Making a Comeback!

Hello everyone. I’m sorry I have not updated the blog for so long, but I have some news now.

Firstly (and most importantly), Spock and Zé are still with us. After the first couple of weeks of looking for a new home for them things sort of trailed off. We had a couple of near-misses – people who were going to take them, but who then couldn’t (one lady was all set to have them until one of her children said that she didn’t want to have any animals around the grandchild).

But anyway, now that they have been neutered have had all of their injections, Spock and Zé are both spending a lot of time outdoors. They love mooching around the condo’s gardens and pathways. There’s a huge open, grassy space by our building (it was going to be the spot for another building but the developers apparently changed their minds) and they play there, chasing butterflies and pouncing on jumping bugs.

I’d noticed that Marcelo is getting more and more chatty with them. When they come home, full of excitement from their day at ‘work’, they like to tell us about it. Meowing and charging at our legs with their tails held high, purring at full volume and demanding our attention! One day Marcelo just said, simply, “It’s going to be really hard to let them go.” So we talked it over again and have decided to wait a little. We are going to see how his allergies and asthma are now that the cats are not shedding their dander in here 24 hours a day.

If we have another crisis, another hospital trip, then we will have to go back to plan ‘A’, but we both feel that this new situation is worth testing. The cats are not under his nose all the time now…will this be enough to make a difference? It’s certainly possible, so we will see how it goes.

Finally, I am sorry that I have not been keeping up to date with my friends’ blogs. At first it was just too hard to log into here or to read things that came through on my ‘Bewhiskered’ email account. Then, there were just so many unread updates that I was swamped and didn’t know where to start.

I have tonnes of pictures to upload here since my last posts so I’ll be logging on much more regularly again. I hope to be able to catch up with you all a bit. I’m working on getting my little craft business going so I can’t be doing full-time blogging like I used to, but I would like to get back on the scene.

A Huge Thank You

I’d like to say a huge ”THANK YOU” to all of the people who have sent me messages of support over the last week and a bit. Some of those messages were as comments under the last post, others have been by email from friends and family and a couple were from people I’ve never met, likely never will, sent through the ‘contact me’ form. The fact that people I do not even know have taken the time to write and send me such warm-hearted messages about their own experiences is a really beautiful thing. It’s comforting to know that other people have had to make this same decision to protect the health of a (two-legged) loved one. Everyone said that it was an incredibly upsetting decision they’d had to make, but they made it because they had to. As I have had to.

I had a message today asking for an update. I’ve been a little scared to post since I made the announcement last week – I know a lot of people were unhappy with our decision but I will say again: we are NOT dumping the cats – we are looking for a good, loving, safe home(s) for them.

So, the update: We’re still looking new parents for the boys at the moment. We are trying hard to keep them together. Separating them will be a last resort. We’ve had a couple of possibles that, unfortunately, fell through, but we are still looking.

Zé checking out the bushes.

In order to broaden their horizons and address their ‘scaredy cat-ness’ we’ve started to let the boys roam around outside everyday.

It Seems in a Moment…

This is going to be a hard post to write. Having a cat blog, you know that there is a chance you’ll have to report upsetting news at some point, I just didn’t think mine would be so soon.

It breaks my heart to tell you all this, but I’m afraid that Spock and Zé are going to be leaving us soon. I will tell you a little of the events leading up to this decision so that you can understand why it has to be:

As my regular readers will know, Marcelo (my husband) is allergic to cats. He’s also an asthmatic and has been for his whole life. He tried to do something incredibly wonderful for me, something self-sacrificing and done purely out of his love for me…he tried to live with cats.

We have tried everything to manage his allergies: herbal remedies, homoeopathic ones, drug store anti-allergens, prescription meds…

But on Saturday we wound up at the local hospital for several hours, with Marcelo wearing an oxygen mask and being injected and tested by the lung specialist. She had one solution, and one recommendation only…

No cats!

Heartbreaking as it is, what choice do we have? I will miss the boys more than I can put into words, but how can I sit and watch my husband suffer? I can’t. 

We Are not Amused

What's that in the background?

Camouflage

 

Last night we brought all of our pillows into the living room to make an extra comfy nest (we were going to watch one of the 4+ hour extended Lord of the Rings films). This was Spock’s reaction to the pillow pile.