February 7, 2013

  • Feb 2 2013, 3:50PM

    My mom is SUCH A BITCH. We've been getting along so well for so long, and then her obsession with control and death and "punishing" me for not doing what she wants just came back out of the blue and totally blindsided me. Shin's out of town for a couple of days, so I woke Leslie and she kept me from having a full-on panic attack.

    My mom was here 2 nights ago and Nibbler was bleeding badly from her bum again. She pooped out a big blood clot, but then pooped solid poos after and was OK. I gave her antibiotics and yogourt, and she's been better. This treatment has been very effective for these recurring issues over the last few months. I think this time it was caused by giving her a fresh carrot the night before. It seems to cause inflammation or something, so I won't give her carrots any more. Just the veggie puff treats and regular food. However Mom has been obsessed with trying to convince me to drown her since she saw the blood the other night.

    At 2PM today Mom called me and said she reported me to the Humane Society for animal cruelty. I've been volunteering there for several years, and the last thing I want is for them to believe I'm an animal abuser!

    I called the HS to explain, and the woman wouldn't let me get a word in edgeways. I finally broke in, explained that I have been caring for her and she's better, she's eating voraciously and drinking lots, walking around and cuddly. She demanded I take her in by 4PM for euthanasia, and I'd be billed $130! I said I didn't take her to the vet because it's $85 and I can't afford it. She said "Don't worry, we'll give you 35 days to pay it." As if that's any better!

    So then I was trying to call my mom to demand she pay for it, but she was on the phone with her fucking asshole child molester brother for ages. Meanwhile, the HS called me again and was harassing me to take her in, saying they will just do it and I'll pay later.

    I finally reached Mom, and she was yelling at me, and I yelled at her, and she said she wouldn't pay. "I can't afford it," she said, even though her income is more than mine and Shin's combined, and she recently spent several hundred dollars on catalogue orders (she gave them my e-mail address, so I get all these messages when she's ordering crap) and also just bought herself YET ANOTHER new coat, plus a had, gloves and purse to match, and then she bought two handbags because she liked the cats pictures on them and appliqued the pictures on to her coat. Yeah, bitch, don't tell me you can't pay when you're wasting your money on this shit.

     

    I woke Leslie up and she was helping me call vets to see what could be done. All the time Nibbler was wiggling around snuggling into my bra, and I was crying all over her.

    So there's the Farley Fund here, where they pay for vet care if you don't have     money. However, they only pay a certain amount per vet clinic per year, and there are hardly any hamster vets around here. I reached one in Preston and they said they could see her on Monday afternoon, and they'd find out if they have any funding left to cover it.

     

    So I made appointment, and then animal control showed up at my door. The guy had a kitten cage with him. _To take a hamster in. _ Holes big enough for her to walk through.

    He asked to see Nibbler, and I reached into my boobs and pulled her out. She wa    s freaked out and pooping all over me, solid, bloodless poops. He held her, looked at her, I showed him she ate. She wanted treats so badly she bit me when I pulled them away for a second!

    I put her on the table, showed she was able to walk, although she has a draggy foot so she walked in circles. He called the vet clinic to confirm the appointment. He decided I know more about hamsters than he does (he thought they live 5 years, when it's really 2-3) and said since she doesn't look to be suffering and I have an appointment, he'd leave her with me.

    I told him if I really truly thought she might be suffering, I'd put her down in a heartbeat, but she's not.

     

    So I called my mom and had another fight with her, and all she wanted to talk about was her broken TV. She has no empathy for the distress she put me through.

     

    Nibbler wouldn't have made it there, I don't think. Putting her in that big cage and carrying her out to the truck would have frozen her. She may have died from the cold before she got back to the shelter. Hamsters are from Syria, and they can't handle cold. If I have to transport her, I carry her inside my clothes. I do lots of research on hamster care, and also consult with a friend who has had hamsters for years.

    My friends who have only known my mom since she got better are baffled. They are used to her being nice to me. I keep telling them she's bipolar, obsessive, and a control freak. She also has an obsession with euthanasia. A couple years ago, her cat was sick and she couldn't afford treatment, so she tried to have her put down. The vet and I worked hard to convince her to surrender Maria to the vet's care, and eventually she did. Maria took 5 months to get better (major GI condition) and was adopted by a responsible family who take excellent care of her, according the the vet's report. Mom still says she wishes Maria had been put down so she didn't wonder what happened to her.

    She also tried to convince my uncle to pull the plug on their dad while he was in a medically-induced coma. She didn't understand that he was recovering. She's just totally obsessed with everything being disposable.

    She's been obsessed with death for years. When someone talks about a deceased spouse, she asks "How old was he when he died?" She calls me from her seniors' home and reports on who died today. In Newmarket, one of her pastimes was going to funerals of people she only vaguely knew. When my dad died, she immediately threw out all his clothes, took his neatly-arranged drawer of financial documents and dumped them out of their envelopes into the recycling bin, and started cashing in her RRSPs. She couldn't wait to erase the sum of his life. The day Mom was here, she was updating her will (something she's wanted to to do for months) and also asked me to do Power of Attorney forms for her. When I asked her how she wanted the POA forms filled out (who to give POA to, whether Gilly and I should be jointly or severally responsible) Mom just said "Just divide everything evenly." When I told her that's not what POA was for, she said "Just don't keep me alive. If something happens, let me go." Those kinds of answers are typical for someone with her type of brain damage, because she doesn't fully process the question.