And on that note - as the holidays approached I discovered that my Christmas stuff did not make it to the new house from the old. All of my lights, decorations, trees, etc. were in a closet in the attic that was apparently overlooked during the move. Truthfully, in July the last place in the Easley house I wanted to be in was the attic anyway, so I admit that when we were moving during record heat last summer and I went up there to pull things down and pack them into the truck, I tried to do it at the coolest time of the day, which was the nether hours of the morning. Since we were only given a week to move, I was more concerned about the cats and cattery than I was the Christmas ornaments. Also, and I guess this was a stupid assumption but once again, at the time I plead heat exhaustion, I just assumed the men who were loading things up while I packed the more fragile things would naturally look in the Christmas Closet and say "oops, here's some more stuff". If that happened I'm not aware of it, and up to this point I haven't found any bins with Christmas stuff in them. I know for a fact the big tree isn't here, and since I had all my outdoor lights wound around a 2 foot wire spool I'm pretty sure I'd know if that was here, and it's not. So, needless to say I don't hold out much hope. The closet was stuck back in a corner under the eaves, the door looked like part of the wall, so it could have been very easily missed. In addition, after my little accident with the bungee cord I wasn't able to go back and do a final walk-through like I normally would before we had to turn the house back over to the (bastards) owners, so who knows what else got left behind. I may never know all that I lost.
Luckily my mother-in-law is downsizing her Christmas collection this year and gave me a number of beautiful holiday things to set out, but it's not the same. I had a ceramic Christmas tree with colored pegs inserted into holes that Mom had made with my Aunt Jeri, and I grieved for that. I had ornaments that me and my sister made one stoned evening back in the late '80's, and losing her this year made losing them even harder. But, as I have said time and time again, things are not what is important, people are. I still have my memories, and even though I know those memories will be gone when I am, I can still share them with family if they want to hear them.
It took me three weeks to find the time to sit down (this evening) and upgrade my old Blackberry Curve to a newer model (working in a cell phone store does have it's perks) and part of that was transferring pictures and videos from the old phone to the new. As I sat and looked through the pictures, some of them represented a great deal more than just a picture of a cat to me, or a sunset, or a flower. For instance, a "before and almost after" photo montage of Buttons, the Maine Coone we lost a year ago September to pneumonia brought back a lot of the rage that it took a long time for me to cool.
The first picture is of Buttons on the day we found him. He had gotten loose from us and had tangled with something, what we don't know, but he was covered with bite marks, and was paralyzed from the middle back, and had no control over his bowels. He was peeing blood in his urine, and was obviously in pain. Dr. Furr in Easley didn't give him a lot of hope but was impressed that I was willing to work with him and helped with pain meds and regular checkups. We pretty much carried this guy around everywhere we went for weeks, because I was a stickler that if his diaper was wet or soiled, he was not going to lay in it. I gave him physical therapy several times a day, and we saw almost daily progress, to the point that he had started standing on his back legs again and could even hop a little on one of them. His bites healed, he was doing well, seemed happy and could scoot around the house on his butt as easily as many other cats walk. Then one day he seemed a little peaked, and by mid-afternoon the next day he was struggling to breath. I called Dr. Furr (it was a Sunday) after doing everything I knew how to do, and he told me to take him to the Greenville ER Vet. Once there we were given the bad news that Buttons would need many, many hundreds of dollars of care, money we just did not have, and we had to make the extremely difficult decision to let him go.
The rage comes from what happened next. When you take your animal to the ER Vet, they fax over a copy of their records to your vet the next day so that your vet can do any followup necessary, or in the case of a euthenized animal, adjust their records accordingly. When I had filled out the paperwork I had put down Dr. Furr's info as attending vet, but there was a mixup, and instead they sent Buttons' information to Dr. Heather Gleaton, my previous vet.
I don't know what happened to Dr. Gleaton, I really don't. She used to really care about animals, but then she built that new animal hospital and it became all about the money. Most of her old staff left her not long after that (which says something, most of them had been with her for YEARS) and the new people just weren't as friendly and compassionate. After she hired this inept vet right out of vet school who knew less about cats and their diseases than I did, I made the decision to switch vets and after visiting and meeting a number of local veterinarians, I chose Dr. Furr, and haven't had a moment of regret. He treats all of the cats in my rescue as well as my dog, and has saved a number of lives that I didn't believe could be saved. What is interesting is that when I moved to Easley I asked Dr. Gleaton whom she would recommend in the Easley area should I need someone local, and she specifically told me NOT to go to Dr. Furr. She didn't like him, and told me he wasn't very "professional". Pretty is as pretty does.
Back to Buttons - apparently Dr. Gleaton, who had never seen or treated Buttons, decided to make my business hers, and without ever consulting with either myself or Dr. Furr, called up the Pickens County Animal Control and told them I was an animal hoarder. This started the whole chain of events a year ago September which caused me to go from someone who believed that overall the police and government is good and honest and treats citizens who obey the law and pay their taxes with respect and dignity, to someone who is utterly paranoid of EVERYONE in their life. Dr. Gleaton is indirectly responsible for the illegal raid on my home, for two of my cats getting loose on prison property (where animal control is located), for the disappearance of another cat, and could have been responsible for the killing of almost 50 cats, that being the number we had in our rescue at that time, if I hadn't been able to prove to AC that we were taking VERY good care of our animals. And she hasn't suffered a day for it.
I'm not a vengeful person but I do believe that when people deliberately hurt other people they should be held accountable. I just don't know what could be done to Dr. Gleaton, though. There is no money for a lawyer and lawsuit, and even if there were, there are FAR more important things to spend it on than her. Buttons is gone, there's absolutely nothing I could do to bring him back. Dr. Gleaton, as a doctor, makes a lot of money, and since her husband is a lawyer he does pretty well too. I'm an underemployed sales clerk and full-time animal rescuer. There's absolutely no money here, I'm trying to find ways to pay for neuters that need doing asap.
So in the end Buttons will most likely go unavenged. Dr. Gleaton will most likely continue her practice and will probably end up hurting or killing someone else's beloved pets because of her need to live in a McMansion in a toney development and have an expensive address for her veterinary practice. And me, I've learned a lesson that maybe I should have learned a long time ago, but never seem to....it isn't wise to put too much trust in people, it will come back to bite you every time, whether it's your husband and friends who should have packed up your Christmas supplies, or the (in my opinion) petty, spiteful and money-grubbing woman who should have checked with the vet who was actually treating the cat before making a phone call that set in motion a situation that hurt so many, both human and four-legged. The two cats that were lost on the prison property (someplace they never should have been in the first place) paid for her meanness. Bobby Kitty, who disappeared off of the AC truck most likely paid for her meanness, and me and my husband have paid, and still are paying for her meanness. I hope the new year has less meanness in it all the way around.
