More on Brownie, the elder of our cats, who has been suffering a wild neck swelling for four days now. She was supposed to go to the second-class citizen's vet clinic last Friday, and like I said the line was 24 dogs and a cat and only 2 dogs were seen in all that time. After her unnecessary boiling-hot car ride to the poverty clinic it seemed like the swelling went down by about half, which gave me some hope.
I checked her today and now its bigger than it ever was, and spreading around the right side and up behind the ear (throat-choking zone, basically). Once I felt the spread I ended up having to cry (I try to preserve my precious salt for sweating, though). After crying I got mad as hell and went and got my damned knife again, and gave one more attempt at lancing, which failed miserably, didn't even break the skin (yet again). The knife is sharp, the point at least, and I hold it so that only the tip is exposed so there is no possibility of going too deep, and I clean both the blade and the site I shaved, besides.
But none of that precaution means shit, because she's still going to die. I still can't pop it, and if I can't pop it I sure as hell can't put her out of her misery. That was my dad's job, and he's gone. I love animals to death, I save every leftover scrap I can possibly get my hands on, and have even hunted birds and rabbits for my cats on a couple occasions I was forced to, to keep these kitties healthier than I keep myself. I believe every single creature on this earth has a life to live, and likes and dislikes, and good days and bad days, from the smallest all the way up to the animal human. Just because something was born as a snake or spider doesn't mean it needs executed on sight.
This is one more coat of sweet, sweet poverty. Money is essential to protect those you love, and to pull them away from the cold, clammy hand of death. And if you don't have the money, you'll die. Or get the absolute barebones treatment, one millimeter above negligence.
And here is Brown, our oldest cat, dying a slow death of misery and useless suffering, no dignity, like an elderly person that has no air conditioning and no visitors and no hope, like ex-professors and doctors that don't remember their own names, like healthy powerhouse workhorses reduced to piss-smelling skeletons in button-up plaids and diapers. How each and every one of us deals with watching our great grandparents, and then grandparents, and then parents fade, suffer, and then disappear, all the while dealing with life's menagerie of repeated tragedies.. I'll never know.
At least she gets to share in the same death that the grand majority of us all get to experience.
Also, for both my "credit score" and my mother's hopes of going back to her hometown, those are also trash. I have a "thin file" and therefore don't have a credit rating, which lenders do not like at all. Apparently the innocent til proven guilty spiel doesn't apply to finances. So we sit here until the slow vampire of debt makes us unable to escape, then.
Did you have a better day than me?
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