Today was my pre-op appointment. They took my blood, my weight, and then did a quick sono. Dr. G said everything looked good so far, but they may find some polyps on Wednesday when I get my hysteroscopy. At first, I was disappointed that I had to go through with yet another hysteroscopy, but I quickly came to realize that I do not want to go through all of this and have some stupid, slimy polyp keep my baby (babies?) from sticking. It’s better to create a smooth landing spot for my embies.
I think the explanation he used in his serious and heavily accented voice was When we scrape the lining of uterus it will be refreshed.” I had to smother a giggle at that one. Sometimes his word choices are very interesting, probably because English is his second language. I’m glad that at least my uterus gets to feel refreshed, I wanted to say.
In other new, two days ago the husband called me to tell me he found a black cat and her seven kittens huddled by the side of our house. As soon as he came close, the mama cat shot off into the bushes like greased lightning. “Let me handle it when I get home,” I said quickly, since he has zero experience with cats (and also, if I’m 100% truthful, because I wanted to hold one). I was about to leave work a couple of hours later and he called to tell me animal control had already came by and taken away the kittens to the animal shelter. Immediately, I freaked out. “What about the mother cat!?! How old were the kittens?? They need to be with their mom!!”
He tried to calmly explain that the animal control officer said that the kittens were old enough to be separated and that it was better to take them before they got bigger and hard to trap. He tried to explain that the mother cat wasn’t around when he came by and would bring a live trap by later if we wanted to try and trap her. I say tried because I wouldn’t hear any of it. I was utterly distraught.
“This is too upsetting! I can’t talk about it on the phone…I’m coming home right now!” I cried before hanging up. My supervisor who I share an office with looked over at me with saucer eyes. “My husband took baby kittens away from their mom! I’m so mad right now!” She nodded, but slowly, so as not to further upset the crazy person.
When I got home, I was still flipping out over these damn kittens. I had to know exactly how big they were (five were normal-looking, two looked really skinny and weak) when the mother cat was last seen (hours before, when she had fled the scene) and if the animal control guy thought they were old enough to be weaned (he did). Still, I was not to be consoled. All I could picture was this poor mama cat, frantically looking for her kittens, meowing pitifully and dripping milk from her swollen teats. Yeah, dramatic, I know. But I really, really love animals. More than humans, sometimes.
I could feel her grief, her terror, her bewilderment at losing her babies. I could picture her looking everywhere and it broke my heart. I cried in my bed for at least an hour. Trying to further explain to my husband why I was behaving like a total loon, all I could choke out was “A…mama…should…have…her…babieeees!!!” I was in a crap mood the rest of the night and kept torturing myself with my imaginings.
Two days later, and I’m still upset about it. The guy said we could set up a live trap if we saw her hanging around, but to tell you the truth, I don’t know if we should even try. Capturing her would be truly traumatic as she is a completely feral cat. I set out food for her two nights in a row, and the food is always gone but she’s very elusive. I’m afraid that even if she gets to be with her kittens for a while longer, they’ll just put her down after the kittens are weaned. No one is going to adopt a scraggly black wild cat. And after all she’s been through, I don’t know if I can do that to her.
I know my husband did what was right, even though I would have liked to have left them be. We live really close to a busy road and eventually those kittens would have been old enough to wander onto it. Plus, it’s been so terribly hot they might not have survived this weekend. I feel bad about overreacting the way I did, but on the plus side, my husband is starting to catch on that while I might not cry about our situation as much as I used to, those emotions still have come out one way or another.
The moment I realized this, he was rubbing my back as I cried like a six-year-old over those damn kittens and their poor mama, and he said quietly “This really isn’t just about the kittens, is it?”
No, no I suppose it wasn’t…
Cystic And Optimistic 