Tuesday, September 05, 2006

two losses

it was a very busy night tonight...the busiest tuesday night in a long time. one of the girls left early. she went with her mom to have her cat put down. her cat was suffering from cancer and i think they thought it was time. a very hard thing to do and a hard thing to know when to do it. we can ever really know when is the right time. we were very lucky with Queequeg. he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure 6 months before he died. when we first brought him in to see the vet, the vet thought he was doing very poorly. do to my sister's excellent care, when we next brought him to the vet, he was stunned at how well he was doing. so, he improved for awhile, but of course, there was no cure and we expected the loss. i believe, though he might have been uncomfotable once or twice, and he hated (then refused) to take his medicine, and his appetite waned, Queequeg never suffered. he never experienced the difficulty breathing the doctor warned us about. he did tire out very easily and we restricted his playtime . he always slept well and soundly. he was watched around the clock, held nearly 24 hours a day and held on to life tenaciously because he absolutely loved my sister (his Auntie) and thought he was king of the planet. he died peacefully in my sisters arms. now, he is giving them a hell of a time in heaven. i've had two dreams...one before he died. i was introduced to the man in charge of caring for afterlife pets...animals that could not be wild because they were used to a certain lifestyle. pampering, basically. he had a special place for prairie dogs. they could come out of their homes whenever they wanted, they got their treats and lots of love. they could play together. in this dream, i saw a big, fat prairie dog in a pink tutu. she was spoiled rotten, clearly and happy. it gave me some comfort, this dream. then, after Queequeg died, i had another dream of the same man. he was a short, round, balding and very pleasant man in the first dream. in the second dream, his pure white coat was askew and he was pulling his hair out because, no matter what they did for Queequeg, he was not satisfied. i saw a young lady holding Queequeg in a rocking chair, trying to comfort him with a blanket. Queequeg was all in a tither because the blanket was clearly not his special blanket and he was pounding away at the poor girl, trying to get it arranged some way to his liking. since then, i have felt that he misses my sister more than anything and will not be happy until they are together again. he was that close AND that spoiled.
our second loss: this was the last night for our only male circiworker. he is moving on to a full time job in the big city. he would have rather stayed with us, but we have no full time openings. since he won't be working weekends at his new job, he may work a few saturdays. my saturday crew won't be affected, but the opposite saturday crew has lost a circworker and will be one short. however, we will all feel the crunch and who knows when we will get someone to fill his place and god only knows WHAT we may get. we have had some real doseys in the past.

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