March 4th was not going to be a good day. Our vet was coming over at 8:30 a.m. to put precious Isis kitty to sleep (see recent posts in Show Us Your Pets thread). She was still spunky, but the mouth cancer had just made eating too difficult. At 6:30 am my mom called. Not good. My sister, who is younger than me, only in her early 40's had a stroke. DP and I had been planning on a short get-away trip that weekend; instead, I was trying to book a flight to get to my sister. And trying to deal with losing my 18 year old kitty cat (she just missed 19 by a few weeks) that morning. It was all so surreal and I wanted to go back to bed and start over.

I spent a week at sis's, visiting her at the hospital every day and helping take care of her home and three kids. My mom is still down there. Long story short, she has made amazing progress and is now at home continuing her long, hard road to recovery. We have family care lined up until mid-May to go down and help out (my family, and even DP's mom are pitching in; brother-in-law's family is worthless); after that, we'll need to figure something out until school gets out and we can bring her and the girls home to MN for the summer. If there's any silver lining in this, it is that it has made sis and I grow even closer and, hopefully, she will stop neglecting to take care of herself in the future - such a mom, always putting her family first, to the detriment of her health.

Anyway, I sure do miss my Pooky Wooky precious Isis kitty cat-cat (yeah, I used to call her that ):
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