My daughter gave me permission to share some of her journey with her rescue pootie, Allie.
A gentle reminder of how we do things: 🐱🐶🐦
- Do not troll the diary. If you hate pootie diaries, leave now. No harm, no foul.
- Please do share pics of your fur kids! If you have health/behavior issues with your pets, feel free to bring it to the community.
- Pooties are cats; Woozles are dogs. Birds... are birds! Peeps are people.
- Whatever happens in the outer blog STAYS in the outer blog. If you’re having “issues” with another Kossack, keep it “out there.” This is a place to relax and play; please treat it accordingly.
- There are some pics we never post: snakes, creepy crawlies, any and all photos that depict or encourage human cruelty toward animals. These are considered “out of bounds” and will not be tolerated. If we alert you to it, please remember that we do have phobic peeps who react strongly to them. If you keep posting banned pics...well then...the Tigress will have to take matters in hand. Or, paw.
This one, Peeps — well, let’s just say the story has some deeply intense moments, but I’m going to keep it as light as I can. With all due respect.
My daughter, G—, had an extremely … volatile … period in her life. Running face-first into the realization that her drinking was taking over, out of her control, her marriage shattered and bankruptcy unavoidable…
Yeah. It was …. yeah. And during that period wherein she was struggling to really achieve sobriety (she had sober periods, and then not), she got into a short-lived, horrid, abusive relationship with a man she met in detox. (“These are the stories that make us, as counselors, just cringe!” she told me). But one decent thing this person did was take G— to the shelter to adopt a cat.
And here’s where we get into the crux of the commitment. There had been something of a succession of cats that unsettled life circumstances had obliged her to rehome, and she and Allie, in their first year, saw a few, um, bounces, between residences. But she was determined to keep Allie. And they are, after 15 years, very bonded. But Allie is odd about men in the first place (go figure, although my son-in-law is a Certifiable Good Guy and has been around her for many years), and then — oh, and then…
Then there was … The Incident. We’re going back many years, now, and while it was radical enough in its own right, unfortunately, it happened twice — Allie got a plastic grocery bag caught around her neck. It wasn’t threatening her breathing, just her sanity. Now if I were writing that about me, yep, this would be the break for the laugh track, but unhappily, it did something to that cat. It really badly traumatized her. “It just changed her,” my daughter said. “Since then, if she doesn’t like something, anything, she hisses and growls. That’s just her go-to response.” My daughter works two jobs, so has someone come in and help with cleaning twice a month (“When I have time off, I don’t want to spend it cleaning!” and as someone who has had “homemaker” as the job description since, like, the year I turned 14, I concur), which means there are two days a month G— can count on Allie not using the litterbox, in protest of the invader’s presence. Getting her into a carrying crate for trips to the vet is out of the question, and even mobile vets present a problem, since they want the animal crated when they get there (Catch 22 if ever there was one). When we did our phone … interview! for this diary, she said they’d been having a pretty good run just now, but she accepts that this is Allie’s functioning reality. She startles easily and deeply, she’s on-again-off-again with her litterbox, she is becoming increasingly picky about food, and she only accepts interaction with my son-in-law at bedtime… wait. What?! Yep, Allie has a little rug next to G—‘s bed, one spot Allie hasn’t had an accident on, and that’s when she gets her “daddy lovin’ “! For the rest of the day, if G— isn’t home, the man won’t see her at all. When my daughter comes home, Allie comes out. “Oh, huh!” he’ll remark. “We do have a cat!” [I am writing this diary in May, so I discussed it with my son-in-law while he was helping me with some of the Allie photos. “Yep,” he confirmed. “I get my five minutes a day. The other 23 hours and 55 minutes belong to G—!”]
I told my daughter that Allie was very blessed to have come to her — lots of people would have given up on Allie long since. “Am I ready for a dog? A new cat? Yes, I am ... but I’m not going to ... to put arsenic in her food or anything!” my daughter laughed. “She’s definitely got a home till she’s done. She’s my girl.”
My daughter? Wow! Give me space to brag — I’ll do it! She found, and held onto, her sobriety*… went back to school and got her masters in social work, got I can’t even recall how many hours of certification in different therapy modalities, and now works with addicts and domestic abuse survivors (I refuse to use the word “victim”), because she wanted to put some back. She is a woman I respect and admire, and feel blessed to have in my life. And Allie is still at her side, reminding …
And now for something a bit lighter….! (whew!)
That’s it for this time, Peeps. Stay safe, be brilliant as usual, be the friend you’d like to have.
*Alcoholism is rampant in my family — or rather, it was, because it’s absolutely the reason so many of them aren’t here any more. I can’t even articulate my gratitude that my daughter chose herself over that. She adds a great deal to this world!
If you think you have a challenge with some or other substance, if you are in an abusive relationship, please, PLEASE — reach out. There are resources available to you. Choose you — we’ll walk with you, honest.