The Story of Samantha Sophia 2002-2015

Okay I think enough time has passed now that I can write about what happened.

We had a holiday party on Saturday, December 19. Sam usually hid in the back room when more than three people came into the house, and when she didn't move for a few hours, we thought that was really strange but wrote it off as her learning to be more social. A couple hours after everyone left, she started behaving very strangely. Constantly walking around the house, walking on parts of us and the bed she doesn't normally go, constant swallowing. At 2am we decided to take her to the emergency vet clinic.

A few very expensive tests later, the vet told Dan that Sam had no platelets - no cause, no cure - and would not live to Christmas. While we were there Sam became very lethargic and went blind. It was so hard to watch. We were given the options of leaving her there for more tests, having her put down, or taking her home. We opted for the latter. We got home at 4am and she was totally unresponsive. She went peacefully an hour later.

It was just so sudden and there was no way we could have prepared ourselves for that, nothing we could have done differently to help. She did not suffer.

It's been a long time since I have had to mourn the loss of a loved one. She was my baby, we were together for 13 years - a long time for her breed as I understand it but I expected her to live at least to 17. That cat has been all over the place though - she was born in Korea, I took her to Canada in 2003, she moved between Alberta & BC for a few years until we settled in BC, Then we immigrated to the United States in 2013, moved to North Carolina and then Utah eleven months later. She lived in Utah just nine days shy of two years.

This all happened at a very interesting time, actually. If it had happened during a semester I would have been completely messed up. Because she died just at the beginning of the Christmas break, I had time to grieve with no work obligations - and we had no social plans for Christmas either (thank the heavens!) If it had happened at the end of this spring semester when we are also planning to move out of the house we are renting, that would have been difficult too. So really, it could not have come at a better time. Kitties know that, I think. Still, it's been hard getting used to our house being really quiet.

In the days that followed her passing, we took out all the kitty supplies. Her two scratching posts were nearly threadbare anyway, and with the mobility ramps that Dan built in 2013, all her paraphernalia took up a lot of space. I gave away her food to neighbours. We had to clean up from the party anyway but we have completely rearranged the house again.

It's also really changed our perspective on things. It was unconscious, but we had planned to stay in Salt Lake after I graduate partly because we didn't want to put her through another move. We don't have to worry about that now. We can also go away for a week or weekend and not need to find someone to look after the kitty. We definitely plan to get cats again in the future but not until we are a bit more stable and we know where I will be working.

During the week around New Year's eve, I looked after my friend Jenn's cats while she was away. She didn't know I had lost my companion. It was so nice to be loved up by her big fluffy kitties - I think they knew I was grieving for my baby.

Because of the full-on winter weather we had for the two weeks over the holidays, we weren't able to find a place to bury Sam. Finally, on New Year's day we found a good place in the western desert and gave her a perfect send off. We did everything we could for her, and now it's time to let her go and move on. I still get sad and cry every day when something reminds me of her, of course. She's the only pet I have ever had in my adult life. But as a gardener, I understand that all things must die that others may live.

December 25: the second day of our road trip across the country

Apologies for not bringing this out sooner. Photos!

 Breakfast at McDonald's on Christmas day, because that's what was open. We were still in Georgia. Or Alabama? I can't even remember now.

 We went a bit out of our way to pop into Florida, mostly because I had never been there. We gave Pensacola a miss, ho hum.

 And we were soon back in Alabama anyway.

 Mississippi didn't take long. An hour?

 The photos might be out of order here but this is where we had lunch, in Alabama. Great themed restaurant, excellent food, MASSIVE burgers. I bought postcards here too.

 A wall-table. Up at the bar they had several different seats - a horse saddle, a pilot chair, motorcycle seat, theater seat, etc.

 Sam in the footwell of my side. She preferred to be down there during the day, for some reason.

 Maybe this is Mississippi. Goodness, this part of the country is so flat and marshy, it's hard to keep them all straight!

 We did not stop to see what Woolmarket was but I assure you I was curious.

 Louisiana!

 Here we switched the map from the Southeastern States to the Southwestern States.

 Any time we stopped for gas, Sam jumped into Dan's spot.

 We spent the night of Christmas in Baton Rouge. That is a horrible place to find food in a restaurant on Christmas day. We weren't going to wait half an hour at IHOP, but it soon became clear that very little else was open. The Burger King was open but they were only doing drive-through service. We found a Jack-in-the-Box, but they were slammed with customers and getting every single order wrong. From the time we walked in to the time we got our meal, 40 minutes had passed. Dan figures the guy who took our order couldn't actually read.

  Baton Rouge did sort of redeem itself the next morning with the coffee shop we found. Great muffins, good juice, excellent coffee and great service!

Happy New Year! A snapshot of our journey to Utah

As my readers will know, Dan and I have moved to Utah. The move was for family reasons, but it turns out there is a lot of opportunity for both of us here. I was live tweeting our six day drive across the country and took a bazillion photos, so I wanted to post a few here.

We had planned to leave on December 23rd, a Monday. We weren't really ready until late in the day, and then the weather turned poor and it was raining buckets. Visibility was poor, the roads were flooded, and it would have been unwise to start our trip on such a soggy note. We pulled out on the morning of the 24th, Christmas eve.

While Dan was doing the final loading and hooking the trailer to the truck, a German shepard cross pup came along and decided Dan was his human. It was quite a conundrum for us - we wouldn't normally consider owning a dog (especially given how Sam hates other animals) and of course we were just about to leave for a 3,500 mile trip. He was so charming, this pup, that I think if we hadn't been preparing to move then we might have adopted him. As luck would have it, our next door neighbors (who work at the brewery) offered to look after the pup. They already have a dog, and the two got on well immediately. A few days later they decided to keep him, as he had tapeworms, was dirty and a bit underfed, so they knew they would take better of Paco better than his previous owners.

There was quite a bit of last minute stuff that needed to be attended to before pulling out of town. The trailer was quite heavily loaded so we needed to secure the hitch. The tires needed to be inflated, the truck fueled up. We finally pulled out of Kinston around 10:30am on Christmas eve.

My friend Irene in Connecticut crocheted Mr. Cupcake for me just before our big journey from Victoria to North Carolina earlier this year. Turns out he was to make another cross-country trek! Here he is saying goodbye to our neighborhood.

 Sam liked to be in the driver's side foot well, which of course is an inconvenient place.

 We visited this very same Flying J when we went to South Carolina/Asheville NC in October.

I can't be the only person confused by this. "Open" and yet bars. 

 The bars made it difficult to pull my coffee out without spilling.

 Regular gas, $2.99/gal.

 Hey, Georgia.

We stayed the night in Newnan, Georgia, at probably the dirtiest Motel 6 I have ever stayed at. Sam is pretty good in motel rooms, and we just needed sleep, so we made due.

Stay tuned tomorrow to find out how traveling in the deep south on Christmas day went!

Kinston's Christmas Parade

I thought we had missed it because we went for breakfast - but we managed to catch the last 45 min of a one hour show! Took lots of pictures...

 All the emergency vehicles in Lenoir County, it seemed, were here with all the sirens going. I was a bit confused about what this had to do with Christmas.

 Here is the Kinston Free Press car (why wasn't Bryan Hanks, editor, driving his Jeep?) with Bryan at the wheel, Jon Dawson and Citizen of the Year.

 The Jesus Train.

 This was a pretty good marching band. Dan noted three sousaphones.

 Cynthia and Michael from the Overland Gallery! I actually got out of the truck to take this photo. Who was the gorilla brandishing a candy cane as a sceptre?

 Live band singing something Christmasy.

 The only Smart Car in all of North Carolina.

 Dogs! With costumes! And they aren't all pit bulls! (Most of the dogs around here are pit bulls, it's rare to see a different breed).

 The Canadian and Indian flag on this float caught my eye, then we saw flags of other nations.

 These little dancey girls were cute and saucy, but man they sure looked cold.

 Dan said "An airport tug with an inline six". Note the leopard sitting up front - probably not a real leopard.

 This one was confusing because it says "Jesus... The Greatest Gift"

 I liked this one a lot. A gingerbread house!

 Happy Birthday Jesus!

 Tractor.

Dan said "It's the Chick-Fil-A show!" (get it?)

I was live tweeting as I took all these photos. The parade was much better than I was expecting. There were a lot of vehicles that had no decorations on them so it was hard to see what they had to do with Christmas. It sort of made us think about how much fun it would be to create a parade float!