Back in the saddle, so to speak.

Wow It's been a long time since I wrote here. I thought it was deleted, but it seems it's survived. But there are bugs abound. So many things have happened since I last wrote something here. The big things are that my niece Alex died in a car accident in 2011. She was born on my birthday and died on my dads birthday, how odd. It didn't hit me as hard as one might think. For a few years prior we had a falling out, and in a sense she had already died to me. We never really talked other than an occasional hi if I made it to town. She also managed to give birth a little over a year before that. So now my parents are looking after the kid, Tristen, because the dad is out of the picture.
The next big thing was my cat Chewbacca "Chewy". Now that one hit me hard, mainly because it caught me off guard. In September of last year he had difficulty pooping. He managed to work it out and he was fine again. October the same thing, November the same thing. In September I brought him to the animal hospital because he was looking so pathetic. The helped him out and he was very grateful to me that night. He was very clingy, his way of saying thanks. Octobers incident lasted most of a weekend but it worked itself free and he was fine. I didn't care by this point that he was dripping liquid poop everywhere. I did kinda attempt to follow him around and assist when I could. I did give him a bath in sink when he was done. He hated water but we managed. So November rolls around, about a week before Thanksgiving. I bring him to my normal vet and she does an X-ray on him, after they cleaned him up. She comes out and tells me he has a football shaped tumor that was very large. It extended from his bum to his rib cage. It was pressing down on his intestines, which caused him to get backed up. I agreed to an operation to determine the origin of tumor. After a few days she identified it and said it hadn't spread and recommended steroids to reduce the size, but said he wouldn't live past Christmas. Things were going fine the first week, he hated his steroids and fought me every time i gave it to him. I also had to give him pain meds for the surgery. He didn't like the original stuff, but did get some tuna flavored stuff which he liked. But unfortunately he had another episode of blockage. He back legs had gotten all weak and one leg looked like it popped out of socket. He had lost alot of weight in the last few months. He used to be a good 12 - 13 lbs in his prime. When he died he weighed like 8. The last night we had together his frail little body climbed in to bed with me. We had this routine where he would sit next to my head and massage my shoulder for a good 5 minutes. Well his weak little body managed to get up on bed and do it one last time. (I'm crying again just thinking about it) That night I made up my mind to set up an appointment to put him down. The date would be two days before Thanksgiving. I managed to get the day off of work for this. I shared some ice cream with him that morning, which he weakly licked up. He wasn't eating much anymore. I gave him 2 treats a day and didn't care if he ate it all. It appeared the dry food hurt his mouth to much. We hugged in the vets office as she administered the shot and he quietly slipped away. I stayed home for Thanksgiving as I couldn't let my other cat stay behind as he was grieving in his own way. I decided to look for a new cat while I was at home. I settled on a Chewy look alike name Cole. I seem to call him Colby though. Well that's enough for tonight... the next one will be on the 3rd big thing my trip to England.