There are times when there are no words to express the jumbled, confused disarray of emotions that come at you in a sleet-storm. When that happens, I tend to find refuge in the word "dude". So I will once again take recourse in my comfortable, familiar epithet. Dude.
I leave for Virginia one week from today. Next Saturday, July 30th, I will hop on a plane with my mom and hopefully drugged cat, and will arrive - after about seven hours in the air/airports (same thing; they're both like demilitarized no-man's lands) - in Virginia. We'll spend the night just outside Dulles International Airport, and then the next morning, will drive down to Charlottesville to take possession of my new apartment, new job, and new life.
Yesterday, I had two ReloCubes (they're like Pods) picked up, filled with all the detritus of my life. Some bookshelves, my desk, a few chairs and tables (along with a tiny doll dresser from the 1800s that I recently refinished, so proud, a post on that later), a bunch of boxes, some pictures, and that's it. It's what I'm taking to start a new life. It's overwhelming.
Of course, it would be anti-climactic if the only thing that happened over the last few days was the picking up of some Cubes. Yes, important, but God is not without a sense of drama. Thursday night, about 11:30, as I'm trying to pack up the last few boxes and find a way to stash them all in the Cubes without them falling on my head when I open the doors in Virginia, I get a call from my ex-husband. It was not a good call.
Back in 2003, the night before Easter, when all through the apartment, not a creature was stirring, except a tiny pregnant cat crying outside our sliding glass door leading out to a large grassy hill. Because it's me, the tiny pregnant cat came inside, and the next morning - Easter - presented us (my then-husband and I) with five baby kittens. I sat and watched them arrive, one by one, and the last one, whom we named "Bundle of Love", I literally pulled from his mother's womb, since she was too exhausted to push anymore. They were our babies, and while we were able to find a home for one of them - a little blonde baby girl named "Princess" - and eventually had to take the mother to the Humane Society (two things we regret), we kept the other four, along with my Nardabeast. We called them "the bodies" - I don't remember why or where it started - and they were the most precious, wonderful things in our lives. We loved them and adored them, and when my ex became my ex, he took them. It broke my heart, because they were my children, especially since I had long believed that I wouldn't ever have children. I'm learning to deal without their presence, and was doing fairly well, until my ex's phone call.
Apparently, Bun - our Bundle of Love - the sweetest and most endearing of all the cats, the shyest, most timid, most darling little gray cat beast, was lying on his side, crying plaintively, and breathing heavily, with his little pink tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth. My ex was wondering what he should do, and because I was distracted with packing, I advised him impatiently to find an emergency animal hospital, and take him in. Of course, nothing is that simple with my ex, but after several heated conversations, he finally got him in.
And called me 45 minutes later, crying, telling me that he thought that Bun might die.
The bottom dropped out of my world, and I ran out the door, thinking only that I might be too late to see my little Bun one last time. It was, of course, completely unexpected, as he's only 8, and should have many, many years of happy, pampered life left. But no. No, apparently, at this point, the best estimate that anyone can give us is 6-18 months.
My little Bun-creature, who has the sweetest heart of all my bodies, has cardiomyopathy. It's the kind of thing in humans that leads - immediately - to pacemakers or heart transplants. In cats, the options are limited to medications. Cardiomyopathy is where the heart - one giant muscle - becomes enlarged, and thus pumps blood less efficiently. Thursday night Bun was essentially having a heart attack.
Since then, we have also discovered ($4,500 later), that he is anemic, and the poor little guy has spent the last few days - and will spend the weekend - in a vet hospital. He received a full blood transfusion today, because apparently there was so little oxygen left in his blood that he was suffocating. And on Monday, my ex and I will meet with an internal specialist, who will tell us why/how Bun became anemic and cardiomyopathic. And then we'll have to make a decision. And it's a decision I did not imagine myself making anytime soon.
It breaks my heart, and makes all this Virginia stuff seem very, very far away. My little Bun-heart is dying.
