In 2008, one of my colleagues from the veterinary hospital we worked at was walking her dog when she came across a cat half dead in some bushes – this calico cat was covered in maggots. She brought the cat in. The cat was scanned and had a microchip – she was owned by someone. This poor cat who my colleague named Maggie due to the sheer number of maggots on her could not be euthanized, although that would have been the most humane treatment for her. I only say this because this poor cat not only had fly larvae on her skin, but they were on the inside of her! As soon as she had an intravenous catheter placed and fluids were started, copious maggots were removed from her. She was then taken straight to surgery where my friend and veterinarian, Callalily, had to amputate her tail and lavage Maggie’s insides. Maggie had at least two more surgeries to rid her of all of the maggots and the intensive damage that they did to her. The owners were never located. Instead, the microchip had been registered to an animal shelter.

Maggie was in the ICU for a couple of weeks and then she was in the boarding ward. She was right across from the barking dogs. She was extremely scared. My colleague was trying to find a home for the cat, but nobody was interested. Maggie wasn’t a very loving, cuddly cat. I remember trying to do her treatments one time. I had to give her her pain meds and without warning, she bit me! I kept thinking about this poor cat.

I am known as a cat whisperer. I would rather deal with a frightened cat any day over a frightened dog. I can handle a fractious cat. A biting dog scares the hell out of me. After Maggie bit me, I knew that where this cat was – right across the way from barking dogs wasn’t the answer for her. She needed to move. But where? She was very timid. I asked my colleague if I could foster Maggie at my house, thinking that this might help the cat out.

I’m a foster failure. I ended up keeping Maggie and changed her name to Maddie. She didn’t have maggots any more, she had mats and lots of them! Her fine hair tangled up. After taking her home, I eventually moved her upstairs to my bedroom with my cat, Spritzer, who didn’t get along with one of my cats downstairs. Maddie didn’t seem to mind Spritzer, so all was well.

I found out that Maddie had a diarrhea problem. More tests and it turned out that she had inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). She was placed on a special food for this – Natural Balance duck and green pea. But this is why she had the maggots because they were attracted to her diarrhea.

I lost Maddie in September of 2017. I had her for nine years. She never became a lap cat. But in those nine years, she did allow me to pick her up, brush her, trim her nails, pet her, love on her, and she did purr for me. I am so glad I took her home and became her owner. She was a love in her own special way. She never took to any of my other pets, but seemed to tolerate Spritzer and even allowed him to groom her a couple of times.

Funny Story about a Finch

There was one time when I was cleaning my finches’ cage and one of my finches got out. Peepers was flying all over my room. Ack! With two cats in the room, this wasn’t very smart on Peepers part for getting loose. Well he happened to fall in Maddie’s food dish. The look on her face if she could talk would have been, “That’s my food! Get out of my bowl bird!” 😂

I absolutely hate moving. Of course, I don’t know anyone who really likes moving as it’s very stressful. First, you have to pack up everything to make sure nothing breaks. Second, you have to pack up the similar stuff together as you certainly don’t want to pack the dishes with the bathroom rugs and shower curtains, or pack the baby gate odds and ends with the sheets and blankets because then you’ll never find what you’re looking for. Sigh. Lastly, you need to label the box appropriately. Maybe even assign it a room – master bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, etc. Is is fragile? Does the box need to be kept upright? Of course, you also have to make sure you have enough sturdy boxes, packing materials, tape, and a sharpie. Yep, I definitely dislike packing and moving! 😕

What’s worse than packing is when you have to pack up an entire house in less than five days time. Now, that’s a killer! I was packing the appropriate stuff together, but as the hours dragged on, the days running into the evenings, and there was still so much left to do… I started throwing stuff in whatever open box. (I don’t recommend this.) My body ached from packing and moving boxes from one end of the house to the other.

A typical day consisted of getting up at the crack of dawn, driving my boyfriend, Dick, to work (40 minutes one way,) driving back home, feeding the pets and me, packing for several hours, driving back to pick up Dick from work – then he’d want to go grocery shopping, then back to the nightmare rental, packing some more, eating dinner, feeding the pets again, and collapsing into bed, to repeat the process the next morning. We were supposed to have finished packing up the house in three days. Nope, there was no way to do this with just me packing. Dick stayed in the garage the duration of the time. There wasn’t even that much stuff in the garage to pack. What was he doing?! He said there was nothing of his in the house to pack. But what about helping me pack? He said it wasn’t his stuff. But did he not use my pots and pans to cook his food and my dishes to eat his food? Did he not use my bed to sleep in? Did he not use my stuff on a daily basis?! But it’s not his stuff and therefore he’s not going to help me pack?! 🤔 Why am I driving him to work in my vehicle then? Why am I wasting my time picking him up? Why have I been doing this for months now?!

Moving Day

I hired a guy on Facebook to come help us pack the U-haul truck I rented. He said he had a truck with a trailer – perfect! Between his truck and trailer and the U-haul truck that I had rented, we would be able to pack up the whole house in one trip. Except the guy was late and he didn’t bring his truck or his trailer. He drove a smaller vehicle with his grandpa in the passenger seat and also brought his young friend who didn’t really care if boxes were fragile or not. 😡

We were able to at least get the major appliances out of the house and most of the bigger boxes, but a lot of the boxes wouldn’t fit into the U-haul. It’d be another couple of trips, for certain. The guy I hired said he’d come back the next day, but he never showed. 😕 This was after I had paid him more than what we had bargained for, had given him a work bench for free, paid for his, his grandpa, and his friend’s lunch, AND gave him an extra $20 for fuel!

With the U-haul truck rental and storing my stuff at a U-haul storage facility, the first month was free. The only reason I decided to store my stuff was because I thought Dick and I were going to look for another place for us. Little did I know…

Back at the nightmare rental, we packed up more of my truck, and left the cats there and then brought both of the dogs with us. Back to the storage facility to drop off more boxes and then to the motel to collapse. It was now about 5:00 in the morning. We were both zombies. 🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️

I had reserved this extended stay motel for the week. They allowed two pets. Dick paid for half the stay minus the deposit of the pets. He was not willing to pay for anything over his share, but he also didn’t pay anything towards the U-haul or the moving even though some of his stuff was moved too. After we woke up, I fed and walked the dogs – oh my gosh, I thought my limbs were going to break. I don’t remember ever being so tired or painful. I just wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep for the next three days. But we had a house to move out of, and another house to look for. What a nightmare!

I loaded up the dogs, waited for Dick, and then we drove the 40 minutes back to Taft to get more boxes – back to Bakersfield to drop the boxes off, and back to Taft again. It took about two more trips because that guy flaked on us. I also had to find a pet sitter to board Roscoe, my dog and ended up boarding my cat, Blur, at Bakersfield Veterinary Hospital. Before our last trip back to Bakersfield, I needed to drop the pets off, then we had to clean the house, and then take Halo, my Pomeranian and Aby, my other cat back to the motel with us. Unfortunately, when we went to lock up the house, I couldn’t find my keys. I don’t know if I accidentally packed them up or if I accidentally threw them away. Luckily, I had a spare key for my truck.

Ethele didn’t get back to me until the 7th of May! The following was her text to me.

I immediately texted Corinna to get a picture of the sliding glass door. I already knew we weren’t going to get our deposit back, but for someone to say that I broke something… oh this made me mad! I’m not that type of person. Never have been, never will be.

It’s interesting to see the sliding glass door broken from this angle because it’s intact from the inside. It’s only shattered from the outside. When we left, the backyard had grass. Dick had spent a day cutting down the grass with his weed-whacker. Ethele had hired someone between the day we moved out and before this picture was taken to have the backyard completely redone – all of the grass is gone. My guess is that the gardener, when mowing the backyard, kicked up a rock into the sliding glass door. That’s the only way a double pane glass can have a single glass pane broken. Then they decided to blame it on us.

Next up: Shame on Me