#mellie bear who adopted leander

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

Kinnie died one year ago yesterday, and I did not post about it anywhere because what I needed more was to hang out with Leander and miss her together and pursue fun distractions (our movie choice was less fun than we both needed, unfortunately, but video gaming was as effective as always).

My life is full of beloved cats and I’m not often lonely but I still miss and love Kinnie and I always will. She’s still on my phone lock screen and home screen, and she’ll stay there for as long as I have my phone. I still forget sometimes that she’s not a living part of the family, and have to correct myself when I count her among us.

I can’t go back in time and save her, and I get to carry that with me, just like every other cat that died or that I let go of and hoped they’d have a better life without me. Those aren’t easy memories for me to carry, but I try to be a good cat parent to the ones I look after now. That’s all I can do. And Mellie brightens up all kinds of grey days. <3

#kinnie the cat #mellie bear who adopted leander #i have the best best friend #actuallylukedanes #life stuff

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

can you believe these are all just from the last couple hours? mellie is giving maximum cuteness so i don't even feel bad about not being able to sleep until after 4am

#though i do feel bad about having to ruin her contentment in that last pose #because she's still curled up just like that on my foot and i really must go to bed now #mellie bear who adopted leander #life stuff #breaking news: i have a face #(or in this case a hand)

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

yesterday: my first attempt to crochet while also letting mellie have my lap. success! :)

#crochet #mellie bear who adopted leander #life stuff

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

because she is a delightful weirdo mellie believes that socks are the biggest threat to our entire family so at any moment of the day or night i will be startled by her emphatic yowling over the sock she has discovered somewhere in the house and neutralized by carrying it to a different location and standing over it and she will not stop meowing like a full throated cat alarm until a human witnesses her victory and praises her efforts

#the number of times i have heard her go off at 3am like someone is dying only to wonder where exactly she even FOUND that sock #lol #tonight was cute because i was in the restroom when i heard the meowing and when i emerged #i realized she had brought the evil sock to lay it in front of leander's closed bedroom door #cuz they were both awake in there but had gone to bed already and with me unavailable mellie was like #'I SAVED YOU WITNESS ME' #it's just so funny to me because she doesn't react this way to anything but socks and i very much wonder why #mellie bear who adopted leander #oh cats #life stuff

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

happy birthday mellie

mellie rose is five years old today! 

mellie is a liquid (and a creative sleeper). the final photo is from today :)

#mellie bear who adopted leander #happy birthday!! #long post #breaking news: i have a face #(or in this case a hand lol)

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

so it's been pouring rain lately and mellie has been pretty unhappy at being stuck inside (though she's not much happier when she gets a few minutes outside on the porch in the damp air, either). 

and apparently our beloved future-adoptee sebastian is pretty unhappy about living outside in that weather, because he followed me in at dinnertime, went past mellie and straight to my room, where after some light bullying on her part, leander found them like this:

they’re still there. i’ll have to spray my bed down for fleas later just to be safe, but it is so totally worth it. i love bash so much. :D

#look at our cat kids! <3 #the only reasons bash isn't officially adopted yet are because we don't have the room for 3 cats and bailey is bonded to him #and because unlike mellie he is a truly feral cat so i wanted him to slowly get more comfortable with us #and considering this is the second time he's made himself at home on my bed #and the second time he's decide to come in and stay a long time (one night he settled on the couch while everyone else was asleep) #i think it's been a good strategy for easing him in #most nights he steps into our foyer then immediately goes back out until i'm done feeding the outdoor cats #but these occasional instances are just delightful since he's a part of our family too and just isn't ready to live inside yet #oh cats #mellie bear who adopted leander #sebastian the beautiful bby who adopted me #life stuff

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

so under the banner of heaven was a bit hard to watch with so much blunt violence (although thankfully they implied rather than depicted some of the worst acts against women and children) but andrew garfield did bring the damn fine acting i was hoping for, so i did enjoy the show. i actually went in to try and finish two more episodes last night and then save the final three for another day...but right before i finished up to go to bed, this happened:

and mellie claiming my lap like she really belongs there (especially with no blanket!) is a relatively new development i must encourage at every opportunity. so...i finished the whole thing last night. lol. i meant to rewatch downton abbey and make gifs and play video games while i’ve been here alone, but instead i finished the mormon murder show and have just been offering mellie lots of my attention and space, because the heat wave here has made her a prisoner and she is very very unhappy about it unless she’s asleep with me undisturbed.

#(she's not quite as upset when weather restricts her if we're all home but with only me to complain to she...has been doing so) #under the banner of heaven #mellie bear who adopted leander #life stuff #andrew garfield #breaking news: i have a face #(i know it's not in this photo but my skin is? so i'm still adding my selfie tag)

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

mellie cuddled with me earlier and then left to have a snack and was gone long enough that i assume she settled on the couch for a while...so i took the opportunity to work on crochet and finally made my first new octopus leg since covid august! 

as soon as i set that one aside, mellie returned for my lap again, and stayed there for almost four hours. i got exactly one leg made. lol. if this is what crocheting with the family cat will be like at night, then it’s going to be a very slow process. but i am progressing. :)

#also i'm awake at 5 in the morning because this month was a disaster trying to refill my adderall and going back on it yesterday #means my sleep is gonna be wonky for a bit #mellie bear who adopted leander #crochet #life stuff

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

if anybody has a direct line to the universe please ask them to grant me a september free of major and minor disasters because in august alone i had weeks of mosquito bites that looked suspiciously like giant bruises, two major cat scratches from mellie that have yet to heal, covid with full loss of smell and taste so i couldn’t stand any food besides saltine crackers, three days of exhausting painful housecleaning during my covid recovery to prepare for a family visit, a long family visit which is always fun but also constantly overwhelming, days of stressing about money because my income just cannot stretch as far as i need it to and it’s been six months since kinnie died and my bank account is not even a little healed, having to up my adderall because it hadn’t worked for me since covid, and a fire so close to our house that firefighters broke through our backyard fence to put it out. i am at a breaking point tbh and i wish i could just go somewhere and be alone in total quiet for a while but since that isn’t possible...maybe an ordinary september?

#i have had enough living in interesting times for one year already and there's still three months to go #(also i had a really bad dream before i woke up about my family and home life which started my day off bad mood-y anyway #and the whole thing has felt downhill from there so i'm just straight up depressed now #which i'm sure is probably clear from my level of overdramatizing lol--after all i'm still here and survived all that #but i'm hoping maybe it's my brain adjusting to the meds increase? so that it can be better after a day or two) #/whining #life stuff #mellie bear who adopted leander #covid #money stuff #adhd #fire

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

happy christmas!!

with photos!! aka time to say once again how much i love my friends 

@beturass’s box arrived first, and it contained not only presents but treats. behold, cookies! 

i shared them with my best friend and the kid in residence and they were unanimously enjoyed.

as requested, phoebe found me cute socks. i saw the ducks and rainbows first and was already in love, but then penguins!! aww penguins. BUT THERE WAS MORE. 

i pulled these out and just. could not get over them. a cat hugging a cup of coffee!! is there anything more ME than cat-coffee socks??

well, yesterday i got a card and gift from @jicklet​ and it turns out there is exactly one thing even better than a pair of cat-coffee socks:

TWO PAIRS OF CAT-COFFEE SOCKS. the fact that not one, but two people i like thought about me and bought these absolutely perfect socks makes me feel so known and loved and i really really appreciate it. online friends are real true friends no matter the distance and i’m feeling that this holiday season. also my card from ronnie was sealed with this teeny tiny pig, whom i adore.

finally, here is a bonus season’s greetings from kinnie! she and mellie were both cuddled up with me on christmas eve. that’s my kind of holiday. 💖

#family christmas is tomorrow! i'm looking forward to that a lot #i have the best tumblr friends #life stuff #long post #photos #jicklet #beturass #christmas #mellie bear who adopted leander #kinnie the cat #oh cats #coffee coffee coffee #food #I LOVE PENGUINS #rainbows

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

tw: pet illness, pet death

kinnie cuddled with me last night during video games, then joined me on her designated pillow when i went to bed. she even hopped in the tub while i was in the bathroom, purring away. (the photo above was taken just a couple of days ago--kinnie was never as big a fan of bathtubs as griffin was or as mellie is, so i found her sudden interest extra cute.)

she was also her usual self when leander got up and gave her insulin this morning, and they hung out together for a while. a few hours after that, mellie attacked leander’s door and meowed until they reacted...and kinnie was unresponsive when they found her.

kinnie had gotten sick all over the little couch i spend time on, and the floor where she was laying. she was still breathing, so we took her to the nearby emergency vet. they told us she was in crisis, and that while they’d gotten her blood sugar up a little, she wasn’t going to make it. 

we made the terrible decision to let her go, and said goodbye. 

i haven’t been able to stop crying for seven hours. i can take comfort in the fact that we did all we could to put her diabetes in remission, and she really was healthier and happier in the weeks since we started the insulin--it’s not like what happened to griffin. but telling myself that doesn’t help, because nothing can. 

we’d had to postpone the next phase of her treatment due to covid in our house, so we had the donated money for that procedure still in my account--but her end of life costs were still more than we had. i have to cover the rest as soon as i get paid, so we can receive her ashes. leander had to get a donation from a friend to make sure my account would be stable in the meantime.

kinnie teagan travis was the most beautiful, loyal, talkative cat. we were so lucky fourteen and a half years ago when she climbed @actuallylukedanes’s shoulder in a pet adoption center and stood there like a fluffy parrot, claiming her new home. she never stopped charming us, even turning leander’s fiance into a cat person. nothing about our lives can ever be the same after her.

she snuggled up to fred the frog behind me on the couch, or in my lap or on my legs. she tried to sneak into the garage because she knew mellie spent time there--and she snuck out onto the front porch, never sure what to do with her freedom once she got it. she had her own pillow on my bed where she slept most nights. she insisted on accompanying me to the bathroom. there’s no part of the house that isn’t full of her. 

i hate saying all of this in the past tense. 

kinnie loved fruit, especially blueberries, and she was repelled by my taste in most tv, movies and music. when i got stuck in north carolina due to flight problems and was gone for more than a week, kinnie was loudly despondent. sitting on napkins and then shredding them so they couldn’t be used was her hobby. she survived all of our worst ups and downs and only ever wanted to be near us. i know she didn’t want to leave, any more than i wanted her to. 

i want her back. 

i want to adopt a kitten off the internet and fill the house with so much life and energy and need that things don’t hurt anymore. even though i know that’s not actually how it works.

instead, mellie is wonderful and i’m glad she adopted us long before this. i feel so bad that she’s been looking for kinnie all day since we came home without her. she’s pressed against me with her whole body while i type this, because while she doesn’t always want laptime, she is an understanding sweetheart today and a comfort on purpose. 

sebastian the proud outside tabby may never want to live inside with us and be a cuddler; he just doesn’t seem like the type, but he likes seeing us and getting affection and being nearby, so hopefully we’ll adopt him too eventually. he filled the hole griffin left behind, just a bit. we love him so much. 

and bailey is a ghost, smol and cute and trusting with me. in a few months, when everyone’s more ready, she’ll get a vet visit and a proper adoption and a chance to be an indoor cat like she deserves. today a chair went where kinnie’s scratcher used to go, one that i bought partly because bailey always wants me to stay standing outside longer. maybe now she’ll get all the petting she wants, and see what she thinks of laps.

my life is not without cats, and i can’t throw myself into kitten parenting for selfish fun, when the cats i already love need me and kittens are easy to adopt. nobody could replace kinnie anyway. 

i can throw myself into distractions, though. i was working on minecraft dungeons lately, trying to get ready for a guest week that was guaranteed to include the game, and now that visit’s postponed but i can still shut my brain off with it, and other games. i also have so many shows and movies that are ready to absorb me, if i can focus on them. 

it’s a completely normal reaction to grief, for me to feel like nothing matters. i know that. grief tries to set off the worst of my bipolar depression, and medication can’t stop it because the grief is real. so all my plans and goals from lately, big and small, they got washed away today along with my obsessive budgeting around vet bills, our schedule for giving out insulin, and the things in my room that only kinnie needed. 

what i used to want, i don’t care about anymore. 

i’ll care again, eventually. i went to my first funerals before i understood death; i practiced grief before i reached double digits. i learned survival and acceptance. but i have to make it through the first one to get to the other, and that requires as little time to dwell as possible. some numbness. some avoidance. 

my brain isn’t designed to handle big feelings, because my feelings have no borders and they only grow and grow. i don’t feel bad about that anymore--at least i know what helps. at least i can survive. every time i can honestly tell a specialist that i haven’t recently thought about hurting myself or others, i acknowledge the gift of that. i’m lucky i’ve made it this far.

so, i may be very quiet on my blog for a while. i may post a lot but not respond when you talk to me. or i may be extra engaged, just to keep the thoughts at bay. i honestly don’t know. i’ve never lost a kinnie before. 

whatever happens, thank you to everyone who loved her from afar, who tried to help when we were scared of losing her. thank you in advance for riding out my blogging mania or depression or complete emotional detachment. no matter how quiet i get or how hard i spam your dash with endless liveblogs, i really love you. 

i wish you all could’ve met kinnie in person. she was one of a kind.

#long post #kinnie the cat #kinnie the internet's cat #death #pet death #tw death #tw pet death #cw death #cw pet death #actuallylukedanes #life stuff #bipolar disorder #grief #sebastian the beautiful bby who adopted me #mellie bear who adopted leander #bailey the ghost cat #(i cannot believe bailey didn't have a tag yet--glad i fixed that)

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

general life update

today was my second morning giving kinnie insulin. (@actuallylukedanes and i are trading off, they give it to her after dinner.) it definitely went better than the first time, though i was even more aware of my anxiety this time, and my hands shook even worse. but the first time kinnie jolted and tried to escape, and this time she sat in my lap and was honestly calmer than me til it was over. so that seems like good progress.

she’s already got more of an appetite and to my eye, isn’t as overly thirsty anymore. the insulin has been making her sleepy, but i had to remind myself today that after i get up and begin my day, she has always demanded her morning nap in which i’m not allowed to do anything but hang out with her. so it’s not concerning that she does that now after her breakfast and insulin. and of course, we’ll get things adjusted later this month. it’s early stages yet.

myself, i’m having a weirdly good day! i volunteered to take the morning shift because leander has a pretty regular wake up time that wouldn’t mesh well with 12-hour shifts for kinnie--whereas i have basically no sleep schedule. much easier for me to put myself on a new morning routine when i didn’t have one to start from. the sleep deprivation hasn’t been fun (i have a bit of a headache from it atm) but on early days, i always feel extra clearheaded. 

things with kinnie have been so stressful and so frantic, all while we’ve been trying to get ready for a short visit from the 9-year-old next week when i also had an invasive procedure coming up on monday. i learned at the last minute that the procedure wasn’t happening locally, just adding more stress to everything, so i rescheduled it for next month and here in our city. i think that might be part of why things feel calmer to me now, in addition to being out of the ‘oh god kinnie is sick’ stage and into the ‘taking planned action’ daily routine. 

whatever the reason though, i got up today, gave kinnie and mellie their breakfast (they’re both getting wet food now), took care of kinnie’s health needs before she cuddled up with me, and then i realized: i feel clearheaded today and calm and like i could get things done, for the first time in a week. and i hadn’t even taken my adhd meds yet! so maybe my theory about mornings will turn out to be true. 

i’m naturally nocturnal and always have been, which is why i can never convince myself to get up early every day just for life improvement reasons. even though it gives me quiet time to get chores done, and focused work on things like writing...i need that external motivation or i default back to thriving at 4am. kinnie loves her new delicious (lol i find wet food so gross, even the kind she eats that smells like human food) breakfast and she likes me being up early to provide a reliable lap, so i’ve got excellent external motivation now.

i have a bunch of chores to get done (mainly cleaning my bathroom before i start sharing it next week) and not a lot of energy as i adjust to this new schedule, but i have faith that i will manage it, now that i’m not planning on being out of commission starting monday. if day two is surprisingly cheerful, maybe i’ll be almost at maximum functioning again by tomorrow or the next day. 

#life stuff #rambling #kinnie the cat #mellie bear who adopted leander #actuallylukedanes #i have the best best friend #health stuff

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

because kinnie is very possessive of my lap and that means that mellie is much more likely to be found in @actuallylukedanes​’s room than with me...behold, a cat who secured rare status as Full Lap Cuddler:

and at the same time, the cat who was forced to sit behind my head, and banned from stealing the lap back through Expert Stalking Maneuvers:

#mellie bear who adopted leander #kinnie the cat #kinnie's expression was just so funny to me that i had to capture the contrast #please ignore the tip of my ear lol #life stuff #oh cats

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

mellie with me this evening, appreciating the newly rearranged dining room, right before she winked at @actuallylukedanes, who was taking the pictures

#she's making good progress in claiming us and the house as her own #it's sad for us obviously but also very lovely to see her so happy #mellie bear who adopted leander #life stuff #breaking news: i have a face

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

i’ve never raised a puppy but i swear sometimes adopting a feral cat is harder than what i imagine raising a puppy would be like. i’m holding my dinner plate above my head and every time i gently nudge her out of my lap so i can eat she hops nimbly over the arm i’m nudging her with and right back into my lap. at one point she looked up at my food and licked her mouth and all i could think was boy i’m glad i’ve never tried to raise a puppy  

#(she doesn’t even eat human food! she has no actual interest in it! lol) #not that i don't love her to pieces obviously and i'm so glad she's ours now #but it's also hilarious how much more unruly she can be than the cats we adopted and raised from kittens #'surely you want my company' she insists over and over as i try to shield my fries from calico fur #life stuff #oh cats #mellie bear who adopted leander

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

there’s a book called all cats have asperger syndrome that i used to love when we discovered it years ago, and griffin the cat acted so much like a small person on the autism spectrum that it seemed to prove the comparison true, which was a delight in my book. but the funny thing is that he behaved like somebody whose autistic traits were fairly mild, same as me. he made sense that way.

whereas mellie the cat, who was feral before she became part of our family, she does the most adorable things but in completely oblivious ways, like she doesn’t have the canny manipulation skills our adopted cats developed when we got them from shelters. she’s learned how to ask us for door opening, and it took her a while to figure out being slow-blinked at but she gets it now.

sometimes though she’ll do the most random thing, like floomping sideways into me before she goes back to bathing, and it’s so guileless, it’s just a love-filled hello with no expectation. stuff like that reminds me of what the inside of my head feels like when i’m not trying to be a person. i don’t think it’s something i can explain well, for anybody who doesn’t already get it, and i doubt most people could get it. 

but it’s like, i didn’t talk until i was 3.5 years old, and my mom told me that fact as though it wasn’t the sort of marker they look for now as a wildly divergent developmental path. i don’t remember being that age, i don’t remember being nonverbal, but there’s a part of my brain that just...feels like home, tucked completely away from the outside world, that i have to force myself not to live inside of. 

anyway, from stories like that and what i do remember, i know that a lot of my autistic traits were softened as i grew up, because even without a diagnosis i had ‘normal’ pressed into me whether i wanted it or not. i learned it, as well as i could. it didn’t make me less autistic, but especially around people i seem more neurotypical than i used to.

hanging out with mellie the formerly feral cat after years of watching other cats grow up in domestication reminds me of that, of the outward range of behaviors between people on the spectrum. she’s a cat, just like kinnie, but she’s so different. she relates to us so differently. with just as much love, which is awesome, but like she’s never had to figure out how to express it before to humans she lives with. 

like i said, this probably doesn’t make much sense to anybody but me. i know that i relate to cats more intensely as an autistic person, i know i’m not the only one on the spectrum who bonds with animals more easily than other humans. i just needed to share the ramble, because mellie is so weird but in such a great way, and i think i finally figured out that that’s partly why i think so. her communication differences are relatable to me. 

#it's making it very difficult for her and kinnie to ever get on the same page though poor girls #mellie bear who adopted leander #kinnie the cat #randomness #actuallyautistic #autism #life stuff