YIKES!!!
What a story! I'm glad it all worked out and certainly hope that you are healing well, Brenda!
Take care and give those kitties a big smooch!
Love, Julie
"Brenda K. Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi Again.....
Peggy, will you call Tinley and pass my previous email info to her and also this email info? I get her email bounced back every time I sent one to her work.
OK, changed my mind. I think Lovey is a Ragdoll. He has the same type of fur that my Baby Kitty has and she is a Tortie Point Birman. She is a mix and rather than the white mittens that Birmans have her paws are tortie point. But, she has the Birman fur that never mats. I did some research of my pedigree books and Lovey looks almost exactly like a Ragdoll. Some Ragdolls have the white mitten paws, but some have the chocolate paws like Lovey. Two or three times now I have picked him up under the armpits with both hands and hold him and he justs hangs down and loves it. It doesn't really matter what he is, but I like to match them as close as possible when I can. He continues to be adorable. He lays next to me on the couch and then up on my daughter's lap and lays there. He wants to be fair you know. lol
Right now precious Merry is laying on my bed. Whenever I go in there she starts to purr. I stop and pet her, give her kisses and she rolls over on her side. :) She came up from the basement earlier tonight and wanted to eat. She had 1/2 can and nibbled on some dry. She is starting a mat by her neck and her ears are quite dirty. I'm just not doing too much to her except get her Interferon down until she feels more comfortable here, but she is definitely responding.
We were to pick them up Monday night around 9:30 PM in Portage, WI. Thanks to the selfless wonderful Gail, Valerie, Mitch and Tom (along with all the great people who were helping) we were going to accomplish this goal. Gail kept the cats two nights and started after a long day at work Monday evening getting them to Valerie and Mitch. Valerie and Mitch started after work when Gail passed the cats to them. Then Valerie & Mitch passed the cats onto Tom in Beloit, WI. Tom was to drive to Portage, WI and meet us at 9:15 to 9:30 PM.
Everthing started out fine for us. We were getting ready and planned to leave at 2:00 PM central time in order to be able to stop for dinner and get to Portage in plenty of time. I was getting ready and around 1:15 PM my husband told me he accidentally spilled his coffee on the carpeted stairs when coming into the house through the back door which also leds down to the basement. He said he tried to wipe it up. I asked him to spray it with Nature's Miracle, scrub it, wipe it up and then spray a coating to let it dry. It's an enzyme eater and works wonderfully. I thought it was just a small area on the step. It turned out to be the entire first step, second step and onto the landing rug and they were soaked and slippery. A few minutes later after my husband had worked on the spot, my daughter went downstairs to get something for the trip. I heard her go and went into the kitchen to go down the two steps to yell at her to get something else so she didn't have to make two trips. I was barefoot. I am always barefoot in the house summer and winter. Must be my early beginnings. I was born in Paducah, KY. :) Anyway, all of my floors are oak with no carpets. The two stairs to go down to the landing to go to the basement or out the back door are carpeted with a tweed carpet. As soon as my right front foot hit the first step (it felt like an ice skating rink ice) it slid right off the step passed the second step to the landing, my left foot and leg were still on the oak floor so my left leg and foot ended up backward under me and my right foot kept going while my right arm was trying to save myself from hurling on down to the basement. At all of our doorways because of boarding dogs in our home we have the older wooden accordian type gates. The one at the doorway in the kitchen which leads to the basement and outside has been busted through and eaten through at times. Those types of gates are hard to find. Anyway, my husband has tried to keep repairing them. He had screwed the slats together the last time with screws and nuts. My left front thigh was in intense pain, the complete top of my left foot and four toes were immediately purple, stiff and swollen. At the time my left leg turned under me my right thigh must have hit the edge of the oak floor just before the stairs and the rest of my right leg hit the stairs hard. My daughter was running up the stairs to me as soon as she heard me fall. I was unable to speak or move the pain was so intense. She kept screaming for her dad, but he couldn't hear her at first. As the pain receptors in my body started dulling the pain I looked down and saw blood on my tan slacks. I lifted my right arm and my daughter said, "Oh my God". I looked then and I had a very deep gash about 1-1/2" going horizonally across under my wrist and about 1/4" deep or more along with two more triangular gashes down the fatty part of the right forearm. The blood was kind of gushing out.
Anyway, by that time my daughter had pulled me up and got me to the bathroom still yelling for her dad. He finally heard and came to the bathroom to see what was going on. My daughter was very upset and wanted me to go to the emergency room. But, I knew that wonderful people, Lovey and Merry were counting on me. After everything all these wonderful people had done for me and our family to rescue these cats, I just couldn't let them down. My daughter was not happy. She is a very special young woman who has seen me through almost dying, the heart transplant and cancer. I don't think of myself as anybody special, but I do have a very strong spirit and resolve. I have had much adversity in my life and I have a way of dealing with emergencies and/or pain by focusing on what I need to do to deal with the emergency or pain, but pushing down the actual feelings of pain. I get kine of a tunnel vision, deal with what I have to deal with, get it done and then let down when everything is over and accomplished.
I calmed my daughter and husband. I told them I am going to get the cats. I told them that my heart was full of the caring and love of all these people who didn't even know me and it had shown me that Lovey and Merry were destined to be with us. I told them that I was going. I knew that I would be fine in the end. I peroxided all of my arm wounds, held the deep gash on my wrist closed as my daughter butterflied it. Then I told her to wrap that with paper tape. Then I put an elastic wrist band around my wrist/wound to keep in place. Then we bandaged the other two triangular shaped gashes. By then I could hardly walk because of the pain in my left foot and right thigh/leg, so we put an ice pack on top of my left foot. Needless to say, we didn't get to leave until almost 3:30 PM. My total concentration was on getting to Portage to get my new babies.
At 5:50 PM we came to Bloomer, WI. We had made great time. With the freeway we were traveling one mile per minute. We knew we had no problem getting to Portage well before Tom. We needed to stop in Bloomer to get gas, bathroom and get a little snack to eat in the car. We got back on the freeway in Bloomer eating a chicken strip and about 1/2 mile later Janine's gauge went ding, ding, ding. It said check the gauges. She looked and the heat gauge was way up. I told her to pull over and stop the car immediately. The radiator was overheating.
We were sitting there on the side of the rood, getting cold and Janine called 1-800-roadside. It took about 45 minutes to get a tow truck. Meanwhile I called Tom and told him what was going on. I didn't know what the problem was with the car. We had never had any problem with my daughter's car before. Tom was very patient and understanding. I told him I would let him know what was happening as soon as I knew.
Thank goodness the person who responded with the tow truck was a very special person. His last name was Prince. After he had fixed the problem I told him he was our special prince. :) He towed us to Colfax, WI to his auto body shop to try to fix the car. He said if he couldn't fix the car he would take us to Eau Claire, a bigger city, to have our car fixed. He was an exceptional young man. It wasn't a serious problem. The clamp that held a water hose had blown off or fallen off allowing all the water and anti-freeze to drain quickly through the hose from the radiator. Mr. Prince fixed it and took the car for a ride to make sure it was fine. We had already told him about the cats and all the special people who had made it possible. He had three cats and understood completely. :)
We finally got on the road again. I checked the cell phone and Tom had called I think three times. We had no service in the little town of Colfax, WI. I called Tom and told him the car was fixed and that we were so sorry to inconvenience him. I told him that I thought we could be in Portage by 10:00 or 10:30 PM. He was very accomodating although I knew he must be very tired by then. He had long been in Beloit awaiting us. We continued on and a little later Tom called and said he would be glad to drive further to the Wisconsin Dells area. We were just so touched that this man who must have been tired was again going out of his way to help us. We said we would get there as fast as we could. Tom said "Don't kill yourself trying to get here, just take it easy." He didn't even know us and he was worried about us.
More later.
-- Brenda..... http://www.whiskersandwicks.com http://www.cheqnet.net/~bksmith "The only risk you ever run in befriending a cat is enriching yourself." - Colette Don't Take Your Organs To Heaven. Heaven Knows We Need Them Here.No virus found in this outgoing message.
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"I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is
to protection by man from the cruelty of man. "
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged
by the way its animals are treated."
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948)
Paws Come WITH Claws!!!
If you're thinking about de-clawing your cat, you need to re-think your decision to acquire a pet.
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