learn more from her.  I am 34 years old, and she is 15 years old.  One website tells me she is the equivalent of about 80 years old.  That’s a lot of years she has on me.  Cats who gain wisdom from the aging process, gain wisdom faster than humans because they die faster than humans.  I suspect that humans with shorter lifespans (especially those who know from a young age that they are going to die younger than normal) sometimes experience an accelerated wisdom-gaining process as well.  And I’ve found that proximity to death seems to increase wisdom in a lot of people, regardless of how that proximity is found.  As long as they don’t run away from their knowledge as soon as they’ve found it, which also happens because death scares the shit out of people.  And if they can put it behind them, many will. Anyway, I hope she likes her cat bed.  I got it for her as a fall/winter-in-Vermont present, especially since I don’t normally have heaters on and her other option is to burrow under seven layers of blankets and curl up in my crotch.  (The first time she did that, I had a dream that I was giving birth, followed by a dream about sex with a woman in a cat costume.  Then I woke up, realized there was a cat in my crotch, and laughed my ass off.)  I’d like her to have better options than that. I can’t wait to eventually see her stand up from being curled up in that cat bed, and see if she’s any less stiff – less walking sideways, less wobbly on her feet, etc.  Because I’d love if it made her not just warm, but relaxed and comfortable and less painful and stiff overall.  I know what it’s like to wake up stiff and immobile and in bad pain, and it’s not fun.  I think it may even be why she’s such a grumpy stick lately. Oh and it’s machine-washable.  So if she pukes on it (she pukes on her “beds” a lot, even if her “bed” is just a shirt or a piece of paper, she aims for it).  So you can just unzip the lining, throw it in the wash, and zip it back on again. If this works, I might buy some heating pads designed for cats and put them in strategic locations around the house, covered in soft blankets and stuff.   I know Fey hates the cold, and it’s obvious this year what a toll it’s taking on her body. Oh, and thank you Natalia.  I ended up using the money you sent, to buy this bed.  This is the bed I bought, for anyone interested, it’s the K&H Thermo-Kitty Deluxe Hooded Cat Bed, 4 Watts and I got a size large to be safe, because 16 inches seemed a bit small for a full-grown old lady cat with weight fluctuations (although lately she’s been losing weight and looking bony around the shoulder blades :-(  the padding should do her good).  It’s got 4.5 out of 5 stars from 310 ratings, so I thought I could do a lot worse than this. I am incredibly grateful to you for donating enough money that I could do something like this, because this is far more than a luxury for an elderly, arthritic cat who clearly gets stiff when she lays on the floor, even with mild padding.  It has excellent reviews, but what matters is Fey’s “review”.  And that she’s in it already tells me something’s right, because I got her another amazing cat bed that took her 3 months to warm up to.  (It was this giant fluffy squishy thing that she came to know and love, but it took her forever.)  I’m just… really excited for her, because if this works… she’ll be a lot happier.  And I love the thought of not having to see her stagger sideways and limp painfully every time she gets up. But I swear she’s been an old lady cat every since she was a kitten.  She’s just now got the body to go with it. TL;DR:  I just bought my 15-year-old elderly cat a heated, heavily padded bed in the hopes that it will keep her more comfortable as it gets colder.  I’ve already seen her staggering around sideways trying to get her balance after sleeping a long time on the floor.  And someone had donated enough money to make this possible, which makes me grateful beyond belief.  Everyone who has donated money or wish list items, for any reason (yes including the one of you who did it in a slightly misguided effort to end a fight with me), is an amazing person, no matter how little the donation.  A few packs of gum saves me more grief than you can imagine.  A book for my collection means everything.  Thank you, so much, for everything, all of you.

So… Fey has been lying in front of the oxygen concentrator a lot lately, because it’s the warmest spot on the house.  But even putting down my clothes for her to lie on, it’s obvious that she feels stiff when she gets up.  Sometimes she even walks sideways a little bit before she gets her balance.  She’s fifteen years old and her joints have to be getting a little creaky, in addition to the painful nerve damage she’s had in her left back leg since she was little.

So I bought her this cat bed.  It’s heavily padded, which is one plus, I hope it makes her less stiff than the floor.  The other thing is that it plugs in.  And it has a thermostat.  And it always keeps the temperature 15 degrees hotter than whoever is sitting inside it.  So it warms up past her body temperature and heats her from below.

I am hoping she figures this out soon.  This is the first time I have seen her lie in that bed at all.  I put a used shirt of mine in it because she likes old clothes of mine to lie on, and I sprinkled some catnip right in the middle because she usually finds that irresistible.  But her response to the catnip was to bite me in the leg as hard as she could before running away looking like a massive grumpy stick.  I think it was ¼ “You put the catnip where I couldn’t reach it without going where I didn’t want to go,” and ¾ “You’re really fucking condescending to think you ought to persuade me to try this bed, when I’ll do it in my own fucking good time thank you fucking very much <CHOMP> <CHOMP> <CHOMP> <RUN-AWAY>.”

And yes I think she’d be about that foul-mouthed if she could talk.  She’s certainly sworn at me before by shitting dead center on my pillow.  You can’t tell me that’s not swearing.

The thing is, I really want her to know that the bed is heated, and the only way for her to know that is to lay in it for long enough for that to take effect, and that takes time.  I also want her to know it’s soft and cushy and probably much better on her sore bones than the floor is.  But mostly I want her to know it’s heated.  And for that, she has to actually use it.  She once took three months to even sit on a new cat bed, so I was trying to speed things up a bit by associating it with what she likes.  But she (somewhat rightly) perceived that as manipulation and got furious with me.  Especially since she’s older than me and by all rights ought to be the one telling me what to do, as far as she’s concerned.  (And in some areas, she’s absolutely right.)

And she does have age-related wisdom.  Age-related wisdom has less to do with the number of years someone has been alive, and more to do with where they are in their species’ developmental lifespan.  So a 15-year-old cat is way wiser than a 15-year-old human, and a 60-year-old human with a developmental disability is way wiser than a 20-year-old human without a developmental disability, and people fail to grasp both of these facts on a regular basis.  Note that I’m talking about people who actually gain wisdom as they age.  There are plenty of people who don’t.  I’m only discussing those who do, for ease of discussion.

Fey is very wise and sometimes I wish I could learn more from her.  I am 34 years old, and she is 15 years old.  One website tells me she is the equivalent of about 80 years old.  That’s a lot of years she has on me.  Cats who gain wisdom from the aging process, gain wisdom faster than humans because they die faster than humans.  I suspect that humans with shorter lifespans (especially those who know from a young age that they are going to die younger than normal) sometimes experience an accelerated wisdom-gaining process as well.  And I’ve found that proximity to death seems to increase wisdom in a lot of people, regardless of how that proximity is found.  As long as they don’t run away from their knowledge as soon as they’ve found it, which also happens because death scares the shit out of people.  And if they can put it behind them, many will.

Anyway, I hope she likes her cat bed.  I got it for her as a fall/winter-in-Vermont present, especially since I don’t normally have heaters on and her other option is to burrow under seven layers of blankets and curl up in my crotch.  (The first time she did that, I had a dream that I was giving birth, followed by a dream about sex with a woman in a cat costume.  Then I woke up, realized there was a cat in my crotch, and laughed my ass off.)  I’d like her to have better options than that.

I can’t wait to eventually see her stand up from being curled up in that cat bed, and see if she’s any less stiff – less walking sideways, less wobbly on her feet, etc.  Because I’d love if it made her not just warm, but relaxed and comfortable and less painful and stiff overall.  I know what it’s like to wake up stiff and immobile and in bad pain, and it’s not fun.  I think it may even be why she’s such a grumpy stick lately.

Oh and it’s machine-washable.  So if she pukes on it (she pukes on her “beds” a lot, even if her “bed” is just a shirt or a piece of paper, she aims for it).  So you can just unzip the lining, throw it in the wash, and zip it back on again.

If this works, I might buy some heating pads designed for cats and put them in strategic locations around the house, covered in soft blankets and stuff.   I know Fey hates the cold, and it’s obvious this year what a toll it’s taking on her body.

Oh, and thank you Natalia.  I ended up using the money you sent, to buy this bed.  This is the bed I bought, for anyone interested, it’s the K&H Thermo-Kitty Deluxe Hooded Cat Bed, 4 Watts and I got a size large to be safe, because 16 inches seemed a bit small for a full-grown old lady cat with weight fluctuations (although lately she’s been losing weight and looking bony around the shoulder blades :-(  the padding should do her good).  It’s got 4.5 out of 5 stars from 310 ratings, so I thought I could do a lot worse than this.

I am incredibly grateful to you for donating enough money that I could do something like this, because this is far more than a luxury for an elderly, arthritic cat who clearly gets stiff when she lays on the floor, even with mild padding.  It has excellent reviews, but what matters is Fey’s “review”.  And that she’s in it already tells me something’s right, because I got her another amazing cat bed that took her 3 months to warm up to.  (It was this giant fluffy squishy thing that she came to know and love, but it took her forever.)  I’m just… really excited for her, because if this works… she’ll be a lot happier.  And I love the thought of not having to see her stagger sideways and limp painfully every time she gets up.

But I swear she’s been an old lady cat every since she was a kitten.  She’s just now got the body to go with it.

TL;DR:  I just bought my 15-year-old elderly cat a heated, heavily padded bed in the hopes that it will keep her more comfortable as it gets colder.  I’ve already seen her staggering around sideways trying to get her balance after sleeping a long time on the floor.  And someone had donated enough money to make this possible, which makes me grateful beyond belief.  Everyone who has donated money or wish list items, for any reason (yes including the one of you who did it in a slightly misguided effort to end a fight with me), is an amazing person, no matter how little the donation.  A few packs of gum saves me more grief than you can imagine.  A book for my collection means everything.  Thank you, so much, for everything, all of you.

1:08pm September 14, 2014

Fey-snugglin’.

3:24pm September 8, 2014
Maybe because she&rsquo;s a desert animal, or maybe because she&rsquo;s an old lady cat, it doesn&rsquo;t matter how hot it gets, Fey still has to find the hottest spot in the house.  Which right now is underneath the oxygen concentrator.  The only problem is if she farts down there, with all that heat, pretty soon you have a very ripe cat fart wafting its way around the house.

Maybe because she’s a desert animal, or maybe because she’s an old lady cat, it doesn’t matter how hot it gets, Fey still has to find the hottest spot in the house.  Which right now is underneath the oxygen concentrator.  The only problem is if she farts down there, with all that heat, pretty soon you have a very ripe cat fart wafting its way around the house.