drowned rat

[llywela]

I so should have called in to say I wasn't even attempting to get to the office today. Gale force winds and torrential rain? Not fun to walk through. Luckily I keep dry clothes in my desk drawer - I was soaked to the skin by the time I got here! Marvellous.

Supposed to be meeting my friend Julie after work tonight, but might have to email to see if it's a bit too wild and wet. Lovely as it always is to sit and chat over a cuppa, it won't be quite so lovely if we are both drenched. Stupid weather.

Apparently I owe my parents money for more vets fees for my girl Calico. She really is getting very frail, and probably won't be with us that much longer. She is still gorgeous, though. Whenever I'm there, she comes running to see me, and I have to sit with her on my lap the whole time I'm there. The only thing that will make her voluntarily leave my lap is if someone comes into the room eating a bit of cake - she goes and dances at their feet until they give her a bit. She loves cake. But most of all she loves having someone's nice warm lap to sleep on, preferably mine. Hopefully we won't lose her too soon.

When I was at my Mum's on Monday, she had a house full of kids. Small was there, obviously, and she had her friend Cheryse around. Cheryse lives with her grandparents - her mother, who is a drug addict, was the one who first told us Small's mother had died. And Tyra was there, too - another of the youngsters Mum used to provide childcare for via Barnardos, but one of the success stories. She still lives with her mother, who now pays Mum privately to have her before and after school while she works. So the three girls all lived in that Barnardos Mother-And-Baby Unit when they were infants, and that was the topic of conversation when I got there. Mum and I stood in the kitchen and listened in fascination as what for us is personal history that we lived through but for them is personal history that they know only as stories they've been told was re-told through the understanding of nine- and ten-year-olds. It's interesting to learn how much they each know and understand - which is rather a lot, truth be told.

Cheryse also talked about that day at the beach last summer, when we were there on our church outing and her mother - who she is not supposed to have any contact with - turned up. She didn't want to see R, she declared, but was happy to see her baby brother and sister for the 'only time in [her] life', and went on to say that R wants her to go back and live with her, but she isn't ever going to do that, because it's 'too much to go through again'. Well, she couldn't go back to live with R anyway, because there's a court order saying so.

Cheryse: "You wouldn't ever want to go and live with your other mum again, would you, Chelsea?"
Small: "She's dead!"
Cheryse: "Yes, and that's too much to go through, as well!"

They were like...ten going on about forty! If only those women knew and cared what they did to their kids.

Comments

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

Oh man, bless the kids. It must be frustrating at times to see how much the kids are affected by their situation and how much they have to process in their young lives. But in all this they at least have families like yours that care about them and do everything to protect them from further harm. *hugs*

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

It's always so funny to see Chelsea and Cheryse together, and how close they are, how much they have in common - and remember that their mothers used to sleep rough in the Toys R Us car park together. Funny that they ended up such good friends after that, when neither has lived with or had any contact with their mothers since they were tiny. Such a small world.

[bagpuss1966.livejournal.com]

Out of the mouths of babes, eh? Hope you've dried out now. :)

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

Dried out and caught a cold. Typical, eh!

[rosie55.livejournal.com]

Your post brought a lump to my throat - for these children and the experiences they have lived through - it is good to know that they have people around who care so much for them.
And also for you and your cat Calico. My old lady cats are 17 and 16 now and whenever either of the children come home, both cats make a bee-line for them, sit on their laps, sleep on their beds, given the opportunity. J came home last night to go back to the dentist just for him to check what he did last week and both cats were on her lap the moment she sat down. And, while both of them seem in reasonable health at the moment, I know we won't have them for too much longer. So I know just how you feel. Fluffy loves cake, too -especially fruit cake!
And I do hope you've recovered from your soaking! Foul weather today. J has been travelling back to London by train. The usual 90 minute journey took four hours!

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

Aye, some kids have to go through a hell of a lot. We've done out best for our girl, but she's always going to have to live with the consequences of her mother's actions.

With new people on the f-list, I'm never sure who knows the full story and who doesn't. Do feel free to ask if I say anything that doesn't make sense!

My Calico cat is 17 now - 18 in April - and getting very frail. Also incredibly senile - anyone in any doubt that animals can develop dementia should come and do a study on my cat! But she's still a darling, and I feel I have to make the most of every moment with her these days.

90 minute journey becoming 4 hours sounds about par for the course today - it really has been foul.

[rosie55.livejournal.com]

No, I don't know the full story because I've only been around for a year or two on LJ but I did read back a bit on your journal when we friended so I gathered some of the background. Enough to have recognised how much you and your family give to others.
Our last poorly cat Beaufort was (about) 19+ when he died. He'd been a stray so we didn't know exactly but we had him 17 or 18 years. He was increasingly deaf, very frail and a bit eccentric for several years before he died and one day I realised, when he started blundering into open cupboard doors and falling down steps, that he had gone blind, too. We didn't let him linger long like that, the vet said he'd had strokes so we paid him the kindness we so often deny to humans. He was a lovely character, we still miss him and talk about him, several years later.
I'm sure you're right about the dementia, why wouldn't cats get that, they have personalities and quirks and individualities, and brains, muscles, nerves, just like us. As you say, we just have to make the most of the joy they give us while we can.

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

Cali has already lasted longer than our last cat - our Grand Old Man Sam didn't quite make it to 17, and had a lot of health problems in his last couple of years. We kept him going because he was still happy and content, as long as he took his pills and was kept to a very strict diet, but when one day his legs gave out, that was the end - time to let him go peacefully. That was about 3/4 years ago and we still miss him dreadfully.

Small's long story cut short...basically, ny Mum was a childminder and did a lot of respite childcare for Barnardos Mother-and-Baby Unit. She minded a lot of babies, the children of young care leavers, and Chelsea - now my Small Sis - started out as just one of them. She was 8 days old when she started coming to us for 5 afternoons a week, supposedly just for a few weeks while her parents settled. She had a cleft palate and other health problems that they were struggling with. But they never settled and the home situation deteriorated - dad was an alcoholic, mum a drug addict, and they spiralled downwards. When she was 6 months old my parents were asked to foster her for a couple of nights while her mother had an abortion - a previous stay in foster care had proved difficult because of the cleft palate; the foster carer had struggled to feed her, and we'd all become expert at it.

Two nights, it was meant to be. She'll be eleven this year. Only went home to her mother for two very short stays after moving in - after about 3 weeks she went home on Christmas Eve. Boxing Day she was back, JW threatening to kill her if we didn't take her. JW later asked my parents to adopt her, they asked what would happen if they said no and were told that she'd be put up for adoption, but her health problems would make her hard to place and in 15 years time chances were she'd be JW all over again. They said no, they wanted to at least try to break the cycle.

Then when Small was just on a year old - after months of work trying to reunite mother and child, and JW failing on every level - JW came and snatched her (she was in voluntary care at that point, so she couldn't be prevented from taking the baby) over a bank holiday weekend. By the time social services were back in work and tried to take action, they'd left it too long for an emergency care order and had to go through much longer procedures. It took two weeks to get the baby back, during which time she was fed nothing but white chocolate, yoghurt and orange squash, wasn't given any of her medication, and was living with her drug addict mother and the pimp new boyfriend in a flat littered with used needles where every stick of furniture had been either smashed or sold and even the cot was held together with sellotape. We went to court - JW actually brought her to me to babysit that day, crazily enough - and got a residence order, rather than have her go back into the care system, since it had let her down so badly once already. JW had visitation rights, but visited infrequently even at best, came less and less, and disappeared back onto the streets (her choice - she was offered so much support and rejected it all). Then the adoption went through a couple of months before Small turned 4.

And that's just the barest details - I could write a whole book about our experiences! It was a really crazy time, and our girl will always have to live with the impact of her mother's actions, in particular the drug taking that caused her health and learning difficulties. But she is who she is and we love her to bits. :-)

Shutting up now ;-)

[rosie55.livejournal.com]

I'd love to see a picture of your cat - I enjoy admiring other people's! My Fluffy is the long-haired tabby I tend to use as my default icon and I've used Misty for this message! At this moment, Misty is sitting on the table by me, sulking because I won't let her sit on my shoulder, like a parrot! She is quite heavy and after a few minutes it gets quite painful, so I put her down and she sulks and sneaks back about three minutes later to try again!
Small is a very lucky little girl to have found such good people to love her. And you all obviously get a lot of joy from her, too.
It sometimes worries me that our society tends to teach kids these days that everything should be "fair" when we all know that life is not fair. And when kids realise that, it's hard to cope with. But as luck, goes, I think Small's changed when she came into contact with your family.

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

Calico (http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/16/3fd6zc3.jpg)

The picture is a few years old now, mind - don't have any more recent in electronic format. She hasn't changed that much, although she is a lot thinner and frailer now.

[justwolf.livejournal.com]

Your Calico sounds so sweet. I hope she has a few more good years.

It's great how resiliant people are. Cheryse and Small sound amazing, after all they've been through.

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

People can be wonderfully resilient, but it does make you angry when you see young children like that and can see very clearly the emotional and behavioural damage caused by the actions of their parents in their early months and years. Some people really don't deserve to ever have children.

My Calico is gorgeous. Thick as bricks and completely senile, but gorgeous!