I suddenly don’t feel so bad! It’s like transitive guilt reduction.
Now it seems my 3 year old child is allergic and our small house is pretty crowded with the four of us. I don’t know what to do.
Allergy shots! Worth a try, maybe.
Anyway, thanks a lot everyone. It helps.
Sorry to hear about your cat, Jason. Losing pets is hard, and you tend to run into a lot of people that think “It’s just an animal.” They don’t get it, ignore them.
My wife and I had a similar experience with a cat. We only had her about a month when she started losing her balance and vomiting, and the vet’s tests showed she had total liver failure. We had adopted her from some people that had a lot of cars in the yard that were being worked on, and the vet was pretty sure she had swallowed some coolant. We didn’t notice any jaudice since she was a yellow tabby with brown eyes, but the vet pointed it out & we felt like callous idiots.
We had two cats when we learned our kids were allergic. We put up a flyer at the nearby PetSmart, and a nice lady adopted them. She had recently lost a cat & wanted a grown cat or two. She even sent us a Christmas card about 18 months later telling us how well they were doing, and included a picture of them. You might be surprised who is out there wanting a nice cat.
If nothing else, I could find someone to take your cat, Tyler. hell, my wife and I would possibly consider it (though, jesus, 3 cats in a small place would be bad.)
Thanks for the offer Jason and suggestion SuperTanker. Still deciding. :?
And yes, McCullough, I am taking her today to the doctor to look into that possibility. Do I want to subject her to shots when I could find the kitty a happy home and do I want to give up on my Kitty because my kid is a pansy and can’t handle a few nasal issues. 
I don’t know how practical is would be given I know nothing about your house but have you thought at all about how feasable it would be to separate areas for the cats and kids so they need not interfere with each other?
You’re clearly not Catholic. :)
Erm, you aren’t going to ban Jobe from here are you? I don’t see much reason…
Condolences, Jason.
Sarah and I are on our first set of pets as adults, and as the cats head past nine and the big dog toward five, I dread the day I have to deal with the pain you’re feeling now.
We’ve told them they’re required to stick around for at least 40 years, but damn cats, you know they only pretend to listen.
From his comments here, his profile, and the IRC channel, I think it’s going to be a self-imposed exile. He made it sound as if Trixie left a couple of days ago, and he’s just following along.
You’re clearly not Catholic. :)[/quote]
Actually, I am – Catholics just take it one step further, and use the fear of guilt to avoid doing whatever we’re not supposed to do in the first place :)
Jason, let me add my condolences for your loss. Whatever misgivings you may have regarding the final day or two of Sponge’s life, I urge you to give yourself appropriate credit for all the decisions you made over the years that made her life pleasant and happy. Plus, it sounds like she was going to go regardless of your decision, so I suspect she was less anxious in the comfortable surroundings of your home compared to a vet’s observation kennel.
Slight derail on the topic of guilt and religious upbringing – I’m a Tibetian Buddhist, and a lot of the folks who study with my teacher (born & bred in Tibet) have a Catholic background. One of them asked him about his experiences with guilt and regret. He expressed empathy for the student, but indicated (with slight puzzlement) that he can’t remember feeling either of those two emotions. Allen Ginsberg was a good friend and student of his, and my teacher said he misses Allen and wishes he could have spent more time with him, but doesn’t really dwell on past events he wishes he would have handled differently.
He’s a pretty straightforward guy, and I saw his statement more about differences between Asian culture and American, rather than any spiritual enlightenment on his part. I thought it was interesting that how we express certain emotions may be influenced by our cultural worldviews.
Sorry to hear about your kitty, Jason. I hope the situation improves!
You’re clearly not Catholic. :)[/quote]
Actually, I am – Catholics just take it one step further, and use the fear of guilt to avoid doing whatever we’re not supposed to do in the first place :)[/quote]
I meant recovering Catholic. :)
But seriously, I think you’re talking about learning from experience, which I think is an imporant part of learning, too. I just don’t think guilt adds anything to the learning process. If anything, I would argue that feeling guilty makes it more difficult to learn appropriate life lessons.
That is interesting. I’d feel like I was being a callous fool or something if I didn’t work through the guilt - after all, what’s to stop it from happening again? Hmm.
The fact that you’ve learned from experiance now? For me, it’s like you have to work through guilt before you can get to a place where you’re richer from the experiance. But experiencing the guilt itself really doesn’t add much to the lesson.
Sorry to hear about your cat, Jason.
Tyjenks: Just a data point…I used to be horribly, deathly allergic to cats as a small child, but completely outgrew it by around middle school. Now I’m a pathetic multiple-cat-owning, cat photo-posting dork who not only carries on entire conversations with cats but made cat toys in the shape of a D8 and D20 so her friend’s cats could play D&D with him. It can happen. Now that we have Allegra and Claritin and all that jazz, maybe an allergic kid doesn’t necessarily mean the cat’s gotta go?
And Jobe can bite Wumpus’ big black ass.
I carry on complete cat conversations as well.
I can’t believe I just wrote that on a public forum.
Sorry to hear about the loss, Jason. There really isn’t much you could have done.
Troy
Derail!
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Silk and Merlot, my babies. ;>
Ah I miss them.
I was going to make a comment on getting a new cat, but I really don’t know what would be good as far as that goes. I think I would be too choked up, I’d have to wait a while.