Wednesday, August 8, 2007

The Trinity of Death

XBrood Live: The Trinity of Death

Sunday, June 18, 2006

The Morrigan, my Morrigan, got her name from the Celtic Goddess of War; The keeper of Death. Morrigan ran away a couple of months ago. Actually she more than likely simply rolled out of a window by accident. By the time I actually got around to write about it she had been gone for nearly two weeks. To say I was distraught...well, it's a bit of an understatement. I have a knack for keeping my true feelings hidden. If I could hide my deep desire to have children for so many years I could hide anything. It hasn't been easy though and It's gotten harder and harder the more time goes by. I don't know why, maybe I'm getting old. Just after I was able two write about the incident she came home. Both Morrigan & Salem came home and I was happy again.

She continued her bad behavior urinating around the house as did Salem, but I kept things as clean and neat as humanly possible, used Pet Stain Oxiclean around every corner and gave both of them lots of love and attention. Suddenly instead of urinating all over the house she started eating absolutely everything in site. Rigid asked me why I thought she would be doing that and I told him she was either pregnant or was starved out in the street so that when she came back she started to overeat to compensate. If that makes sense at all... Kitty psychology or so I thought. Within a few weeks she gained so much weight. Don't get me wrong we suspected she could be pregnant, but the way she put weight on was strange. I actually thought there might be something else wrong with her.

About a month and a half after she'd come home we started to worry more and I thought we should see a vet, but she seemed happy. Fat, but happy. I figured she was just getting some really bad habits. It got to the point where she was eating Salems food. When Salem started to lose weight we freaked and started feeding Salem on the side to try to keep her weight up. Morrigan had turned into a little pigly wiggly and I was not happy. I started restricting her diet. Fed them twice a day and only about a cup each time. Of course she still ate Salems food so she was still getting more than she needed. I even started trying to get her to excercise more. Nothing worked. We were frustrated and angry and didn't know what to do anymore.

The Morrigan needed attention so she meowed and meowed, but we ignored her pleas. That's what she gets for being a naughty kitty eating her sisters food. I felt guilty, but justified. I checked her belly so many times and went into my memory banks of all the pregnant cats I've seen in my life time and never do I remember a cat carrying so high and wide. It looked like someone stuffed her like a turkey....like she'd eaten a large bird and it sat in her belly sideways like in the cartoons. You'd think the nipples would have tipped me off at some point. We looked at them and messed with them when we rubbed her belly...even squished them just in case. No milk...very puzzling indeed.

Her neediness grew worse and worse with each passing day. Where ever I went she went. It was so bad that I was afraid to ever step back without looking because I had stepped on her tail so many times before. I got so angry at her at 0ne point for getting underfoot that I even went to far as to step on her tail on purpose to teach her a lesson and get her out of my way once and for all. It wasn't hard, but I hurt her feelings because she knew I'd done it on purpose. Have you ever seen a cat look at you that way? It's not fun and that was the day she was being particularly needy. She wouldn't leave our side, not even to let us eat. She knows to stay away when food is on the table, but she was being very naughty and meowing for attention while we ate.

Rigid cast her aside like a rag doll after having scolded her so many times before. I was horrified and warned him not to treat her that way again. She's only an animal after all and doesn't understand why she shouldn't be there. Plus the enormous weight of her girth could snap her legs in two! If I had been thinking at all I would have kept the water bottle at my side as I've had to do the last few weeks. I got sick of coming home to a disheveled house night after night because Morrigan decided she wanted to stretch out on everything throwing all my knickknacks on the floor. The water bottle did the trick. She can't even see it in my hand because she'll run for her very life. Later that evening we were on the couch watching television. I was watching "So You Think You Can Dance" and forcing Rigid to watch with me to spend quality time together. WHAT? There was nothing else on! *ahem*

Morrigan decides it's okay to be pushy and whiny again because there's no human food around. Unfortunately the cat decided she wanted to lay with me, but it was hot and I didn't feel like having fur on my leg. That and I was very annoyed with her for being so needy and whiny and constantly getting underfoot nearly tripping me half a dozen times this weeks. I was sick of it! I shoved her off me. She'd meow/purred and come back for more so I pushed her and told Rigid to keep her next to him. He tried, but she wanted me so I got off the couch, grabbed a giant pillow from another chair, shoved her aside again then plopped down on the couch with the pillow between she and I.

I realized that I would actually be getting hotter this way, but I didn't care. It wasn't about the heat anymore, this cat had annoyed the living shit out of me and I wanted her head! Rigid tried to make her feel better by giving her love and petting her while we continued to watch TV. I think he even called me mean and asked her to forgive me. I gave him a obstinate glare and he chuckled at himself. I was enjoying watching people prancing on TV...I like watching other people cry. It makes me feel good. Not in a perverse sort of way but in a way that makes me feel like I'm not the only idiot out there with feelings. In a way that makes me feel good about peoples triumphs and choices but before I even had a chance to get into the show Rigid became concerned with a noise she made.

I thought he had farted, but it was Morrigan. It didn't smell it was just a noise I had never heard the cat make. He started yelling that she was having babies and I told him he was crazy, but I was concerned so I removed the pillow and started petting her belly. Her nipples were massive and that's when I got worried. My brain started to go blank on me. I was sure it was over 3 months since she'd gotten out. That's much too long. Gestation is about 2 months right? Yeah. I petted her and checked her nipples, squished them...Nothing. I figured he was over reacting and she's probably starting to make funny fat noises like some animals I've known. Definitely decided to take her to the Vet on Monday. About 10 min after that Rigid jumped off the couch and started screaming that she was having contractions. That she was having babies. He wasn't making any sense to me so I gave him a piece of my mind as I continued to pet and coo Morrigan.

He'd startled her and she was meowing. Suddenly I saw it. She was just lying there and then this wave exploded through her furry little body from her chest just above her stomach down to her toes. I jumped up screaming "Oh my god!" over and over again and instantly broke into hysterical tears. Just like that all the awful things we did, all the neglect came rushing back to me stabbing me in the neck....Not the heart. The neck…kind of like those awful movies you’ve seen of prison house shankings; that's why I felt I couldn't breath. Rigid tried to calm me down, but his version of calm is a little skewed. "Maharet! Shut the fuck up, your freaking Morrigan out. Calm the fuck down. Get a hold of yourself your only making things worse."

He was right of course so I went to the open part of the living room and sat with Morrigan while I tried to think more clearly. Unfortunately the contractions were a little distracting and I was filled with grief all over again so that I was just sitting there trying to pet her trying not to spit all over her while I tried to tell Rigid what to do. Get on the internet, find me information, call my sister. He tried the Internet, but halfway through Morrigan decided she didn't want him away from us and got up in the middle of a contraction. He brought me the phone and brought her back and tried to find me my sister’s number. Everything flew out of my brain so I couldn't think which is weird for me because I'm always very much in control. Icy control...that's what I'm known for. It was my cat though and I melted. Every awful thing, every bit of neglect jabbing away at my skull like a hot poker melting away every last bit of control I ever had.

I was beyond a wreck...and I couldn’t get a hold of my sister. Thank god because I would have freaked her out. Rigid decided to call Pumpo and told him what was going on. When he spoke to me the first words that came out of the earpiece was "First of all CALM THE FUCK DOWN! Okay?", it was hard, but I tried and I listened and just talking about all the stuff we needed to expect really helped me get through this. When I told him why I felt the way I did he helped me understand that there's nothing I could do about it and that he knows our actions didn't put her into labor... That it sounded like she was right on time and that stepping on her tail isn't going to make her lose her babies. I eventually got off the phone and hung it up. By the time I got back to her she had already given birth to her first kitten....It happened right under my nose. She had all three kittens just fine and they all survived the night. I took the next day off to get some rest and a few more hours of sleep. I was worried that the kittens didn't seem to be suckling properly so I took her to the Vet. She also hadn't expelled the other two placentas and I was very worried about her health.

The Dr was a bit of a prick at first, but he was nice enough once we got in there. He told me there was nothing to worry about and that I most likely will never actually see the kittens feed then he gave her a shot in case she hadn't expelled the placentas. Said it would help her milk production as well. I believed him when he said I needed to stop fussing over her and that the kittens would be fine. The next day I got home and found two dead under the computer. Ants crawled all over their tiny bodies and I was horrified and disgusted. It's not the first time I've seen dead cats or kittens, but I think it was the first time they were mine. I realized the third kitten was missing and I figured someone ate it. I was bereaved and I didn't know who to call or what to do. I tried to look for the kitten, but I couldn't find it. I finally heard a tiny meow and found her behind my TV. He seemed strong enough, but also didn’t seem to be feeding properly. I walked to the store two very long blocks away and blistered my foot in the process. I got back to the apt huffing and puffing (I’m a slacker…I do nothing.) and tried to feed the kitten with a children’s toy bottle. He tried a little, but he didn’t like the milk. After Rigid got home he tried some more of his tough love and yelled at me to get up so we could take the kitten to the hospital. I could barely lift my head off the floor. I just got done trying to feed a kitten that didn’t want to feed and Morrigan kept getting in the way. I just didn’t know what to do anymore.

I weakly told him to fuck off because I didn’t even have the strength to tell him what a dick he was being to me and to cut it the fuck out. To be fair though he did care for the dead kittens. He washed all the horrible ants of their bodies, put them away in a little box then buried them in the yard. He even made a little cross for the grave. I thought that a very bizarre thing to do, but I was more concerned with the last kitten. I tried to convince myself that he was fighting tooth and nail; that it wasn’t dying and that I was just being overly dramatic. I even spoke to another friend who told me her kittens slept all the time when they were just born and not to worry. But he died the next day. I knew they were going to die. I knew they were all going to die because all those little things that threw me into hysterics were real. They weren’t imagined. Had we known she was pregnant things would have been different I know, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. I’m trying not to blame myself or my husband for this. I’m trying not to see my cat flying through the air and hit the floor over and over again. I’m trying not to hate him because it’s not his fault.

Last night was the first night she let me sleep without pawing at my door and meowing. Maybe it was the vinegar? I thought it might be, but no…She was lying right outside my door waiting for me to wake up and when I did we both went to the computer without thinking. She let out a strangled little purr and I stopped dead in my tracks, turned around and got in the shower. It’ll take us a little while to recover from this, but we’ll be fine. We know Morrigan is too old at this point to really have healthy kittens so we most likely will go through with our decision to have her spayed. I think it’s the right thing to do. Still according to my calculations she went into labor a little early…maybe. Anywhere between 57 and 68 days…or is that normal. It’s varied.

So I named the kitties after they all died… I haven’t actually seen the little grave Rigid made for them. Maybe I’ll get out there and visit The Morrigan Trinity of Life & Death: Macha (Raven), Badb (The Crow) & Nemain (Battle Fury) Or according to Rigid: Mr. Black, Mr. Grey and Mr. Orange.

Posted by Maharet at 8:59 AM

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