Happy (Assigned) Birthday, Sorry About Your Present, And My Future
Today is the shelter-assigned birthday of Meru, who today in 2014 was taken in by Multnomah County as a stray. By their estimate, she was born in 2006 which would make her an (assigned) seventeen. In 2017 when she was eleven, I got her Willow for her birthday, who then went on to die last year partially due to an inadequate support system and so did not get a fourteenth birthday this year.
Little-known fact: when Meru, who at the time the shelter had named Dancer, was picked up as a stray, she’d been found barely a block from where I was living by the time I adopted Willow. I adopted Meru on December 27, 2014, one week after her predecessor, Scully, died of old age, making this Wednesday the anniversary of that death. All of which means that this week, or I guess two weeks, is pretty complicated for me. Timehop has been surfacing a lot of Scully pictures lately, and that’s been fine, but of course it also routinely surfaces Willow pictures, and that typically is not.
Next month, Meru goes for her annual checkup and rabies vaccine. Despite the inevitable urgings, she won’t be getting a wellness blood draw, because she’s stuck with the same inadequate support system as was Willow. Lately I’ve been trying to come to terms with the fact it follows on from me being considered surplus that Meru, too, is so considered.
When her time comes, it’s unlikely she will have a successor, as I don’t see how you can consider it anything but irresponsible to take on an animal for direly-needed emotional support when the society in which you live doesn’t want to support you in the first place.
Addenda
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Out of fear that some people might take offense here: the last remarks are not meant to diminish those who showed up first for Meru’s dental fundraising and then suddenly for Willow’s emergency fundraising, or has ever helped me pay for veterinary bills at all.
Nonetheless, the reality is that raising the former already was placing at risk my SNAP and Medicaid benefits, and raising the latter was I achievable even with instant payment plan services available at Dove Lewis, because everyone had already just ponied up for Meru. It’s really just that if society isn’t going to protect my own disabled ass, it’s certainly not going to make it anything but hard on my pets.