Category: Pets

Goodbye House, I Love You

Our cat Boo gives our cat Trixie the side-eye

I’ve saved my last goodbye for the house that has been our home for sixteen years. Built in 1925, old homes have their charms and their challenges. This one has charmed me and it’s hard to say goodbye but it is time. The movers are packing our belongings and loading it onto the truck. Tomorrow we leave for Arizona.

It’s funny what you fall in love with, sometimes it’s the little things. I’ll always remember the wooden grate over the heating vent that attracted the cats like a watering hole in a dry savannah. Trixie loves it, as have many of our cats, including Boo who was already occupying it and wondering about his sister’s intentions as he gave her the side-eye on her approach.

The mover’s were surprised we aren’t taking the stained glass windows with us, which hang just inside of the real windows. They were here when we bought the house, home-made I would guess, but do a lovely job of providing privacy while letting in light.

These old houses have their challenges too. I won’t miss the tiny one car garage. You get used to contractors coming out to fix what seems like a simple problem and hearing them say “I’ve never seen this before”. We had an electrician out recently who based on my description of the problem thought it would be an easy fix, as it had been a long day and he was ready for home. Two hours later …

When I think of home I think of this house. I’ve never lived anywhere nearly as long as we’ve lived here. It will still be a home, just not ours. I hope it protects and delights its new owners as well it has us. Goodbye, I love you.

A stained-glass window that sits inside of the real window in an old house in the Irvington neighborhood of Portland, Oregon

Goodbye Irving Park, I Love You

Our dog Ellie rests in the dog park at Irving Park in front of blooming trees in the Irvington neighborhood of Portland, Oregon on March 11, 2018. Original: _DSC3933

As our move to Arizona draws close, let me say goodbye to some of the things I’ve loved about our time in the Pacific Northwest, starting with Irving Park. When we moved to Portland 16 years ago, we only had cats so we never considered how close the house might be to a dog park. When we adopted Ellie in 2009 and trained her to go off-leash, it was a delight to discover a dog park was only a few blocks away. After not stepping foot in the park until then we’ve visited twice a day, every day, since. In the sun, in the fog, in the rain, in the snow. Not the ice, Ellie hates the ice.

These days Ellie keeps her evening walks short so we go up to Irving Park but not all the way to the dog park, but most mornings she wants to make it up the hill. More to meet the owners than the other dogs, both because she adores people and because she never misses an opportunity to try to convince someone to give her a treat. After that we head out into the neighborhood, occasionally she wants to go straight home but usually she’s up for a longer ramble, even at 14 years old.

The trees started blooming a couple of weeks ago so I took advantage of a sunny morning to get one last picture of Ellie at the park. A variety of trees ring the paths of the park, some giants from long ago whose lives were spared when the area was carved from the forest. A handful of years ago I deliberately traded a lot of my hiking on the weekends for long walks with Ellie when I realized our aging pup would still go on long walks if they were in the morning, and while I miss the hiking I wouldn’t trade my time with Ellie for it.

Thank you Irving Park for many great memories with this greatest of pups. Thank you to all who helped create and maintain the park over so many years. Goodbye, I love you.

📷: Sony A6500 | Sony-Zeiss 24mm f/1.8
🗓️: March 11, 2018

What Matters

Our black tuxedo cat Boo sleeps curled up in a large box surrounded by wrapping paper

If our rental application is approved, we leave for Arizona in a week-and-a-half.

A week-and-a-half.

How can it be that it is time to say goodbye to my home? But it is time. I’m planning to write goodbye posts to a few of my favorite parts of life here, tributes to a place that I have loved to my very core, but I don’t want to give the impression that just because it saddens me to leave the Pacific Northwest that I’m not excited about exploring the Southwest. The Sonoran desert has a unique beauty all its own and I have much to learn on many levels and I’m eager for the journey to begin. I wish I was already there.

But even if the job was in a place I wasn’t excited about, what matters most is our little family will be together.

When our plane landed Saturday night and we took our phones out of airplane mode, my wife had texts from our pet sitter that she and our three cats were at DoveLewis, our emergency vet. She had prepared Ellie’s pills by covering them with pill pockets, but when she let Ellie outside briefly to go to the bathroom one of the cats ate all of Ellie’s pills. With a long history of pet ownership this is not our first brush with an accidental poisoning, I shudder to think how many things Ellie ate in her first months with us as we learned the hard way just how low the bar our pup sets for what qualifies as food.

And of course when I started this blog 12 years ago one of my first posts was about our cat Templeton swallowing a sewing needle right before we were leaving for a trip. Accidents happen, I’m sure all pet owners (and parents) have their own stories.

Thankfully she got all three cats into their carriers (trust me, this is no small feat) and took them to DoveLewis so they were already getting treatment by the time we arrived. It would be easy to panic in a situation like this but I’m grateful she did exactly what was needed.

We suspected Boo was the culprit but until we knew for sure all cats were getting treatment. They gave them medicine to get the cats to throw up but only Trixie cooperated, and she didn’t have any pills (or pill pockets) in her stomach as we suspected. Sam and Boo weren’t revealing their secrets and neither was talking so we left them overnight after talking with both the doctors there and the experts at the ASPCA poison control hotline (1-888-426-4435), while we took Trixie home with us.

The brothers were given charcoal to absorb as much of the medicine as possible, Sam never showed any symptoms but overnight Boo developed an elevated temperature and was anxious and over-reactive, one of the effects the ASPCA predicted, confirming our suspicions about the identify of the pill thief. Those symptoms cleared up by morning and by 2 p.m. they were cleared to come home.

At this point we’re just monitoring Boo, he only ate half his food last night but ate most of it this morning although it took him two passes. He’s been a bit lethargic but not frighteningly so, he could just be recovering from everything he went through physically and emotionally. It could be because he’s upset I recycled all his Boo Boxes. He’s asleep on my legs at the moment, I hate to disturb him but the dog must be walked and I have more to do today than I have time to do.

I’m thankful for my little ones, and so very thankful that we have the income to afford treatments like this when something goes wrong. And I’m deeply thankful for everyone who has looked after our little ones during our stay here, from the sitters to the doctors and everyone in between. We’ll have to find new people in Arizona to fill those roles, and will want to know a good emergency vet before we leave Oregon, one of the many little tasks to be done.

But for now we’re all together and that makes me happy.

Shelter Me, My Brother, and Protect Me From All Harm

Our cats Sam and Trixie sleep side-by-side atop the cat tree in my office

Trixie has been a bit on edge lately as she knows something is up from all the sorting we’ve been doing the past couple of weeks. She’s always adored our eldest cat Sam and seeks him out to snuggle with him, but never as much as now. Seeing them like this reminds me of how much comfort Sam took from Scout when he was younger.

The Ball Game

Our dog Ellie looks at me as she stands in the hallway with the kitchen in the background of our house in Portland, Oregon in February 2018

Someone from the moving company came the other day to do a walk-through of our house. Ellie was eager to greet him, as is her wont, but then she got her orange ball and starting tossing it at me. She followed us around, trying unsuccessfully to get me to play, the entire time he was there. When we were finished, the moment he was out the door I turned to Ellie to play with the ball but she wouldn’t even put it in her mouth much less play with it.

You make me laugh, my pup, my heart and my joy.

How To Make Sure They Don’t Leave You Behind

Our cat Trixie sleeps in a duffel bag in front of packed belongings in preparation for our move

Don’t worry little Squeaks, we are going to great lengths to make sure you and your siblings join us in Arizona. My wife and I fly out on Thursday so we can meet with a realtor on Friday and Saturday to look for a rental house. We know it is going to be difficult to find a place that will take 3 cats and a dog, but we’ll do our best. If we find a place then we’ll move down before I start my new job, regardless of when our stuff can follow us down. I meet with the moving company later today so I might have a better feel then for when they can pack our things and get them started on their journey.