Worried

Living with animals brings me so much joy, even as it also brings mess and chaos and no time to myself. I get deeply invested in their well-being, which brings with it the bittersweet part of this life: the constant worrying. Sometimes bad things happen to the animals I love, and I live under a constant cloud of worry. I bring this up today because my sweet orange baby, Yoda, is not feeling well.

Yoda is no stranger to the vet's office. He came home with a broken tail one time, but aside from a lump, it turned out ok. Another time he strolled in on a Friday evening (after office hours, of course) with his face all bloody from a slice on the bridge of his nose that went down to the bone. That was an expensive trip that ended with staples in his face.

Last winter he was acting really strange and growling at everybody. After several hours of that, I guessed that he had a bladder blockage and rushed him to the vet's office again. He was there for three days with a catheter flushing out all the gunk, and has to be on prescription (read: not cheap) food for the rest of his life.

He went to the vet today with similar, albeit milder symptoms. They poked his bladder and took his temperature and sent him home, saying we should keep an eye on him. He is obviously not well, and I can't stand not knowing what's going on and not being able to fix it.

My view on farming and keeping animals in general is that the animals don't have a choice in the matter. They are here, whether they like it or not, and my job is to make sure they like it. I want all of them to have the happiest life they can possibly have, whether it's a goat I will be milking for years or a rooster eventually destined for the freezer.

Hence the worrying. Having the brush goats living all over the place took some getting used to, and I still wake up in a cold sweat imagining the horrible things that could happen. They probably won't, but they could. Maybe it's a side effect of motherhood. My son is 22 and I still worry all the time about every awful thing that could befall him. When I get into "discussions" with my more pragmatic half, I have to remind him that sometimes the bad things do happen. Animals get sick, they get injured, they die. Every time I lose one, I have a moment where it seems like a better idea not to have animals at all rather than go through the pain of losing them. But I always come back to the joy. I may not have any time to myself and I may end up with an ulcer and adrenal fatigue from panicking all the time, but my furry and feathered family is there loving me right back every day.

I apologize if this post was a bit of a downer. I'm a little stressed out, if you hadn't picked up on that. I desperately hope all will be well and maybe he just ate a bad mouse.

Be well, everyone, and maybe send Yoda a happy thought.