Stacy Horn

I started not feeling well yesterday, and I decided to call in sick today. At the same time, Finney, who has been crashing, has hit bottom. So today is the day I’ll be saying goodbye.

I’ve been here so many times, and described it so many times, I don’t have the heart to talk about it again. If you’ve gone through this you know. I left a message for Dr. Wendy McCulloch to come here and do it at home. I’d planned to call her to arrange for her to come on Thursday after work. (I took him to the vet last night and got him a shot of pain killers that last three days. We were going to have three final days.) But if she can’t get here on such short notice I will bring him to the vet. It’s not what I want for Finney, but it really has to be today.

The only thing I can think of to do for him is to let him eat all the frozen yogurt that he wants. I always used to give him a tiny bite or two of these frozen yogurt pops I like. When the tumor came back I start giving him lots of bites. Today I’ll just put a whole one down on a plate for him.

I got a few shots of Finney checking out one of the kittens. Which kitten, as per usual, I do not know. As you can see, his hair never grew back after the surgery. A tumor returned in the exact same spot, and I’m guessing that’s why his hair didn’t return.

I can’t get a decent shot of them with the camera on my phone! I didn’t want to upload this because it doesn’t really capture their cuteness. I’m not sure which one this is. I can only tell them apart by their personalities. Bali is sweeter, Bodhi is more bold, both are extremely affectionate. They are very tiny.

Update: I added another photo of … I do not know.

Some of you may remember that a kitten aspirated while I was feeding him over a month ago. I thought he was going to die, but he pulled through. He and his brother have had a ton of health issues, but they are out of the woods and I am going to adopt them.

Because I felt responsible for Bodhi’s problems I’ve been loving on him and his brother ever since, and they are the sweetest kittens in the nursery (to me!).

But someone snapped them up and took them home to foster them while I was off the past two days. I thought they were too young for foster!! So I quick put a hold on them, so only I can adopt them. But now I won’t see them for weeks! They’re going to forget me!!

In much worse news, Finney, who seemed mostly fine, has turned a sad corner. I don’t know if this is it, but he’s now eating less, which is the sign I go by. I don’t know how close we are, but we’re now firmly heading there.

This never gets any easier, apparently.

Poor Bleeck, relegated to the floor at my feet while Finney gets the prime real estate, my lap. But Bleecker has two kittens in his future, cats he can really play with like he never could with Finney, who was always too old. So his life is going to get much better. I hope Bodhi and Bali are up for this. Bleeck is a handful.

Also, I’m pretty sure I’m going to rename them, but I don’t hate Bodhi and Bali for names.

I took this back in the day when I was able to take full hour lunches away from my ASPCA work in the Kitten Nursery. I’d sit along the East River, gazing across at the former Blackwell’s Island (I have a book coming out next year about what happened there) feeling so relaxed.

Now we have so many kittens I have to figure out how to manage my time so I can do that again. My problem is I’m a relatively slow bottle feeder. They had someone (Judith, aka the “kitten whisper”) come in on Thursday especially to watch me and give me tips on how to take up less time, which she generously did. We shall see how I do next week!