When the music changes, so does the dance. ~ African Proverb

Sorry about the double entendre title above, but I couldn’t resist. It made me giggle, and we needed laughs right now. We’ve had a particularly rough 48 hours so this wasn’t the easiest post to write. I firmly believe it’s the rough patches in life when we need to celebrate the most. Afterall, what is life without celebrations?

Earlier in the week we took Burt to the vet’s. While his thyroid levels are slowly ticking up, he’s not in the abnormal levels yet. He does have something wrong with his kidneys. Kidney problems in cats are essentially terminal, but hey every day brings us all one step closer to the grave, right? So we’re waiting for more lab results to come back to give us a better picture of Burt’s kidney health. Does he have chronic kidney disease (CKD)? Does he have a UTI? Does he have something else all together? Is it a combo of CKD, UTI and his thyroid? Waiting for the results is the hardest part. All I want to do is fix it, but what if I can’t?

The first 24 hours it was really challenging for us to stop thinking about all the things we love about Burt that are unique to him: his head bobble greetings, his cat operas in the bathroom, his talking to the outside through open windows and the trail of socks he leaves through out the house (as I wrote this post I’m surrounded by six different socks in my craft room/work space. He brings them when he misses the herd or when he wants food.) Which of course brought tears and even more tears. Then came the frustration when we realized changing Burt over to a renal support diet would be more challenging than we thought. (Shame on you big pet food companies for putting gluten, corn and other various fillers in your prescription diet cat foods and then charging a ridiculous amount of money! Cats are not supposed to eat these types of carbs, fillers or additives even when the kitty can’t handle high amounts of protein.) The British Hubby joked that by next week, I would be hunting down fresh prey for Burt. (Okay, I did contemplate that as a viable option.)

So now, we’re trying to celebrate life and look for the positive. How do you pull yourself out of a funk? Please feel free to add your ideas in the comments. Do you:

1. Cry (check I got this one covered)
2. Get angry (well I’m now in the cursing phase)
3. Exercise (check I had good lunch time walk in the sunshine. It did actually make me feel better. Okay, there may have also been more tears in there too.)
4. Retail therapy (check I may have more yarn coming only days after I posted about trying to finish projects. Yeah, I’ll be casting on a new project this weekend.)
5. Comfort eat (check and check. I know those empty carbs didn’t actually help the situation, but they did taste good.)
6. Pray/Meditate/Talk to Various Gods (check, check and check. Okay, what god I decide to pray/talk with, depending on how I’m feeling. Most days I have a chat with Mother Earth.)
7. Get out in nature (check. The photo below is during my lunch time walk in the sunshine.)

This last thought came to me while I was walking and chatting with Mother Earth: What if when we changed the kitties diet about 12 years ago when Burt had a UTI to all wet/raw food, we actually extended his quality of life adding on additional years?

It’s probably pretty obvious, the British Hubby and I are having a tough week. Did I mention I also had a dental appointment this morning to get my crown replaced?

I wish you the best weekend. Keep dancing even through the hard times.