Last night we had to say goodbye to a beloved family member; our cat Jasper. Jasper has been a part of our life for more than 11 years. Lee got Jasper for my birthday in June 1997 when Keaton was almost 3-years-old. He was just a small ball of white fur when we got him. And he grew in to a big, manly cat.

In 1999 we had Jasper neutered. But we didn’t do it soon enough because just a few weeks later our other cat (the female, Pepe) gave birth to three kittens. One looked just like Jasper.

We gave the kittens away. And year later, after the twins were born, we gave away Pepe too because we were worried Spencer might be allergic. Spencer had really bad eczema and it seemed to get worse when he was around the cats. We got rid of Pepe first because she had long hair and shedded more. We ended up keeping Jasper and Spencer seemed to be just fine.

Jasper was a big part of our family. None of the kids can remember not having Jasper (and most of them were born after Jasper came to our family). Jasper even had his own stocking at Christmas time.

He usually got some catnip toy stuffed in his stocking for him to enjoy after Christmas.

As he got older, Jasper was less playful and more lazy (like the rest of us old timers.)

Recently his favorite spot was snug in a blanket on the couch in the family room or on top of the folded towels.

And like most cats, he liked to stay warm by sitting in window sills or patches of sunlight on the floor.

Keaton was particularly attached to Jasper. They practically grew up together. Keaton always hunted Jasper down at night so he could take him to bed with him.

About an hour after we got home last night, Justis heard Jasper meowing. He and Keaton went looking for him and found him laying on the cold cement under the stairs. That was odd for him…not his usual hang out place. Justis crawled under the stairs and pulled Jasper out.

Right away it was obvious something was wrong. Jasper couldn’t even stand. They called Lee in to look at him. Lee brought him in to my office so I could see him. He didn’t look well.

Lee and the boys took him upstairs and tried to get some water in to him, but they were unsuccessful. It was obvious this was something well beyond our own personal animal care experience so I called the animal hospital. They told me to bring him right in.

Keaton had wrapped Jasper in a blanket and was snuggling with him on the couch in the living room. When I reached down to grab Jasper I could see that Keaton had been crying. He knew the worst was about to come.

We rushed Jasper to the animal hospital, filled out the paperwork, and waited for the doctor. The vet came out and took us to a small room to give us her diagnoses. She said she could tell he was jaundiced just by looking at him from across the room. He was also cold. His temp was only 92 degrees and normal for cats is around 102 degrees. Plus he was very dehydrated. She suspected he had fatty liver disease. She told us he likely hadn’t eaten in 3 to 5 days.

Our options were to get him warmed up and hydrated and then put a feeding tube in for several weeks. We would have to feed him by hand until he learned to eat on his own again. We also talked about having an ultrasound done to make sure he didn’t have cancer before we went to the effort of putting in a feeding tube that wouldn’t help him. We also talked about putting him down.

When I was a child, two of my cats died. Our Siamese cat, Misty, died when I was in elementary school. He was actually my stepmom’s cat and he was already pretty old when she and my dad got together. I also had my own cat that I named Paw Prints. Paw Prints had a rough life. He once got string wrapped tightly around his tongue and almost choked on his swollen tongue. He also got acne after being stressed when we got another cat. Eventually Paw Prints died from cancer. I remember being upset about it, but I got over it quickly.

However, having to make the decision yourself is so much harder. We got Jasper on our own. He lived with us throughout our whole marriage. Throughout almost all of the kids’ whole lives to this point. He was a member of our family.

I have heard of people spending thousands of dollars on an animal and I always thought that was just crazy. It’s an animal. But last night I was willing to spend big bucks to see if we could nurse Jasper back to health. It’s totally different when you are sitting there looking at your beloved kitty suffering. You want to do everything you can to help him.

We decided to see how the night went. I plopped down a few hundred dollars to have the vet get Jasper back to healthy. They covered him with blankets and put hot water bottles on him to get his temp back up. They inserted an IV to get some fluids in to him. And she was able to draw a little bit of blood for blood work.

Lee and I went back to see him before we left. I scratched his neck and head and told him it would be ok. He would be ok. What I didn’t realize is I was totally lying to him.

A few hours later the vet called to give us an update. She said she got enough blood to do a couple of tests, but not all the tests. All three of his protein levels were very low. This is consistent with blood loss. Jasper had blood loss due to fleas, thanks to our other two stupid cats that won’t stay inside and are now outside only cats. We’ve been battling these fleas for several months now; giving the cats a pill, dumping Frontline on their backs, scrubbing them with flea shampoo in the bathtub, and bombing the whole house with bug bombs. But we still have fleas.

The sort of good news was that Jasper bilirubin (?) was up so the vet didn’t think it was liver failure. However, he wasn’t showing any improvement. He was still pretty lifeless and cold. She told me she’d call me in the morning to give me an update so we could decide our next move.

An hour later she called again. As soon as the phone rang, I knew what it was about. She said she was working on another patient when Jasper stopped breathing. She came over to listen to him and his heart had stopped. We asked her not to perform CPR on him if he passed away. We figured, at his age, if his body gave up then it was his time to go.

The vet told us we shouldn’t feel guilty about being gone the last 10 days. She said she suspects there were some pretty major things wrong with Jasper and this same scenario likely would have played out even if we had been home. But we can’t help but feel guilty. The last few days of his life were spent alone, lying on a cold cement floor. How can we not feel guilty about that. If we had been home we would have seen him deteriorating. We would have been able to cuddle him. We would have been able to get him to the vet sooner. There are a lot of “we could haves.” But it’s not going to bring him back.

Instead we will remember all of the good times we had with Jasper. All of his purrs and his snuggles on the couch during family movie night. We’ll remember the funny moment like when we sneezed and snotted all over us (ick). We will remember the love we have for him and the love he had for us.

We’ll miss you Jasper!

This week’s Friday Flashback theme is movies. Her Bad Mother tells us to write about our first or most memorable early movie memory.

I have a couple of early movie memories.

When I was eight-years-old, I remember standing in a really, really, really, really long line to go see E.T. Did I mention the line was long? That’s about all I remember about that experience. [Aren't I just a fabulous story teller?] I do know I loved the movie and we actually saw it in the theater more than once. I even had a little stuffed E.T. that I loved dearly. I also think this was the start of my girl crush on Drew Barrymore, who I still love to this day.

Oh and when my mom lived in California we went to Universal Studios and they had this E.T. exhibit with a bike and a green screen. They picked somebody out of the crowd to ride the bike and then we could see them flying on the green screen. I was so pissed I wasn’t picked to ride that bike.

In other news you couldn’t care less about, I just discovered E.T. was released on my birthday in 1982. Interesting.

Then when I was nine-years-old, my mom’s friend, Tree (which I believe was short for Theresa), took me to see Staying Alive.

This was memorable because we brought out own food. But not just a little food. We brought a lot of food. We brought our own popcorn in big brown paper bag, some candy, maybe even some grapes and our own cans of sodas. And somehow we snuck it all in to the theater. I remember we had to be quiet when we opened our cans of soda so they didn’t make too much noise when the top popped. That Tree was a crazy one.

About thirteen-years-ago, I went to a party at co-workers house. It was a bunch of us girls (and one guy) and we had a John Travolta night. We watched a bunch of Travolta movies, including Staying Alive (and Saturday Night Fever and Urban Cowboy). Good times.

Then when I was 11, we went to see Follow That Bird, a Big Bird movie. I was way to old and mature to be at a Big Bird movie, but we brought my Aunt Candy’s, friend’s son (wow, that was a mouthful). I can’t remember the boys name, but his mom, Laura, was (and I think still is) one of my aunt’s very good friends.

This movie was memorable because of what happened in the theater. It was this big theater somewhere near Daly City, California. Like many theaters the floor slants up. But in this theater the seats didn’t start until halfway up the floor. In other words, there was a huge gap between the screen and the first row of seats. There were no seats to crimp your neck. We sat in the front row. Some time in the middle of the movie I accidentally kicked my soda. It fell over and spilled all over the floor. I spent the rest of the movie watching my soda slowing roll down the cement floor towards the screen. I was so bummed.

Read about others (more exciting) memorable movie memories:
Assertagirl
Frances
IrishKat
Izzy Mom
Oh The Joys
Mamalogues
Mrs. Flinger
Parenting Toys
Posts From the Playground
Sweetney

Once again I’m participating in Friday Flashback created by the lovely Her Bad Mother and also the quite lovely Sweetney. And, as usual, I’m late to the party. What’s new?

This week’s theme is “what story about yourself would you never tell you child?” Oh I have so many. It was hard to me to come up with something since I’ve already told you about taking my mom’s car out by myself, shoplifting and assaulting a guy with paper. Surely there couldn’t be anymore secrets.

On a side note, it’s posts like these that keep my mom and dad coming back for more on this here blog. Ever since my mom heard I took her car out before I had a license (and then yelled at me because “I could have lost my insurance” even though it was fifteen years prior) she’s been reading religiously. But this post? This one’s for Dad.

For this week’s embarrassing story, which will make my dad squirm I will never tell my children, let’s go all the way back to 1989 (back in the time of disco according to my teenager…and he wasn’t even kidding) when I was a fifteen-year-old high school sophomore. My best friend Rachel (who is no longer a friend at all, but that’s another story) and I lived just a few houses from each other. On this dark and starry night I was hanging out with Rachel at her neighbor’s house…a boy named Jay (but that has really nothing to do with this story). The neighbors across the street (older boys) were having a party. One of the boys, nineteen-year-old Bob, came over to apologize for being so loud and to tell us we could come over and party if we wanted to.

Rachel and I were intrigued so we decided to head over for a bit. There had to be at least thirty to forty people at this party. There were a lot of older kids from our school (because the younger brother, Jim, was a junior at our school) and a lot of young adults who were friends of Bob. We felt pretty darn special being lowly sophomores at this upperclassmen and adult party.

As with most parties where parents are out of town, the alcohol was flowing. I was throwing back wine coolers like they were strawberry milk. But I tried to pace myself since I had to be home by curfew; 10pm.

Just before ten we left to go back to my house. Rachel was going to spend the night.

After my parents went to bed (around midnight ’cause they were old ), Rachel and I snuck through the hall, past my parents bedroom, down the stairs and out the patio door in the back. I left the door open just a smidge because even back then I had paranoia about everything and was worried that somehow the lock that is hard to lock when you are trying would miraculously lock on its own and we would have to ring the doorbell when we came back. Then we would have been totally busted.

We ran back over to Bob and Jim’s house. By this point, everybody was pretty drunk and we had a lot of catching up to do. Being just fifteen, I had hardly ever drank in my entire life. So (1) I thought it was really cool that we go to drink with these older kids and (2) I got drunk easily.

After several more wine coolers and some very stiff mixed drinks along with a few glasses of beer, I was pretty hammered. For some reason some of the party guests were lighting the stove to light their cigarettes. The electric stove. Who knew that would light a cigarette? Not me who had also never smoked before that night.

After somebody lit their cigarette and turned off the burner they said, “Get back. It’s still hot.” They were talking to my drunk ass because I was dangerously close the hot stove. Like any good drunk does, I said, “It’s not hot” and proceeded to place my hand right on the burner for a good couple of seconds.

It really didn’t feel hot. But that was the alcohol playing a cruel trick on me.

After a few minutes my hand started to hurt a little bit. I looked down at it and there, on my hand, were the curved lines from the burner. I had a pretty nice burn on my hand. And now it hurt like hell. Bob got me some ice and held the ice on my hand for me. I continued to complain about how my hand hurt. All night long.

And that’s how Bob and I started dating. It’s amazing that relationship didn’t work out since we met under such wonderful circumstances.

Check out some other great blogs who also spilled the beans:
Her Bad Mother
Mrs. Flinger
Izzy Mom
Mamalogues

I tried to post this yesterday. You now, when it was actually Friday. But my hosting company apparently hates me and my site was down.

I’ve decided to participate in this week’s Friday Flashback, along with Sweetney, Mrs. Flinger, Whoorl, Her Bad Mother, Mamalogues and Oh the Joys.

Where were you when…? Our parents’ generation can recall exactly what they were doing when JFK was shot – it’s a cultural moment that defines a generation. What big cultural event occurred during your childhood/youth that you recall clearly, if juvenile-ly? What was its impact on you?

I remember where I was at when the Challenger blew up (in my fifth grade class when it came over the loudspeaker). I remember when the Berlin Wall fell. I remember OJ’s long drive in the white Broncho. I remember where I was at when I heard the verdict (the computer room at work). I remember watching the first television footage of the car accident that killed Princess Diana when Lee and I were out to eat on a ‘date.’ I remember when Clinton gave his “I did NOT have sexual relations with that woman” and “It depends on the meaning of is” speeches. I remember first hearing of the terrorist attacks on 9/11. And I remember the fear in my heart when I heard of the big blackout in New York because my mom was back working in NY.

I was a junior in high school when Operation Desert Storm began. Just that year my high school had installed televisions in every room. The TVs were supposed to be used for Channel One, but we could watch other things if our teachers allowed us. It was rare for the teachers to let us watch TV. I guess they figured Scooby Doo would interfere with their daily lessons or something. But when the Gulf War started the TVs were on all the time. We usually turned down the volume while the teacher was talking, but we would always spend the last few minutes of each class catching up. I think we were all just shocked to be in the middle of a war. War was something that happened in our grandparent’s time.

During the war I remember telling my mom that my generation was really seeing a lot of historical events happening right before our eyes. In my teenage everything-revolves-around-me mindset I truly thought no other generation had experienced so much history. But then my mom told me about the JFK assassination and the first man on the moon and I realized we all have our history.