Cats

MARIE: I meant to write about one of the subjects I briefly trailed last week, but you’ll have to wait for that. Because foremost in my mind this week is that our cat has died. He’s been sick with chronic kidney disease for years, only he didn’t know, so carried on regardless almost up until the last moment.

 

Weirdly, Jon and the cat got their diagnoses at roughly the same time. Jon’s came first, and although it’s obvious in hindsight how naïve we were about Parkinson’s, that naivety helped us to handle the diagnosis calmly and sensibly. But when a few months later the cat had an ultrasound (which involved shaving his stomach, and let me tell you: a cat with no stomach fur looks and feels pretty damn silly), the vet said he’d never seen a cat functioning so well with so little normal kidney tissue – and told us to expect a lifespan counted in months rather than years. That broke the dam for me, and all the angst and despair over Jon’s diagnosis came flooding out over the cat’s prognosis. I guess it was less scary to allow myself to be upset about my cat than about my husband.

 

As it happens, both the doctor and the vet were wrong. As you know, PD meds did not help Jon to live “an almost normal life” for years after his diagnosis, but the cat was still going strong six years after his death sentence. Nothing good lasts forever, though, and this week was the end of the line for the cat. As predicted, he went downhill suddenly and fast, which was a relief. When the time came to call on the vet one last time, there was no doubt in our minds that the decision was the right one.

 

Jon was at the Oak House when I realized that the kindest thing would be to take the cat to the vet, but I just couldn’t face doing it on my own. I waited for Jon, and as soon as he came home, we set off. In the car, Jon said to me that he was glad he was at least useful for something, which was really such a very sad thing to say. It is true, I do (or farm out) all the practical jobs around here, and our conversations no longer have the intellectual playfulness or depth of the old days. But I depend on Jon for emotional support (and also for laughs and physical affection, but that’s a different story). In a weird way, it was good to have the cat crisis to demonstrate that to him.

 

We took the cat home with us afterwards. I had chosen a spot under our walnut tree, and the physical work of digging the grave did me good, one last thing I could do for him. Jon didn’t have the balance to help me dig – standing on one leg and pushing down on a spade with other was way beyond him – but we did bury the cat together. And Jon has been so sweetly solicitous of me these last few days as I’ve moped around missing my kitty. Many hugs and a fair few tissues have come my way. I know it’s “just” a cat, but we had 11 funfilled and cuddly years together, so there.

 

He wasn’t a cat person when we met, but Jon now agrees that this house needs cats – in fact, I believe that cats make the difference between a house and a home.  We are thinking of getting two kittens this time, and (typical!) I’ve already started worrying how they’ll treat Jon’s constantly twitching diskinetic toes. They look like prey to me!

Missing you

MARIE: It’s been ages since we’ve blogged. In a reversal of roles, Jon has been nagging me lately to get started again, and I’ve been meaning to for weeks, honest I have. Things have been busy here, but not so busy I couldn’t have found the time to blog. But I’ve had various frustrations on the volunteer work front, and I guess that drained me more than I realized. Last week, though, I had a few days away to sit quietly and think about my priorities and the balance between what I have to do and what I want to do. Well, one thing I definitely want to do is write this blog, so here (at last) we are again.

 

The previous post listed the many events and visits we had coming up, most of which are now behind us. A highlight was Jon’s 60th birthday, which he celebrated in regal style with several weeks of festivities. We had two weeks of staggered family visits from the UK, a lovely dinner out at a meat temple of Jon’s choice on the birthday itself, and a big party on the day the Danish family came down too.

 

That last event proved perhaps a bridge too far for Jon. He’s not good in crowds any longer – it’s both the sheer amount of sensory input that throws him and simply the speed with which party conversations move and skip from topic to joke to interruption. So although he enjoyed seeing how well we all get on with each other, and also consented to suffer the dual indignities of having birthday songs sung at him while adorned with an enormous medal proclaiming him to be “40ish”, he did spend quite a bit of time resting in his bedroom.

 

Before they came over, I had talked to Jon’s children, sister and first wife about making it a joint project to create a poster for him of all his life. He was 40 when I met him, so that’s hardly a task I could take on alone. They all brought loads of old photos which Jon had great fun looking through, and then together we picked out the high spots and the crossroads of his life, with pictures to match. Embarrasingly, the material is still sitting on my desk waiting to be scanned and organized, but I’ll get to it soon (priorities, right?).

 

The purpose of this This-Is-Your-Life poster is threefold. First and simplest: it’s fun, and who wouldn’t enjoy such a gift? Second, it will help Jon to remember the whos and whens and wheres of his life if his memory should fail him. And third, it will be an aid to any outside nursing or care staff to get to know Jon, which is especially important given the language barrier he lives behind. For as long as I have known him, he’s been impossible to buy gifts for, but I’m confident we hit on a good one here.

 

Later, I must tell you how we are getting on with the local nursing service, why my volunteer work was getting me down, how well Jon is doing after his latest medication adjustments and additions, and what we did on our holidays. Enough for now, though. Talk to you soon.