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Update from Sofia 10 Years On

It’s been 10 years since I last posted! Wow – where does the time go? Well, Mom’s been busy and she’s my secretary so it’s been some slow going. Anyway, a lot has changed in my life since December of 2015, when I was finishing my first year in my new home with Mom in fabulous West Hollywood. Above pic, by the way, is of me leading Mom down a nice woodsy path in Watkins Glen, New York. So, yes, quite a different place from Los Angeles.

I think where I last left off, things were going well with Rhea (one of the “strange squirrels” who I later learned were called CATS), and the other strange squirrel, Katusha, was still learning to warm up to me. Eventually, Katusha and I did learn to like each other and even grow to be top of sofa buddies. Mom was quite happy when we began sharing the most coveted place in the apartment together.

Anyway, we spent about two more years in our WeHo abode. Mom’s aunt was sick and Grandpa was having a hard time dealing with it all himself and Mom found herself driving back and forth between LA and Phoenix far too often. I was spending practically every other weekend in Posh Pet Care, which I liked because I had a cute boyfriend there, another chiweenie named Bruno! But Mom got tired of driving through the desert, and of driving in crazy LA, and she was also a little tired of the noise in WeHo and of apartment living in general, and the houses, she said, were just not in our budget. So, she got a job lead through a friend at work, and, off the four of us moved to Phoenix.

At first we lived in a rented condo in a part of North Phoenix called Deer Valley, which I liked because there were lots of small dogs there, like me. It was really fun walking around the complex to chat with all my friends, and going to see Grandpa, whose house was just down at the next intersection. But then we bought a house all the way down in a place called Sun Lakes, way south of Phoenix. It was kind of out in the boondocks, and Mom called it the desert boondocks house. But it was great because it was quiet and we had lots of space and there were five big lakes and we took lots of walks around them.

That’s a pic of me and my new sis, Irina – more about that nutter in a sec – walking around one of the lakes. The lakes contained so many great scents – and I am a scent-hound so it was a perfect place for me! Also, duck poop was fab, although Mom always stopped me when she saw me munching on some. Mom loved the lakes because, she said, they were beautiful, but hot in the summer. I never noticed hot.

Anyway, other wonderful thing about our Sun Lakes home was the huge backyard! We could run and run and run around it, and sometimes there were cottontail rabbits and gophers, and lots and lots of birds and lizards. It was a cornucopia of critters out there!

Here I am smelling a newly dug gopher hole. We called him Gunny! We never did find him. But we knew he was there from the smells and the holes he dug. Mom called it the Caddyshack backyard, whatever that means.

But some bad things happened in Sun Lakes. First, Rhea got sick. Mom found a bump on her head that wouldn’t go away. She took her to the vet and it ended up being cancer. Rhea had stereotactic radiotherapy and for a little while got better. But then, early one morning, Rhea was bumping all around. She couldn’t walk straight and she was trying to climb the stairs and was so woozy I was afraid she’d fall down them. I ran to get Mom. She was not happy about being woken up and she yelled at me and told me to hold my pee. I said, no, I don’t have to go to the bathroom! And I kept licking her face and pawing at her arm. Finally, she got up and stomped out to the patio door to open it when Rhea came bumping up, walking sideways, her head lopsided. “Oh no!” Mom cried. Mom took her to the radiation vet and when she came home she did not have Rhea with her. Mom was so sad for a long time. And so was I. Rhea had become my bestie. Katusha and I had become friends by then, but Rhea let me play with her in a way that Katusha would not. Rhea let me bop her in the face with my nose; Katusha let me sit next to her on the couch and bed but there was no touching.

Mom used to let Rhea go outside in a harness and play on the rock sculpture. She’s out there, Sofia, she would tell me. But we just can’t see her anymore. Her spirit is there. I kind of understood. For a long time, I sat at the patio door, waiting anyway.

Mom knew I was depressed over Rhea, so she decided to bring a new companion into the house. She didn’t want another cat because it took me so long to learn to get on with Rhea and Katusha. So, she went to the shelter she volunteered at to adopt this little brown and white chiweenie whom she said looked just like me. But that dog, Lucy, was adopted right before we got there. So, the adoption specialists said since I was there to meet a new friend, Mom should have me try out some other dogs. So, I waited in a big play area while they brought several dogs by to play with me. One of them was a crazy jumper and Mom worried he would jump the fence in no time, one was way too high-strung and wouldn’t stop barking and then whining, and one actually had the nerve to growl at me when I made a stink about him warming up to Mom too quickly. We were about to go home empty-handed when they brought this big coyote-looking dog in, who’d just arrived at the shelter from rural northern Arizona. She looked scary but seemed pretty cool. She sniffed at me, but didn’t get too crazy, and when she sniffed at Mom and I made it known she was mine, this dog just acted like no biggie, little dude, and trotted away to run about the field. The adoption lady said, hmmm, they’re tolerating each other anyway. Since coyote lady had not reaction to the cats in the cattery, we decided to do a slumber party.

For the whole weekend all this dog did was sit in a corner. Mom introduced her to Katusha and she carefully went to sniff her and Kat turned herself into a porcupine and hissed and the dog whimpered away. That was a good reaction, the trainer said. So, Mom went back to the shelter and signed the adoption papers. They had named the dog Irii, after some character on Game of Thrones but Mom didn’t like the name so changed it slightly to that of a ballerina she liked, Irina.

Well, the second Irina got home after the official adoption, it’s like she knew something was different. She knew she was being brought to stay this time and she felt the need to assert herself. Instead of going to the corner she curled up in all weekend, she ran to the kitchen and stole the Beyond Beef taco Mom had brought home to have for dinner. After chowing that down in one swallow, she ran to the master bedroom where Katusha was and practically banged down the door. When Katusha hissed from the other side, Irina barked and jumped at the door. Poor Mom. Long story short, we went through three trainers, two of whom told Mom to give her back to the shelter; she was too much for Mom. But Mom just couldn’t. She’d made a commitment and had to make it work. It was mainly Katusha who wasn’t having any of Irina because Irina just wanted her so badly to like her so they could play. By that time I knew Katusha and knew it wasn’t personal; she just didn’t like being touched by a big-snouted dog. My annoyance with Irina was that sometimes she tried to take away Mom’s attention from me. I’d be sitting next to Mom on the sofa and Irina would come up and want Mom to pet her. I’d growl, but so low that Mom didn’t notice it. But Irina did. She treated me with more respect than Katusha. She didn’t persist; she walked away with her head down. Well… either it was respect or she played Mom well, walking away and acting all hurt so Mom would tell me to be nice and go after her to give her a cuddle. Sofia be nice; she’s new and insecure, we have to make her welcome, poor thing! Irina would give me a smirk. But then Mom would cuddle her, then cuddle me, then go back and forth insisting that she loved all of her kids equally.

Eventually, Irina and I both realized that Mom was true to her word and loved us all. No one was getting left out. It look Katusha a little while longer than me to make friends with Irina, but eventually she did. Really, it happened during the pandemic, when Mom was home all day and spent all day with us. She separated Kat and Irina forever, but one day, Kat walked right out of the bedroom and climbed up her cat tree right in front of Irina and sat on the top rung. Irina sat down below and gazed up at her like she was the most gifted creature in the world to be able to climb up that tree.

Eventually, Irina learned to respect Kat’s boundaries. And we became a happy family. But our time as a happy family was cut far too short.

Because then, one day, Katusha would not eat or drink. She just sat in the cupboard and would not come out. Mom tried to feed her her favorite bonito flakes but Kat refused. Mom took her to the vet and they ran a bunch of tests and first came back with silly diagnoses like thyroid disorder and allergies. But eventually, they found it was stomach cancer. It was too late by that time to do much. So, Mom had Kat undergo steroid treatment that would alleviate her pain for a while. And then when Kat wouldn’t get up, Mom wrapped her in a blanket and took her to the vet, and, just like Rhea, Mom came home alone.

For weeks afterward, Irina would sit at the cupboard and wait for Kat to come out.

Like she told me of Rhea, Mom told Irina Kat was outside in the ether, in the air. Maybe one of the hummingbirds who came around was her in spirit, like the lizards who crawled up the front stained glass window during summer, whom Rhea always watched with fascination. We had to listen and watch very carefully for the spirits to make their presence known. But Irina wouldn’t listen to Mom. She stayed at that cupboard for ages. If we hadn’t moved to another house in another city, she’d probably still be there, waiting.

Mom’s law job never returned to normal after the pandemic ended. One of her friends from New York City back in the day called her and told her of a job at his new firm, in a place called Rochester, New York, which was in the same state they’d worked in together before, but was in a different part of the state. Mom told Jonathan she had barking dogs now, one of them quite big and would not fit into a shoebox apartment. I knew she was talking about Irina, because she was the “big” one, but I couldn’t live in shoebox apartment either. She always told us Rhea was her New York cat which meant Rhea lived in a shoebox? How? Anyway, Jonathan said no, Rochester’s not New York City, you can buy a house here. It’s very livable, and there are vegan restaurants, he assured her.

Anyway, Grandpa was now settled in his living facility and his sister, Mom’s aunt, had passed on, so Mom was no longer really needed in Phoenix like she had been before. She put us in boarding and took a trip to this Rochester place. When she came home she told us it was strikingly different from Phoenix – the most different place we could imagine! The houses were smaller and older and quaint and the city was very arty and the people were a lot more liberal! We didn’t really know what it all meant but she was excited so we were too.

So, we sold the big house with the big backyard near the lakes and booked it cross-country.

Mom was too scared to drive out there since there was a big snowstorm and she wasn’t used to driving in snow, so she sent us in a van with a company called Happy Tails while she flew.

I was so scared. Irina gets along with humans better than I do. I’m still generally timid, although I’ve gotten better since our days in West Hollywood. We stopped at a lot of places along the route and it took a while. I was so happy when we drove up to a little house and Mom came out!

Before Mom could buy a house we rented one from Mom’s real estate agent, Joe. We lived in his house in a placed with a complicated-sounding name, Irondequoit. Well, it had a HUGE backyard – even bigger than in Phoenix! And it was all covered in snow when we arrived, and it stayed that way for weeks! We had so much fun galloping around in all that snow. Mom was surprised since, one time when we visited the Grand Canyon in May and there was still a bit of snow, I was scared of it. But that was before Irina came to live with us. Irina told me she’d lived in snow in Northern Arizona and it was super fun. There were all kinds of scents and treats to be uncovered! And she was right!

We had a blast! But then, Mom found a house to buy in the city. She didn’t like living out in the suburbs, especially since she wasn’t used to driving on freeways in icy conditions. She wanted to be able to drive on smaller streets and sometimes take an Uber. And she wanted to be close to the museums and galleries and fun things. So we moved into a little house in the city.

This house is fun. It’s been around for a really long time and is creaky and has an attic and a basement and a side door. Mom calls it our antique doll house. Irina and I call it the up and down house because we’re always running up or down stairs. Up to go inside, up to go to the bedroom for night, down to the kitchen to eat, down to go to the backyard, down again to help Mom with laundry. It’s a fun house and we get a different kind of exercise than with the big flat house in Phoenix!

The backyard is a lot smaller than in Phoenix or Irondequoit. But it’s okay. We just run around and around it to get our exercise! And it has interesting smells all the same – lots and lots and lots of squirrels! And birds, all kinds of birds. And rabbits! And sometimes even other creatures who dig holes. Our neighbor had an encounter with a raccoon which Mom hopes we don’t ever have. But when we go walking sometimes, we can see a deer far off!

There’s a little community garden to visit when we go out on walks.

And we have lakes around too.

The one above is in Cobbs Hill.

Sometimes we take a road trip and go down to bigger lakes, called The Finger Lakes.

It’s very very different. But home nonetheless! It’s colder for sure. And Mom’s and my joints are a little achy in winter. But snow is, as I said, super fun, and summer is nice and warm and we spend a lot time sitting on the back patio or on the porch when it’s warm out. We have lots of nice neighbors who say hi to us. Grandma took this pic of us with Mom on the porch. Mom travels a lot now to faraway places like Africa and Alaska to take photos of big animals. When she does, Grandma comes to stay with us. It’s great when she stays because she gives us lots of treats!

I’ve lived in lots of places now and they have all been really different. Life is fun!

That’s all for now. Mom’s law job here keeps her very busy but I will try hard to get her to write more often!

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Happy New Year 2023 From Rochester, NY!

Happy 2023, Everyone!

It’s been ridiculously long since I last posted.

2022 was a rather big year for me. I sold my house in Arizona and moved cross-country with my dogs back to New York. But not the City this time; I moved to Rochester, up in Western New York. I was offered a job as an appellate attorney in the Monroe County Public Defender’s office. This is very similar to my old job in New York City. I’d thought often of moving back to NYC since leaving it in 2011, but since living in LA and Phoenix where I became accustomed to space and became mom to two dogs – one rather large – it just didn’t seem like I could fit back into my old lifestyle in my tiny Manhattan apartment very easily. So, when several friends moved to Rochester, I came to visit and fell in love with its charm, its history, its proximity to beautiful nature, and its affordability. Plus, for a small city, it has a pretty thriving arts scene. There are many museums and art galleries – this one is a favorite, a small arthouse film theater, two playhouses, a gorgeous music hall with a world-class philharmonic orchestra, a lovely ballet company, and an African-based modern dance one. It just seemed like a good fit.

So in January 2022 Sofia, Irina, and I moved, right after a pretty big snowstorm dumped quite a bit of snow in the area no less – hadn’t seen any real snow in 10 years, so that was an experience! I bought a sweet colonial in historical Swillburg, and spent much of the year fixing it up, acclimating myself back to my job as a criminal appeals attorney, and exploring my new home. I visited Toronto (about 2.5 hours away by car), my old neighborhood in NYC (about 5.5 hours by car, 7 by train), and took multiple trips to various beach parks on Lake Ontario and in the beautiful Finger Lakes region (about 45 minutes to a couple hours away depending on which lake you visit). The Finger Lakes soon became one of my favorite summer destinations, with gorgeous lake views, many, many wineries, and a couple of farm sanctuaries, including a new one, which made its own cross-country trek this year from California. At top is a pic is of me at Dr. Konstantin Frank winery on Keuka Lake.

I am loving my new area, and my new/old job. I am lucky to have a great boss that understands that writing briefs is an art form, which makes me feel fulfilled in my day job, something I haven’t experienced in a very long time. It’s also good to be back in the state in which I am barred to practice law, so I can do side work on behalf of animals and their protectors. I promptly joined a state bar association’s animal law committee and am helping organize panel discussions on animal law.

Now that I am finally settled, I am returning to my creative writing. I had to take the past year off from my WIP – a paranormal cozy mystery series set in a cat cafe and adjoining dog bar. It had been set in Sedona, AZ, but I’m so inspired to write about my new home, I am working on relocating it here. I’m hoping to release it later this year, with two other books in the series to follow shortly.

I am so very thankful to everyone who has enjoyed my writing, written reviews of my books, joined my newsletter, and continued to follow me on social media for the past several years. I haven’t produced new fiction in a while, and I am so grateful to readers who have stayed with me. I wish everyone a wonderful 2023 filled with lots of engaging reads!

 

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WHO WERE YOU 20 YEARS AGO?

A couple photos of Najma, taken in the apartment we were living in on 9/11/2001, in Hoboken, New Jersey. The bottom shows the phone (a landline, remember those!) on which I tried in vain all throughout that day to call relatives and coworkers letting them know I was okay. Both landlines and cell towers were awack for a while. Fortunately we had the internet and I ended up communicating with people by email. One of my most solid memories from that day is an email from my boss letting us know everyone in my office – two blocks from the World Trade Center – was accounted for and okay.

I was walking to the PATH station to take the train across the Hudson River into the WTC when the first plane hit. I watched everything from across the water before walking back home, in a daze. In addition to getting that email from my office, my other strongest memories of that day are waiting in my apartment building to hear all of my neighbors return home – thankfully they all did, and Najma continually sitting in the front window, ears perked up, looking in the direction of the WTC. She clearly knew something was up. But she was a cat, so of course.

Anyway, over the last twenty years I’ve written about that day so many times, I thought this year I’d reflect more on who I was twenty years ago than where I was. The pandemic has made me reflect repeatedly over the past year and a half, so it seems natural on this anniversary.

Twenty years ago today I was a newish lawyer working my second real law job, as an appellate public defender in lower Manhattan. I was living in Hoboken, New Jersey with a Russian blue mix I’d adopted from the ASPCA, whom I named Najma, after a fellow law school student. I was two years into the job and beginning to fit into it. I loved researching and writing briefs, hated oral arguments in court. I still loved books, primarily fiction, and as busy as the job was I still entertained dreams of a writing career. I remember that night the Brown University Alumni Club (I’d gotten my masters at that school), which I’d recently joined, was to have its inaugural meeting. Of course it ended up being postponed. But I would go on to befriend several people in that group who worked in publishing. Some of them tried to convince me to go into a publishing career, which, after much deliberation, I decided I couldn’t afford to do with my student loan debt and my desire to live without a roommate. That remains my greatest regret. My only real regret, actually. But I don’t want to harp on that.

Four months after that day I decided life was too short and I needed to start on that writing career, no matter how busy it would make me. I began classes at Gotham Writers Workshop in the Village, and started my first novel. I later got an agent and had my first, and likely only, experience with traditional publishing. I ended up indie publishing it and it won several awards. I left the public defender job about seven years later, and with it, the legal profession. I embarked on a writing career, penning articles for online magazines and eventually a blog that become popular in the dance world, before publishing six more novels. I now have a seventh on the way, whose main character is actually Najma, the Russian blue cat I lived with all those years ago. Though she passed away in 2005 of a congenital heart condition, she’s never really left my life.

It’s funny thinking what my 9/11/2001 self would have thought of what her life became 20 years later. She’d be shocked, that’s for sure. She would never have thought she’d return to the desert, live outside of a big city, buy a house, and have, instead of cats, dogs, one of which is a Belgian malinois / German shepherd mix! A large dog who kind of looks like a coyote? Never! She never would have thought she’d publish romance novels set in the world of ballroom dancing. She was so into “literary fiction.” And she’d never danced anything but ballet as a child! But would she be surprised to be writing a novel in which Najma is one of the two main characters, about a woman her age who’s left the law to begin a cat cafe? Probably not so much, although she’d be sad to know Najma is no longer physically with her. And she wouldn’t have known what a cat cafe was 🙂

She definitely could have imagined she’d become an animal advocate, since one of her favorite classes in law school was animal rights law, and she’d always loved animals. She easily could have imagined she’d write fiction about animals.

Hey, maybe I’ve actually come full circle, writing a series involving animal characters and using some of my criminal procedure background.

Anyway, enough navel gazing. If you’ve stuck with me this far, thank you! It’s good to reflect sometimes on who you once were and where you’ve come in order to chart a course for what’s ahead. On this most solemn of days, I wish you peaceful thoughts and happy continuing progress on life’s journey. I wish you all the excitement for life and hopefulness for the future that I felt at that stage of my life, and that, yes, despite the pandemic and the threat of climate change, I can’t help but still feel today.

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MY CAT JEOFFRY BOOKSTORE AND CAT LOUNGE!

MY CAT JEOFFRY BOOKSTORE AND CAT LOUNGE is now officially a nonprofit! I’d started it earlier as a book blog, but it is now an online bookstore for animal lovers, with links to adoptable cats. We are hoping to open physically in Phoenix, AZ, in Spring 2022, after the pandemic is over and it’s safe again to have crowds in a contained, indoor area. For now, please visit the website where we have links to our Bookshop storefront, and our Libro account for audiobooks and Hummingbird account for eBooks.

We will also have a small publishing arm, specializing in children’s books that foster empathy toward animals. We hope to have our first picture book out in Spring 2022. Once we get the store up and running, we plan to have writing events for kids so that we can publish a book of short stories written by kids about their favorite animal.

This is my passion project (apart from my own writing 🙂 ) so I’m really excited about it! We are small right now but hope to grow. If you have publishing or bookstore experience and would like to volunteer or be on our board, please contact us at mycatjeoffrybooks [at] gmail [dot] com.

 

 

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The Death of New York City Cat Girl

I think we “animal people” grieve so much when a beloved pet dies because a part of us dies with them. At least that’s how it’s always been for me. The part of me that died with my dear Katusha, who passed away a month ago from cancer at only eight years old, is the New York City cat girl. So I’m still grieving for the loss of my kitty, as well as the loss (at least for the time being) of that part of myself.

I adopted Katusha seven and a half years ago from the Los Angeles County shelter when I lived in West Hollywood, years after I’d moved out of New York. I’d wanted a friend for my cat, Rhea (whom I did adopt in NY, and who passed away two years ago, also from cancer). So I never actually lived in NY with Katusha.

Even so, after she died, I realized how much she actually was the quintessential New York cat. She was perfectly content to stay inside, never tempted to venture out, unlike Rhea and Najma, who were my NYC kitties at various stages of my life there. She would have been perfectly happy to sit in the bay window, looking out at the birds and the people, the way she did at the patio window looking out over our West Hollywood deck, to cuddle in my lap while I read on the couch, and to snuggle up with me in bed.

I keep thinking how different our lives would have been if we (she, Rhea, and Sofia, the chihuahua mix we adopted in LA) had moved back to NY after leaving California, instead of Arizona. I grew up in Phoenix but hadn’t lived there since graduating college.

I’d left New York in 2011 after having lived there for nearly two decades following grad school. I didn’t intend to leave forever, but just to take a break. I was sick of all the noise, sick of tourists who’d largely taken over Manhattan, sick of the lack of space and the increasingly unaffordable rents. Also, I’d written a dance blog, and I’d self-published my first novel. The blog became rather popular among the dance crowd, and the novel did reasonably well for a self-published book in 2009. New York being the epicenter of traditional publishing, and still in the midst of the 2008 recession, the increasing popularity of eBooks and the advent of online journalism, the city just seemed to be seething with very angry displaced publishing execs and writers. As basically an indie journalist and author, I really felt a lot of their venom directed at me. I just needed a break from the hostility. Los Angeles was a big city where I could still find the legal work I’d been supporting myself on while writing. San Francisco culture would probably have been more akin to New York, but I couldn’t afford that city. So I chose LA.

I loved West Holllywood but hated LA. West Hollywood, being smack in the middle of Los Angeles, meant I couldn’t venture out of my little cocoon without some degree of stress. And I had to venture out often, for things like work and friends who wanted to go to the beach, and shopping, etc. We had a nice big apartment between the Sunset Strip and the gay bars of Santa Monica Boulevard. It was a crazy fun place. I adopted Katusha as a friend for Rhea, and then, seeing all my neighbors with dogs and missing my little childhood terrier mix, I decided to adopt Sofia, a chihuahua mix.

Five years later I was really sick of all traffic, the lack of public transportation, lack of parking spaces, lack of culture, and lack of affordable property to buy (in my income bracket anyway). I’d thought of returning to New York at that time, and, being honest with myself, I’m not completely sure why I didn’t. I think I just wasn’t ready yet. I remembered the lack of space in New York and I now had three animals, including a barky dog. I wanted to try home ownership. I wanted a back yard. There definitely wasn’t as much traffic in Phoenix as in LA, and there was even more space. Plus, an aunt in Arizona was sick and had no one to care for her. So I packed up the fur kids and moved one state over, back “home,” instead of back across the country.

We rented a condo until I had enough work experience in Arizona to qualify for a mortgage. And then we found my dream home. It was a little out of the city, close to the open desert and south of Phoenix, en route to Tucson, the city where I’d gone to undergrad and which held very good memories. Funny but what I really loved about the house was the parts of it that resembled my last apartment in New York, on the Upper West Side. Part of the house was two stories, so we had a cathedral ceiling on one side, perfect for my little art collection. But the builders had left one of the upstairs rooms open-walled, so our living room was basically two stories, giving us a balcony that I knew Rhea would love, as she had our NYC loft balcony. And I was right. That little gymnast cat loved to run up the stairs and hop through the balcony bars onto the top of the bookcase.

I loved the whole house but especially the upstairs room I used for my writing loft, the sun room with floor to ceiling windows facing the back, and the side patio where I could see both the front and back of the house simultaneously. Rhea loved the balcony, Sofia loved the fig tree out back, under which all kinds of creatures would shade themselves, and Katusha loved the big walk-in closet in the master bedroom where she could cocoon herself among the footwear (her foster mom had named her Cinderella because of her fondness for fitting herself into various shoes!).

Rhea died of cancer about two years after we moved in. It was horrible, as death of a beloved pet always is, but I think hers was made worse because of what she meant to me. With my New York companion now gone, part of my New York self was gone as well. I put her ashes on the top of the bookcase near the balcony.

I began volunteering at the local SPCA and decided to adopt another dog. We had a big backyard now and a large house, so we could have a large dog. I’d never had a big dog but my mom took care of several labs and I became very fond of one of them on my visits to her. Anyway, long story short, I ended up not with a lab but with a German shepherd Belgian malinois mix. I’ve grown to love Irina fiercely, but our lives together have not been without lots of drama, mainly due to the fact that I am not an experienced dog handler and she is a dog who needs just that. Anyway, love is love. It took some time for the other animals to get along with her, but due largely to the pandemic when I worked remotely from home and spent a lot of time acclimating them, we eventually became one big happy family. And then Katusha got sick.

The pandemic (by which I mean not worrying about getting sick but being home all the time and thinking about my life ad nauseam) followed by Katusha’s illness really made me question what I was doing in Arizona and whether we wouldn’t have been better off in New York. That saying “you can’t go home again” – it’s real. First, would the cats have both gotten cancer? Were their cancers caused by the Arizona sun or air or water? The vets assured me they were not. Second, Arizona not being as big of a legal market as New York and LA, there’s not as much paying work here, which can be unsettling to say the least. And of course there’s nowhere near the culture available in New York.

I miss my life as a dance blogger. I miss the ballet, the theatre (Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway), the wine bar around the corner from my apartment (can’t remember the name but can remember right where I always used to sit), Fiorellos after the ballet, watching Yankees games at The Emerald Inn, the cafe on the Hudson River, Brighton Beach boardwalk, Lincoln Center, Strawberry Fields, 57th Street, Dance Times Square, the Algonquin lounge, the New York City Bar Association (yes, I have fond memories of that as well, perhaps ridiculously), the Center for Fiction, the Strand and St. Marks Bookshop. I miss my friends. For weeks after Katusha’s death all I could think about was what if I’d moved back and lived there with her, writing at my desk with our view of Columbus Avenue out the bay window, her wrapped around my feet, cuddling on the futon with her while I read. Would I have been happier?

(Above: Rhea in the bay window of our old apartment, 71st Street and Columbus right after I adopted her in 2011; below, Lincoln Center, 9/11 memorial dance performance, 9/11/2011).

Of course, if we’d have moved back to NY instead of Phoenix after leaving California, we never would have lived in this house I so love and that Rhea and Katusha so loved and that Sofia so loves, and that is now so full of memories – most wonderful, some painful.

And we would never have adopted the crazy, playful, always-excited, always getting into something, often barking to let me know the neighbor is in his back yard, always pulling on her leash, but always available for cuddles whenever I need her to be, our sweet, kind of scary-coyote-looking but always lovable “desert dog”.

A few nights ago I had a dream that really made me think all over again about my life and helped me put things into perspective.

When I first moved to New York in the early nineties (I feel so old!) I had a friend whose father was a doorman in a nice Upper West-Side apartment building. (I don’t have a picture of him, but the below picture is of me with the doorman in the building I lived in at the time, 1993.)

One day the friend and I were out and about in the city and we had to visit her dad so she could get something (keys I think). Anyway, while we were in his building, a very elegantly-dressed elderly woman emerged from the elevator and walked through the lobby, full of energy and spark. My friend’s dad greeted her, wished her a happy birthday, and helped her into the cab he’d hailed for her. She was very sweet and thanked him profusely. After she took off, he told us she’d just turned 97. I remember thinking how wonderful that you could live to be such an age in such a big city and do so with such vigor and glamour. This was back when New York was expensive but not exorbitant like it is today, and you didn’t have to be an investment banker to afford a small place.

So my dream was weird, as dreams always are. In it I was somehow that woman. Obviously I was much later in my life than I am now. But it was me. And I was living with a cat and a small dog. They weren’t exactly Katusha and Sofia, but they inhabited their essences, you know what I mean? In the dream I knew it was them, basically. I was happy looking out my window over Lincoln Center (which was based on the apartment of another friend I met later), waiting to go somewhere.

But then in the dream for some reason I started to remember the big “desert dog” I’d had long, long ago, whom I couldn’t bring with me here. I saw her always-happy face. And remembered her silliness and constant excitement over her ball and her tug toy. And her barking. And her leash pulling. And her antics. And my always unsuccessful attempts to control her.

And I missed her so badly it hurt. I missed her and our lives back in the desert house with the back yard so very much.

I woke up in a sweat. And I realized I was happy here. Even though I loved my life in New York as the cat lady, the dance blogger, the girl always about town, I really loved big crazy dog and our lives in the desert. And I wasn’t ready to leave it yet.

(Above: with Najma, my first NYC kitty, in my Upper West-Side studio loft, around 2004.)

After I woke I started to think about the things I love here: the Desert Botanical Gardens (specifically, seeing Ballet Arizona perform there, and bring-your-dog days), the Heard Museum (of Native American art), the Poisoned Pen and Changing Hands bookstores, the galleries of Old Scottsdale and Roosevelt Row in downtown Phoenix, the Musical Instrument Museum, moonlight walks and wild yoga at The Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center, all of the wonderful animal sanctuaries, Saguaro National Park, trips to Sedona and Verde Valley wine country, the DeGrazia Studio in Tucson, the Tucson Festival of Books, walks with the dogs around the lakes in my neighborhood, plays at Tempe Performing Arts Center, dining on the canal at Olive and Ivy in Scottsdale, road trips back to LA to see friends, hanging out with friends here, particularly all those I’ve made volunteering with animals and in my romance and crime writer groups.

Maybe someday I will go back to New York. Maybe someday I’ll be that elegant old lady with the sweet petite fur babies in her one room apartment excitedly sprinting through a lobby on her way to her cab (or self-driving Uber, or Jetson air mobile?) ready to be whisked off to the ballet or a play or reading or restaurant for birthday dinner. But for now I’m happy in my desert house with my desert life as a “desert dog mom.”

Sorry, this was navel-gazing to the max! But writing often helps to me figure things out. So if you got this far, thank you for indulging me 🙂

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Sweet Katusha: Thank You For Being So Good to Me

It’s been about a month now that my dear Katusha passed away and I’m still mourning her, as I always will in some form. She had an aggressive form of abdominal cancer and I didn’t even know she was sick until she suddenly stopped eating and drinking. It was too late to do much.

She was a few weeks short of eight years old, so very young for a cat. My other cat, Rhea, passed away only a little over two years earlier, also of cancer. She was only ten, and hers was a sarcoma on her head. I asked the vet if it was something in my house, in Arizona, in the air or water. But she said no; these are two very common forms of cancer in cats. Most likely something in their genetic codes.

I adopted Katusha seven and a half years ago when I lived in West Hollywood, CA. My job at the time had crazy hours and I felt badly because Rhea, whom I’d adopted in New York a couple years earlier before moving to CA, was alone for hours on end. I thought she needed a companion.

I saw a post on Facebook. It was kitten season and a woman fostering a litter found motherless on the street was required to return them to the high-kill LA County shelter she volunteered for since they were now old enough. She was worried and needed adopters. I spotted a cute-looking boy cat in the litter and called the foster. It turned out the boy cat had already been adopted and they only had a girl available. I was dubious about adopting a female because I worried two girl cats wouldn’t get along. But I picked this little one up – her name was Cinderella at the time because of her fondness for making a little bed for herself out of her foster mom’s shoes – and she immediately purred and let me cuddle her as much as I wanted. She was perfect for me. I called my vet and she told me that as long as everyone was spayed gender wouldn’t be an issue. So she was ours!

Katusha continued to love shoes, by the way. I changed her name from Cinderella because there was a Russian ballroom dancer I adored and I loved her name. Katusha seemed perfect for a cat 🙂

At first Rhea was pretty mad at me. Actually I think she kind of remained mad at me. She had the run of our fairly large apartment all to herself and now she had to share space with a little kitten who constantly wanted to play. But she soon learned to tolerate her new sister. And the vet was right – there were no fighting issues.

Katusha’s coat was the most amazing pattern! She was so playful as a small kitten, as I guess most small kittens are.

She and Rhea really loved that WeHo apartment with its big patio door and floor-to-ceiling windows that were perfect for bird-watching!

Unlike Rhea, who wasn’t very cuddly, Katusha loved to snuggle in my lap as I read. This is one of the things I miss most about her.

I volunteered at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. In Dogtown. And realized I really missed my dog from childhood, named very imaginatively by my five-year-old self, Fluffy. I lived in a pretty big apartment in LA and everyone in my building seemed to have a dog, and I knew there was room for a small one. One of my friends who volunteered with LA County posted a video on Facebook of a dog for adoption who looked ideal. She described her as shy. I went to West LA Shelter and met her. And we bonded on the spot. Sofia was perfect.

But not to the cats! I brought her home and she immediately chased them. Katusha was the most scared, and she nearly opened the locked window in her attempt to escape. Poor kitty. It took the better part of a year to get her to calm down and accept Sofia. Rhea was easier. You can read Sofia’s take on the whole thing if you like here.

But Katusha was good to me and she loved me. And for my sake, I believe, she eventually managed to get along with Sofia. I made her and Rhea a cat tree and she played in it, even with the crazy dog present down below. She eventually even shared the couch with the dog.

I grew weary of LA traffic and I really wanted to buy a house, which I knew I couldn’t afford in LA, so I decided to move back to Arizona, where I’m from. I thought of moving back to New York but … I’m actually not sure why I didn’t, to be honest. I missed my friends there, I missed the ballet, the culture. I missed my life there. But I think I just wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to return to all the noise and the lack of space and the ten plus hour work days. I’d done somewhat well self-publishing my novels and I’d remembered how angry people in traditional publishing were about the success of indie authors and Amazon and all and I didn’t really want to return to that negativity. Plus, I wanted to buy a house with a yard, see what that kind of life was like. My aunt was also ill at the time and she had no one to care for her. As you can see, I’m still trying to figure out why I didn’t return to New York…

Anyway, we moved back to Arizona. We rented a condo for a few months until I could get enough local work experience to qualify for a mortgage. Six months later, we moved into our first house.

Rhea loved the house. It had a bi-level living room, which I found so charming and full of character. And a balcony, which she couldn’t get enough of. It reminded me of the balcony of the loft in our New York apartment, which she loved to sit on and peer down. She loved to jump off the balcony onto the bookcase, little gymnast!

But I’m not sure how much Katusha liked the new house. She pretty much hung out in the walk-in closet in the master bedroom, which of course contained all my footwear. She still loved to cocoon herself in my shoes, or between the shoe boxes in the corner. She liked to hide. Perhaps it was because she had longer hair than Rhea and southern Arizona is warm and dry. She’d come out to the kitchen to eat, and use the guest bathroom, where I kept one of the litter boxes. But, unlike Rhea, who loved to climb the stairs, she never ventured up to the second floor to use the other bathroom’s litter box.

A year and a half after we moved in Rhea was diagnosed with a sarcoma on her head. She went through grueling stereotactic radiosurgery, which left her with large radiation burns that eventually became infected. Poor Rhea. I think it must have been traumatic for Katusha to see her sister so sick. I don’t really know how animals handle those kind of things.

A few months later Rhea passed away. Katusha came out of the closet a little more often but not much. She’d sit at the big patio window and look out back a little, but not much. Sitting at the window had always been more Rhea’s thing than Katusha’s, although Katusha seemed to like looking out the window in West Hollywood.

I began volunteering at my local SPCA. I felt Sofia, who’d become best friends with Rhea, missed her sister. She and Katusha got along but they weren’t besties the way she and Rhea were.

I did a couple of short-term fosters with some small dogs at the shelter and Katusha seemed to get along with them. I was amazed. She seemed to now be a dog-friendly cat.

Six months later, I decided to adopt another dog to befriend Sofia and hopefully Katusha as well. I went to the shelter to adopt a dog about Sofia’s size that I’d walked and read to and liked but that dog had gotten adopted by the time I got to the shelter. The adoption counselors encouraged me to look at other dogs since I was there with Sofia, so I did. I hesitantly brought home a dog for what’s called a slumber party to see if she’d get along with everyone in our household. They tested her with cats and found she wasn’t predatory and she and Sofia got along, so even though she was larger than the other dog I was thinking of, I decided to try it. We now had a big backyard, suitable for a larger dog.

When I introduced her to Katusha, Kat was immediately scared of her. No wonder. Irina was much bigger than Sofia. She was a German shepherd / Belgian malinois mix and kind of resembled a coyote with her coloring. Katusha hissed and swatted at her. Irina cried and ran off. I felt that was a good reaction. Irina was giving Katusha her boundaries and hopefully Katusha would soon come around.

But soon took much, much longer than I’d expected. I hired a total of three private trainers and took three group classes. I worked hard on getting both of them to like each other, for many, many months to no avail. I moved Katusha’s litter box and food into the master bedroom and kept her shut in there and away from Irina, which was fine with, really, her since that’s where she always hung out anyway.

It wasn’t until the pandemic when I began to work from home that they finally became friends. And it was mainly Irina’s doing. I opened the door to “Katusha’s room” and let Irina go in with me. She kept trying and trying to break the ice with Katusha, just by touching noses. With Irina in the room whenever I was, Katusha eventually realized that I wasn’t going to let Irina hurt her. Irina didn’t want to anyway. She was just big and scary-looking.

I was so happy when Katusha finally let Irina get close to her.

Katusha slowly began not to be scared. She’d walk around the house and climb into her cat tree even when Irina tried to climb in after her. I’d originally kept Irina crated at night and spend the night with Katusha alone. But when I was home all the time I began to let Irina sleep with us as well. At first Katusha would sleep in the cupboard in the bathroom. But soon she began to come out and sleep with us at night, cuddling with me, while I read to her, even while Irina slept feet away, at the foot of the bed.

The thing was, I think Katusha was feeling sick for a while and it just wasn’t noticeable to me. I think she wanted and needed my attention and she realized the only way she would be able to get it was to befriend the coyote-looking dog. It was literally only days after the above picture was taken that she stopped eating and drinking and I rushed her to the vet. I was so happy they were all getting along and we were all happy and at peace with each other. I do think it was genuine, I just think I forced the peace-making on Katusha and she may not have been truly comfortable for a large part of that time.

When I found out about her cancer it was already advanced. The vet said we could still try chemotherapy. I was hesitant after Rhea’s horrible experience with radiation, and her cancer wasn’t nearly as advanced as Katusha’s. So we tried palliative care. The steroids initially worked wonders and I began to seriously consider chemo. But those wonders were sadly short-lived. After one week she wasn’t eating and drinking again. The vet told me to increase her steroids and pain-killers but Katusha hated me giving her medication and she fought me every time. She started trying to hide from us. She began hissing at Irina and Sofia again when they tried to play with her, which I understood of course since she was feeling so horribly. But it still totally broke my heart.

I separated her from the dogs again and crated them at night, sleeping alone with her. But she often stayed in the cupboard and I had to reach inside and pull her out at night to put her on the bed with me. She purred a little, but it became less and less. I kept increasing the meds until all she did was sleep. The night I had her euthanized at the ER she was so out of it I honestly thought she was going to die of an overdose anyway. Keeping her alive just so I could feel her soft fur against my skin, so I could hold her and make myself believe the steroids would work again, and try hard as I could to wish the pre-sick Katusha back, just became so obviously wrong.

I still feel badly that I didn’t try the chemo even though the ER vet told me her cancer was advanced and it likely wouldn’t keep her alive for long. Cats don’t know they’re being kept alive for so and so much time; they just know they feel unwell and they’re unhappy. I know I did the right thing but I still wonder what if I’d done the chemo. She’d probably still be here. Even after my experience with Rhea, I’m not sure I’m the kind of person who can’t do everything I possibly can to save an animal.

Looking back, I think Katusha made herself get along with the dogs for my sake. First Sofia in LA then Irina in Arizona. She wanted me to be happy and she knew I would be if only they would all get along. I will forever cherish her for doing that for me.

And I’m not so sure she’s really gone. I feel her spirit around the house the same way I still feel Rhea’s. I know the dogs do as well.

Here she is in her cat tree looking outside at us in the backyard. When we’re out back, I often still feel her inside looking out at us.

A month after her death and Irina still sniffs and looks intently at the cupboard, waiting for her to come out.

I’ve been working on a new cozy mystery series, set in a cat cafe and adjoining dog bar with animal sleuths and ghosts. Rhea is the basis for the character of the main ghost, and the cat character who heads the cafe is based on my dear Najma, the cat I had back in New York. Katusha passed away after I finished the penultimate draft but I managed to write in a recurring role for her. So my beloved animals never really die. They live on in my writing and in the spirit energy with which they continue to fill our lives.

 

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Irina the Belgian Marshmallow

This post is cross-posted at MyCatJeoffryBooks and is about the rescue dog I adopted last year. Since there are so many dog and cat lovers out there – and since my next series will be set in a cat cafe and dog bar 🙂 I thought readers here may be interested.

2019 ended up being crazy busy but hugely productive for me. After Rhea passed away at the end of 2018 I fell into a bad depression. She’d been with me for so much of my adult life, from New York to California to Arizona, and losing her hit me hard. I think because of that, I threw myself into volunteer work with the Arizona Animal Welfare League and SPCA, which drew me into volunteer work as a District Leader with the Humane Society of the United States. I also volunteered with the therapy dog program at the Phoenix Public Library. I absolutely love all of my volunteer roles. I also finished and published my next romance novel in the Infectious Rhythm series, Tremor. And I worked hard on getting my business plan together for opening the bookstore. So, throwing myself into my work has been a good thing. Hopefully I will accomplish as much in 2020, and hopefully that will include getting this bookstore off the ground!

But the biggest part of my year was taken up with a new dog I adopted.

Photo above taken by Dogtopia, South Chandler.

After Rhea passed, I felt like Sofia, my chihuahua mix, who’d been Rhea’s bestie, took it hard too. For months afterward, she’d look around for her. I used to always ask her to find Rhea since Rhea was fond of hiding in cupboards, behind shoeboxes in the closet, or behind or underneath furniture, etc. And Sofia with her superb sniffer was always able to find her. Sofia knew she was gone but still sniffed around anyway. After Rhea’s scent had finally disappeared for good, Sofia would sit at the side porch window, where Rhea always tried to get out.

Katusha, our other cat, took it hard too. She didn’t eat a thing for two weeks, and began nearly living in the closet, clearly depressed.

I couldn’t really bear the thought of getting another cat. I felt like it might confuse and upset Katusha, and Sofia, being a terrier, is so hard to train to get along with cats. So I started keeping an eye out at the shelter for a dog that I thought would get along with Sofia and Katusha and would fit well into our family.

One day this rat terrier / chihuahua mix, Lucy, came in. She looked exactly like Sofia but was brown and was the same age and playfulness level of Sofia. And I knew she got along with cats. I called and told the shelter I was coming with my dog so they could have a meet and greet. My drive was only about 45 minutes but by the time I got there, Lucy had already been adopted. I knew that was likely to happen since Lucy was so cute, and I had other dogs in mind in case it did – all of them small since that was the kind of dog I was used to and the kind I felt would get along best with Kat and Sof.

Unbelievably, every single dog in that row failed their cat test with flying colors! I was so annoyed. “You people practically are cats!” I called down the row, throwing up my arms.

The adoption counselor suggested I leave Sofia in her room and walk around to see if there was anyone I might like to try from one of the larger dog rooms, since I was already there. I knew there were two labs in the back and I had some experience with labs and thought they might be good fit for us, so decided to give it a try. There was one yellow lab, five years old (can’t remember his name) sitting in a large kennel with this one-year-old Shepherd-looking person. The lab was lying down and looked up at me with tired eyes, while the Shepherd bounced all around pawing at the gate as if asking me to give her a walk. They were both brand new to the shelter and I hadn’t handled either of them yet. I thought I’d give the lab a try, but I distinctly remember looking at the Shepherd, named Irii, and thinking, “Sorry but no way; you’re way too high-energy for me!” Yeah, famous last words…

I returned to the counselor and gave her my sheet with the name of the labs. She looked at my application and said both were way too active for my lifestyle. She said I needed a dog the behaviorists had labelled “weekend athlete,” since that’s the time I’d mainly be giving the dog to exercise since I worked long hours during the week.

She looked at her list of “weekend athletes.” She found two, both cattle dogs: Jerry, and Irii. I recognized the latter name and thought she must be mistaken.

“Are you sure the cards aren’t mixed up and it’s the five-year-old lab who’s the more mellow one?” I asked. She shook her head. “Nope, Irii is the weekend athlete.”

First we tried Jerry but he growled at Sofia, which didn’t sit well with me. Sofia does tend to be possessive with me, so I knew I needed a dog who would just let her be the princess chi she was used to being and not demand my attention too much. So we decided to try Irii.

I laughed when they brought her into the yard, because, sure enough, it was the one I thought – the crazy bouncing Shepherd mix, which a behaviorist had labeled mellow enough to be content with few walks during the week. Unbelievably, she calmed down once in the big, open yard. She ran around a bit, sniffed Sofia, made easy friends with her, then sniffed me. When Sofia made it clear I was her mommy and she was number one, Irii backed right off. She was scared when going into the cattery so we didn’t get a good take on whether she would get along with cats. But she didn’t seem to NOT like them. The counselor told me she was a transfer from a rural shelter in Northern Arizona, and had likely been a stray, likely in the Navajo Nation. So she might be shy around me and other humans but would appreciate a dog friend.

So I decided to give it a try and do a weekend “slumber party.” The counselors put her in a dog carrier in the back of my Prius. I kept seeing her head bouncing all around with her curious eyes looking this way and that in the in the rear view mirror the whole ride home. I kept thinking, “Who is this German Shepherd you have in your car?” Cattle dog, Shepherd – made no difference to me – I had no experience with dogs like this. “What are you doing?” I wondered.

Once at home, she sniffed all around the living room, then found a corner and curled up. She spent most of the weekend there. She wasn’t very scared of me, but seemed overall not very confident in her surroundings. Which made perfect sense since she just got there. I led her into my bedroom, where I was keeping Katusha. When I carefully introduced them, Katusha got scared and hissed at her, and she whimpered and ran away, which I was told was a good response for a dog: meant she didn’t have a crazy prey drive and would respect boundaries.

I took a bunch of photos of her and posted them on Facebook and Instagram and everyone of course said she was beautiful and hoped I’d keep her. When I went back to the shelter to formalize the adoption I was still a little unsure. We hadn’t really bonded yet and I still didn’t know much about large breeds other than labs. But somehow I just felt right about it, like it would work out and would be an experience to boot. The behaviorist gave me the numbers of a couple of trainers to call and invited me to sign up for group classes at the shelter. I did both right away. I named her Irina, only slightly changing the name the shelter gave her but to something I connected with. (Dance background, Russian ballet and ballroom dancers and all 🙂 )

I adopted Irina on March 15, so it’s been nearly a year. And it’s been a very a wild ride. The behaviorists were right in that she definitely is mellow, especially given her age and breed. (I later found out through Wisdom Panel that she is a mix but mostly Belgian Malinois and German Shepherd.) I can take her for a short walk and let her run around the backyard a few times and she will be quiet the rest of the day. If she goes to daycare during the day while I’m at work, she’ll sleep in the car on the ride home, then all night in her kennel. She’s very easygoing with children and has never exhibited any aggression whatsoever to anyone. At every daycare she’s gone to, the employees all tell me she’s very mellow, often lounges around all day, and is extremely gentle with the other dogs and with all the humans.

Dog of the Week photo, from Dogtopia, South Chandler.

BUT. Having said all that… it wasn’t easy on me at the beginning. Initially, Irina suffered separation anxiety, which I now know is a common young Shepherd trait. When I left her at home for only minutes, she knocked down the gate I’d set up and tore apart the bedroom, tearing up books, the blinds, the door, everything she could find. I tried to keep her in a large kennel, but she escaped by tearing apart the latch. The trainer directed me to buy locks to latch her in more securely. That worked. But it didn’t make her separation anxiety better. She kept me up all night barking and crying in her kennel. I couldn’t let her sleep with us because she wasn’t getting along with Katusha. So I went out and slept on the couch, for months. After she was here a few weeks and became more comfortable, she started acting out toward the cat. Katusha was scared of her and continued to hiss, but Irina started barking back. I’ve gone through three at home trainers trying to get her to get along with Katusha.

Irina’s gotten out of her harness in the car and unlatched seat belts. Basically, high intelligence and emotion are a difficult mix, and I know now it takes an experienced handler to deal with them. One of my friends who used to run a white Shepherd rescue has helped a lot. But at first she begged me to take Irina back to the shelter because she thought I was simply in way over my head with such a dog. Two of the three professional trainers I hired told me the same. For some reason, I just wasn’t going to give up, even though, with all the trainers and daily daycare, I was spending thousands of dollars I really didn’t have. It’s taken me the better part of a year to really figure out how to handle her and and I’m still learning. Everyday.

I love this dog dearly and I’m so thankful she came into my life. She’s made a wonderful companion for Sofia and I’ve learned so much about dogs, and about myself. I’ve become a lot more social and made other dog guardian friends I otherwise never would have. We are still learning to live together though. She and Katusha are not entirely friends yet, and I can’t walk Irina and Sofia together because Irina gets too crazy when she’s with her sister – it becomes a competition of who can go faster or something and my shoulders nearly get ripped out of their sockets. I’m still learning to keep her from door dashing and bashing down the patio door. And I’m trying to alternate days between leaving her at home – her separation anxiety is almost gone – and going to daycare since I can’t afford daycare every single day. We still have a ways to go, but not anywhere near as long as the distance we’ve come. And I know now that I can do it.

This ended up being a far longer post than I meant! I meant only to explain why I’ve been absent for nearly a year from this blog. I guess what I really wanted to say is that, as I said, I’ve been doing a lot of shelter volunteer work and I hear shelter people all the time expressing so much anger at people who return their dogs. And I know how stressful it is to have another animal dropped off that you have to care for and find a home for. And I definitely have absolutely NO patience or respect for the person who dumps his dog because he’s a long distance runner and the dog is too old to keep up with him, so he wants to exchange this dog for a younger one. Believe me, we would NEVER adopt to that degree of loser. But there is a big difference between that kind of person and a person who tries very, very, very hard and simply doesn’t have what it takes to continue on with the dog they adopted. I could never have brought Irina back like some of my trainers suggested. She’s brought so much joy and experience to my life and and I’ve grown immensely because of her. And I’m pretty sure she’s happy here with her two sisters (even though one is still hissing at her – but what is life without a challenge?!), and her two-story house with the fun stairs and the big backyard. She is one of my three dearest friends and I love her beyond words. But, that doesn’t mean that every dog is for every person. There is absolutely nothing wrong with re-homing an animal if it’s going to be better for everyone involved, including that animal.

My two cents. Anyway, I’ve gone on long enough. I will be posting more of my own animals’ updates, and definitely more books that I’ve read. In the top photo, Irina is posing with a picture of a book I just finished reading by Debbie Burns, who is now one of my favorite romance authors. Her first series is called Rescue Me, and all the books involve dogs who bring their humans together. Sweetness! Okay, more to come! I promise!

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TREMOR is out!

Hey Everyone!

Just letting you know TREMOR, the next installment in the Infectious Rhythm Ballroom Romance series, is now out! This one focuses on Arabelle, whom readers of the other books in the series will recognize as Sasha’s former dance partner, and a theater dancer she meets in Las Vegas, Jett.

Here is the back cover description:

After losing her husband and dance partner to a motorcycle accident, ballroom showdance champion Arabelle has developed a hand tremor, making it impossible to perform the beautiful balletic feats she is known for. In her devastation, she’s lost her love of dance anyway. But when she meets Jett, a theatrical dancer specializing in daredevil aerial stunts, Arabelle feels a double tremor – one producing trepidation, the other pulsing excitement, as he evokes the bad boy ways of her husband that had so enthralled her but had also resulted in his tragedy. Can Jett help Arabelle overcome the pain of her loss, cure her trembling body, and reinvigorate her passion for dance and life? And can Arabelle tame Jett’s reckless ways before they result in his own misfortune?

I’ve put this one in the Kindle Unlimited program, so if you’re a member, you can read it for free! Otherwise, it’s $2.99, as are the others in the series.

Happy reading, everyone 🙂 And, again, thank you so much for your support! It’s been a while since I last published since I’ve had a lot happening in my life (more on that later), so I really appreciate you sticking with me!

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Sweet Rhea

Cross–posted here.

Rhea passed away from her cancer November 29, almost a month ago now, and I’ve been quite heartbroken. She moved cross-country with me, and lived with me in five different apartments, and finally a house. She’d been with me through a tumultuous time in my life.

I adopted her from the ASPCA in New York in March, 2011. I’d been unemployed for nearly two years during the recession, and within a week of adopting her, I got my first post-recession job. Cats had always been good luck for me. The day I adopted my first cat in adulthood, Najma, I found out I’d passed the New Jersey bar exam, the first bar I took. The ASPCA told me Rhea was rescued from a hoarder, who had upwards of 70 cats! I hope that was in upstate somewhere and not in a New York City apartment. Anyway, the second I saw her in the shelter I knew she was the cat for me, the way she made eye contact immediately, and purred when I touched her. But it was clear she wasn’t used to people. She hid immediately when I got her home and didn’t come out from under the futon for nearly a week. I felt badly when I had to go back to work right after bringing her home, but I think nothing could have suited her better than to have a whole apartment all to herself.

She really loved our upper west side apartment. And so she should: it was a veritable cat gymnasium. She’d fly up the stairs to the bedroom loft, run to the corner, and jump onto the fireplace mantle. She loved sitting on that mantle and peeking out between the bars of the loft.

But when my lease renewed in October that year, I was tired of New York – all the noise, the lack of space, the lack of money – and decided to try Los Angeles.

Rhea was the best traveler ever. Especially for a cat. We flew from New York to Phoenix, without a peep out of her. Once we landed and I sat her carrier atop my suitcase, I peeked in to see her looking about in wonder, taking everything in. “This is the absolutely coolest experience ever,” she seemed to say.

In Phoenix, where I’m from, my cousin helped me buy a car – my first, having lived in New York City for the past 18 years, basically since becoming an adult. We drove to Los Angeles, with, again, not a peep out of Rhea. It turns out, she loved car rides and plane rides – it meant we were going off on an adventure!

We found an apartment in L.A. but it wouldn’t be ready for another two weeks, so we stayed with a variety of friends and relatives, and then lived for a week in a pet-friendly motel in west Phoenix.

We lived in Burbank for a year before relocating to fabulous West Hollywood, where we had a living room with a huge balcony and a bedroom with a splendid floor-to-ceiling window. “My cat’s going to love this place!” I exclaimed to the landlord, upon seeing it. He shot me a bemused look and said, “Sure.” Yes, I’m the crazy lady who thinks of her animals first. Well, I knew I’d love it there too, of course.

And, yes, when we later moved to Arizona, I chose my first house based on what I knew Rhea would like 🙂

After five years in L.A., I’d finally had enough of the traffic. I think living in New York for so long and from a young age had a permanent effect on my ability to drive without major anxiety. And know I wasn’t alone – my New York friend who’d moved to L.A. years before I did had to drive with a mouth guard so she wouldn’t destroy her teeth by grinding. When Uber became a thing, she took it everywhere. But I couldn’t afford to do that. I had to use my own car to get myself from place to place. As much as I loved West Hollywood, I had to work, and my jobs were either in Century City or downtown L.A., which meant I had to get in my car and risk a nervous breakdown everyday. I still miss L.A. – especially West Hollywood. If ever self-driving cars become affordable and become the norm – which, believe me, will happen long before any serious additions to the Metro system will – I really may move back.

While in L.A., we added to our family, adopting first a kitten, Katusha, then a puppy, Sofia, both from the L.A. County shelter. That apartment was the biggest I’d ever lived in, so there was plenty of space for more. Still, at first, Rhea was not too happy to have to share any of her space with another, but it only took about two weeks before she and Katusha got along.

And soon they were sharing space, particularly the big window overlooking the deck. So many birds, squirrels, even raccoons! So much life out there!

Adjusting to a new dog took quite a bit longer than a new kitten, especially since Sofia, being part rat terrier (I think) just wanted to chase the cats all the time! Sofia wrote a blog post about learning to live with cats here. But Rhea was the first to accept Sofia and break the ice. One day she decided she wouldn’t be scared and run away; instead she’d chase Sofia and grab at her leash. The trainer had taught me to let Sofia run around the house with her leash on staying close behind to grab it if she got out of control. Well, Rhea was so excited by that snaky leash, she pounced on it, totally ignoring that it was attached to the big, bad dog 🙂 It took Katusha a bit longer to adjust, but that was the beginning of a very happy, three-way friendship.

I missed New York but wasn’t sure whether I was ready to go back, especially now that I had three animals, and rents had gone up substantially since I’d left while the rate of pay for the legal work I was doing had stayed the same. I was used to Arizona (or so I’d thought; I hadn’t lived there in 23 years so not quite sure what I thought I knew), and knew there was work there, plus cheaper housing. So, I packed up the family and went.

No one liked moves more than Rhea – the traveling, and the packing boxes!

We rented a condo for a few months until I found a house I wanted to buy. The house was a ways out of town, but I loved it the second I saw it, because the main living area reminded me of our old place in New York. It was two floors, but the living room area was open, so there’s a cathedral roof, and a big, two-floor room, with a balcony! Another kitty gymnasium!

And I was right. The first thing Rhea did when I unpacked her and the others, was run up the stairs, and peek out through the bars of the living room balcony. After we set up the furniture, she became fond of using the balcony to get access to the bookcase, where she’d perch for hours.

She loved the house. We had a big back yard with grass and trees, which drew plenty of birds and cottontail rabbits, and two big patio windows to watch it all through.

I felt badly always letting Sofia go out back, so I bought a harness and let Rhea explore the backyard as well.

She loved that window, such a sun kitty she was.

About a year and a half after we moved I discovered a bump on Rhea’s head. Sofia liked to play with her and would wrap her teeth around Rhea’s ear, so I thought it was maybe an infected abscess. But the doctor did tests and found it to be cancer. She referred me to an oncologist, and they both convinced me to opt for stereotactic radiosurgery, a relatively new form of radiation for animals. I’ve written about all of that in other posts, here and here.

Soon after her three-day radiation treatment, she was back to her old self, getting into everything in the house and sitting atop her old perch.

And she still loved her outdoor stroller rides. I bought the stroller after her diagnosis. I’d always wanted to take her out more, since she loved the outdoors so much, and worried she wouldn’t be able to do that much longer. So, we tried to make up for lost time.

Everything went well for about a month, and then her hair started falling out, which I expected. But what I didn’t expect was all the radiation burns. They spread all across her head and ears. I put a cone around her neck so she wouldn’t scratch them and risk infection but she was so depressed wearing that cone, I soon took it off. The burns got infected anyway, and we went through several rounds of antibiotics, painkillers, and steroids. The tumor had initially shrunk but the skin around her radiation burns began to swell. The doctor didn’t know if the tumor had returned or whether there was just swelling from the infection. I was beside myself because the burns looked awful. Initially, she got better after her initial rounds of painkillers, but the infection wouldn’t heel and the swelling increased. It began to seep into her ear and the ear closed up, which soon made her lose her balance.

It was all so awful and I just kept trying to get those burns to heal.

Finally, on the morning of November 29th, Sofia woke me up unusually early, sticking, as she usually does, her big wet nose into my eye lids. I looked at the time – 3:00 a.m. – and yelled at her to use her wee wee pads if she had to go to the bathroom so early. Of course after I got up two hours later I realized what the problem was. Rhea was sitting in a box my mom had set up for her when she visited a couple weeks back. Her head was leaning all the way to the side, and when she got up to walk, one side of her body just wouldn’t work. It was like she’d had a stroke. I realized then her loss of balance wasn’t the infection spreading into her ear; it was neurological. I called the oncologist as soon as he opened and he told me to bring her to emergency room connected with his clinic. When I got her there he said the tumor had grown substantially since the radiation and was now affecting her brain. We’d done all we could, he said.

So, it was about five months from the time I first noticed the tumor until she passed away, and about three months from the time she’d had the radiation. I may have prolonged her life for, at most, a month, with the stereotactic radiosurgery, and, honestly, I’m not sure I would put another animal through it. I feel like she suffered a lot from those burns, and I’m not sure that month was worth it in terms of the pain. I don’t know. I’m not God. So who am I to say what treatment or lifesaving support is worth it and what is not? The vet had told me the therapy had not been performed much on cats, only on dogs, so maybe medicine will improve. I’m sure it will.

The first couple weeks were very hard because I kept expecting her to rub up against my leg in the kitchen in anticipation of food, or sitting down at my feet while I wrote. She never was much of a touchy-feely cat. She didn’t like being held, or even petted much. I think that was because of the hoarding situation she grew up in and her early distrust of humans. But she showed her love in her own way. She’d follow me around the house. Everywhere I was, I’d look up and she’d be curled up somewhere close by. She always sat at my feet when I wrote. She always sat in the rocking chair in the living room when I watched TV.

I’ve had animals die before and I thought this would be easier since I had two others. But it wasn’t. It was just the same. Katusha didn’t eat for a week, and whenever I said I missed Rhea, which I said often, Sofia would run around looking for her. That was always a favorite game for Sofia and me, especially toward the end when I needed to give Rhea her medication and she’d hide from me. I’d say, “Where’s Rhea?” And Sofia would run all around the house, banging open cupboards and looking through closets until we found her. After a while, Sofia would look at me strangely when I said Rhea’s name. Initially she’d start to look around then, realizing Rhea’s scent was gone, would run to the patio window and look out. It makes sense that, since the last time she saw Rhea, Rhea was going outside in her carrier. So she must still be out there. Someday she’ll come back.

I have the urn holding her ashes on top of the bookcase where she used to sit. Someday I’ll get a cool cat urn, but for now the polished wood the crematorium gave me is fine. What I didn’t expect was the pawprint they included. I didn’t order it, so they must have just included it for free. But it’s beautiful, and it really made me cry.

As soon as I’m finished with revisions to my middle-grade mystery, I am going to return to a cat cafe cozy I was writing. The main cat in that novel is based on Najma, who passed away over thirteen years ago from a heart condition. Now, I’m creating a role for a cat based on Rhea as well. My animals never really die 🙂

 

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My Cat Rhea’s Experience With Stereotactic Radiosurgery

I posted this originally on my new My Cat Jeoffry blog, here, and here, but decided to cross-post here as well.

My cat, Rhea, recently underwent stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS). I thought I’d write a post about it since, after the oncology vet recommended it, we tried to research it online but found very little. Especially about SRS and cats.

SRS is a new kind of radiation therapy – well, new to use for animals; it’s been used for humans for some time. Instead of traditional radiation, which isn’t as effective, and can take many multiple treatments, SRS can be administered as little as once, or up to a few times. And, because the vet takes a CT scan of the tumor beforehand, it’s delivered very precisely to the tumor. This means that there’s little chance of the radiation affecting any healthy, non-cancerous tissues. And, every time the animal is given a dose of radiation, s/he has to be anesthetized, which is always risky and can result in complications. So, the fewer treatments an animal has to have, the better.

Of course SRS is costly. Luckily, I had pet insurance that footed a big chunk of the bill. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have been able to afford it.

Rhea developed a tumor or the right side of her head, which grew very quickly. Above is a photo taken shortly after I first noticed it. I thought our dog, Sofia, had just played with her a bit too rough and she had an abscess. I took her to my regular vet who said it wasn’t an infection. She did some tests and it came back positive for cancer. So she referred me to a veterinary oncologist.

By the time I was able to get her in to see the oncologist – about three weeks later – it had grown substantially. It also seemed to be affecting her eyes. He did a full CT scan from her head to her chest and found that, thankfully, it hadn’t spread into her body; it was a sarcoma that was only above the bone on top of her head. The reason her eyes were affected was that it was growing so fast it was pulling the skin back, so she couldn’t close her eyes. This would mean I’d have to give her lots of eye drops, to keep her eyes moist. Anyway, the fact that the tumor was only on the top of her head made it ideal for SRS treatment.

The vet told me she would likely lose some hair on her head and when it grew back, it may be white. He also said some of the skin on the affected area could die. But the tumor was inoperable due to its size and location, and this was our only chance for her to have a full life (Rhea is 10 years old). Chemotherapy didn’t make any sense since it wasn’t metastasizing.

I was really scared! I was so afraid she was going to be in pain. I had several friends and family members who couldn’t eat for a long time after radiation because it burnt their mouths so. But both my regular and specialist vet said animals didn’t experience pain with radiation like humans often did. My regular vet said that’s the course of action she would definitely pursue if it were her pet. But I still worried. One of my friends referred me to a holistic vet and another to an animal communicator. I would have tried both if I had more money and time, but the tumor was getting bigger so quickly, I had no experience with animal communicators and had no idea what to expect and whether to trust one, they weren’t cheap, and my pet insurance plan pre-authorized my claims. So, I just went with it and trusted my oncology and regular vets’ opinions. And I prayed I wasn’t putting my cat through horrible pain.

So, Rhea had three days of SRS. I kept her at the hospital throughout because I felt like it was going to be traumatic to have to keep taking her there and back. So, I packed a little bag of food and treats and her eye medication. The man who administered the radiation called me every day with updates on how she did – which was well! When I picked her up, they gave her the little certificate below, signed by all the techs and the radiation administerer, along with the cute cape!

Everyone at AZ Veterinary Oncology was so wonderful, so supportive. I really appreciated all of their help, and that little certificate made me ridiculously happy!

When I got Rhea home, she seemed perfectly fine. She didn’t seem to be in pain at all. She went straight to her food bowl and feasted to her heart’s content, rubbed up against Sofia, then trotted upstairs and jumped from the balcony onto the top of the bookcase, always her favorite perch 🙂

Anyway, it’s been two weeks since the end of her SRS. We just went to the oncologist today for her check-up and he said the tumor has definitely shrunk, which I’d noticed but was afraid it was just wishful thinking on my part!

She honestly has not seemed to be in any pain whatsoever for the past two weeks. She’s been purring, wrapping herself around my feet, sitting at my desk while I work, rubbing up against Sofia, being tolerant toward our other cat, Katusha, (as usual), eating, drinking, pawing open cupboards and closet doors to explore, fitting herself into tiny spaces, making noise in the middle of the night, trying to get outside (I don’t let her, she is an indoor cat; but since she does like to explore the outdoors, I push her around in a little dog stroller 🙂 ) Basically, she’s been her usual self, and with all the purring, she seems perfectly happy. The only thing the doctor noticed is that she’d lost a little weight. I have noticed that some days she doesn’t eat as much as she normally does, although other days she does. So I’ve been trying to buy her her very favorite food, even if it’s not the healthiest 🙂

She has yet to lose any hair, although I suspect that still may be coming. I’m hoping that blasted tumor continues to shrink down to nothing, and never returns. For now, we can only hope she’ll continue her progress. I will keep you posted!

Below, today, enjoying the Arizona sun with Sofia 🙂

Update six weeks later (cross-posted here):

It’s now been a little over two months since the treatment. A couple of days after we came home from her two-week follow up, right after I wrote the last post, her hair began falling out – which I was expecting – but they exposed some burns on top of her head, where she had the treatment. I took her back to the doctor, and he told me they were indicative of burns from radiation and were to be expected. He gave me a topical steroid and told me to keep a cone over her head so that she couldn’t scratch or lick the burns.

I applied the steroid for a few weeks, but the wound area – some of the burns were open and pus-filled, seemed to keep growing. She also seemed to be depressed and in pain, as she wasn’t her playful self and wasn’t eating like normal. I took her back to him about two weeks ago and he said the burns looked like they were getting infected. So he gave me an antibiotic, a stronger steroid, and some pain medication.

It’s been two weeks since then and she is definitely much better. I can tell she’s no longer in pain – or at least not is as much pain as she was, as she’s running about, getting into things, playing with the dog, and is back to eating normally. She doesn’t like taking her meds, but what animal does 🙂

The burn still looks yucky – for lack of a better term – but it isn’t open and blistery and pus-filled. It now looks like it is scabbed over. Her tumor is still there but I do think it’s still shrinking. The doctor told me sometimes it takes months for it to go away or get down to a small size. He also told me it could come back or never go completely away.

So, I’m happy that she seems to feel better and that the burn area looks improved. But I know this could be a long journey, and that it could still not end well. If the tumor comes back or doesn’t go completely away, I really don’t want to put her through this again, especially since we went through over a month of dealing with open, pus-filled, potentially infected burn marks, and I know she was in pain at points. Not to mention, I don’t have a lot left in my insurance account and the treatments are very expense. So, basically I’m trying to brace myself for the worst while hoping and trying my hardest for the best.

Anyway, I just wanted to record my experiences here in case anyone else has a cat who goes through stereotactic radiosurgery / stereotactic radiation. There hasn’t been a whole lot written about the treatment, and my vet hadn’t had much experience with cats undergoing it – only dogs. So maybe we can benefit from each other’s personal experiences.

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WITTY KITTY is Now MY CAT JEOFFRY BOOKSTORE AND CAT LOUNGE

Just letting everyone know I changed the name of the cat cafe / bookstore I long to open from WITTY KITTY to MY CAT JEOFFRY BOOKSTORE AND CAT LOUNGE. You can find it here. If you’re an avid reader and an animal lover or if you’re interested in adoptable kitties, please follow us!

Right now, it’s pretty much a blog where I write mainly about books for animal lovers and post links to local pets up for adoption. I sometimes blog about great vegan food or personal stuff involving my own wonderful rescue kids 🙂 I hope to open in brick and mortar form someday soon and will definitely keep everyone posted on our progress 😀