SAINTS

it is not often where i get really desperate and ask for help with something i need help with because honestly, i usually can deal with most things without bothering folks. but it is nice to know that when my desperate cries do go out, the people who care about us every day, willingly step in to lend a hand.
all i can say is…thank you guys.

moving the water bowl was a good idea to keep coles butt from adding his poop to the water…except..i just watched that idiot max, lift his leg and pee right where the water bowl is now..sigh, now their water is yelllow.

oh where oh where will i move the thing now?

4lane had a couple of small seizures…hmm what is with that? then he vomitted on my bed and had a bile, blood streaked diarrhea on the floor…oh 4lane, sweetheart…..what’s happening with you today?

mostly it was a very good day because today i had the emotional freedom to remember why i actually do this kind of rescue.

i adore these animals. i love to watch them, i love to look into their faces, i love the feel of their trusting heads resting inside my hands. i love to look into their eyes and see the warmth of their contentment, looking right back at me.

the other day i was questioning the validity in what i see around me. today i think i see the truth…these animals are better, these animals are happier, these animals are more at peace since coming here.

rosie did a little happy rosie run to catch up with us on our walk today.

anyway..i guess for now, we are ok.

just what i want to do…bath that poor moaning and wailing dog on a cold and wet rainy day. we are going to have to start measuring his canned food intake..i think a teaspoon too much, and there is hell in his guts to pay.
i spent the entire evening on the phone last night..one very long (and yes enjoyably pleasant call) and my cell phone is dead and again, i did not do any of my personal laundry. it was almost 1 am by the time the diabetics were done, shadow was walked and the bed buddies finally got to use their velcro skills….a 6 am wake up call by a leaking chica..(chica, honey?…. you leak????) and another wet bed..which made even more laundry for me.
everything has it’s price to pay.

anyway…the conversation was interesting because it was party about feral cat trapping..which is by choice not one of my areas of expertise. don’t get me wrong..over the years i have done my fair share but not any more because saints focus is different.
but just because i don’t do it and don’t have to live it…does not mean i don’t have an opinion of how it “should” be done (as we all know…carol has an opinion on just about EVERYTHING)…”should” is such a dangerous word…it implies judgement, which it is.

BUT…there is a softer side to judgements that are attached to words like “should”….i do totally get why my “shoulds” logistically and reasonably aren’t always happening at this moment in time…but maybe in a time down the road?
but i am going to put them out here anyway..others can take them or leave them according to their realities. but it is something to think about..maybe even one day to implement if the harsh realities of feral trapping do ever begin to change (like suddenly communities and municipalities actually start to value the incredibly hard and difficult work of cat trappers and fork over some dough)

i think feral cats trapped “should” be given a reasonable amount of time before re-release to ensure they are in fact actually feral and not just really freaked. the thought of tame domestics TNR’d and let back go because they didn’t have the time to settle and remember that humans are their protectors and friends…worries me. we all know that most cats once trapped, are not ever willingly going to be trapped again and they might just have lost the last and only opportunity to reconnect once again with a kinder human world.

and i think all TNR’d cats “should” be FeLV tested routinely. i don’t think it is wise to send infected ones back out there to spread this devastating disease…AND i think to send an infected cat out there to eventually suffer the horrible symptoms without any medical assistence to die really difficult deaths alone in a harsh and unforgiving life, is just plain mean.

i know all of the reasonable and reality based reasons why many feral cat trappers don’t test (lack of funds, lack of resouces, lack of space to put positives, lack of a reasonable way to re-test in a couple of months to ensure the first test was accurate anyway…and a real lack of having the stone cold heart necessary if you have no other options, to nuke an unhealthy animal that looks vibrantly healthy and alive, that you were trying so hard to help….but…(why does someone always have to throw in a “but” to make life even more brutally difficult than it already is?…sorry)…but…there are some horribly brutal consequences to feral cats in general everywhere if testing is not done before re-release…like not only are individual cats going to die difficult deaths but now whole groups are, including new, not yet TNR’d moms and their now infected babies…AND those cute little feral kittens that you just spent weeks socializing, can’t be accurately tested til 6 months of age so you may well be adopting out litters of FeLV kittens to infect even more cats but now in people’s homes. i tell you, the consequences can be devastatingly far reaching.

anyway..just putting this out there..rome did not rise and fall in a day. we do so much more and better than we did 10 years ago, and we will do even more and even better 10 years from now..that’s the name of the game in rescue… baby steps that begins with a thought or an idea supporting positive, far reaching change.

firstly the vet came to do tunie’s and hermans feet (and hermans teeth)..tunie got her feet done..herman got nothing done..he was and still is royally pissed off. the vet will come back and try again next week. tunie’s feet look good, but because they were so long, he accidently clipped the quick on her back left foot. she is fine but it is bugging her so if you see her lifting her foot, she is ok and it should feel better in a day or so.

cole has no idea any more where his back end is…sooo..i have switched the waters around in the computer room..the tall pail is by the cat run door (so his butt isn’t up against it and he is not accidentally pooping in the water bowl.) the big low water bowl is by the door into the kitchen so the little dogs can have a drink in here too (and it is safe from our dear cole’s poop.)

and finally…little mister is here. the dog is a horror..i actually forgot we had both of his eyes out…he was blind anyway and in agony from the pressure and no one could treat him because he is such a biting freak. we actually thought that if he wasn’t in such pain, he might be nicer… or not. sooooo..he has no eyes, his front feet are deformed, and he only has one tooth (which will still hurt you if he sinks it into your flesh) he is a truly horribly bred puppy mill dog…and he is not altogether right in his head.

anyway…he has already tried to bite me three times….BUT..it is only when i try to touch him. i laid with him in his pen while i fed him his dinner and he could of cared less. i think everyone should just stay away from him and let me fiddle around with whatever he needs.

hopefully his mom will be well enough to go home soon and then he can too.
in the meantime, i do feel sorry for the little emotionally isolated bugger so i will try to make friends with him..even if it doesn’t work..at least it will break up the monotony of his day.

rosie did a bad thing today…she tried to eat one of the cat beds! yay rosie, good girl, you go for wrecking as much stuff as you want!
don’t anyone ever stop rosie from doing something bad,,for her something bad is really good.

he has been sliding downwards for the past few weeks. today he didn’t eat and louise found him in his bed drooling. she and colleen took him down to the vet. the vet called me..he had an ear infection and he wouldn’t let her look in his mouth. she thought he might have a huge mouth inflammation because he had to have all of his teeth out last year for the same reason, or he had a tumour in there but whatever it was, was too painful for him to open his mouth.
colleen stayed with him til i got there. she showed me the brown crud from his ear..ok it was gross but it was not full of pus so that was not what was bringing him down so low. but i had already decided to euthanize because i have known for awhile that mosley was nearing the end of his road.
he was so afraid in there…i felt so bad for him. the vet gave him his pre-sedation, but he was too upset to fall asleep. she gave him some more but it upset his stomach, and then he started to vomit.

finally the second dose kicked in and he drifted off. we gave him the final injection and he passed quickly away.
after he was gone we looked in his mouth…a very small tumour and slightly red area..not enough to cause him so much distress. but he was so very pale and he had started to show a bit of jaundice along his gums.
so i think a few things here…i think his anemia from the feline leukemia was getting to be a big problem. i think the jaundice was because he was beginning the dying process as his organs began to shut down.

i think i might have rushed him a bit. i should have probably brought him home again and booked a home euthanization tomorrow so he wouldn’t have been so afraid today…. but by then it was too late.

rest in peace now dear mosley, i am so sorry i didn’t slow down and think this all of the way thru. you were a truly lovely cat, and we will all really miss you.

carol, call me asap.
like, right now. you are not allowed to leave the house without a phone!!
6048629738

the cats in the computer room all got clean beds today..they are all stretched out and obviously so comfortable. mango is laying on the second shelf under the TV..stretched out on his polkadot blanket with his head on the pillow…he looks so lovely and sweet..i almost completely forgot that he is a total pee spraying beast! and tang his twin spraying brother..instead of wandering around and pissing on the dog beds or picking a fight with someone..is curled up above him in a soft donut bed looking just as peaceful and lovely as his brother.

rose this morning, said hello to me by stretching herself out and offerring me her belly. it wasn’t in fear or in uncertainty..she was just drowsily aware that i was there and that in that sleepy moment she totally trusted me. yay rosie!

shadow’s mkennel cough is slightly better, but not enough to move over to the house yet. she is like a black version of daffy..sweet, sweet, sweet and very, very hungry. i just took her for her final walk…the rain has stopped and the air is moist and foggy. it is a beautiful fall evening slipping away as winter comes close.

speaking of winter..she is parked in front of the moniter..i think she is looking for someone to bug but they are all asleep in their beds….sooo, she has decided to bug me.

max is finally playing with his balls again..it is good to see him feeling better even if his late evening ball playing does annoy cole.

well…2 more diabetics to poke…and felix’s bedtime cuddle and check..i should have done some of my personal laundry tonight cuz there was no saints laundry to do…but i didn’t. maybe tomorrow night or on the weekend..how long can i go before i run out of clean work clothes? probably not much longer.

quick note to the staff (because i will forget before morning)..one of our foster dogs foster mom is in the hospital so he is being dropped off here in the morning. long story made short…i do not know this dog except to know that he has alot of social problems. we took him on, sight unseen, to pay for his eye removal and because his new senior mom does sometimes end up in the hospital. i still have never met him, but have heard his stories..he is quite the handful and he bites..sigh…we are this little dog’s safety net. so once lanie puts him in the pen with food and water and a nice soft bed in there, leave him for me to deal with…i will be home for lunch.
anyway….
please set up an xpen for him in the computer room somewhere or in my bedroom if that works better..(it is too late for me to disturb colleen by digging around in the shop)..and when he does get dropped off, make sure you ask his name because i for the life of me cannot remember tonight..it is mr. little bugger or something or other.

what a personally intense and emotional journey saints is for me. everyday i am stretched to expand my thinking, to accomondate a new learning opportunity, to self evaluate fairly…not just looking at the good, or glossing over the bad but really trying to understand if i am standing in the same place i believed.
i so totally understand the risks of not knowing what is true inside me, what is really real around me, of trying to turn a blind eye to who i am really and what i am in actuality doing.
so i struggle with my natural human inclination to protect and perserve myself with illusions to comfortably live inside of me.

and why is this such an issue for me…because honesty is so important to me. i not only need to be honest to the animals here, but to the folks that care about us.
sometimes we can lie so well…we do convince ourselves. sometimes we are so afraid of the truth that we just turn and look away or blame someone else. sometimes our minds are so messed up that we honestly create a new reality that fits better than whats real.

sorry, here i go again…i know all of this. and i am not sure how to ensure that i myself have not fallen into the shadowy pit of not quite real. like if your mind is so good at protecting itself…how do you know if you snuck under the wire and really have figured it all out for REAL?

and in the end why does it even matter? well..mostly because of this blog. if i try to share with you what saints is for me every day, in my reality..it means that i share information, thoughts and beliefs..i share the good and the bad, not just about here…but about me personally and as a species, we are not very good at separating personal things..like saints is forever at risk of getting the unfair end of the stick because no one ever says..oh yeah, saints is great but carol sucks…if i suck, people think that saints sucks, unfairly sad for saints but true that saints gets tarred with the same brush as me. i feel bad for the animals about this but what do i do..pretend i am better or different than i am?..i am sorry..sometimes i do suck (but not always, sometimes i am good.)

and it means that by doing this…i leave myself open to all kinds of things. like misinterpetation, or correct interpetation, misjudgements or pretty darn accurate judgements. it means that for those who do not like me or are mad at me…some pretty good stuff is available to prove or justify why they feel the way that they do.

here is the key to all of this…just because i try to be totally honest in telling you what is happening, what i am feeling, what i am thinking…does not mean that i am always right in what i believe. i obviously believe i am right (mostly because i actually do believe i am right alot (most..almost all) of the time) but i acknowledge the possibilty that i might actually be wrong and have not figured it out yet.

so where does that leave me? with a thousand pages of blog that i believe to be true but may not actually be right because i am doing everything wrong and don’t even know it because..my whole premise was flawed.

so thats a big worry for me.

if my lifes journey is going to be such a personally intense and emotional (and shared) thing..i want at least for it to be real, for it to be true.

i don’t want to take my last breath and suddenly realize that i missed one really big important thing…like i was really so blindly full of shit all along.

i think that would suck and after all of life’s struggles and challenges, to realize i got it all so wrong…well shit man..that life was just totally a waste of time!

i want to get the laundry thru without crapping out the well.
i told mo today that if i stopped right here, today…where we are now and just slid thru the next 10 years without letting anyone else in… (i’d be 61 by the way..) theoretically, i could retire with only half a dozen dogs left (these would be the non adoptable younger behavioral dogs…(one of them would probably be phoebe, shit!)…maybe a dozen cats ( all the bloody younger spray-a-lots)…3 cows and 2 sheep. what’s that?… 20 some odd animals?..in retirement, i could handle that!
where the hell is the closed sign…i can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

lately i am feeling like my life is just as futile as beating my head against the wall.
and i know some folks think we have it easy..nice place, paid staff, great volunteers, some really wonderful and loyal supporters. but it isn’t easy..we work so incredibly hard. we take in the most difficult animals to manage..the ones that not even any one in rescue wants…and we take them in til we are squeezed beyond reason…give us an inch and we will find some new difficult to manage needy some room.
the medical care costs these guys incurr..shit, just the number of daily meds we give out. i had less heavy med assignments in the hospitals than i have here in my home. the weekly baths for the skin guys…do you know how much work one skin dog takes..we have 6….how much did one flooding diabetic stretch you?…we have 4…we have 5 fully blind dogs…several more cats and dogs either with profound vision losses or missing eyes completely, 90% of our animals suffer from profound arthritis, 80% are incontinent, 70% are totally deaf and several are currently dying of cancer. this does not count the many run of the mill cardiac, kidney failure or thyroid disease animals, the feline leukemia and aids cats, the many cats and dogs here without any teeth, the truly ancient, ancients, 16, 17, 18 year old dogs…18, 19, 22 year old cats…33 and 34 year old horses, 800 pound arthritic pigs, uncooperative, demented goats….nor the ones that are just plain freaking nutz.

over one hundred of the most ill or physically disabled that came here as the end of their road….
and folks think that we have it easy, that we are lucky? give me a break.
i’d rather go back to when i did this on my own…it was quieter, it was cleaner, it was cheaper, it was nicer, it was easier, it was a helluvalot less frustraing and painful. it was almost normal..and back then so was i.

and here is the crux of the matter…i couldn’t make it home for lunch today…and i really missed all of these guys.

that is complete and total entrappment in a difficult life that may not ever end…not even in 10 years if i stopped right now.

it reeks like old urine in here today..when i first walked in i thought who the hell had a perm here today..oh right..no one, that is old ammonia i smell..gross…a not so perfect end to a not so perfect day..do i say screw it and just smell it all night long or do i start cleaning til i find where it is coming from?
both choices totally suck.

barn bedtime went better….we got everyone where they needed to be BEFORE they got their actual food bowls. but lahanie was a big bully while we were shifting them all along. he is such a freaking dolt.

well..i guess i better fire thru the last couple of loads of laundry, search out and clean up some old rotten pee. i will wait to eat cuz i ain’t eating when it smells like a urinal in here.

a bit of advice….do not rescue leaky old dogs….go for the young ones with good bladder tone.