St. Patty’s Day Cherry Blossom Surprise!

Can anyone believe the cherry blossoms are in bloom already? I took all these on March 17, 2012, in Newark, NJ, in Branchbrook Park. St. Patrick was in the pink this year! Click on the bottom of the slideshow frame (on the middle square) to stop the show, or on the arrows to go from picture to picture at your own pace.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Nijinsky is improving!

Will wonders never cease?  A good friend of mine, a truly sweet and caring woman, says Nijinsky in always in her prayers, and it might be working! 

Two nights ago he was standing by the water bowl right after I fed him, and I tried giving him more food but he didn’t want it.  I had a weird intuition he might want to jump into “his chair” in the kitchen, which he hasn’t used for many months.  It’s a small table with only 2 chairs, both torn to hell (the seats) because of the cats, but he liked, in particular, to sleep in one of them.  So I cleared my husband’s two pair of shoes away from the chair (he won’t wear his outside shoes inside, and this table is near the door), and thought maybe that would help.  Nijinsky had been a bit confused about where he was going lately, so I wasn’t 100% sure this is what he wanted to do, but on Tuesday morning I got up and didn’t see him in “his chair” in the bedroom, and went to see if he was standing by the water bowl hoping to be fed.  Nope.  He was curled up in “his chair” in the kitchen, sound asleep! 

Then last night he meowed to be fed.  (He had lately mostly been standing silently by the water bowl waiting for someone to come in and feed him.)  And this morning he got up and came into the bathroom when he heard me go through the kitchen (he slept in “his chair” in the kitchen again last night), and meowed at me to feed him.  He’s going back to being annoying, which is very “Nijinsky”. 

But the real kicker is:  when I tried to get out of the bathroom today he went in front of me, then stopped and kept me waiting!  That was true, pure Nijinsky, getting in my way.  And I had to nudge him along to get him out of the way!  So he seems to be feeling much better, if ‘normal’ behavior for him is an indication.  He’s continuing to eat quite a bit.  Now I’m feeling sort of foolish for being so dramatic when I said he was dying, but I honestly thought that was what was happening.  He has proven me wrong, and I’m glad.

Short Nijinsky Update

For the past week Nijinsky has been eating quite well. Today he actually came into the bathroom just for petting, and it’s been a while since he did that.  He seems to be having an upturn in health.

He is still painfully thin (you can see the outline of his ribcage from above) and I have no doubt this is a temporary improvement, but am happy that he is again able to get to and from the kitchen, is eating quite a bit, and is mobile and unconfused enough to come find me in the bathroom.

Oh, and it’s a most wonderful Spring day outside on the first day of “spring forward”, a full week and a half before the official first day of Spring. And the daffodils outside are in full bloom, early, early, early! Nijinsky will live to see another Spring, I think (although he can’t actually see and my indoor cats are not allowed to go out, so I’m speaking metaphorically here).  Spring is such a time of hope for me, and it’s my favorite season, so I can’t help being optimistic that Nijinsky seems better on the cusp of another Spring.

On Hanging in There

I guess it’s time to write an update on Nijinsky.  I thought (again) at the beginning of last week we might lose him because he was eating so little.  About ¼ of a small can (3 oz.) of cat food per meal, and he was only eating twice a day, if that.  Then, sometime last week (or the previous week) he stopped coming into the kitchen.

I sort of flew him in.  Did you ever see those B. Kliban cat cartoons? There was one drawing I remember where the cat had wings.  Most of his cartoons were in black and white, and he often drew tabby cats, so the cat(s) looked a lot like Nijinsky, at least from the top.  N. has white paws and lower face and stomach, but he is definitely a black and white tabby from the top.  How I “flew” him was by picking him up by the nape of the neck and underneath the ribcage and bringing him into the kitchen, then setting him down by the food plate/water bowl.

I began to realize he was afraid to jump down out of the chair.  He would just walk around in circles on the seat.  He started howling again, just a little, when he was doing this.  I figured he’d either forgotten how to jump down, or was confused or afraid.  So I “flew” him into the kitchen.  Not that it worked out all that well, because sometimes he refused to eat. However, he could walk back to the chair afterwards and jump up (he can feel the chair and the seat with his front paws, which I guess makes him feel safer than when he has to jump down), so I think it was fear and not forgetting that made him stop jumping down off the chair.

About mid-week I began coaxing him to jump down.  I would call him and talk nice and finally he jumped out of the chair on his own and came in to eat.  Since about mid-late week he has been coming into the kitchen and eating a lot more.  In fact, over the weekend I fed him about 5 times a day – and at least ½ a can (a 3 oz. size), so he was getting quite a bit more food than earlier in the week.  Plus, if he’s in the kitchen he’s hungry, so it’s good to feed him when I know he wants to eat.

Once he jumped out of the chair again he seemed to have gotten over his fear of doing it.  Who knows, maybe he made an ill-timed jump and jumped on Lulu as she was walking by and she whacked him while we were out?  I do try to police when he walks back from the kitchen to the bedroom, because sometimes she’ll stand right by the door and if he gets close enough to brush against her he balks and will walk all around the perimeter of the kitchen before he tries to get back to the bedroom again.  She’s not aggressive with him, but they never got along very well and I think he gets nervous when he runs into her.  After all, he is blind, and it can’t be a good thing to walk (or jump) smack into an adversary!

If she’s hanging out near the door (the better to rush in and get any scraps he may have left behind), I’ll shoo her away and then call him and coax him out to let him know the coast is clear.  This seems to be working pretty well and he seems to have regained his confidence.

Good grief.  I’m finding out that dying can be a long process, sometimes.  I’m not complaining, just sayin’.  I’ve found I really have to observe all the time because there are frequent changes one has to adjust to.  I mean, I could have let him sit in the chair and then concluded he was too weak and then taken him to the vet to put him down, but he continues to be astonishing in that he is seemingly still not in pain, and really pretty mobile (he jumps up onto the chair w/out any problem at all) for a cat who maybe weighs 6 pounds at this point and has seemingly been ill and getting worse for a while, now.  And now that his appetite has rallied again, he seems to be making the choice to hang in there.  So I’m trying to hang in there with him too, and adjust to what he seems to want/need.

Road Rudeness

I would really like to know if this behavior bugs other people, or even if anyone else has been noticing this.  I am talking about “forced” lane changes, especially on the highway.  Does this sound petty?  I can’t tell.  By forced, I mean when you’re driving in a lane and somebody signals and just muscles over – and you’re right in their path and have to brake or move to the next lane yourself in order not to get hit.  I have been noticing this more and more frequently, and wonder why people think that if they put on their blinker and start to move over it’s okay to go for it without bothering to see if the actual space they’re moving into is open.  AND – if you honk (as I do) I have not infrequently been given the finger and shouted at.  It’s as though some drivers have the idea it is their right to move over when and where they want to, without looking, and you, the driver in the lane that they are moving into, should automatically yield because they are changing lanes.

When I’m driving I was taught to, and still do, signal before moving over only when the actual space I’m moving into is free, i.e., void of any other vehicle.  And if there is no room, I don’t try to muscle over (unless I’ve miscalculated and am desperate and need to get over to exit, and then I make hand signals and pleading facial expressions to let the other driver know I’m an idiot and am sorry, but could I please get over?).  And you know what?  If I can’t get over I go to the next exit and backtrack, because it was, after all, my mistake.

This happened to me again today on a very backed up highway crammed full of bumper-to-bumper, slow moving cars.  I was in the middle lane.  This big, dark blue SUV started moving over toward me (from the lane on my right) and I pulled forward to let the driver see I was there.  There was no reason to muscle over into my lane.  We were all in line to cross a bridge and it was backed up for miles.  If anything, she would have only needed to move over to the right lane if she had to exit.  Otherwise, the only other place she could go after my lane was the far left lane, and it was very bogged down, too, and there were miles to go before any of us could get anywhere else other than these two lanes.

In any case, she kept muscling over and was not being nice.  She ended up honking and cursing (her window was rolled down), and at one point she was no more than an inch from my car.  It was crazy.  Well, it made me mad and I wouldn’t let her in, because, after all, didn’t your mother tell you that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar?  Then she pulled up and tried to get in front of the driver in front of me, who also pulled up and wouldn’t let her in, so she drifted back and tried to wedge herself in front of me again.  I mouthed “NO” to her through the window and she was cursing, shrieking, honking, etc., and was finally able to wedge herself in front of the driver in front of me (on her second try).  Then she muscled her car over into the far left lane (same tactics), and I sailed past her a few minutes later (the lane I was in always moves faster than the left lane, don’t ask me why, but I drive this route 5 days a week and know the traffic patterns).  She flipped me off, of course.  The funniest thing is she was headed for the highway (that comes in on the left – 3 lovely lanes, but you have to go over a bridge and down these 2 lanes for a while before you come to where the highway widens) and I saw in my rear view mirror that she got onto the highway (as I had) way in back of me, and she never caught up to me at all.  I can only wonder why she felt so crazed about getting over and being so rude about it in the first place.  There was absolutely no rational reason for it that I could see.

What bothers me a lot is I’ve been seeing this more and more.  It’s awfully dangerous.  I drive to and from work and have seen so many folks signal, then start pulling over, as if they’re thinking, “Oh, that car in my way will let me in since I’m signaling.”  But the law is you are supposed to signal and only move over when the lane is clear.  There is no law that I know of which gives a person the right of way just because that driver signaled they want to change lanes.  It’s gracious to make room for someone if they want to come over, but at the rate of speed we’re traveling (on a highway), it’s really up to you to make sure the lane is clear before you change lanes.  I’ll let people in if they’re being nice and if it’s safe (i.e., if I’m not going faster than them, because frequently someone pull into the left lane from the right and is going slower than me, which makes me really unhappy), but that’s not the type of driver I’m talking about.  I’m talking about those who seem to think it’s their right to move on over whenever they damn well please, and you best get out of their way.

End of rant!  But please tell me if you’re seeing this yourself, ok?  Or is it just me?!

On Continuing to Live

Nijinsky has been eating regularly for the past few days.   He is eating about 3-4 full meals a day, which is very good, considering how little he ate last week.  Of course, 3-4 full meals is too much for a normal cat, but we had been feeding him more often recently, since he seemed hungry all the time.  It’s definitely not too much, as he is still very, very thin.  You know the advice they give to determine whether your pet is overweight?  “Look at the dog/cat from the top (look down at them) and see if his stomach sticks out on the sides”?  Well, from about halfway down his back, as you look down on him, his waist cuts in sharply to his hips — he is so thin there is no fat on him at all.

I was concerned about making sure he got enough food this week, because last week I was home sick from work all week (congestive cold) and had taken to sleeping most of the day and staying up all night, so between my husband and I, someone was up most of the 24 hours of the day, and was available to feed Nijinsky when he wandered into the kitchen.  But going back to work this week I was concerned that Nijinsky might be hungry and no one would be home to feed him.

Can’t imagine why I worried!  Nijinsky always lived for food, and he has adjusted himself to our normal schedule.  He eats when my husband feeds all 3 cats (at noon), and then he comes into the kitchen before I leave for work (within 1 hour), which is usually 3:00 – 3:30 p.m. (I work a second shift) and eats, then again when my husband gives all 3 cats their second meal (about 12:00 a.m.), and sometimes comes in before I go to bed (around 3:00 – 4:00 a.m.) and eats something then, too.  It’s only Tuesday, and he’s already figured it out.  How could I have doubted him?!  He’s smarter than I realized (of course).  He’s always been dedicated to getting his food.

Can’t seem to shake the feeling he’s living on borrowed time but even if he is, he seems happy, calm, and comfortable.  Whether his return to health is short-lived or he lives many more years, I am happy he turned the corner and kept on living.  Oh, and yes, the yowling for food if he is hungry and no one is in the kitchen to feed him is back.  Of course, it’s unpleasant for us, but that’s Nijinsky.  Not the most warm and fuzzy personality, but definitely a presence.  And still present on this earth, for sure.

On Living

Nijinsky is having a miraculous turn-around.  For a cat I thought would be dead a week ago (I really, truly felt he’d be dead by last Sunday), he has rejoined the living with force!  Just yesterday (Friday) he wanted more food (than the 1 tsp. he’d been eating every day or 2), so I gave it to him, and he ate twice on Friday — his normal portion each time.  That’s more food than he’d had the entire previous week!  Then today (Sat.) my husband fed him his normal portion in the morning (which I didn’t know until later tonight), then I fed him full portions twice after that (and he meowed at me while I was fixing the food, which means he was impatient, and he hadn’t meowed for food in a week, at least), and late tonight he actually came all the way into the living room and yowled!  He hasn’t come to  the living room in months (since he is blind he’s been going back and forth to the kitchen and “his” chair in the bedroom, which is adjacent to the kitchen — the living room is 2 full rooms away from the bedroom!).  The yowl was his famous “I’m hungry” yowl.  By the time I got over my surprise and went back to the kitchen, he was already there waiting for me to feed him, and he ate another entire portion of food.  Good grief!  He is making up for lost time.  He is still incredibly thin, but his appetite is back and both my husband and I are stunned at how he’s bounced back.

I’ll tell you what — a week ago I felt I’d wake up Sunday to a dead cat.  And I thought there was no way he’d last the week.  So I guess, number one, my deductive powers aren’t that great, and number two, Nijinsky just wasn’t ready to go.  My husband says I wrote his eulogy prematurely (see “On Dying”).  I say the reports of Nijinsky’s demise were greatly exaggerated!

On Persisting

For some reason Nijinsky has rallied – a little.  Last Friday and Saturday were bad.  He wouldn’t eat, and would not move from his chair.  On Saturday he seemed to be in a light sleep most of the time and I thought he might pass on Saturday night.  I kind of expected to wake up on on Sunday and see him limp and dead in the chair.

Instead, he sat up more on Sunday and then got out of the chair, walked to the kitchen and drank a little water!  I took the opportunity on his second trip to drink water to get out a can of his very favorite food (which I didn’t think we had, but discovered a small cache as I was cleaning a few things) and offer him some.  He ate!  About 1 teaspoon, but at least he ate.  He did the same thing several hours later.

Monday he made a few trips for water, but wouldn’t eat.  I’ve continued to offer him food every time I see him in the kitchen, but he’s only licked a tiny bit one time (yesterday).  I doubt he can survive on 2 tsp. of food a week, but guess he’s decided not to die yet.

I wish I knew what was happening.  I’ve always wondered what’s going on in their minds, and it would be very nice to know, now.  But of course we can’t know, and it’s frustrating, especially when it comes to a situation like this and I might have to be called on to “play God”.

When I had Peleas put to sleep it was such a difficult decision.  I knew it was the right thing to do (he was definitely distressed and could not even walk) but I had a realization that I didn’t like having to be “God” in my cat’s life, and couldn’t imagine having to do anything similar (pull the plug?) for a human being.  After thinking about it a lot it seems to me that no one who is truly compassionate would want to be responsible for a life or death decision regarding human beings or animals.  It felt burdensome and unnatural to me.  My guess is people who like making such decisions are not truly compassionate and probably are not in touch with what’s really at stake in making such a decision.  I found it difficult to make such a decision and it has weighed on me for 11 years.  Being faced with having to potentially make such a decision again is no easier the second time.

However, since I have pets I know that I will be called upon to make such decisions, which is why I decided to let Nijinsky die at home.  And now he’s decided to stick around!  I really thought he’d be done by now.  I have to try to remember to take it day by day.  At least he’s in familiar surroundings and as I said before, doesn’t seem to be in pain.  It’s a tough call, since apparently cats are great at masking pain symptoms, but I can pet him, and pick him up, and there is no discomfort reaction.  He seems to still really like being petted, and he can get around on his own.  He is painfully thin, which is weird, since Nijinsky loved his food, but he seems to be choosing to live.

As usual, with Nijinsky, he’s making it difficult.  Leave it to him to make me think he’s dying, then turn around and decide to stick around, making the waters muddy and me uncomfortable.  Oh well, I guess there’s a lesson in there somewhere.  Just hope I can figure it out.

On Dying

My cat, Nijinsky, is dying.  He is the cat in the banner picture on my blog.  The last cat that died on me did so 11 years ago, the week after Thanksgiving, and it was traumatic.  When Peleas died he had been with me for 17-1/2 years and was a sweetheart and a love.  Whenever I moved people would call and say, “I want to come over and say good-bye to Peleas.”  This was a cat who loved people, who had a great personality, and whom I knew I would deeply miss.  I used to say he was the longest-term male in my life.  But Peleas has come and gone and although I still think of him and wish he were here, for me the pain of his dying has passed.

My feelings about Nijinsky are more complicated.  I got him about 2 years before Peleas passed, because I realized I would soon be without a cat since Peleas was getting older.  I saw Nijinsky’s picture on the bulletin board where I worked, a lone kitten, and since he looked very much like Peleas I was intrigued.  I asked the woman whom he belonged to and she said she and her husband were trying to place him because they’d let a female have a litter of kittens and had already placed all the kittens except him.  I finally went to get him the week she told me they were going to take him to the pound because they couldn’t find a home for him.  They had too many animals already and decided they just couldn’t keep him.  I took my cat carrier on the train to the Bronx, and showed up one lovely Saturday or Sunday afternoon.  When I got there she and I sat down on a futon couch and he crawled into my lap and lay there for a while, then went to play.  I thought he was nice and although he wasn’t a young kitten (he was already about 9 mos. old) I decided to take him home with me.

He turned out to be rather less than what I had hoped for.  He wasn’t a lap cat, nor even very affectionate.  He never crawled into my lap again after that one time.  When we got to my place he completely ignored me and followed Peleas around, his nose practically up his butt.  Peleas was, alas, too old to really desire a companion and he mostly ignored Nijinsky, but Nijinsky persisted.

The one thing of note Nijinsky immediately began doing was to get up on every surface he wasn’t allowed to be on.  Kitchen counters, the stove, and my coffee table, all off-limits to my cats, and he was on them all the time.  He refused to get down when I yelled at him, which had worked well with all my other cats.  He was stubborn.  He would sit where he was and just stare at me.  We began a battle of wills.  He clearly understood exactly how far I could reach and how quickly I could move and would only jump down at the last moment when I got close enough to touch him.  I would have had to jump up 1,000 times a day to keep him off forbidden surfaces and it got to be very tiresome, so I finally bought a super-soaker water gun and squirted him when he stubbornly disobeyed me.  It worked!  If he even heard me touch the gun (it was hard plastic and had a great range) he’d jump down because, thank God, he hated water.  I don’t know what I would have done if he’d been impervious to water, since there would have been no way to discipline him.

His attitude toward me changed the day I brought him back from being neutered.  I let him out of the carrier an hour after getting home (per the vet’s instructions) and he came out a little wobbly, but fine.  The second he tried sit on his butt he sprang up and had a very surprised look on his face!  I’m sure his surgically-removed balls smarted!  Within a day he was fine and after that he seemed to bond more with me and accepted that Peleas didn’t want much to do with him.  He was still very stubborn and not very affectionate, but at least he didn’t completely ignore me any more.  When he wanted affection he’d come and sit by me on the couch – a whole cushion between us.  He didn’t need closeness the way some other cats do.

Another of his traits, something both my husband and I remarked on many times, was an outstanding talent for getting in the way.  If this were a desirable quality he would have been the King of it.  Most cats will trot in front of you and move if you catch up to them, but not Nijinsky.  He stayed the course no matter if you yelled at him, or nudged him with your foot.  He would not swerve.  Many’s the time I almost took a header over that cat because he just got in the way.  It was a gigantically annoying trait and I never understood why he couldn’t just move to the side like most cats do.  He never did figure it out.

As he got older he displayed, if not a talent, then a brute stubbornness and unwavering determination in finding whatever nugget of food might be lying around waiting for him to discover and eat it.  It got so we couldn’t leave a packet of cookies or chips out on the coffee table overnight or it would be on the floor the next morning, with bites and tears in the packaging where he’d wrestled it open trying to get at the food he smelled.  We tried every way we could think of to secure the trash can, because if he smelled food in it, he would tip it over and spread trash on the floor trying to get at anything edible.  Once I discovered a big, cat-head-sized hole in the side of a large bag of cheap cat food I buy to feed outdoor cats.  I figured since the bag was closed he couldn’t get to it.  Not so.  I had to have a cabinet built and put in next to my stove, and then had to buy a big plastic container to store the food in, because Nijinsky could move the trash can (that stood in front of the doors) and open the doors to get at the food.  Unbelievable.  I used to tell my husband, “He has all day every day to figure this out.”  It seemed he devoted a considerable amount of his brain function to finding anything edible he could get at.

You could say he wasn’t my favorite cat.  About a year after Peleas died (an event that Nijinsky didn’t seem to register), I got two new kittens about 2 weeks apart.  One was a feral kitten I got from my vet (Isadora) and then 2 weeks later the lady who did my laundry brought this adorable, fluffy black and white kitten with a black nose into the laundry and handed her to me, saying, “Julee, I have 5 more at home, can you take her?”  She was so cute, and Isadora was hiding under the couch all the time, and I just thought, “Oh, what’s one more?” and put her in my purse and headed home with cat #3.  It turned out to be my lucky day.  Lulu is the most affectionate, loving, sweet cat that anyone could want and she was the replacement for Peleas my sore heart needed.  But she usurped Nijinsky’s place as “top cat” and he hated her for it.  They have fought and swiped at each other for 11-1/2 years (as old as Lulu is).

While I realized Nijinsky should rightfully have been the top cat, he did nothing to earn it.  He didn’t cuddle up to me, wasn’t sweet, wasn’t affectionate, and got in my way all the time.  Plus, when he wanted to be fed he had the most irritating “yowl” I’ve ever heard.  He was not a cat who won my affection.  Many times my husband, who had never had pets, would say, “Why don’t you get rid of him?” and I’d say because I took him for life and even if I don’t like him, I won’t abandon him.  But I gritted my teeth when I said it because he beat up on Lulu and was just not a cat for whom I felt a lot of love.

Nijinsky used to sit and watch any worker who came into the apartment.  At first he was shy and would not come out when other people came over.  But if a workman left his tools lying on the floor and went out, he would come in and wander among them, looking and sniffing.  I never saw a cat so fascinated with tools.  As he got older he didn’t like to hide, and realized if he stayed where he was and swiped at anyone he didn’t know who walked past him, they’d leave him alone.  Then as he got to know people, he would come out for the ones he knew.  He especially liked a couple of workers who came into our apartment with some regularity, and would watch them do their work.  I swear if he’d had thumbs he would have helped them with whatever project they were doing.  I always said he was coming back in his next life as a handyman.

The summer of 2010 I realized he’d gone blind.  Both my husband and I were not working and couldn’t afford to pay for the battery of tests I’d been able to do with Peleas when I realized he was ill.  And Nijinsky seemed to adjust to being blind.  He was only 12 but my husband and I couldn’t afford to find out what was wrong, so we didn’t.  Then about a year ago I realized he was getting too thin.  This cat always had an appetite and while I had to put him on a diet many years ago because he’d gotten too fat (to clean himself), after he took off the excess weight he looked great.  We never underfed him, but he was getting thinner.  So I upped his food.  This caused Lulu some upset because she has been on a diet forever – she also got too fat to clean herself – and although she took off enough weight to be able to clean herself again, she has never been svelte.  When Nijinsky got more food I’d have to stand over them and make her leave the kitchen while he ate, or she would try to steal his food.  She was very jealous that he got more to eat than she did, but he needed it and she didn’t.

Then this summer (2011) he began yowling piteously for more food.  It was annoying, but I realized he was so thin I could feed him more often, so we started giving him extra meals in-between the main meals (at 12:00 and 12:00).  He was getting about 4 meals a day and this seemed to solve the problem for many months.  But he began garbage digging again and yowling about a month ago, and I realized he’d gotten even thinner, so I told my husband just to feed Nijinsky whenever he wanted food.  We have been feeding him about 2 tablespoons of food whenever he came into the kitchen, and once he ate he’d go back to “his” chair and sleep.  This was about all he was doing lately but he seemed to be okay.  I realized he was coming up on dying because his body wasn’t metabolizing the food properly and he was getting thinner, yet I didn’t really know how long the process would take.  When Peleas died he went downhill so fast – one day he was walking and eating, and the next day he could not walk, so I took him to the vet and had him euthanized, which was traumatic because he hated being in a car and I hated having him on that cold, stainless steel table, taking big, gasping breaths after the vet administered the drugs, and watching him die.  But it was the right thing to do, as hard as it was.

Nijinsky stopped eating on Friday.  He didn’t go in to eat when my husband called the cats, and believe me, he lived for food.  He just stayed in his chair.  My husband told me when I got home from work.  I tempted Nijinsky with some food in the chair, and he ate a little, but not much.  To tell the truth, I’d realized recently he was eating less and less.  But since Friday he’s not eaten a thing.  He doesn’t want it and he doesn’t want water, either.

I know he will soon die, and it’s amazing to me how long he is holding on.  He seems very peaceful in his chair, sort of going in and out of a light sleep, looking very pleasant and at peace and seemingly not in pain.  He looks and feels very comfortable.

I called several vet offices today to see how much it costs to euthanize a cat.  The cost has gone way up since I had it done in 1999.  $253 to put to sleep and $100 to get the ashes back.  The cheapest I found was $190 to put to sleep and another $105 for the ashes.  Wow.  I didn’t know if I would need to take him in today or not, but wanted to be prepared.  Do you know out of the 5 vet offices I called only one said, “I’m sorry.”  That’s right.  I asked only about the fee for euthanization and only one person, a young man, said “I’m sorry.”  What a world.

As I thought about Nijinsky and whether I should take him to a vet to be euthanized, I thought of my neighbor, Sharon, who died 1-1/2 years ago.  She lived across the hall from me for 10 years and when she realized she was going to die (of cancer),  she decided to do it at home.  She let all her family and neighbors have access to her apartment and we went in and out and checked on her, and it took around 6 mos. for her to die.  She got gradually skinnier and completely bedridden, and she refused food, too, in the end.  She coasted in and out of light sleep, as Nijinsky is doing, and finally one day she stopped breathing.  But it was what she wanted and through the process of her dying I realized we can take charge of our own deaths, if we want to.  We don’t have to be at the mercy of medical procedures, or hospitals, and we can die at home in comfort and familiarity if we so choose.

I realized with Nijinsky that if I can, I would like him to die here, on the chair that is “his”, in comfort, with as little trauma as possible.  He doesn’t seem to be in pain and if I can spare him that cold, frightening drive to the vet (in a carrier) and the cold, hard stainless steel of the examining table, the final needles and drugs that cause him to take great, gasping breaths before he dies, then I will.  Why not let him die where he’s comfortable?

I realize it’s a process and it’s hard to watch.  His eyes have been closed most of today (even when he was blind his huge, cat eyes were always open just like a seeing cat’s) and he is lying in the chair, but he seems very peaceful.  Sometimes he rearranges himself, but he hasn’t come down to eat, drink, or go to the bathroom at all today.  He’s dying.

It’s not a very active process, but I can see there is a process involved.  I have been going by to gently stroke his head and scratch his chin, which he’s always liked, but now (today) that seems to be waking him up and I don’t want to disturb him, so I am taking it hour by hour at this point.

I want him to feel loved and comfortable enough to let go.  I know his body is used up.  Some disease that may or may not have been curable has taken over and these are his last days in that body, in this incarnation.  I know this is a process and I am a witness, and I’m trying not to panic or judge it.  Dying is inevitable and we will all do it one day.  It’s best to see what it’s like and to be prepared and try not to fear it.

I hope when Nijinsky passes he realizes I did my best for him.  My biggest regret is he wasn’t my favorite and I think he knew that.  He wasn’t my biggest cat love.  But I kept him for his whole life as I swore I would do, I fed him the best food I could afford, and made sure he never wanted for the basics.  He was never the most pleasant pet, but he had his place here and I feel he could have ended up at the pound and gassed before he even got to his first birthday, so that’s something.  Many cats have had far less than Nijinsky has had.

I hope when he comes back, as a cat or a human, he realizes it might be better to reach out to humans and be a little more affectionate and a little more agreeable, and maybe he will be the #1 love of someone’s life next time around.

Quantum Leap

I had a voice lesson this past Saturday. I’d cancelled the week before, due to the freak snow storm on Saturday (Oct. 29), and wasn’t about to go out in it. So I rescheduled for this (past) Saturday (Nov. 5). I also have another lesson next Saturday, as I want to get back on the every-other Saturday schedule, and my hair appointment conflicts with doing every-other Saturday starting from this past Saturday (Nov. 5). You dig? Or is it all too confusing and who really cares about my damn schedule? The nice thing is I’ll have two lessons in a row, and it will be interesting to see if there is a quantum leap next Saturday, because there surely was one during this Saturday’s lesson.

Why do I say a quantum leap? Because first off, even though I have not been practicing (much to my voice teacher’s disappointment, and it’s not like I am happy with myself either, but I have never been the most consistent about practice), when she warmed me up (which is about 90% of the lesson) and I sang vocal exercises, she said, “I’ve never heard you sing with so much openness and color in your middle voice.” I could hear the evidence of her remark because she has a stringed instrument mounted on the wall in her voice studio; it looks kind of like a lap harpsichord (if there is such a thing); I’m not sure exactly what it is and will ask. You walk into the room through French doors and the fireplace is on the opposite wall, with a big mirror above it (I look at myself when I sing), the piano is to the right (in front of the front window), and to the left of the fireplace is a settee and the stringed instrument is mounted on the wall above it.

I think I mentioned in a previous post I made the piano “zing” when I was singing – in my middle voice, which I’d never done before. Plenty of times in my high voice. That may have happened in the first lesson (or the second?) after the “golden lollipop” discovery. This time I made both the piano and the harpsichord “zing”! It was crazy, because I could barely hear myself, there was so much feedback! AND it was in the middle voice. The room was alive with sound.

So at the end of the lesson I sang “Voi lo sapete”, Santuzza’s aria from Cavalleria Rusticana. The main reason being Rebecca wanted to work my middle voice, and also because I know it, having learned it many years ago. Plus, I forgot my music. Grabbed the wrong folder and brought handouts for TNR for cats. Can’t sing that!

Maybe you recall from prior posts on voice I’ve not been singing arias that much? In the two years I’ve been taking voice with Rebecca, although we’ve tried, it had mostly been frustrating, because we had to stop and start so much. We took out a lot of arias, tried them, then put them back. But this time, I sang the damn thing all the way through. Okay, I had to stop a few times; there are some tricky places and my placement wasn’t always perfect. But the aria is sung very much in the middle voice, and I was able to sing so much of it correctly. I’m noticing that I’m understanding more and more what I did wrong and how to fix it.

Because I was singing in the middle voice so well, my tops just opened up! This is frequently a result of working on your technique – when you fix one thing, something that is already strong can sound even better. The flip side is if you fix one thing it will uncover other flaws. During the warm-up/vocalises, Rebecca noticed that on certain sung-through consonants (“l”, “n”) I had tongue tension (because she could hear the partials cut out). But I can sing a “t” w/out any tension at all. I can (and do) sing “tee tay tee tay tee tay tee tay” (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 4) over and over again and never experience any tongue tension at all. So she stopped me and pointed it out and I sang “tee tay” and then “lee lay” back and forth until I could feel just the tip of my tongue and not the back of my tongue (pulling). The tension was very subtle and quite frankly I had never noticed it at all.  The minutiae of singing with a good classical technique is mind boggling.

Back to “Voi lo sapete”. Rebecca wanted me to be crude/angry when I was singing, but also smooth (because, as she said, “After all, it’s Italian.”).  She feels I sing “too pretty”. By that she means I have a penchant for controlling my sound and she wants more of a shout, more of that “in the nose” cut in my voice. She has said over and over she is sure I will never sound ugly, which I have some ungodly fear of. I don’t know why, but it is hard for me to think about singing “ugly” — it scares me and I shy away from it, yet ironically in my personality there is plenty of “cut”! Go figure.  Singing legato AND angry was a difficult combination, but finally I got it. At first I sang angry and choppy, but she wanted the line, as well. Grrrr.

When I manged to do both my whole voice took off. The tops were flying out, the middle was sounding fully, the bottom notes were bassy and full (lots of chest), and everything was placed very forward and I could feel the spin and pop as I was singing. I can feel that from other singers, too, when it’s live, and it’s the most thrilling part of hearing a live singer (usually in opera, but other types of singers can have this in their voices). You get that frisson of sound that is so penetrating and exciting. I felt that as I sang on Saturday. I was ON! It’s the first time I’ve felt like an opera singer in a long, long time. In many years, in fact. It felt like I was delivering the entire sound, the snap, crackle and pop. I know, it’s a Rice Crispies thing, but I always think of that phrase when I hear a good singer – because there is that spin, pop, and crackle in the voice – in an exciting, interesting way.

I had wondered if my breakthrough was going to stick, and it has so far. I felt so good after singing on Saturday. After all the years I thought I was going to be an opera singer, then all the years I gave it up, and the past 2 years where I have been hoping to rediscover my opera voice, it feels like this span of time has led up to finally being able to sing the way I always wanted to. Am I too old? Is it too late? I really don’t know. What I know is it felt good. That’s the other thing I forget. When I’m singing well it feels good. I don’t mean emotionally, although when I do a good job of singing I feel uplifted. However, it’s a physically good feeling after I’ve sung well. It’s a release and a physical rush, and it activates a sense of physical well-being that makes my body (and mind) feel wonderful!  I don’t know if singing well will make a big change in my life.  I don’t know what singing well will accomplish for me.  But I’ll take feeling good, for now.  For right now, that’s enough.