Post #116 – The mystery of Sasha’s death has been solved…

I called the OSU Pathology department back, and, apparently, they had the wrong fax number for the vet. They faxed the autopsy report on Sasha, my cat, while I was at the vet with Samantha (Sasha’s daughter). But knowing what happened doesn’t make me feel much better. Sasha choked on one of her own HAIR BALLS! Apparently, she had an allergic reaction to something, which made her esophagus swell, so she couldn’t throw up the hairball. And she was a very furry cat, and the vet said it was a rather large lump of fur.

It just breaks my heart knowing how she must’ve suffered in the end. But she’s at peace now, and the vet is going to test Samantha for allergies.  It could’ve been an allergy to dog fur since Sasha was known to chew on clumps of Raven fur, but I fear it might be an allergy to peanuts. Charlie left a can of peanuts on the end table by his recliner in the family room, and the lid was off when he got home that day, and there were a couple of peanuts on the floor. They didn’t test for allergies during the autopsy, but anything’s possible.

Regardless of the exact cause of her death, Sasha was a very sweet cat, and she often surprised me. One day, Raven wandered into our walk-in closet while I was working in my office, and I didn’t realize it. I came out of the office and shut the closet door to keep the cats out of there because they would go in there and knock things off the shelf, and Sasha loved to get her white fur all over my black clothing.

A little while later after I’d shut the closet door, I was sitting on the bed folding clothes. I had the TV on, so I didn’t hear Raven whining from within the closet, but Sasha heard her. And, apparently, I hadn’t shut the door all the way because Sasha wandered over to the door, listened for a second then pushed the door open with her head and out came Raven! Charlie walked in just as Sasha knocked the door open, and he started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I asked because all I’d seen was Raven bounding toward me.

“Sasha, she saved Raven from the closet. You must’ve penned her up in there.”

“What a good girl, Sasha,” I said smiling, and she looked at me, then looked at Raven for a second then hissed at her as if to say – I don’t like you THAT MUCH…LOL

Since Raven is black, she blends into the shadows if the closet light isn’t on, and that’s not the first time I’ve accidentally shut her up in there – just the first time that Sasha had been the one to rescue her.

Sasha was also a good mouser, definitely brought me quite a few corpses during her 18 months on this earth. She liked having her belly rubbed, which is so unlike most cats. She would lie on her back with all four legs drawn back, and if you didn’t touch her, she’d bat a big furry paw at you until you just couldn’t resist – and you’d end up petting her and rubbing that matted carpet of fur on her tummy.

I had Sasha cremated, and I’ll be picking up her urn next week. It’ll go on the mantel over the fireplace next to Bart and Maggie’s urns – everyone’s photos over their ashes. Some people might think it’s morbid, but it makes me feel like they’re still part of the family – which they most certainly are.

So, goodnight and goodbye my dear Sasha. There are no words for how much you will be missed…there will never be one like you…:)

Over and out from fracked up central…

TenaciousBITCH and her band of truth-spouting hippies

Post #115 -She’s NOT the daughter of an Iranian Prince…

I realize people may be getting tired of hearing about my dead cat, but…

When we dropped Sasha off to get autopsied, they told us to contact the pathology department at Ohio State in a couple of days to see if they had found the cause of death right off, or if they’d had to do testing before a definitive cause of her demise could be determined. In which case, we wouldn’t know until the final report comes out in 3-4 weeks.

However, when I called earlier today, I was told they couldn’t give me any information over the phone!  What the hell?!! She was a CAT, for heaven’s sake, not the daughter of an Iranian PRINCE…or some neighbor’s kid. She was 1/2 Maine Coon, but she wasn’t a show cat. She was a stray 18 months ago. She wasn’t a descendant of Ronald Reagan’s dog – or a radioactive squirrel that survived CHERNOBYL just your ordinary – loved to eat mice/chase dog fur/play with the feather duster, kind of cat. So, HIPPA, the International Laws of NATO, and/ or the guidelines/restrictions of the World Health Organization do not apply.

I was told the pathologist could tell me, but he wasn’t there. And I was so angry, I didn’t think to leave a message for said pathologist/wizard/keeper of the Book of the DEAD or whomever has the classified intel/clearance to discuss why my cat was fine one minute and croaked the next…

So, the woman I spoke to in the Pathological Department at OSU said they’d faxed a preliminary report to Dr. Blair, our vet, but the vet’s office didn’t have any record of the report. AWESOME.  Tina, the vet’s admin assistant was going to check around to see if it had landed in the wrong inbox, but – nope. They simply don’t have it.

I’m worried about Samantha (Sasha’s daughter) and Raven, our dog – maybe getting into whatever killed Sasha. Plus, Sasha was 18 months old. Maybe, it was something genetic that Samantha could be tested for, and she’s got an appointment with our vet, tomorrow, which is why I’d REALLY like to know today what killed my beautiful baby feline – if there was any preliminary findings that point toward a particular medical condition or accidental ingestion of some sort of poison/bad meat/bad air – or did she sneak off to a rave and re-up on some bad Ecstasy? Or something more normal and cat-like a.k.a. having a seizure/heart attack/aneurism, etc., because she certainly didn’t die of old age…

I’ll keep everyone POSTED as this veterinary nightmare of redirection, reanimation and red tape unfolds…

Over and out from fracked up central…

KENNEDY/TENACIOUS BITCH and her band of truth-spouting hippies…

___

 

Post #114 – My beloved Sasha is gone…

I was going to write another post about another man who wronged me, but I’m afraid a death in the family has usurped that rather juicy tome. And HEAR me, UNIVERSE, it’s time for death to take a frickin’ holiday!! Since 2004, we’ve lost my Aunt Lily, Max’s Dad Ashe (for the 411 on him – ck out:  http://tenaciousbitch.com/2012/09/07/post-75-about-ashes-logic/  ) both my parents, our dog, Maggie, suddenly in ’09, my husband’s grandparents, our dog, Bart, and now SASHA my cat, who was half Maine Coon and half dog (at least that’s how she acted…:)).

I mentioned Sasha recently in this rather amusing post http://tenaciousbitch.com/2013/09/03/post-111-no-judging-my-transsexual-cat/ )….

Sasha, queen of cats, whose passing left an un-healable gash in my heart

Yes, I know – un-healable is NOT a word. But it is today, dammit!  I’m completely devastated by her death.  She’s only 18 months old. She was in the kitchen watching me make spaghetti/playing around, chasing a fly- didn’t act ill at all, and an hour later, I found her lifeless corpse in Nana’s room. I kept staring at her, thinking she couldn’t possibly be dead. She’s just a baby!

I know it’s different with animals, but her life had just began. And it’s just NOT FAIR. Why her? Why not a couple pedophiles, or the poor black stray who terrorizes Samantha, hissing at the windows all the time. It would be a blessing if that one died. She’s suffering so.

The crazy drunk next door moved and left her cat behind! She’s at least 12 years old and blind in one eye. I’d take her in, but she was so badly neglected before the woman moved, I’m afraid of what she might give my cats/dog – or the way she might treat them. She’s a mean little thing.

And the strange thing is – I dreamed it. I’d forgotten all about it, but after the shock started to wear off, I remember waking up and being sickened by the sight of Sasha lying exactly where I found her. Only in the dream, she wasn’t dead. She was really sick. Shit – I hope that dream wasn’t supposed to be a warning, and I missed it. But if she had a seizure or a heart attack or something, she hadn’t been lying there for long. And if she found one of Nana’s pills, she probably wouldn’t have made it to the vet. Nana was really bad about dropping her meds. I vacuumed obsessively in there, but I found 2 in her chair right after she moved into the nursing home.

I just totally feel like I’ve had the wind knocked out of my life. I know she’s just a cat, but she and Samantha are the little girls I could never have. And Sasha was very different from most cats, very laid back. She was a stray. And she FOUND me. She saw me from across the street and came running up on our porch like she knew I would rescue her – like someone told her I was the one, and she kept coming back for weeks before I talked Charlie into letting me keep her because he allegedly doesn’t like cats.

But guess who was out back on the deck, chain smoking and sobbing after I told him about Sasha? Definitely a far cry from his behavior in this post: http://tenaciousbitch.com/2012/05/11/post-no-60-my-confession/  – and when she first dawned our doorstep, Charlie would try to shoo her off the porch, but she wouldn’t budge.

Obviously, she wasn’t skittish like most cats. She wasn’t afraid of much – not dogs, not loud people or loud music, not other cats – or thunderstorms – nothing really. The only things that bothered her were mechanical like the sound of the garage door or the squeaky springs on the oven door. It’s almost like since she lived in the wild for the first three months of her life – not much in nature could intimidate her. But maybe I’m reading too much into her personality.

I’ve cried so much, my head hurts, and my tear ducts must surely be empty. And this is the cat, of course, whose babies I delivered, and we still have Samantha, her 15-month old who is completely lost without Mommy. She’s been trolling the house aimlessly for hours since Sasha died.

We took Sasha to OSU to be autopsied. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t bother with something like that, but I want to know if she got into anything that maybe would be a danger to Raven (our black lab) or Samantha. And it only cost $100, which I didn’t think was bad, but we won’t get the report for THREE or FOUR weeks. Charlie did a pretty thorough search of the garage and couldn’t find any antifreeze leaking or anything toxic since Sasha had been in the garage this morning. She constantly dashes in there when you open the door to go to the freezer or something, and sometimes you don’t see her rush by. Occasionally, I actually put her in the garage on purpose when I’m eating breakfast because she drives me bonkers trying to jump/climb/scale the big screened TV the minute I sit down to eat. I really didn’t think there was anything in there that could hurt her.

But she never misbehaved when Charlie and I are eating (little dickens) only when it was just me. Samantha never does any of that, and she’s more prone to chew on things, so I never put her in the garage intentionally. So if Sasha did get into something in the garage, hopefully, Samantha was not exposed.

Even though I have to wait three weeks for the official report, I can call the pathologist in a couple of days to see if he found anything obvious like an aneurism or a heart attack. I thought maybe it might’ve been some old d-Con that we had set out awhile ago before we had the cats, but Charlie said that probably wouldn’t have killed her because she would’ve thrown it up, but we’ll see what the autopsy reveals.

                                                                             See? LITTLE DICKENS…:)

I miss her so much already! So, when I recover from the latest chink in my armor, I’ll be back to lambasting bad men, the universe and the like…just thought I’d share.

Over and out from fracked up/off the hook/home of the Hotel California of crazy trains…

Tenacious BITCH and her band of truth-spouting hippies…

Yes, I am, in fact – LOOKING FOR CRAZY…:)

I HAVE A NEW BLOG. Its purpose is to gather crazy-assed narratives, post them on WP, and eventually incorporate 4 or 5 of them into a collection/book of bizarro stories called Tales from the Lunatic Lounge, which I am going to self-publish.

Why? Well, because I realized I have way too many stories of OH, MY, GOD that did NOT just happen kind of experiences during my 40+ years of surviving this bewildering thing we call life. And I assume I’m not the only one who has had a number of too flipping weird – not to be true events that have occurred in his/her life, and I thought it would be interesting to create a space to share these yarns of madness for public perusal.

NOTE: The deadline to submit stories for the book is NOVEMBER 15, 2013.

That said, if you’re interested in contributing a CRAZY tome or two, check out the new digs at:

http://lunaticslounge.wordpress.com/submission-guidelinesrulesterms-for-this-blog/

ENJOY, and I look forward to hearing from you! 🙂

THANKS for reading my blog!

TENACIOUS Bitch…and company

TB/KS

POST #112 – Death by CHOCOLATE of the sad variety…

My cousin’s birthday was yesterday. I made her a cake from scratch. Why? Well, I’m one of those freaks who prefers to eat food that I can identify or at least pronounce as opposed to a cake with items like these:

Thiamine Mononitrate,Propylene Glycol Mono- and Diesters Of Fats, Mono and Diglycerides, Dextrose, Leavening (Sodium Bicarbonate, Dicalcium Phosphate, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Monocalcium Phosphate. Modified Food Starch, Wheat Starch, Polyglycerol Esters Of Fatty Acids, Salt, Cellulose Gum, Xanthan Gum, Maltodextrin.

I have no clue what most of those things are, but suffice to say, the bulk of said components are probably chemicals. And…ahem, those are only SOME of the ingredients in the Duncan Hines chocolate cake mix, which my grandmother always used as the basis of her infamous Coca-Cola cake. However, my cake contained:

Whole wheat flour, cake flour, brown rice flour, eggs, sugar, Splenda (a by-product of sugar, so it is natural even if it’s processed), organic sugar, brown sugar, cocoa, vanilla extract, buttermilk, 1/2 a cup of Coca-Cola, butter, baking soda, a dash of salt, baking powder, and the frosting was comprised of 4 oz. of unsweetened chocolate (100% Cacao, no less, so this fine dessert has tons of fiber) confectioner’s sugar, butter, a little more Coke, a slurp of milk and a dash of vanilla.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I LOVED Nana’s Coca-Cola cake, which is why I began making them a few years ago.  And there’s NOTHING wrong with making a cake from a cardboard box. But to me, it makes it all the more special if you make a cake or an entree from all natural – or mostly natural ingredients.

Knowing this cake had all that fiber and such helps ease my guilt for consuming carb-laden foods because all the fiber helps to dilute the negative effects of SUGAR on one’s biology. And though excessive sugar is bad for anyone – a piece of cake now and then won’t kill you. Additionally, REAL sugar, and real butter and such aren’t nearly as bad for your liver and other organs as all the concocted ingredients in cake mixes.

But again, no judgement intended for anyone who makes brownies/cakes/cookies, etc., from a box/can. I simply TRY to craft/whip up homemade, organic yummies.

Aside from that, cooking from scratch is a dying art, and if a few of us don’t endeavor to cook and bake from organic foods – some day, maybe, no one will know HOW to blend flour, sugar, et. al into CAKE, and, maybe, all food sources might end up akin to MREs. You know, that food stuff that soldier eat in the trenches? Yeah, some day we could be eating a gooey mess plopped out of a plastic pouch that’s allegedly roast beef and mashed potatoes while longing for home-cooked food, but we’ve never actually baked/broiled cow meat and cut up/boiled and mashed up spuds, so we wouldn’t even know where to start. Sad thought, isn’t it?

And last but not least, sadly, according to several books/studies I’ve read lately, sugar and whatever crap is infiltrating prepared foods seem to be the prevalent suspect contributing to the rising rates of various cancers. In particular, Jorge Cruise’s 100 Diet book wags a rather angry index finger at sugar and processed foods in regard to the underlying cause of several types of cancer.

Plus, three years ago, when I decided to attempt to cook/bake/fry/saute, etc., as many organic meals as possible, I started taking all those old recipes and eliminated prepared foods, and revised them/creating as many organic recipes as possible. Despite the extra work, I lost 11 pounds by eating organic and fresh foods for almost every meal for two weeks in June of 2010. And I had a steak and a baked potato one night with organic chocolate ice cream for dessert and spaghetti another night. Not homemade noodles, but you get the idea.

Sooooooooooooooooooo, that said, after spending all that time making this much-blabbed about birthday cake, it was really delicious…and oh, so pretty…

However, though she LOVED the cake, this is the way it looked upon arrival…

And she sent a text with the photo that said: Cake demolished, but it TASTES GREAT! 🙂

I overnighted it to her since I wasn’t able to make the 300-mile trip for her birthday bash this past weekend, but the U.S. Mail tried their best to decimate it. No surprise there… I’ve sent cookies and brownies through the mail previously, but this was the first time entrusting a cake to the postal service. I double-boxed it, but that wasn’t enough, obviously. I asked Nana how she’d wrapped up the Coca-Cola cake she sent me about 15 years ago for my birthday, but she couldn’t remember. Hers arrived in PRISTINE condition. However, after my cousin called to thank me for the gift and to tell me the cake was delicious – even though it was rather desecrated, it dawned on me that THREE little words could’ve saved my beloved Coca-Cola and Chocolate Confection:

THIS END UP…

Yeah, I wrote FRAGILE all over the box in red, but I didn’t think about the negative impact of gravity, which my husband reminded me of – sigh…looks like it toppled over and laid upside down for AWHILE. Oh, well, I had included a little tub of extra frosting (the little thingy with the red lid in the photo) in case some of it got stuck to the lid (or all as the case may be).  But she decided to scoop up the lumps of cake, slather them with frosting, then douse them with whipped cream. Apparently, t’was most delectable that way…:)

And it is, after all, the THOUGHT that counts…:)

PEACE OUT from the hapless kitchen of TENACIOUS BITCH and company…

© Tenacious Bitch 2013

Post #111 – No judging my transsexual cat…

For the last couple weeks, my Mama cat, Sasha (pictured below), decided that her daughter Samantha had become a wicked adolescent (or something, who knows), and every time poor little Samantha sashayed into the room, Sasha would hiss and bat at Samantha with her very swift and furry paw, which, thankfully, is a mitt sans CLAWS, so Sasha didn’t draw blood or anything.

Sasha, the mama cat, lounging on my bed.

And as far as I could see, Samantha had done nothing to warrant her mother’s wrath…

Here’s Samantha, pretty as you please after she trashed my closet a couple of months ago…:), the little dickens.

We thought the ruckus was due to the fact that Sasha was spayed shortly after Samantha and her brothers/sisters were born, but Samantha has not yet had the dreaded hysterectomy, which one of my friends on Facebook mentioned. I hadn’t scheduled Samantha’s official snipping before now because we were so broke when Nana was still living with us. And quite honestly, after she moved back to Florida (see http://tenaciousbitch.com/2013/06/28/still-unhappy-but-there-is-a-dog-named-sue/ ), I kind of forgot about it.

I called the Vet this morning, and Samantha has an appointment for a checkup/booster on her immunizations this coming Friday, and then, she’ll be going in for surgery to remove all that pesky female plumbing next Thursday.

HOWEVER…finally, thank HEAVENS, Sasha and Samantha seemed to have patched things up – because this is how I found them when I got up this morning…

Sasha and Samantha all curled up on the couch.

Oddly enough, this was AFTER Samantha went into heat Saturday night. Weird, huh? Yeah, she started YOWLING and hiking her haunches up in the air late Saturday afternoon. She’s a little calmer now but not much.

So, then, yesterday, my son, Max, was making his breakfast. I was upstairs cleaning when he heard me tearing around after Sasha, completely panicked, shouting, “Oh, my God, Sasha! Come back here! Give me that!”

“What’s wrong?” Max asked, from the kitchen, spatula in hand, as I chased after Sasha who bounced down the steps like a calico basketball.

According to Max, I sputtered, “She’s got a penis!”

“What?” He asked, rather confused. He sauntered back in the kitchen, flipped his omelet, then followed me into the dining room where Sasha had stopped right in front of the Grandfather clock, which began CHIMING loudly – 11 times, since it was 11 AM. “She’s got a what?”

“She’s got a penis!” I allegedly shouted over the loud GONGING of the clock. Finally, I kneeled down on the floor beside Sasha, and Max watched, ever-so-puzzled, while I wrestled something out of Sasha’s mouth. “Oh, thank God,” I said with a sigh. “It was just a tag.”

“What’d you think she had?”

“A peanut.”

His brow furrowed, a little befuddled. “Well, that wouldn’t kill her. Was she choking on it?”

“No, not a Planter’s Peanut that you eat,” I said, shaking my head.

White Styrofoam PEANUTS in my trash

“A packing peanut. I bought a book that was packed to the brim with them last week. I hate those damned things. They get everywhere. I was consolidating all the trash from upstairs into a plastic bag to carry outside when some of the packing peanuts fell on the floor in the hallway, and Sasha ran off with something white, couldn’t tell what.”

“Oh, okay,” Max said, laughing. “I thought you said, she had a penis!”

We both burst out laughing. “Nope, just this…” I said, holding up the tag.

Okay, so maybe Sasha cat isn’t REALLY transsexual, but the fact that Sasha and Samantha are now all cozy after Samantha went into heat does make ya wonder, does it not?

Over and out from fracked up central…

Tenacious BITCH and her band of truth-spouting hippies

© Tenacious Bitch 2013