52 Card Project 2021: Week 5: Kittens

[pegkerr]

Now that we are in the depths of winter, I am reminded of a friend who once remarked:

thirty days have September
April, June, and November
All the rest have thirty-one
Save for February alone
And that has 9,838.

I have been thinking longingly about how much I would love to have a cat. Fiona has been sending me adorable pictures of her roommate's cat, who is a big chunk of a Tuxedo With An Attitude.




Alas, I am deathly allergic. If I hold a cat and let it nuzzle against my neck, within twenty minutes, I'll have hives breaking out all over. We had a cat when I was growing up, and I had to be on a prescription antihistamine AND go to the doctor's office to get an allergy shot once a week for seven years. Fiona is as allergic as I am, and she copes with it by taking a strong anti-allergy medication. I suppose I could do that, too, but then I consider that after all, a cat could live fifteen years or more. I am not sure what lies ahead for Eric and me, but perhaps we will be getting a place together. He has an elderly cat already. So I hesitate, not sure I'm willing to commit that long to something that, after all, could make me deathly ill if the medicine doesn't work. Perhaps I could foster kittens?

Over the last week, when it's late at night, when I'm lying in bed and too lonely to sleep, I've been scrolling through YouTube kitten videos (check out The Dodo kitten channel). I don't know why they comfort me, but they do.

Kittens




Click here to read about the 52 card project and see the year's gallery.

Comments

[bowdlerized]

Hi Peg! Regarding cats, I have several friends who do a lot of cat rescue volunteering and their groups always need lots of fosters starting this time of year since there are so many kittens in the spring...even being able to take a single kitten for a couple weeks makes it more sociable/adoptable and can save lives. I have one good friend who doesn't want to make the commitment of having a cat for life, so she's a serial kitten fosterer.

Also, I've wondered sometimes reading your journal if Eric was still around since you first mentioned him a couple years ago...I am glad to read that he is. :)

[pegkerr]

Yes, Eric is definitely a part of my life and my future.

We talk on the phone every day, but we are not in the same quarantine bubble which is endlessly frustrating. He has a very frail mother for whom he is a caregiver, and his sons move each week between his house and his ex-wife's. Originally, we decided we'd stay in separate quarantine bubbles with our respective kids, so he was in a bubble with his kids and his mom, and I was in a bubble with Fiona and her housemates. I was seeing him once a week, masked and socially distanced.

As the pandemic worsened, however, and new variants emerged, we stopped seeing each other. I withdrew from Fiona's bubble, too, as someone in her bubble was pregnant (and now has a new baby). So I am quarantining alone.

Which really really sucks.

(Once, pre-pandemic, Eric and I were going out somewhere and he grabbed a sweater to loan me because I was chilly. Within five minutes, I was sneezing my head off in reaction to the cat dander on the sweater. We will have to figure things out if Jasmine is still alive when the pandemic is over--she's 16 and definitely old and creaky).

[bowdlerized]

Thanks for the update! The current situation sounds very difficult...I hope everyone is able to get vaccinated soon so you can see each other.

[pameladean]

I too am glad that Eric is still in the picture.

There are so-called hypoallergenic cats, but they seem to mostly be recommended for people with comparatively mild allergies. They are also all breed cats, which might not be what you want. Many of them are Siamese-adjacent, so very pretty and chatty.

P.

[pru]

When our 13 year old cat died in 2018, our hearts were not ready for a young cat. So I focused on older cats, and that is how Luna came into our lives. She was 7 and had the same dental problems that Mitzi had had in her later years, only, Luna had begun them as a kitten. Having already stared at end stage renal failure and near-toothlessness, I decided I could do it again. And she is a wonderful girl, and every time I think of her being in a shelter for years labelled unadoptable, I want to kick people.
Not all older cats come with health problems, but eventually, all older cats get expensive, so that's a thing.
I do not have the allergies you mention, but did want to make a note about adopting older cats being feasible vs fostering kittens.

[aome]

Not that I want you to risk hives, or anything worse but ... have you been around a cat lately? I ask only because my husband's allergy to cats (not as severe as yours, thankfully) went away. (Good thing, given that we've lived with between 4-7 cats since we moved in with my BIL/SIL.) I will say that my SIL is also allergic to cats, and gets regular allergy shots because she loves cats that much.

Are there other small fuzzy things you'd be less allergic to? Hamster? Bunny? Small dog?

*hugs*