i've made a huge mistake
i am my own worst enemy
i’ve been trying to write an email to you for two weeks, but all of my energy has instead gone to keeping my cat alive. i’m going to talk about that (as of right now, she is okay!) and also the way i’ve been coping. let this serve as a content warning, i guess. if you want to skip all the cat health stuff, scroll down to the cat picture and bolded text.
i don’t even know where to start, so i will try doing this somewhat chronologically.
on monday, may 12, theo was scheduled for blood work at the vet, as is necessary before a spay procedure. she does not like going in her carrier, riding in the car, or being at the vet, and this time she decided to opt out. how did she do this, you ask? well, she fought me and i ended up with multiple gnarly lacerations across my chest. i did get her into the carrier, because i am tough like catelyn stark and did not let go of her (and also i had both teens helping me), but the veterinary assistants were like yeah no, here’s some gabapentin and let’s try again on wednesday.
so theo got her blood work done on wednesday, may 14. it was uneventful.
on thursday, may 22, we took theo in to be spayed. she fought me again, even while loopy on gabapentin, and i look like someone tried to slit my throat (i am telling you, i’m catelyn stark), but we did it. she came home in a cone, with internal stitches.
on saturday, may 24, we switched her to a soft donut instead of a plastic cone, because 1) she was miserable and 2) she kept getting out of the plastic cone. i kept a very close eye on her and confirmed several times that she absolutely could not get at her incision, so we thought she was okay in the substitute.
on monday, may 26, she stopped eating and drinking, and by tuesday morning she was lethargic. i took her to the emergency vet and they found that her incision had partially reopened (which we could not see at all) and was infected. after several hours and an enormous bill that i had to borrow money to pay, she came home with new, external stitches and a drain because they found so much infection and an abscess. they blamed the soft cone and seemed sure she was able to get at her stitches, but i am positive that’s not the case. i suspect that the donut gave her too much freedom of movement otherwise, and she strained her incision by climbing or jumping when i was not looking. (you might be thinking this cone thing was my huge mistake, but no! i have not gotten to it yet! this was me doing the best i could with the information i had.)
we have had to completely start over with her recovery. she is in an even bigger plastic cone, and it’s taken her four days to figure out how to eat and drink in it. she is still figuring out how to get around, and there are a lot of bonks when her cone hits the furniture (or the door/wall/whatever). she is very affectionate with us, and doesn’t really understand why we are preventing her from going upstairs or out on the porch, but we are all managing. it’s such a relief that she’s a menace again and apparently not currently about to die that the constant vigilance to keep it that way is almost bearable.
but i am really exhausted and the burnout is real.
over the weekend (so after a lot of stress but before the worst of it) i was sitting on the porch with my husband, who was drinking a budweiser 0, and i noticed a little slogan on the can, the visible part of which read “the great american” (the other half was something about beer).
and i…got a book idea.
now, i have new book ideas all the time. some days i have six book ideas before breakfast! but i am currently two-thirds of the way through the first draft of a (slightly less) new book idea that i allowed to take over my life two months ago, setting aside several other extremely good ideas i had already discussed with my agent to write this one instead. and now it is being usurped? what the hell, brain????!
i do not have time for this, i do not have energy for this, i do not have space in my brain for this.
anyway, i wrote an outline and a first chapter. oops.
my brain is as big a menace as my goddamn cat, but writing this new thing did help me cope with everything, so i guess it’s okay. i don’t know. i hope i will manage to get back to the mmmbop book after things go somewhat back to normal. does anyone know how to do that? (any part of it tbh)
xo
annika