Diabetic Recipes
On Thursday night, I found myself in an emergency room exam room at 2 am, waiting anxiously and staring up at a picture of a baby cocker spaniel posing cutely in a watering can.
No, don't worry. Charlie is fine. I'm fine too. Whole family is fine. This was an emergency room for pets. But wait, I don't even own a pet. I'm not even a pet person. I had to get up for work in a few hours. What was I doing?
While putting the lawnmower away earlier that night, I discovered four newborn kittens squirming around and wrestling with each other in the darkness under the front porch. I nearly ran them over before I heard the little cries. At first, I couldn't tell what they were. It was dark. They were intertwined in an orgy of grey and black fur. I first thought I counted six. Then five. Just a week earlier, I found a big, sleeping possum curled up in the bottom of my garbage can when I went to take it to the curb. Were they possum babies? Skunks? Alligators? I ran for Susanne, telling her, as I do so often, "we have a situation!"
With the help of neighbors, we determined they were in fact very, very tiny kittens. When I got the "all clear," I emerged from the bushes where I was hiding in fetal position.
We decided it was best to leave them alone, hoping that the mother would return to them soon. I checked back every hour or so, but there was no sign of the mother. Midnight rolled around and I couldn't go to sleep. I went back outside with the flashlight. Still no sign of the mother. Just the squirming pile of fuzz. Dammit! Could they survive the night if the mother never came back? I doubted it. Dammit!
Not knowing who to call at such a late hour, I called a Petco in San Diego (I'm in PA) to get some guidance. The Petco woman assured me they wouldn't last the night if left alone. Dammit! Dammit!
"You will have to use an eye dropper or buy syringes at the pharmacy to feed them kitten formula," she said." Just remember to remove the needle part."
"Yeah. I have syringes."
And that's what brought me and a box full of newborn kittens (still attached to the placenta) to the animal ER in the middle of the night. I got home at 3 am.
By 6:30 am the next morning they already had names - Skywalker, Night, Georgie and Bug (the runt of the litter). And the passageway to my lungs began to close due to my severe cat allergy.
We all fell madly in love with the babies.
We bottle-fed them every two to three hours and had to stroke their little kitty junk with a warm, moist gauze pad to relieve their bladders for them. This was sort of exhausting at midnight, then 2 am, then 5 am.
Some of the dialogue over the weekend went like this:
"Carey, can you warm the bottle and then check Charlie's sugar? I'll start getting the kitties to pee."
Or
"No! I can't get you juice right now, Charlie. I'm feeding the babies."
Susanne's motherly instinct kicked in bigtime.
There's not a whole lot of diabetes relevance to this story, but somehow it always finds its way into the conversation.
We dealt with some hardcore cat people when trying to find a good home for the kitties. We learned right away that there wasn't going to be a pat on the back from these people. We weren't going to receive a 'caught being good' certificate like my kids do at school. They couldn't comprehend why we wouldn't raise the cats and keep them as our own. There was no possible excuse.
"My husband is really allergic," Susanne told one woman.
"Yeah, so is my husband. He takes medication."
Susanne then played the diabetes card.
"We sort of have our hands full already," Susanne continued. "We have three young children and our son has diabetes."
"Oh, so you can understand what it's like to have special needs."
Our efforts seemed futile.
But, in the end, the cat lady made some calls and arranged for a surrogate mother of sorts to take the kittens in. It also turns out the cat lady was doing something pretty remarkable. She cared for many, many abandoned kittens, purchasing formula and medicine out of her own pocket, nursing them back to health and then finding good homes for them.
We dropped off the box of kittens on Sunday afternoon.
And everyone cried.
So that was the crazy weekend you were referring to in your comment on my blog. Ahhh....
Waaaaait a minute. Kittens can't pee on their own?? What's up with that? (LMAO @ "kitty junk")
Did you use the syringes for insulin to feed the kittens? There's your link to the D.
Sorry to hear you have such bad cat allergies. I'm sure the kids would have loved to have kept at least one of the little kitties...
As far as the "hardcore cat people"... well... I think some of them would sell the kids to keep the cats. The other thing is, many cat-owners believe the cats chose them rather than the other way around... so they saw your inability to keep the kittens as a sort of second rejection of them.
Oh, and did I mention? many pet owners tend to anthropomorphize their pets...
(Disclosure: the only pets I ever had were goldfish, which did NOT live up to standard expectations and grew beyond our ability to care for them. We eventually donated them to the junior high school, where a faulty aquarium heater caused their demise.)
Oh Carey you are such a softie. Those kitties are soooo tiny. I'll pat you on the back if no one else will.
OMG they're adorable!!! Kerri would probably adopt them all if she wasn't on her honeymoon. ;-) And I LOL'd at "kitty junk" too.
hey, susanne ,
i think that ou rock girl i don't know about everyone else i think you are the CATS MEOW
of the cat lady i have an big heart to also be sides they are the cute best medince for us daibetics to have cute little fur balls, to raze hell letter with an lower blood pressure. ROCK ON CAT LADY i have the
same nick name also they call me that because
i go to the cats meowvillage it's anwsome place to go an see also you'll get an hug from casper him self you can log on too:
www.catsmeow.com to check it out it's rocks!!!!!!!
thanks,
queenpuring
I found your blogs by accident. My friend & I were talking about the episode of Happy Days where Fonzie & Joanie are in the dance marathon. We were racking our brains trying to remember the song he was dancing to when they won the contest, & I did some internet searches for “Fonzie”, “dance marathon", “Russian song”, etc. And my searches led me to your blog where you referenced that Happy Days episode. So anyway, that’s how I got here.
I’ve got bills to pay, a house to clean, & work to do, and yet I have spent the last 3 hours reading your blogs.
The only experience I have with diabetes isn’t good. Janna & I met in elementary school when we were 8. She moved to Nashville the summer after 3rd grade, but we kept in touch & would visit each other during Christmas & summer breaks. She was diagnosed with diabetes when she was 13. I don’t know anything about what type or what kind it was. All I knew was she gave herself insulin shots & kept candy bars handy. Which at the time I thought was cool. Hey, I was a teenager. Most kids hated to even get shots, & there she was able to give herself shots. And what teenager wouldn’t love the idea of keeping candy bars around? For two girls who met in the 3rd grade, & then only got to see each other 3 or 4 times a year, we remained the best of friends for the next 17 years. She was a bridesmaid at my wedding when we were 20. And sadly, she died when she was 25. I’m 38 years old, & I still miss her & think about her.
Reading your blogs has been.... You know, I just had to stop typing for a few minutes & think about that. I’m not sure what it’s been. Wonderful, sad, amusing, concerning, educational, hysterical, touching, captivating, inspiring–-I’m tempted to get my thesaurus out & find a few more appropriate words, but I’ll just assume my point has been made. And I’ve not only read your blogs, but I’ve read the comments that other people have left you. I may be leaving this comment on Carey’s blog, but I’d just like to say I think all of you are amazing people.
Even though I’ve read pages & pages of your blogs, I’m posting a comment on this one for a reason. I am a cat person. Well, I’m an “animal” person, but cats are my favorite. I’m eccentric about my love of cats. My photo albums are filled with their pictures, I refer to myself as “mommy” and my husband as “daddy,” & they each have a stocking we put up at Christmas with their names on them. Now having said that, I wanted to tell you not to worry about those crazy cat people that you had to deal with. Don’t worry everybody, it’s ok. Since I’m a cat person myself, I can call someone else a crazy cat person. After reading your story & looking at all the pictures, what you did for those kittens is way more than most people would have done. With all you have to deal with already, your generosity is very impressive. You saved their lives & did what was best for them. And as a cat person, I want to thank you for all the effort you put in to help them. And yes, I also LMAO’d at the “kitty junk.”
I know I’ve gone on & on, but for someone who was just looking for a song that was played on Happy Days, I got so much more than I bargained for. I was touched reading your blogs & the comments, & I hope & pray for the best for all of you and your children.
Oh my God I'm just catching this post now. I WISH I had been here. I would have totally tried to convince Chris to adopt all four of those kitties. But then he may have divorced me on the spot (four kittens + three cats we already have = instant divorce), so maybe my absence was a blessing in disguise.
And I'm still laughing at "kitty junk."