Two September happy dances!

Since I started a lot of pieces in 2005 and 2006, it's time to reap the happy dances!

Here are two lovelies I finished during September:


Mirabilia - Maidens of Seasons I

and

Lavender & Lace - Angel of the Sea

I am currently working on Passione Ricamo Spring Fairy spirit (not close to finishing, but the piece that is - TW's Enchanter - was driving me crazy with all that confetti stitching - I've had enough of that on Maidens!)

Anyway I’ll put her aside for a month tonight – I am involved in two charity stitching projects and I want to dedicate October to charity only – and will see if I will pick her up after that. Just today I heard the news that a very dear friend is expecting her second baby in March, and I want to stitch her another baby guardian angel, and this time I want to have it done on time!

So it is a week...

that I said goodbye to my furry baby. I wasn't in the mood to write about it earlier, and I didn't even have the time, so here it goes.

Last week, when it seemed that our cat was getting better, I arranged for another rentgen to be done. That was on Wednesday evening and the results were not good - her lungs were filling up with water again. Yet then it still seemed that she would last at least through the weekend (we were scheduled to visit my grandma that weekend).

On Thursday, when I came home from a work gala dinner, I noticed immediatelly that things were bad... the cat was apatic, not moving, and breathing very hardly. I knew it was time... so all in tears I send a text message to our vet (who is my close friend) asking her to come the following day.

It was very tough for me. I did make it through, though, and I held the cat all the time, while the vet gave her a sleeping shot and then the lethal one. I then had the other cat sniff the body so that she would understand, and packed the body in a box (out vet knows better - she brought a box of kleenex and a transportation box for the body), and somehow I was even able to drive 200 miles to my grandma's house.

We buried the cat on my grandma's garden, where all the family pets are. I am actually in a way glad that it turned out like this, because otherwise we wouldn't have a decent place to bury the cat - here we live in an apartment house with no garden. I think the burial was harder for me than what I had to do the day before - I had to ask DH to take the body out of the box, because I just couldn't stand touching the cold and stiff thing that was all that was left from my beloved cat.

I miss her a lot. I don't cry the way I did the weekend after we received the diagnosis, when every look at the cat reminded me of what was to come. I just don't think about it and then it doesn't hurt. And when I do think about her, I try to remember only the good things... but of course, now that I am writing this, I can hardly see the screen through tears.

But I just have to get this out somehow.... you can't really talk about grieving a loss of an animal to people at work or to friends, because they wouldn't understand and they would think you are crazy, and DH just doesn't want to talk about it at all. Wonder if he'd be the same if it was his parents... or me.

Better don't want to know.

A happy dance!

Well actually this happy dance is from end of August, but I never got around to put it up here.

I finished Madonna of the Garden! Go me!

This is her:

Madonna of the Garden by Mirabilia

I really like the way she turned out, and the beading was well worth the effect. I still need to wash her and take her for framing - I am thinking a massive golden frame, no matting, to give her the look of old rennaisance paintings - then she will be a great addition to the style of my 12th century church building (did I ever mention that I did this piece as offering to church? Two years ago, when I was getting ready for my legal finals, and scared to death that I wouldn't pass them, I went to church, prayed hard and promised to finish the piece and give it to church if I made it through the finals. It took me some time, but now it is done! In the medieval ages, people would offer to build a church building, I am not that rich, but I put a lot of work in that to please the Lord, so I think that counts as well). Probably will take her to framer's next week, along with Angel of the Sea, which is now also finished (but no picture yet).

I am now working on the Seasonal Maidens, and they are mostly done as well, so wait for some more pictures!

Not all the days are sunny and bright...

After the euphoria of last week, things are much different today. On Thursday evening I realized that one of our beloved cats had breathing problems. Not something that you would notice easily, because felines never let you know they don’t feel well, but it was suspicious. We arranged for an appointment at our vet immediately for Friday morning. It wasn’t until the vet did an X-ray that she realized that our poor cat’s lungs were full of water. She sent us immediately to a specialized veterinary clinic, where they extracted the water and performed all kinds of tests to see what was wrong.

Turns out our kitty has FIP, which is an uncurable feline illness, always fatal. It actually is a mutation of a common feline virus, that most cats have been exposed to, only some end up with the virus taking an ugly turn in their bodies. The form our kitty has is likely to kill her within 2-4 weeks from the start – so by the judgement of the vet in the clinic it would have been wise to put her to sleep right on Friday evening when we picked her up from the clinic.

No way I could have done that – I needed to say my goodbye to the cat, because my furry babies are just my babies, and I love them dearly. So we took DCat home with the anticipation that on the following day, there would be one last trip to the vet clinic.

Well our cat is a real fighter! If we didn’t know she was dying, I’d say she was getting better! She is eating well (something the vet said she wouldn’t do at all), she was even begging scraps of meat as I was cooking yesterday! She of course can’t perform physically straining things, but she will jump on the sofa to be with us, or run for the sound of the food bowl being filled up. I am proud of her.

I spent Friday and Saturday crying my eyes out, can’t really say I am fine today, but at least better. I don’t know how many days more we have, and since there is no hope for a permanent cure, we will not have the cat be operated again (it is likely that her lungs will fill up with water again and that will kill her), buying her a couple more days. Once her health will start failing her again, we will have her put to sleep. Our vet is willing to do that at our home, so it will be peaceful for her.... just like laying down for a long, eternal sleep.

You will always be in our hearts, Miriam...