{"id":4593,"date":"2011-01-01T01:10:25","date_gmt":"2011-01-01T06:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=4656"},"modified":"2010-12-11T16:37:23","modified_gmt":"2010-12-11T21:37:23","slug":"spot-our-magical-cat-the-story-she-wants-me-to-share","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2011\/01\/01\/spot-our-magical-cat-the-story-she-wants-me-to-share\/","title":{"rendered":"Spot – Our Magical Cat: The Story She Wants Me to Share"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spot – Our Magical Cat:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Story She Wants Me to Share<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Spot was our very special pet.\u00a0 She came to us from out of the wild in the spring of 1995 when she was about a year old.\u00a0 We decided that May 1st was her birthday.\u00a0 She had a very playful and inquisitive nature.\u00a0 For a couple of months when my husband, Mack, and I would walk to the nearby restaurant down our street, often on the way there and back we would become aware of the presence of a little black cat following us.\u00a0 We would turn to look and she would scamper into the shadows of trees and nearby objects only to emerge and follow us when we had turned away again.<\/p>\n

Sometimes we would pretend to chase her and she would pretend to be chased, only to resume following us, and eventually disappear into the shadows.\u00a0 I thought to myself, “There is a cat who knows she is black.”\u00a0 I assumed she had a home somewhere in the neighborhood, but she had no collar.\u00a0 For the next three weeks it rained almost continuously.\u00a0 Then, one day, we returned to our home to find this little black cat all drenched and crouched on our doorstep.\u00a0 She was obviously in need of a home.\u00a0 We took her in, fed her, and nursed her back to health, as she needed some nourishment and de-worming.<\/p>\n

Mack said he thought she had been living in the wild for some time, but, as she was very affectionate, she must have been raised by some loving humans. \u00a0She had no fear of people, only a healthy wariness of them.\u00a0 It was also obvious that she was in heat, and we were deciding whether we really could keep her as we were not supposed to have a pet in our apartment.\u00a0 We are on the second floor and have a spacious porch.\u00a0 Naively, we thought she would stay on the porch with her food and litter box when we were away.\u00a0 That is how we discovered ‘the cat elevator.’\u00a0 One of the juniper bushes along the side of the building had a trimmed area off its trunk, just at the level of our porch.\u00a0 By the time we discovered that she could come and go as she pleased, we also discovered that she was pregnant.<\/p>\n

By this time, it was also pretty obvious she had chosen us and we were going to have to make things work out together.\u00a0 We named her Spot because she was all black but for a large white patch from her throat down to her chest.\u00a0 I checked out the cat encyclopedia and found her in its pages staring back at me, matching exactly the description of the beautiful longhaired black Norwegian Forest Cat with the large intense yellow eyes and exquisite triangular shaped head and face.\u00a0 She also had the characteristic of \u2018rusting\u2019 when exposed to sunlight.\u00a0 I would refer to her as my fire cat when her reds, bronzes, and golds reflected in the sunlight.\u00a0 When out of the sunlight she would transform again to black.<\/p>\n

Spot gave birth to five beautiful babies.\u00a0 We ran an ad in the paper and found loving homes for all of them.\u00a0 Then, I rushed her to be spayed, assuring her that she would always be my \u2018kitten\u2019 no matter what.\u00a0 Spot was a natural birder.\u00a0 She was not at all much interested in mice or frogs or anything other than birds.\u00a0 She was so good at catching birds that we kept a bell on her to give the birds a fair chance.\u00a0 In spite of the bell, Spot still managed to occasionally catch birds and would bring them to us, dead, as a gift, or, quite often, she would release them alive inside the house so she could chase them.\u00a0 This always created pandemonium, which she loved.<\/p>\n

Spot would regularly accompany us on walks in the neighborhood, usually to the post office, but she would not go all the way.\u00a0 She had a favorite set of bushes she would sit inside of, and watch and wait for us to return.\u00a0 She would then come out and resume the walk home with us.\u00a0 She was not as fond of riding in the car but, with some persistent encouragement, she would tolerate it.\u00a0 At her best, she really enjoyed watching the world pass by through the windows.\u00a0 At home on her porch, she would constantly survey the neighborhood, her \u2018domain.\u2019\u00a0 Riding in the car expanded her sense of place.\u00a0 She knew exactly where she lived in the scheme of things.\u00a0 She could come and go freely, and she was known and loved throughout the neighborhood by people and creatures alike.\u00a0 She was a true queen.<\/p>\n

I had become accustomed to Spot being around me a lot now that I was working from home.\u00a0 She was always very communicative.\u00a0 Very talkative.\u00a0 And, she had a large vocabulary.\u00a0 She would boss me around and make me do things just the way she wanted them to be done.\u00a0 For instance, she would command me to make the bed for her every morning<\/span><\/strong>, and would not allow me to leave any wrinkles. \u00a0Sometimes I would hold Spot on my lap and gaze into her deep yellow lantern eyes and ask, “How will I ever live without you?”\u00a0 Not that I was really expecting an answer, but her answer would come innocently, “What do you mean ‘without’?”<\/p>\n

I know the life span of a cat, in human terms, is short.\u00a0 But my last cat was a venerable Siamese who lived to the age of 23.\u00a0 He was very healthy all of his life and was never under a regular veterinarian’s care because I could not really afford it.\u00a0 When we lost Si, it was difficult, but understandable.\u00a0 His bodily systems were shutting down.\u00a0 He had lived a long life and it his time had come.\u00a0 Now that Spot was going to be a part of our family, I wanted us to do the best we could for her.\u00a0 We decided that rather than rely on the same country doctor who had done her spay surgery, we would take her for annual checkups at the large veterinarian facility in nearby Sumner.\u00a0 They were well established, with a good reputation, so we trusted them and went along with their program of recommended vaccinations.<\/p>\n

Spot was very happy and healthy and we never had any problems until the summer of 2007 when, based on her blood tests from her standard annual examination, she was diagnosed with early feline hyperthyroidism.\u00a0 She was 13. \u00a0As far as I could tell, she really was not manifesting any symptoms of the disease.\u00a0 I was curious about its cause and asked her doctor lots of questions.\u00a0 According to him, in many cases they are finding that it is hereditary and begins to manifest as a cat approaches its senior years.\u00a0 He also told me that it has become more prevalent in the later part of the last century, which veterinarians theorize is due to successive inheritance of the trait among the cat population.\u00a0 He gave me literature to help me understand what effect the disease can have if it is left untreated and what the options for treatment were.\u00a0 He also strongly recommended radioactive iodine treatment, which is a onetime procedure done at a specialized clinic.\u00a0 As it so happened, there was one nearby, in Tacoma.\u00a0 He referred to this treatment as safe and assured me that it was a \u2018cure\u2019 for the condition, whereas the other treatments would require lifelong therapy.\u00a0 My husband and I discussed it and agreed to have it for Spot.<\/p>\n

Because it was an expensive procedure, we could not have it done until March 2008.\u00a0 By this time, Spot was 14.\u00a0 Everything went well with the treatment.\u00a0 Spot’s 1st month follow-up examination was perfect, and so was her 3-month follow-up.\u00a0 This examination coincided with the time that her standard vaccinations were due, so I asked that they be done at the same time, thinking it was convenient to do so.<\/p>\n

Over the course of the next 14 months, Spot began to develop a progression of serious medical conditions: osteoarthritis, lupus or similar auto immune disorder (requiring chronic steroid dosage), prerenal condition (earliest indicators for a body in danger of developing chronic renal insufficiency that can often be averted with appropriate medical treatment), chronic urinary tract infections (requiring antibiotics), chronic kidney disease (requiring 3 times a week intravenous fluid), anemia (requiring a blood transfusion), diabetes (requiring twice daily insulin injection), and ultimately, end-stage renal disease and sepsis.\u00a0 Spot was in and out of the emergency hospital and several times needed to stay in for extended periods of time.\u00a0 At home, we cared for her and gave her the treatment she needed.\u00a0 Assisted and supported by Mack, I nursed her throughout her progressive stages of health and appealed to the Goddess to heal her.<\/p>\n

Throughout this period of Spot\u2019s illness, Mack and I were in the process of closing a deal, on a lot across the street from where we live, where we plan to eventually build our own home.\u00a0 I found myself, on several occasions, sitting by a little crab apple tree on our soon-to-be-own land, praying to the Goddess to heal Spot.\u00a0 Every time the thought occurred to me that she was dying, I was afraid because we did not, yet, own our own place.\u00a0 Where to bury her?<\/p>\n

Spot, however, was not afraid.\u00a0 She made an amazing recovery and seemed to be making progress to her good state of health.\u00a0 In May of 2009, we finally closed the deal and got our land.\u00a0 Spot had become healthier than she had been in quite awhile and spent the next three months hanging out with us on our property, doing wonderful lazy cat things in the sun and exploring all of its plant life.\u00a0 Until nearly the very end, I believed that Spot could be healed.<\/p>\n

Her time to die came on August 19, 2009.\u00a0 Spot was 15 years old.\u00a0 Mack and I were with her during the day and a half of her passing, until her very last breath.\u00a0 The Goddess had given us time for Mack to build her a beautiful wooden coffin, and we knew where we would bury her.\u00a0 Now, she is the heart of my sacred grove near the little crab apple tree.\u00a0 Mack later built me a beautiful garden bench, where I can often sit and meditate, and be with Spot.\u00a0 It is a powerful place.<\/p>\n

But this is not the end of her story.<\/p>\n

Initially, my grieving period was intense.\u00a0 I could still feel Spot’s presence and I strove to maintain contact with her.\u00a0 In meditation, I can see her eyes gazing back at me.\u00a0 I can feel the exquisite silky texture of her long fur and the velvet of her nose and paws.\u00a0 I can feel the outline of her cheek bones while I rub her cheeks.\u00a0 Now, when I do this, it is a joy.\u00a0 But it was extremely cathartic for me in the beginning.\u00a0 Several times, I asked Spot for a sign.\u00a0 Once, right after I asked, a crow landed on the window ledge, called loudly, and then flew off.\u00a0 Another time, when I was on the bench in the grove, a black walnut dropped from the sky.\u00a0 It landed ten feet away on the grass glistening with dew, making it look like a jewel in the sunlight.\u00a0 What is most interesting about this experience is that crows like to drop these nuts, usually on the pavement, to crack them open.\u00a0 But, as I examined the sky, I could see no sign of a crow nearby.<\/p>\n

For months after Spot died, I tried to deal with nagging thoughts and emotions regarding the progression of her illness, things I had not allowed myself to completely process earlier because I was so absorbed with trying to save Spot’s life.\u00a0 I was conflicted.\u00a0 I could not let go of the feeling that something was not right.\u00a0 I asked Spot what she wanted me to do, and she told me she wanted me to uncover the truth.\u00a0 I had kept all of her health records and I started going back over things.\u00a0 It was a puzzle I felt I had to solve, and I also felt Spot driving me to do it.\u00a0 There was data indicating Spot had had signs of a prerenal condition prior to having the radioactive iodine treatment and studies show that the radioactive iodine treatment can worsen such a kidney condition.\u00a0 It looked to me like Spot’s doctors should not <\/span>have recommended this treatment and should have alerted us to the need to be proactive in treating her prerenal condition.<\/p>\n

I learned that a pet loss support group was available at the Tacoma Humane Society so I went there for two consecutive Saturdays, and was fortunate to be the only person attending.\u00a0 Therefore, I was able to have a one-on-one session with the same facilitator both times.\u00a0 She helped me find my conviction to go ahead and put together a detailed report of my findings to present to the veterinarian specialist who had given Spot the radioactive iodine treatment.\u00a0 I decided to send him my report and ask him to meet with me to discuss it.\u00a0 It took awhile to make the connection with this doctor, but he eventually honored my request and we talked the entire experience out over the phone.\u00a0 He pointed out where some of my conclusions were not correct, agreed with some of them, and also pointed out some other things that were astonishing to me.<\/p>\n

When Spot’s osteoarthritis was diagnosed, I had taken her to her doctor because she seemed to be in pain around her hips.\u00a0 They gave her an injection of Metacam, which they referred to as \u2018Kitty Tylenol\u2019 and also gave me an oral form that I was to give her several more times at home.\u00a0 But this veterinarian specialist informed me that Metacam is usually given to dogs<\/strong> and is known to be toxic<\/strong> to cats and especially damaging <\/span><\/strong>to their kidneys.\u00a0 There is a website that has some startling information regarding this:\u00a0 www.metacamkills.com<\/span><\/em> .<\/p>\n

The veterinarian specialist graciously offered to contact Spot’s doctors at the Sumner facility for me.\u00a0 Eventually, all the doctors involved in Spot’s care, including this specialist, conducted an in depth review of her case and held a conference.\u00a0 The outcome of their conference is that the hospital has made specific changes in their health policy for cats, and they have even named the new policy, \u2018The Spot McLaughlin Health Policy for Cats\u2019 in honor of Spot.\u00a0 They will no longer prescribe Metacam to cats unless the owners insist<\/span> on having it, in which case they must<\/span> sign a disclaimer.\u00a0 They also will stop giving vaccinations to any cat over ten years old.\u00a0 In gratitude, I sent them one of my favorite photos of Spot, framed, to hang on their office wall, next to her health policy.<\/p>\n

It was some consolation.\u00a0 Far from replacing Spot, of course.\u00a0 But both Mack and I feel satisfied that our efforts have born fruit for Spot to be long remembered, knowing that she lives on in a way that will make life better for many other cats.<\/p>\n

Ever since Spot died, I have sensed her presence with me often.\u00a0 She still goes walking with us, like she did in life, for she was that kind of amazing companion.\u00a0 I know when Spot is walking with me now, because even though I cannot see her, I can feel her and am filled with a joy that is like warm sunshine.\u00a0 There are other creatures, and a rare person, who also seem to notice her with me.\u00a0 Spot is here because she likes this place.\u00a0 It is still her earthly home and even though she can travel anywhere anytime she wants, she always comes to me when I call her.\u00a0 Sometimes, sitting at my computer, I feel her lightly brush my bare leg with her fur.\u00a0 Sometimes I see her from the side of my eye, but when I turn to look, she has disappeared into the shadows.<\/p>\n

Now, more than a year later, we have another wonderful kitten.\u00a0 A Ragamuffin breed, he was given to us in circumstances filled with synchronous coincidence that leaves us no doubt that Spot picked him for us to fill in, with joy, the deep space she made in our lives.\u00a0 His name is Socks.\u00a0 As a result of my veterinarian experiences with Spot, we chose to take a different health path for Socks and find an alternative to allopathic medicine for him.\u00a0 Just at the time we decided this, a friend introduced us to Dr. Jennifer Preston, Holistic Veterinarian.\u00a0 She has opened our eyes to the truth surrounding the current widespread common use of vaccinations in animals and the fact that there is a healthy alternative.<\/p>\n

She provides a lot of excellent information on her website:\u00a0 www.holisticvetexpert.com<\/span> .<\/em><\/p>\n

I am still shocked and amazed, that I was so na\u00efve.\u00a0 But, I also know that I am not alone in having blind trust in allopathic animal doctors\u2019 advice.\u00a0 I am also grateful that I want to learn and understand more.\u00a0 On behalf of Spot and Socks, Mack and I encourage you to do the same.<\/p>\n

Mary McLaughlin, November 2010<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spot – Our Magical Cat: The Story She Wants Me to Share Spot was our very special pet.\u00a0 She came to us from out of the wild in the spring of 1995 when she was about a year old.\u00a0 We decided that May 1st was her birthday.\u00a0 She had a very playful and inquisitive nature.\u00a0 For a couple of months when my husband, Mack, and I would walk to the nearby restaurant down our street, often on the way there and back we would become aware of the presence of a little black cat following us.\u00a0 We would turn to look and she would scamper into the shadows of trees and nearby objects only to emerge and follow us when we had turned away again. Sometimes we would pretend to chase her and she would pretend to be chased, only to resume following us, and eventually disappear into the shadows.\u00a0 I thought to myself, “There is a cat who knows she is black.”\u00a0 I assumed she had a home somewhere in the neighborhood, but she had no collar.\u00a0 For the next three weeks it rained almost continuously.\u00a0 Then, one day, we returned to our home to find this little black cat all drenched and crouched on our doorstep.\u00a0 She was obviously in need of a home.\u00a0 We took her in, fed her, and nursed her back to health, as she needed some nourishment and de-worming. Mack said he thought she had been living in the wild for some time, but, as she was very affectionate, she must have been raised by some loving humans. \u00a0She had no fear of people, only a healthy wariness of them.\u00a0 It was also obvious that she was in heat, and we were deciding whether we really could keep her as we were not supposed to have a pet in our apartment.\u00a0 We are on the second floor and have a spacious porch.\u00a0 Naively, we thought she would stay on the porch with her food and litter box when we were away.\u00a0 That is how we discovered ‘the cat elevator.’\u00a0 One of the juniper bushes along the side of the building had a trimmed area off its trunk, just at the level of our porch.\u00a0 By the time we discovered that she could come and go as she pleased, we also discovered that she was pregnant. By this time, it was also pretty obvious she had chosen us and we were going to have to make things work out together.\u00a0 We named her Spot because she was all black but for a large white patch from her throat down to her chest.\u00a0 I checked out the cat encyclopedia and found her in its pages staring back at me, matching exactly the description of the beautiful longhaired black Norwegian Forest Cat with the large intense yellow eyes and exquisite triangular shaped head and face.\u00a0 She also had the characteristic of \u2018rusting\u2019 when exposed to sunlight.\u00a0 I would refer to her as my fire cat when her reds, bronzes, and golds reflected in the sunlight.\u00a0 When out of the sunlight she would transform again to black. Spot gave birth to five beautiful babies.\u00a0 We ran an ad in the paper and found loving homes for all of them.\u00a0 Then, I rushed her to be spayed, assuring her that she would always be my \u2018kitten\u2019 no matter what.\u00a0 Spot was a natural birder.\u00a0 She was not at all much interested in mice or frogs or anything other than birds.\u00a0 She was so good at catching birds that we kept a bell on her to give the birds a fair chance.\u00a0 In spite of the bell, Spot still managed to occasionally catch birds and would bring them to us, dead, as a gift, or, quite often, she would release them alive inside the house so she could chase them.\u00a0 This always created pandemonium, which she loved. Spot would regularly accompany us on walks in the neighborhood, usually to the post office, but she would not go all the way.\u00a0 She had a favorite set of bushes she would sit inside of, and watch and wait for us to return.\u00a0 She would then come out and resume the walk home with us.\u00a0 She was not as fond of riding in the car but, with some persistent encouragement, she would tolerate it.\u00a0 At her best, she really enjoyed watching the world pass by through the windows.\u00a0 At home on her porch, she would constantly survey the neighborhood, her \u2018domain.\u2019\u00a0 Riding in the car expanded her sense of place.\u00a0 She knew exactly where she lived in the scheme of things.\u00a0 She could come and go freely, and she was known and loved throughout the neighborhood by people and creatures alike.\u00a0 She was a true queen. I had become accustomed to Spot being around me a lot now that I was working from home.\u00a0 She was always very communicative.\u00a0 Very talkative.\u00a0 And, she had a large vocabulary.\u00a0 She would boss me around and make me do things just the way she wanted them to be done.\u00a0 For instance, she would command me to make the bed for her every morning, and would not allow me to leave any wrinkles. \u00a0Sometimes I would hold Spot on my lap and gaze into her deep yellow lantern eyes and ask, “How will I ever live without you?”\u00a0 Not that I was really expecting an answer, but her answer would come innocently, “What do you mean ‘without’?” I know the life span of a cat, in human terms, is short.\u00a0 But my last cat was a venerable Siamese who lived to the age of 23.\u00a0 He was very healthy all of his life and was never under a regular veterinarian’s care because I could not really afford it.\u00a0 When we lost Si, it was difficult, but understandable.\u00a0 His bodily systems were shutting down.\u00a0 He had lived a long life and it his time had come.\u00a0 Now that Spot was going to be a part of our family, I wanted us to do the best we could for her.\u00a0 We decided that rather than rely on the same country doctor who had done her spay surgery, we would take her for annual checkups at the large veterinarian facility in nearby Sumner.\u00a0 They were well established, with a good reputation, so we trusted them and went along with their program of recommended vaccinations. Spot was very happy and healthy and we never had any problems until the summer of 2007 when, based on her blood tests from her standard annual examination, she was diagnosed with early feline hyperthyroidism.\u00a0 She was 13. \u00a0As far as I could tell, she really was not manifesting any symptoms of the disease.\u00a0 I was curious about its cause and asked her doctor lots of questions.\u00a0 According to him, in many cases they are finding that it is hereditary and begins to manifest as a cat approaches its senior years.\u00a0 He also told me that it has become more prevalent in the later part of the last century, which veterinarians theorize is due to successive inheritance of the trait among the cat population.\u00a0 He gave me literature to help me understand what effect the disease can have if it is left untreated and what the options for treatment were.\u00a0 He also strongly recommended radioactive iodine treatment, which is a onetime procedure done at a specialized clinic.\u00a0 As it so happened, there was one nearby, in Tacoma.\u00a0 He referred to this treatment as safe and assured me that it was a \u2018cure\u2019 for the condition, whereas the other treatments would require lifelong therapy.\u00a0 My husband and I discussed it and agreed to have it for Spot. Because it was an expensive procedure, we could not have it done until March 2008.\u00a0 By this time, Spot was 14.\u00a0 Everything went well with the treatment.\u00a0 Spot’s 1st month follow-up examination was perfect, and so was her 3-month follow-up.\u00a0 This examination coincided with the time that her standard vaccinations were due, so I asked that they be done at the same time, thinking it was convenient to do so. Over the course of the next 14 months, Spot began to develop a progression of serious medical conditions: osteoarthritis, lupus or similar auto immune disorder (requiring chronic steroid dosage), prerenal condition (earliest indicators for a body in danger of developing chronic renal insufficiency that can often be averted with appropriate medical treatment), chronic urinary tract infections (requiring antibiotics), chronic kidney disease (requiring 3 times a week intravenous fluid), anemia (requiring a blood transfusion), diabetes (requiring twice daily insulin injection), and ultimately, end-stage renal disease and sepsis.\u00a0 Spot was in and out of the emergency hospital and several times needed to stay in for extended periods of time.\u00a0 At home, we cared for her and gave her the treatment she needed.\u00a0 Assisted and supported by Mack, I nursed her throughout her progressive stages of health and appealed to the Goddess to heal her. Throughout this period of Spot\u2019s illness, Mack and I were in the process of closing a deal, on a lot across the street from where we live, where we plan to eventually build our own home.\u00a0 I found myself, on several occasions, sitting by a little crab apple tree on our soon-to-be-own land, praying to the Goddess to heal Spot.\u00a0 Every time the thought occurred to me that she was dying, I was afraid because we did not, yet, own our own place.\u00a0 Where to bury her? Spot, however, was not afraid.\u00a0 She made an amazing recovery and seemed to be making progress to her good state of health.\u00a0 In May of 2009, we finally closed the deal and got our land.\u00a0 Spot had become healthier than she had been in quite awhile and spent the next three months hanging out with us on our property, doing wonderful lazy cat things in the sun and exploring all of its plant life.\u00a0 Until nearly the very end, I believed that Spot could be healed. Her time to die came on August 19, 2009.\u00a0 Spot was 15 years old.\u00a0 Mack and I were with her during the day and a half of her passing, until her very last breath.\u00a0 The Goddess had given us time for Mack to build her a beautiful wooden coffin, and we knew where we would bury her.\u00a0 Now, she is the heart of my sacred grove near the little crab apple tree.\u00a0 Mack later built me a beautiful garden bench, where I can often sit and meditate, and be with Spot.\u00a0 It is a powerful place. But this is not the end of her story. Initially, my grieving period was intense.\u00a0 I could still feel Spot’s presence and I strove to maintain contact with her.\u00a0 In meditation, I can see her eyes gazing back at me.\u00a0 I can feel the exquisite silky texture of her long fur and the velvet of her nose and paws.\u00a0 I can feel the outline of her cheek bones while I rub her cheeks.\u00a0 Now, when I do this, it is a joy.\u00a0 But it was extremely cathartic for me in the beginning.\u00a0 Several times, I asked Spot for a sign.\u00a0 Once, right after I asked, a crow landed on the window ledge, called loudly, and then flew off.\u00a0 Another time, when I was on the bench in the grove, a black walnut dropped from the sky.\u00a0 It landed ten feet away on the grass glistening with dew, making it look like a jewel in the sunlight.\u00a0 What is most interesting about this experience is that crows like to drop these nuts, usually on the pavement, to crack them open.\u00a0 But, as I examined the sky, I could see no sign of a crow nearby. For months after Spot died, I tried to deal with nagging thoughts and emotions regarding the progression of her illness, things I had not allowed myself to completely process earlier because I was so absorbed with trying to save Spot’s life.\u00a0 I was conflicted.\u00a0 I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}