Stress and the City

I don't think I've ever really talked about stress and cat rescue before. I don't know what it is about stress, but I'm not one of those people that thrive on it.

The phone rang at 6 a.m. (yes, 6 in the MORNING) yesterday morning by a lady that adopted Sawyer, a darling, sweet little guy with a Grade 5 heart murmur. He had simply dropped over and died. No doubt it was a heart attack. She was crying and asked me to come over and pick up the body. That's a service I can't provide - not at 6 a.m.. It hurt to e-mail the former foster family that loved him dearly. The heart murmur was fully disclosed to the adopter, but I had hoped she would love him longer than the 2 weeks she had him. Such sad stuff.

The day continued with me picking up a shoe filled with cat pee and flinging it all down the front of me. How on earth did Bob pee in a shoe? I don't think I could pee in a shoe if I tried. I loved those shoes.

I must've been really focused on the tasks of the day, because I forgot to close my car window fully at the car wash and got a blast in the face with water. I took this as a sign to get myself together. What else could I do but laugh? It felt good to laugh and I could feel the stress ease away.

Over the past 48 hours we've had two prior adopters come forward and want to return 3 cats. One of the cats had been adopted over TWO YEARS AGO! The other gal wanted to return her two cats because they broke a vase and she can't handle the stress. Good Lord, did I really adopt to these people? A broken vase? She needs to spend a day at my house.

I'm not letting these people off the hook. I walk a fine line when I tell people to suck it up and deal with their responsibilities. I don't want the cats to suffer the consequences. But we're REALLY full right now, cats are dying at the shelter and I don't feel very nice about taking adopted cats back.

We have a couple of foster homes that need to move problem cats, and I have two brothers in my den. One of the brothers gave me a scary howl and chased me out of the room. *argh* I hate it when that happens! I'm sure it's a funny site to see....me running out of the room with pooper scooper in hand.

I was at the shelter yesterday and rescued a bunch of cats. It's a grim site over there, lemme tell ya. So many sweet young cats. I ended up taking too many. Somehow it'll all work out, but it sure didn't help the stress levels in my head. The newly empty cages on a Wednesday meant that quite a few died.

I went to bed last night worried about the garage sale. They're calling for rain on Saturday. Looks like we're going to have to cancel. At least my garage isn't full of crap like it was last year. David's happy about that. We gotta get the husband's happy, right?

Although this post sounds like I'm discouraged, I'm really not. Things are OK despite the stress. I'm going to take some extra doses of vitamin B complex and cautiously take some treats into my cranky feline houseguests in my den.

Yep...yep....it'll all work out....