theology&geometry

A publishing company found this pic of Felix on my Flickr, sent me a note asking permission to use it, and sent me a copy of the book when it printed. So cool! Here’s the book. I miss Felix a lot, but it’s neat to have him immortalized in print like this.

[Project 365]

I knew I was going to have to write this post eventually, and for many months now, I knew the time was creeping closer and closer. I just didn’t know how close. And then Sunday things just sort of fell apart and difficult decisions had to be made and here we are.

Felix battled his insulinoma like a trooper, but you can only fight your body so long. And Sunday, after so many seizures and him yelping the most pitiful yelp of an animal shocked and in pain you’ve ever heard, we decided — after the vet confirmed our hunch that there was really no guarantee that any treatment option we pursued would help him — it was time to put him to sleep. It happened so fast. He was in the other room, yelping, and then he got quiet and they brought him in, zonked on Valium. We had to make the call. I couldn’t look the doctor in the eye, even though he was being so nice to us. We had some time alone with Felix, but he was already gone. Wasn’t even blinking, just shivering. And then suddenly I was standing there with Phil, watching the doctor inject blue and then clear liquid into his little leg catheter. He stopped breathing and that was that. They put him in a box for us so we could take him and bury him in Saltillo beside Gonzo.

Two hours on the road.

At 1 a.m., Phil dug a grave and I held the flashlight. He said a prayer and went about the business of covering up the grave. There was crying. I was crying for the end of an era in my life as much as I was crying for Felix himself. So much has changed, and I’m not sure it’s all been for the better.

I will miss him so much. He was my first pet — a pet I picked out and raised and cared for. He was tiny, tiny when we first got him, and we were so clueless about ferrets that when we let him have too many dried apples to eat and he was horking them up, we honestly thought we had killed him. There was one time in Havenwood in Murfreesboro when we couldn’t find him, and realized with that gut-walloping horror that he had escaped through the dryer hose and was outside. He’d gotten downstairs and was happily on his way to adventures in wilds of the ‘Boro, but we spotted him and snagged him and utterly foiled his plan. He tried to get away again in Memphis when we lived in Lynnfield Place. One of our neighbors found a little sable ferret in the monkeygrass and notified the office. The apartment was so big and the ferrets had so many places to hide that we didn’t even know he was missing.

He was so smart and so good and such a little boy scout. I’m glad he’s not suffering anymore.

[Project 365]

Last week was hell on steroids. Phil and I went back and forth and back and forth about Felix’s health. He’s old — seven and a half (that’s geriatric for Marshall Farms ferrets, sadly) — and he’s been having these weird fainting-type spells that he’s so far, luckily, snapped out of every time. Knowing the signs of adrenal disease and cancer from Gonzo’s battle with both two years ago, we didn’t hold out much hope for any kind of recovery or treatment. We thought we were very close to having him put to sleep since his quality of life had been reduced so drastically in this past year.

Obviously, we were both agonizing over the prospect. Felix has always been such a trooper.

BUT, long story short, yesterday evening we found pretty much the nicest vet ever — Ralph Pope at Pope Animal Clinic — who told us he thinks Felix has an insulinoma and adrenal gland disease. The good news is that he thinks the insulinoma is in very early stages, and after some tests, should be treatable with Prednisone. The adrenal disease is trickier; you can treat it with monthly injections that will help the fur grow back fuller, but for now we want to focus on the insulinoma and get it under control. If that’s possible.

The best news is that the vet thinks Felix has up to another year in him. I was pretty shocked by that. And very, very happy. He doesn’t see very well and he mostly just sleeps, but it will be awesome to have him scuttle around for another year.

Phil says he might let Felix stay with me for a few days over Thanksgiving while he’s home with his family. Felix has been staying at Phil’s place full-time for several months now because my lovely idiot cats don’t understand that he is not a moving, pounceable target. He’s old and fragile and Jack’s fat ass tackling him multiple times a day was very stressful for everyone involved. So I ended the joint custody arrangement and just took visitation rights. It sucked, but I figured Felix would be happier when he didn’t have to worry about cat snipers tracking his every move.

I’m hoping my little darlings have chilled out substantially since then. We’ll see. I’ll bring the hammer down if not. Or the water bottle. Whatever.

Felix, in his old age, sleeps a lot. He likes his food mixed with warm water to make it softer on his old teeth. He’s skinny and frail and sometimes he trips while scuttling across the hardwood floors.

It’s hard to watch him get old.

Monday we had a close call. I made plans with Phil — visitation plans, I guess you could call them, since I hadn’t seen him in more than a month — and thought we might take Felix to the park to run around like he used to do.

I won’t get into the specifics, but Phil and I got into a curbside discussion about actually taking Felix out. I said we should, he said we shouldn’t, repeat ad nauseam. So Phil brought Felix out to the car so I could at least see him.

So I scritched Felix and gave him as much attention as he would take before demanding to be let down to explore the floorboards. All of a sudden, while Phil and I are having still more discussions about other weighty things, we notice that Felix has just sort of splayed out in the floorboard and is drooling and can barely move.

This sets in motion a whirlwind of affairs I’d rather not relive, including hysterical, tear-soaked, speed-limit-breaking visits to two separate vet clinics that refused to see a ferret — even one in extreme distress. Talk about fucking pissing me off. Yeah, they’re “exotic,” but they’re not fucking alien. I’m pretty sure any doctor worth his weight in student loans could figure out how to hook up an IV to a ferret and at least get him conscious again.

So yeah, Eastgate — you with your horrible website and your rude, rude doctors who loudly bitched and moaned about having to see a ferret while we were standing RIGHT THE FUCK THERE WHERE WE COULD HEAR YOU — and that other clinic on the corner of East Parkway and Central? You’re both dead to me. Fucking Eastgate — I’ve been a customer there since 2005 and that’s where my cats were fixed. But I’ll be moving on to another clinic whose doctors maybe can be a bit more compassionate next time.

Okay. I digress.

The good news is that Felix did eventually come around. It took a while, but he started digging around in his towel and licking himself again. And then he would drink water and eat treats. Just half an hour before, he had been completely unresponsive, limp, and drooling everywhere.

I think maybe he got heat exhaustion. Phil thinks it has something to do with carbon monoxide poisoning. Whatever it was seems to have subsided, as Felix is now staying with me for a little while, and he’s acting more or less normal. Right now he’s curled up underneath my bed, dreaming little ferret dreams about rooting through flowerpots and tormenting rabbits.

I know he’s not going to be around forever. But we got a reprieve this time.

Phew.

I miss Felix.

I have no idea how people do this with actual human children.

I swear, I make it through my digital clutter at an even slower pace than my physical clutter.

Here’s a (silent) video I found of Felix and Gonzo playing back in the spring of 2005. Gonzo’s been gone nearly a year now, believe it or not.

Man, oh man, I miss him a lot.

Just got a call from the vet — kudos to them, by the way, for calling with an update — that the kitties are now spayed (nine-minute surgery) and neutered (thirty-second surgery) and hopped up on kitty painkillers for recovery. I get to pick them up tomorrow after 10.

Felix, meanwhile, has the run of the place. He’s getting to eat outside the cage and sleep wherever he wants without fear of being pounced. Actually, that goes double for me. Uh, sans cage.

I’ve had to start feeding Felix in the cage (or hang around to watch him eat), because if I leave him unattended, the kitties — mostly Jack — move in and snarf up all his food. Because, you know, I never feed them and they are STARVING TO DEATH.

Here’s how it usually happens:

Decides he’d like ferret food for lunch.

Makes an obvious move.

Gets smacked away by human. Is full of resentment. Begins hatching sinister plan involving his supreme cuteness.

Begins to feign stretches.

Does an acrobatic roll.

Nonchalantly lands in a prime position.

“Hey, man, I really feel close to you … like a brother, you know?”

“I mean, we have a really solid relationship. You like to sneak into the cabinets to sleep, so do I. You like to make an unholy racket with plastic bags, so do I.”

“I just think that — hey, wait a sec. Are you wearing some kind of musk? Mmmm. Smells nice. I’m just gonna sit here for a minute and just smell you, ‘k? Just for … a …”

Snarf snarf snarf. *gets smacked away by human, again*

Damn you, Two Legs.

Project 365

[for Thursday, Aug. 2]

Project 365

Project 365