Friday, April 2, 2021
Good afternoon.
As my Facebook friends know, we put down our two cats yesterday. It was a difficult decision. When we returned from Florida on March 15, Kathy's cat allergy began acting up. (She had been allergic to cats earlier in her life, but—mirabile dictu—had had no problems for the ten years she's lived in this house. I joked with her when we first met and she mentioned her allergy when she first came to my house: let's see, Kathy? (looking at one hand) Or the cats? (looking at the other hand) Kathy? Or the cats?) The allergy had returned before, when we returned from nearly four weeks in Australia and New Zealand, but her condition was tolerable (she said). This time the reaction was more severe and neither allergy drugs nor antihistamines could finally stave off the final conclusion: The cats had to be removed from the house because Kathy was suffering from sinus problems, itchy eyes, and fatigue. It was again Kathy or the cats; despite the joke from a decade earlier, it wasn't a hard decision. Kathy resisted removing the cats as long as she could (longer than I would have) and felt terrible about what had to happen.
The cats were nearly 17 and nearly 14. The 17-year-old, Jenny, was a nervous, scaredy-cat her entire life; for example, she ran for the basement whenever the doorbell rang, she tensed up if our cell phones rang, and she never came out of the basement if there were strangers in the house (that is, e.g., dinner company). We have no idea why because she was never abused in any way, certainly not by us and not by anyone who rang the doorbell—or when we answered the phone. In any case, we knew there was no way to try to put her in another setting, because she would have been terrified and probably never recovered. The 14-year-old had recurrent feline herpes for years and she was slightly neurotic (she licked her stomach and back legs bare, for no reason we could ascertain); we doubted there were many prospective adoptive homes for someone with a medical condition like that.
Those circumstances led us to decide that we simply had to put them down. I discovered Blue Skies, an outfit in the Twin Cities (maybe there is more than one; I didn't look any further than the recommendation I received from the cats' vet) that euthanizes pets. That's their business. The vet comes to your house and—at least in our case—gives them a surgery-level sedative to put them to sleep, which takes a few minutes to go fully into effect, and then a second shot that stops their heart. It was very peaceful, except that initially Jenny struggled against being on my lap because there was a stranger near her. After the injections, however, they both went to sleep.
I was talking with the vet while this process was playing out. I told her how Kathy's allergy flared up so vigorously when we returned home. She said it was almost certainly being away, in a setting without cats, that caused the reaction. Her immune system "relaxed" and then reacted strongly when exposed to the allergens again. So going to Florida probably did in the cats. (She also told me, when I related the story of our much-loved Bela starving himself to death about a year and a half ago, she surmised that it was a cancer. She said some feline cancers can be extremely difficult to detect, such as in the intestines, and that was probably what caused him to stop eating.)
Euthanasia is a lovely euphemism. Except for its link to the darkness of eugenics—a lot of "eu" words here—it generally means putting an animal out of its misery. The Blue Skies website has stories of animals in pain that they helped owners put peacefully to sleep. The hardest part of what I did was knowing that the two cats were not in pain nor terminally ill. Jenny at nearly 17 was still spry. Ella at 14 sneezed quite a bit and kept licking herself but was otherwise fine. Given the normal understanding of the term euthanasia, what I did was instruct the vet to kill the cats. I suppose she was not going to disagree with me, but as I described the situation, the vet agreed that putting them down was the best solution.
While they were drifting off I held Jenny and petted Ella and kept murmuring, "it's OK, Jenny, it's OK." Which, of course, from their point of view, it certainly was not, and I felt a little guilty saying it to them when I knew it was not true. They had trusted me all their lives and now I was betraying them. Not a happy feeling. My perceived lack of choice in the matter only barely mitigated the discomfort I felt about doing something that seemed wrong.
I will miss the daily patterns in my life with my little buddies. Both of them meeting me in the morning when I opened the door from the upstairs to the main floor because they knew it was time for soft cat food. Both of them coming nearby and sitting and staring at me every afternoon about 4:30, when they knew it was time for me to sit on the living room rug and roll cat treats across the floor for them to chase and eat. Both of them, from time to time, wandering into my study while I was working on my computer, meowing for attention and a tummy rub (which I invariably gave them). One or the other of them jumping onto my lap and settling down for a nap when I was lying on the sofa reading. I'm sure most pet owners have these routines. They are among the rewarding parts of having a cat or dog.
There are aspects of their presence that I won't miss. Chewed off leaves on some of the plants (which they could get to no matter how much I tried to block the plants). Barf on the rugs (often from chewing on plants) that often stained. Hairballs vomited up. Cat litter all over the basement. Cat hair everywhere. But both Kathy and I would have been willing to continue to put up with those nuisances—we had for ten years—had it not been for her allergy.
So for the first time in about 37 years, I won't have a cat in my house. I guess all good things must come to an end.
The rest of the day after the vet had taken away the deceased cats, I spent much of the day vacuuming rugs and some of the furniture. The next morning we had house cleaners come in and do a "deep clean": vacuuming and washing down the walls, floors, rugs, carpet, furniture, and every vertical and horizontal surface in the house. The cat dander and cat hair was ubiquitous, of course, and when the sunlight is shining just right on the stove or a table or a wall, you can see the dander and cat hair. We know that even after the cleaning it will take weeks if not months to get most of it out.
Last observations from Florida: a collection of miscellany. A Facebook post I wrote in early March:
The manner in which we who choose to seek vaccinations can actually get them, by running to Fargo or St. Cloud or Bemidji or Marshall, is absurd. A friend of mine, who "only" had to drive 45 minutes for a vaccination, wrote to me that "I sometimes fantasize about how much better the whole response might have been if we had anything resembling a well-developed national healthcare system." Yep. I lived in a country that had one. Elliott had a cavity; we took him to a local dentist in Edinburgh. They asked for our local address, where we were from, treated him, and we walked out the door. I had a back problem, went to the doctor, gave my local information (the physician knew we were visiting from the U.S.), treated me, and we walked out the door. No bills, no paperwork, no insurance check, no nothing. We could have that here if we had the will.
The vaccines are now more widely available, of course, but that was no way to run a railroad.
Even in early March it was quite humid in the morning. We did get to the beach early a couple of times, when it was still cool, but I had to confess that we started to get a little bored. It was sometimes too hot to do much outside and one can only read so much or write so much (even though no one would think that was a problem for me). We didn't need to go shopping. So I arranged more social events. My Washburn classmates have decided that my post-retirement career should be event planner.
It would be misleading to say that I didn't write much; I happened to notice that on March 1 I reached 100 pages in the COVID 2021 journal, so after two months. My COVID 2020 journal from April 3 to December 31 totaled 171 pages. At this rate my COVID 2021 journal will be 600 pages long. One difference is that the 2021 edition has many more photos. Another is that politics has calmed down.
Here's how we looked in early March. At a place called Babcock Ranch, which offered a 90-minute buggy tour of swamps and a ranch and various animals. Note what we are holding in our hands. For someone looking at the photo in 20 or 50 years, that will date it immediately. (I am enough of an optimist to hope that we won't face another pandemic-like situation for a long time, if ever. That is probably totally unrealistic.)
My Unilateral Vestibular Hypofunction (loss of the balance function in one ear) returned while we were in Florida, but just mild dizziness, nothing worse. Then, while driving to a nature preserve for a walk this morning, and within a couple hundred feet of the entrance, I had a sudden attack of severe dizziness and headache such that I barely got the car into the parking lot. My vision seemed to blur and (I realized after the fact) I almost felt like I was going to pass out. I communicated with a nurse and my doc and was better fairly quickly. Ever since that spell I've had no symptoms whatever. Zero. Nada. I think I figured out what brought it on. On the drive to the nature preserve, on the right side of and parallel to the road, for several miles, there were long rows of trees with mostly bare trunks and foliage on the top. The sun was just above the horizon, shining through the tree trunks. That created a strobe light effect on the highway. I noticed it but didn't think much of it—until it hit me. Before going through the tests that led to the UVH diagnosis, I had no idea how much vision is involved in balance. I was startled at the extent of the tests involving my vision. As soon as I thought of it—a couple of days later—it struck me that the strobe light effect on the drive would surely be related to the UVH and balance.
I faced the same situation driving north out of Florida when we left, with the sun coming up in the east (on my right). Same pattern: miles of trees, sun shining through, a strobe light effect. This time I repeatedly glanced at the sky and at the oncoming traffic (which was very light, so I wasn't risking driving into anyone!) and I felt no strobe light effect at all.
Isn't it wonderful when self-diagnosis works and you can avoid going to the doctor? (Irrespective of my miraculous recovery, my ENT physician insisted that I make an appointment with a specialist neurologist, which I have grudgingly done—for June. I will have nothing to say to her, but she knows that.)
One of the books I began reading while in Florida was The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President by Noah Feldman (who, I have since noted, has been quoted recently in either the NYTimes or the Washington Post on court cases related to the Trumps). At one point I came across a paragraph that I put in a Facebook post. The context: Madison disliked and fought against the rise of political parties after the Constitution was adopted and Washington served as president 1789-1797. The text is quotation from Feldman's biography; quotes within are Madison.
The way to avoid the evil of party was first to establish "political equality among all." Then politicians ought to maintain some form of economic equality to go alongside political equality. They should avoid giving "unnecessary opportunities . . . to increase the inequality of property, by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches. . . ." What was more, politicians should "by the silent operation of the laws . . . reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigents towards a state of comfort."
Interesting comments from a man who inherited wealth (a plantation) and owned slaves. Madison would not be a Republican in today's political climate if he mouthed sentiments like that. Closer to AOC and Bernie.
A friend of mine, my vintage, commented that she vividly remembered from kindergarten being taught how to use a telephone. (Did any of you have that experience? I do not remember that I did, but who knows.) That recollection prompted me to realize that there was a period of (let's say roughly) 75 years when social and business intercourse was mostly conducted by paper (letters, memos, etc.) and telephone. I'm putting the brackets around 1920 and 1995 (these are very fuzzy boundaries). Before the era of paper & telephones it was paper for centuries. After the era of paper & telephones it has been largely electronic (email, the web, texts, etc.). It's our generation, plus and minus a few years, that went through the transition to the electronic age in our careers. Our kids mostly grew up with an electronic world; our parents largely retired before its advent. In my work life, after the early/mid-1990s, my telephone rarely rang and I almost never sent a memo; everything was email. So our parents, and we for part of our careers, lived in the paper-and-telephone era; no one else will again.
Kathy and I thought that what we would miss most when we get home is not so much the temperature (since we were coming home to 30s and 40s) as the green plants and the flowers. Several shrubs and trees right around where we're staying have bright red and orange flowers. Going back to Minnesota, it would be back to gray and brown and white if there was snow.
Our last non-driving day in Florida, Friday, March 12, marked for us the end of year one of the pandemic restrictions on life. So the first day of year two we were up packing the car in the dark and on the road home at 7:00 in the morning.
Day one of driving (of three) was annoying. We spent 11 hours and 20 minutes in the car yesterday driving to Marietta, GA, a drive that Google said should take 8 hours and 40 minutes. An hour-long slowdown around Tampa, a major construction backup south of Atlanta, and then all six lanes crawled into downtown Atlanta at 4:30 on a Saturday afternoon. Where were all those people going? Driving day two was without incident; we got to Bloomington, IL. The weather forecast for the last driving day, Monday, was ominous. Rain, sleet, freezing rain as well as a possible snowstorm in Minnesota. Hoping that we could beat the worst of it, from looking at the National Weather Service hourly predictions, we got up and out of Bloomington at 6:15 a.m., driving in the dark in sleet and rain for about an hour. I was unexcited about facing this for seven hours. However, after the sun came up there was no more precipitation of any kind—until it started snowing as we crossed the Lake Street Bridge in Minneapolis about 1:30 p.m., about 10 blocks from our house. Our timing was exquisite. So we had the usual hum drum drive across northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. Once we were home, it snowed for several hours. We were OK with that—but I didn't really want to shovel.
As I posted on Facebook, when we were arriving in Bloomington, we had to pick up food for dinner (to eat in the hotel, since we would not eat in a restaurant and the hotel didn't have food at dinner). Kathy said the most convenient location was a Walmart Superstore. I said "no." I have never set foot in a Walmart and I intend to go to my grave never having done so. So we drove a little out of the way to a Kroger's, where we got excellent deli chicken and wild rice soup. Not one cent of mine will go to the Walton family.
I'll return to my regular programming at some point in the near future.
Take care.
Gary
