Here's what's been going on

Just wanted to break the silence here for a moment, since I haven't posted in a couple of weeks.

Right after my last post, I left for a weeklong trip to Maine. We drove from Detroit to the far end of the Maine coast (Lubec), and then worked our way back. We hit 21 lighthouses (18 in Maine, 1 in New Hampshire, and 2 in Canada), spent a couple of days at Acadia National Park, and did a mini tour of Stephen King related sites in Bangor. I was a bit disappointed with the weather. Once we got to the coast, the first 3 days brought us tons of fog. If you moved inland enough to escape the fog, the skies were perfectly clear with few clouds, making for harsh lighting. After the fog was gone, the cloudless skies continued for the majority of the trip. I was able to get a few good shots in the early morning fog and after sunset on the second day, and there was also a halfway decent sunset at one of the lighthouses the next day. However, overall I was less than satisfied with the results I came home with.

Last week, other things came up preventing me from getting much done other than doing some preliminary sorting of my Maine photos. Among those issues was having to put my cat Friskie to sleep. Forgive me for a brief deviation from photography into this personal issue (though what good is a blog if I don't post about my cat).

Friskie was my first of 6 cats, and he outlived the rest of them. I picked Friskie out from the litter only an hour or 2 after he was born. Here's a picture of me holding him when I was 11 years old and he was probably only a week or 2 old.
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Friskie was a big cat. His weight peaked at just over 20 pounds. The following photo was taken 4 or 5 years ago, sometime after he started losing weight. He probably weighed 16-18 pounds at this time:
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Four years ago, Friskie was diagnosed with partial kidney failure. He started going through occasional 2-3 day periods of not eating, and each time he lost a little more weight. Past experience has shown me that the sooner a cat loses its weight, the sooner it dies. To combat this, we increased his feeding schedule to help maintain his weight better and we had some success with this. His rate of weight loss slowed considerably. Of course, the downside to this is that it puts an increased burden on his failing kidneys. It was a case of damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't. We did what we thought was best and were able to keep him alive and very happy for the last 4 years. In fact, he was the most playful he had been in quite some time. You haven't seen anything until you've seen an 18 old cat running at top speed around the house chasing down and tackling my wife's 3 year old cat.

However, in the last few months, his behavior took a downward turn and he was no longer interested in playing or getting attention. His day consisted solely of eating and sleeping. This last Wednesday and Thursday, he started eating very little, and by Friday I couldn't get him to eat anything at all. I've grown accustomed to this scenario over the years, however this time his behavior was different. Instead of being uninterested in food, he seemed very anxious to eat but couldn't find anything he wanted to take more the 2 or 3 licks of. By Saturday he was meowing for food nonstop almost the entire day. We tried several different flavors of 5 or 6 different brands of cat food, along with a variety of human food (tuna, salmon, sardines, chicken, roast beef, lunch meat, baby food, ice cream, etc), but he wouldn't take more than a few licks of anything before returning to meowing for food. By Sunday, he wasn't even meowing anymore, and instead spent the morning laying around with no energy.

Friskie was almost 19.5 years old. He was the friendliest and happiest cat I'd ever seen. He was my companion for nearly 2/3 of my entire life. I was lucky to have such a wonderful friend for so long.

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