Lately

October is almost done and it feels like it just started. Time is strange, it flies and it's slow, all at the same time. Not a whole lot has happened since September. We are still waiting on the keys to our house (6 days!). We've been preping for the big move, have ordered a new kitchen, are meeting up with handyman's (handymen? that just doesn't sound right), packing boxes, choosing paint colours, looking at furniture... This is the part where time feels like it slows down.

Some sad news: our pet rat Lucy died. It all happened within a week. We noticed one weekend that she was walking funny, sort of limping. We thought it was from when we accidently closed the door on her...but then she started sleeping more and eating less, even falling asleep in the most random places, like next to the tv or on the floor under the table. Very un-rat-like. Very un-Lucy-like. Then she started falling from things. She always fell before, but not as often and not as hard. It was like she couldn't hold herself up properly any more. Then, one day I let her out to run around and by the end of the day her back legs stopped moving and the only way for her to move around was to pull herself with her front legs and roll around. She stopped eating and drinking and just slept. We expected her to die that night, but every morning she was still there, half alive. Finally, on Monday, after three days of waiting I took her to the vet to have her put down. I expected to just hand her over and leave, and they'd take care of her. But the vet was a kindly man, very sensative and knowing that some people who love their pets like to be there for the last few moments, assumed I would too. I stood there as he stuck a needle as long as her body into her leg to numb her, then he gave me the box and in a quiet funerary voice sent me to the garden greenhouse in the back so I could say goodbye. I was unprepared for this. I sat there for ten minutes with Lucy on my lap, tears dripping off my chin, watching her breathing slow down till it was hard to see without focusing on her little chest moving up and down. I kept telling myself, this is silly, she's just a rat. But I couldn't help myself. The vet came back after a while and said it was time. Embarassed, I followed him, expecting to be sent away. But instead he offered me a seat next to the examining table where I watched as he checked her reactions before putting a large needle full of an orange fluid straight into her heart. Then we waited. And she kept breathing. All I wanted was to leave the room but I stood there staring, unable to move away and trying so hard not to cry again in front of this sensative vet. If I started, I couldn't stop again. I wanted it to be over so I could leave. But she wouldn't die! Her little chest shuddered and heaved, then her breathing seemed to stop, then it shuddered again. The vet tapped her on her eye and she did not react. He said she was braindead and that her body was just fighting for the last bit of life in it. He asked if I wanted to go back to the garden with her to wait. No, I really didn't want to! I asked if it was ok to just leave her, he said that was fine, they'd take care of her. So I paid and left as quickly as I could, and tried not to think of my little rat the whole way home.

It's been a couple of weeks now. I am throwing away the cage and her stuff. I have an almost full back of rat food that I don't know what to do with... Feels like a waste to throw that out. Maybe I can feed it to the neighborhood pigeons.

We are babysitting a cat, a sort of test trial at the same time. We might keep her. The associate pastor got her from the previous pastor who got her from some lady at church; they all know she's old but not sure how old... Anyway, he got married and his new wife isn't too fond of cats, so they want to find a new home. But I talked to her yesterday and she seemed suddenly reluctant when I told her 'yes, we'll keep her'. Maybe she feels guilty. Anyway, if we can't keep the cat, I'm gonna work on Luuk to convince him that dogs are actually awesome and we should have one. If that doesn't work, mini-pigs are the new trend.