The Case Of The Vanished Substacker

Or, why I've been MIA for a year.

Hello readers!

(insert sheepish hand wave here)

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted. A LOT of things have happened this year, and a heaping helping of it was bad and very bad to go along with the good. Friends have passed, health crises have arisen and been averted, flu and Covid waves struck my home within months of each other, and I ended a long-term partnership with a company I had written for over the last several years. And the majority of those life earthquakes happened over October - December of last year. This year, I’ve been managing the aftershocks.

One of those aftershocks is my cat being diagnosed with cancer around Christmas las year. Milo is seventeen-years-old and the first real pet I’ve ever had. Like, one that I took care of and loved and provided for. We lost his little brother, Jack, just over two years back to cancer (a swift moving one. He went from fine to gone in a two week time span), and I thought that was the hardest thing I’d ever faced.

This is so much harder.

Chemo won’t work anymore and he refuses to eat. My heart breaks every day. The end is close and I can’t stop it from coming. For the last several days I’ve been scrolling Instagram and Buzzfeed, trying to distract myself from the inevitable in the moments that I’m not sitting by his side, petting him and loving him and making him as comfortable as possible. In a day or so, we believe we are going to have to make THE DECISION, and I’m crushed.

In a Sisters In Crime chat group a couple of years ago, I recall another author, Ellen Bryon, asking others how to know it’s time to let a beloved pet cross over the rainbow bridge. She posted about her fur baby after he was at rest and her words, as well as the word of those who responded in the comments, have helped me process it all.

This morning, I decided doom scrolling isn’t helping me cope anymore. It’s not healthy or hopeful. Writing is. So I’ve written my feelings out and shared them with you. And I do feel more in control of the situation now that I’ve laid it out on the screen.

Each day we’ve had with Milo since his diagnosis almost a year ago has been a gift. The best way to honor that gift is to help him move on and then move forward myself. No matter how much it hurts to continue on without his head butts and slow blinks.

So that’s what’s been going on. If you’ve gotten this far in the post, thank you so much for reading the distraught words of an emotional kitty mom. I promise, this is just a slight detour from the usual. The next post you receive will be back to links and mystery news. But I have to get this out before I can focus on the fun stuff again.

Talk with you again very soon,

Kate