Tuesday Nov. 27 after Britty.

Tuesday Nov. 27, I go pick up her ashes.  Glad that part is over at least.  
Now going on without her.  Yes, it is always terribly hard to loose a pet.  I thought this might be a bit easier to accept since I had known it was coming for quite a while.  Smokey went down hill pretty rapidly, but Britty was a much more gradual and longer decline.

It has been 12 years since I have been bunny less.  But then I still had a cat and a bunch of pet ducks.  Now all I have is one turtle.  That's it!  It is like all the life has been sucked out of the house.  I have lived alone and liked it for many years.  Life felt full and busy, now it feels so empty.  

When Andy died (Nov. 2006), my plan was to take a month or so and mourn him.  Then clean and sanitize everything (he had been sick on and off for quite a while).  Then for Christmas I would adopt a pair of buns.  I wanted an already neutered, bonded pair that did remind me too much of Andy.  So that narrowed it down to 1 pair at the Oceanside shelter and 1 pair at the Escondido shelter.  The ones in Escondido had been there longer, so I choose them.  I decided before I ever got there.  I still had to walk past all the cute ones saying "pick me, pick me", to get to their cage.  There was Brittany and Christina.  They had given up.  They looked good.  But kinda like 2 big fat ticks.  They had not had much to do except eat pellets and were a bit pudgy.  They had been been found running loose in Escondido and had been there almost a year.  I decided to make their "birthday" January 2006.  By that, Britty was 2 months away from turning 13.  But I know it could have been a bit more or less either way.  They had each other (sisters) and their pellets, and had little interest in anything else.  

I thought they would be so happy to get out of the shelter, and home with me.  My house is tiny, but for starters they went into a bigger cage before I tried turning them loose.  They had little interest in me.  They did not like the pellets,  carrots, or veggies I served.  They did like the cilantro, and would eat the hay.  Oh, well, they could afford to loose a little weight, they will come around.  

Well, of course they did and after about 2 weeks their personality started to show.  Chrissie was the trouble maker and Britty was the good, polite girl.  Then several years later Smokey came along.  He loved and demanded attention.  I sometimes thought Britty was being short changed on attention because Chrissie and Smokey seemed to need so much.  When Chrisse died, I turned my attention to Smokey and Britty.  When Smokey died, I turned it all to Britty.  So hopefully she felt like she got enough.

I had wondered years ago if maybe Britty had a heart condition.  When it was play time and they all came out to run around, she was always the first to go lay down and rest.  When they had their check up June of 2017 Dr. H. asked if she always breathed that hard.  I did not know.  Well, she lasted longer than both of them, so maybe she was just pacing herself.

This time I feel like I can't go get new buns for Christmas, sad as that feels.  I thought I was going to get some work done in my laundry room and bath room like a year ago at least.  Then I thought after the buns go, I would take a few months and get some work done in the kitchen.  Maybe I would even end up with more room for the bun area, and they would not be in the way or scared when the work was happening.   I am a master procrastinator, and even more so when I have to hire someone.  The laundry room really needs done.  The bathroom I guess could wait, but it has waited many, many years.  And the kitchen!  Well, I can't do all 3 in one year, plus can't wait that long for new buns.  But I feel like I need to at least accomplish some of this work I have been putting off.  With all the time, energy, money, etc. I put into Britty, I started saying, well, I will do that after Britty goes about a lot of things.  I didn't think it would be at the holidays.  Not the best time to look for someone to hire.  I am hoping wanting to adopt new friends will motivate myself to get some stuff done at least the first of the year, and then go adopt.  I thought well maybe I am ready for a new cat, I did not promise myself I would wait any longer for that.  But as bad as the coyotte problems is getting here, I am going to have to try way harder to keep the next cat inside. I don't want to have to worry about it running out while a work man is here.  So waiting on that too.
Christmas is kinda hard when you have no family, but have always had my fur babies.  This is going to be a tough year.