Last summer didn’t turn out quite the way I had expected. Alex and I lost one of our young cats quickly and unexpectedly at the beginning of June. She was only 2 years old. The vet specialist in Birmingham where she was hospitalized for just 2 days was never able to pinpoint and treat the exact cause of Vidalia’s quick decline, and she went into respiratory failure at 2 in the morning. We are both crushed that we were not there for her in her final moments and never knew what took her from us. We suspect FIP or HCM but will never know which for sure. The ‘specialist’ lost the test sample they supposedly sent off to test for FIP; don’t even get me started on that place.
June and July were rough. I didn’t care about anything, including the garden. We were supposed to have at least 15 more years with Vidalia. We had lost 4 other cats in the years prior to Vidalia, but those ranged in age from 15-18 years old. Losing one so young and unexpectedly is a different kind of hurt. My heart still clenches every time I see a picture of her on the digital frame we have honoring those no longer with us. Life is not fair. I miss that girl deeply. 💔 💔
And so, the garden in 2025 was a bare minimum, and if it couldn’t survive without water for a week, it just died. I did less than the minimum to keep some things alive, mainly focusing on the perennials so they wouldn’t die on me and would come back this year. All the seeds I started in my seed-starting series suffered since a lot of them didn’t get planted.
Grief is a powerful thing, and past year or so in general was rough. You never think about the passing of your pets when you first adopt them, and our original 5 were really close in age. We lost Marble Jan 2022 (16 years old), Jasmine in May 2023 (17), Targét in October 2024 (18), Bailey in Feb 2025 (15), Vidalia in June 2025 (2), and Oxford (16) on New Year’s Eve 2025. It’s not fair to put us in the place Vidalia was in summer 2023 (Purple Onion restaurant parking lot) so we could rescue her and care for her only to take her away not quite 2 years later. 💔 We have went from having 7 cats ever since moving here in 2019 to just 3 now. I’m sure these 3 are still adjusting like we are. May we not have any more losses for a LONG time! Two of them turn 7 in April of this year, and the other turns 3 in May. My heart can’t take another loss right now.
It’s been a slow process getting out of this depression these past 10 months, and the beginning of perimenopause hasn’t helped, but I am getting back out there this spring and summer and slowly cleaning up the mess that took over last season. I hope to share more of what I do in the garden this year here on my blog.