Tara

It was Christmas Eve 2008 when Tara came to live with us. Whitey (my last surviving Himalayan cat) had just about grieved himself to death after Chewy, his brother passed away in May. He needed a friend, but I wasn't ready for another cat. Chewy was my baby. I loved him dearly and it crushed me when he died. He had cancer and I had to have him put to sleep. I guess that's the polite terminology for euthanizing your pet, but there's nothing polite about death.

Like a fool I used to go out doing last minute Christmas stuff and I had my son, Matthew with me. When we were headed home, I turned into the Escambia County Animal Shelter and he looked at me and asked me the obvious. Whitey had given us very specific instructions to follow: NO FEMALE CATS and NO BLACK CATS. The reason for this was that his very own mother hated him. Yes, his mother wasn't very nice (she used to bite him and the bites would et infected) and my mother had a black cat named Bob who got ahold of Whitey once and tore his neck open...so NO BLACK CATS and NO FEMALES CATS.

In we went to the Animal Shelter and they had a great selection of kittens and cats, but none of them seemed too playful or had very much personality except one and it kept sticking its paw out through the cage EVERY time we walked by. Hey, pick me! You guys, pick me! It talked and talked and talked and carried on until we came over and read its card and talked to it. So we ended up bringing that cat home for Whitey...it took him about a week to get used to HER. Yes, it was a FEMALE! And yes it was BLACK! He taught her all his bad habits and told her she didn't have to be a lap cat, but about a month before my mother's cat died she started sleeping on my mother's bed as if she knew my mother would need that when Pat was gone. Basically, she's become my mother's cat over the last few years and I think that's a good thing for both of them.

Today Tara is having surgery. She has a mass on her lower left side. The vet says that in cats that it's usually cancer, but they won't know for sure until the pathology report comes back. I know she's just a cat, but if you can please keep Tara in your thoughts I'd really appreciate it. She's a good kitty and we'd like to have her back home and healthy. Fenway, Libby and B.A. are cogs (cat/dogs) and Tara is a member of their pack. They patiently await her return...

Addendum: Thursday November 7, 2019 7:24am: This was written as a draft and was supposed to be posted on Thursday and not on Wednesday. It was my screw up for posting it early. Tara is getting operated today. I'll be dropping her off at the vet in less than hour.

Addendum: Thursday November 7, 2019 3:36pm: Tara is home and doing well. She was sent home with pain meds to take if she needs them. The vet at Megan's Landing Veterinary Clinic said the mass was easily removed. It appeared to be in a sac and had not metastasized to any other surrounding area. We'll know more when the pathology report comes back. I'd like to thank everyone for their support. It means so much to me.

Last Update: Sunday December 11, 2022 8:55am: The mass was cancer, but to date it never returned. Tara is now 14 years old and still a member of the dog pack. 

WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MILDRED?

When I first made this discovery I was like the Tasmanian Devil I was so mad.  It's hard to keep your cool when you want to lash out and do something to a person, but you know there's nothing you can do and it's so frustrating you want to pull your own hair out.  So, you sit there fuming for awhile saying some very colorful language and then you slowly calm down because there's no point in staying angry. [grumble, grumble, grumble....and finally a huge sigh]

When the troll first appeared on my blog I was mildly irritated. At first, I hoped the person would simply go away, but that didn't happen. Obviously, trolls want to be annoying and only go away when blocked or impeached! The subject matter the troll selected to discuss in the comment section of my blog was what I referred to as a "British cum dumpster."  I won't mention the cum dumpster's whole name and I will get into that reason for that shortly, but when I googled that person I found out she was some 1980's porn star. Her first name is Pauline.

Like many people out here I had my settings on my blog set so anyone could leave a comment, but when this troll wouldn't go away, I changed my comment settings so only people with a Google account would be able to comment on my blog. All this change did was eliminate people from leaving anonymous comments. So far, this first step up in security eliminated the troll. So far so good!

Every now and then I check the "Traffic Sources" to my blog. When I did this a few days ago, this is when the Tasmanian Devil came spinning like a top out of control. The first URL I didn't recognize (it had the name monica29 in it), and it had like 175 hits on it coming to my blog. The second and third URL's I did recognize and had fewer hits than the first. I clicked on the first URL to find out what it was and was absolutely stunned when the page opened to a porn site. Nothing about the URL indicated it would be a porn site or I wouldn't have clicked on it. There I sit looking at a site called Chatubate (spelled wrong for obvious reasons).

After having a huge WTF??? moment I figured out why my blog was tied to this porn site. You see, when the dear troll kept referencing this British cum dumpster by name in each comment he left on my blog, it left a "footprint" for the search engine robots to index. I don't know how often they make their rounds throughout the internet, but what I should have done which I didn't do initially was delete all the trolls comments. I did however go back yesterday and delete everything he wrote. Hopefully, this will correct the problem in the future. For now, Mildred Ratched Memoirs is linked to Chatubate (again spelled the wrong way) because the British cum dumpster was mentioned by that darling troll. I wonder if his name was Donald! hmmmm! Wouldn't that be a hoot?

If this idiot has gone to any of your blogs, you might want to check your traffic sources, too under your stats and see if your blog is linked to any sites you don't recognize. I told Martha that I was going to write a blog post pitching a holy old fit about this troll and what he did, but why bother? He's just a little internet maggot that isn't worth the time and effort and besides I don't think I know enough bad language to describe him adequately.

VISIT A FELLOW BLOGGER

I've been a little too wrapped up in politics lately until Jennifer left a comment on my last blog post and I went to her blog Sparrow Tree Journal to repay the visit and got blown right out of my chair.

She wrote a moving post titled Shocking about a student whose mother committed suicide. The post rattled me and made me realize how fragile we all are. You never know from day to day what's going to happen and who looks okay and who doesn't. Don't ever take anyone's mental health for granted. Please go to her blog and leave a comment. Thanks!

Post a Movie Scene

The night before Halloween is called Mischief Night so in honor of that let's have some good old fashioned fun. Since I can't go egg the White House or leave a bag of burning dog poop on the front steps (I don't live close enough lol), I'll have to settle for some blogging chuckles instead. Jack Nicholson always gets me in this scene... who does it for you?

MESSAGES FROM ABOVE

Every now and then I pay attention to billboards I see around town, Here are a few I've seen in my travels around the Redneck Riviera:

It looks like we might still be fighting the Civil War here.

Didn't anyone tell these folks the war was over in 1865?

That doesn't look like one nation under God to me.

This one gave me the creeps. Okay, I get it! Don't sleep with your baby!

You might smother your baby, but come on, a billboard?

What happened to common sense?

It looks like we have a local syphilis problem!

So go to your doctor.

Get some penicillin. End of story!

Oh yeah! We definitely have a syphilis problem

when I see at least 5 billboards in a few miles. 

So go see your doctor and stop spreading 

that stuff around you nasty scum buckets!

This one just seems crazy to me! I know there's people out

there who don't vaccinate their children, but they usually live to regret it

as soon as their child gets one or more childhood diseases.

I've never known anyone who gotten these things listed here from a vaccination.

When I was a child how childhood diseases were handled was if there was an outbreak of measles or chicken pox, you'd expose your child to them to get them over the disease. One winter when I was very young. I don't think I was even school age yet, I was very sick. I had one thing right after another. By Christmas, I was so weak I had to be carried downstairs to open my gifts. The one thing I didn't have that winter was chicken pox.

I saved that honor until I was 28 years old and my husband gave me a helluva case of chicken pox when he came home on leave. That's a post for another time...

I guess what I want to say here is why wouldn't anyone want to protect their child against getting this disease or any other disease? Any medicine has a risk of having a side effect. Does that mean don't take it? You take it with caution. You educate yourself. You arm yourself with the facts and then you do what you think is best. Some people think putting an unvaccinated child out in this germ filled world is what's best while others want to do everything they can do to safeguard their child. What do you think?

An afterthought: Don't schools require vaccinations in order to register your children for school? Is the way around that requirement to homeschool your children? These children are not only high risk to catching childhood diseases as adults, they also develop no social skills because they grow up being isolated from other children. Wow! Wow! Wow! And again wow!

KEEPING THE DOGS HAPPY

Spoiled dogs waiting for bones

Saturday morning I was coming back from a "shopping trip" at a local medical cannabis  dispensary (VidaCann) when I took a short cut across town because I wanted to stop at a certain grocery store to buy my spoiled dogs some bones. Publix is the only store here in Pensacola where the butcher packages the discarded bones and puts them in the freezer section. I cut across Michigan Avenue to get to Publix and before I knew it I was right by where I used to live with my ex-husband.

Keep in mind it's been a very long time since I've been married. When I say a very long time, I mean a VERY long time. I've been divorced since 1997. I'm not against marriage. I don't hate my ex-husband. I'm not bitter. I don't hate men. I think holding grudges and harboring resentment only hurts the person who holds that negative stuff inside them. I had to let that stuff go and forgive...not for their sake but for mine. And as for marriage... I found that being alone was better than being with the wrong person. I'm not saying there isn't a right person out there for me. All I'm saying is that to date, I haven't found that person. I'm not actively looking so chances of me finding that person is slim to nil...

Anyway, getting back to my little story. When I drove past where I used to live I had the strangest reaction. I got a knot in the pit of my stomach.  I'm not what I would call a high strung, anxious person, but seeing my old home sure brought out some anxiety or something in me.  All of sudden it was hard to breathe. I felt hot all over. I had a knot in the pit of my stomach and then I felt nauseous. It all passed rather quickly. Almost as quickly as it started. But I kept having a strange feeling like I almost expected to run into my ex-husband at the grocery store or some place else. I didn't and I'm glad I didn't. It just was weird and it rattled me for a moment or two and I usually don't get rattled. By the time I got home I was okay and my dogs were glad to see momma had brought them a special treat.