On the last day of summer, we said goodbye to our dear friend and companion.

It was as hard a decision as any we’ve ever made… and who knew that a little critter could leave such a large gap in our lives and in our family.  As Evonne put it, he had the biggest heart and the absolute best temperament of any cat we’ve met.

Our story with Kit began in 2001 when we bought our townhouse on Madison, and decided to get a companion for Mocha.  We looked through a few shelters, and came across Kit in the Richmond SPCA.  He was about 18 months old, and he had the most unique coloring (taupe?) as well as a shy and easy going personality.  Evonne always wanted an orange tabby, and so Kit definitely fit that requirement!

We could not adopt him the first time we saw him as it was late in the day, so we came back later that week to adopt him, only to see a little kid playing with him.  So Evonne elbowed the kid out of the way and immediately went and did the paperwork!  We first brought him to my Grandpa’s house, where Mocha was still living.  He did some exploring, timidly, and somehow found a hiding spot under the stairs in the back flower room.  I lived there all my life and never knew that spot existed.  We tried everything to get him out- water, hair dryer, broom stick… and after many attempts, managed to hook him out with a hockey stick.  We then brought him home to Madison, where he enjoyed the sunny deck, window sills, couch, and the foot of the bed for many years.  He and Mocha became fast friends with a few spats here and there, but they were inseparable.  We have so many pictures where the two would be in the same frame- sitting, sleeping, or exploring together.  They have different, but wonderful personalities- they have never scratched (intentionally) or bit another person or annoying child.

kit was never a great jumper- he was about 13-14 lbs, and had a chipped tooth from jumping down as a kitten.  Mocha was the jumper/climber and is about 12-13 lbs.  Whenever they met a strange cat, it was always Mocha that defended the home front, while Kit tried his best to keep the peace and be friends.

They were both there when we got married, both there to cautiously welcome Erica home- a gentle sniff to meet her, and of course they moved with us to Masset where they adjusted to life in a larger house and yard…and a second child.  It was around then that our attention to them dropped quite a bit as the kids took up more of our time, but they had each other for company, and they knew the moment when the kids went to bed, that they can come out and have their time with us.

As is always the case, time goes by all too quickly. We have so many pictures of the cats snoozing on the stairs or enjoying the outdoors or curled up in a blanket.  They certainly looked to have had a great life.

About a year and a half ago, we noticed that Kit was upset about something- he started to mark and not use his litter box.  Then, after numerous visits to the vet that didn’t reveal anything serious, there were signs of weight loss, thyroid issues… then kidney and pancreas and anemia problems in recent months.   After we moved out of Masset, we noticed that Kit would be more and more thirsty, and his weight loss continued… down to about 8.3 lbs.  We had him on regular medication for hypertension, thyroid, and kidney… and then had to have him on daily IV and more medication for pain, nausea, and Phosphate uptake as he wasn’t able to eliminate phosphate from his body.  We took him home and gave him a week to see how he would do.  Thankfully, he perked up, gained back .5 lb, and did more cat things like grooming and going outside to explore a bit.

He sat with us as we watched TV, and had a good appetite.  However something was still bothering him as he still would not use his litterbox- likely by choice and as a way to tell us something was wrong.

We struggled with what to do leading up to his follow up appointment.  On one hand, he was doing better and gaining back weight… on the other hand, he still wasn’t fully himself-  he didn’t purr as much and he slept a lot.  You could see discomfort when he moved.

At the appointment, he ate a whole bunch of cookies, and was rubbing against his carrier, and looked relaxed and happy.  We were informed that we could keep going, but that meant another daily injection to help his anemia, on top of all the other meds.

Dr. Richter told us he would have 3-6 months maybe, but with multiple systems failing, he could crash at any time.

I felt that… maybe it was best to go out on a high, rather than drag it out and watch a painful decline. He was so good at the appointment, and still in many ways, acting like a kitten- very alert and calm. So we made the toughest decision ever… in the end, we wanted to spare him the needles, pills, and the increasing discomfort that was to come.  He could have a few good weeks, but then we’d be back in the same position, and that would be after more meds/pills/needles.

They took him away to put in a catheter into his arm, and when they brought him back he was happily sitting for a few moments, a bit annoyed with the wrap around his paw, and then he laid down and curled up in a comfortable position, and continued to actively wolf down the cookies while the sedative was injected.  I can’t describe the sadness and grief that Evonne and I felt as we held Kitsky and watched him quickly slip away to sleep.

Even though, logically we did the right thing, and he had the best life and didn’t suffer, that knowledge doesn’t take away the huge gap in our family.  Until you’ve had a pet that’s been with you through good and bad, day after day, you can’t understand how they become a part of the family.

Mocha has been searching outside, waiting for his pal to come home, and Erica is at that age where she’s full of questions, and of course, deep sadness and tears.  I did not realize how much of an effect Kit’s absence would have on Mocha- I let him sniff Kit’s collar, which he did for a few moments, and if a cat could express deep sadness, he did.

Thank you Kit, the years went by too fast, and you were the best companion.  Until we meet again…

I have to say that we’re so thankful to Emily, the speech path that first saw Sammo.  She told us about Monarch house, wrote a letter to them on our behalf, and guided us through the early stages and gave us a lot of reassurance and helpful advice.

After we got the diagnosis, we then got busy learning about autism, telling friends and family the news, and went about figuring out the next steps.

If you break a leg, there is an established process and treatment.  You get referred to a specialist who takes X-rays and comes up with a treatment and rehabilitation.  With Autism, once you get a diagnosis, there is a myriad of treatment options ranging from nutrition, alternative therapies, behavioural therapies, diet supplements, hyperbaric chamber treatment, speech pathology, occupational therapy, etc.

In BC, we had to find a behavioural consultant, who would come up with a plan implemented by Behavioural interventionists or BIs.  A behavioural consultant may use ABA or some other form of treatment, but ABA is the only officially recognized form of treatment with scientific backing.

That said, parents are free to choose their BC, and may hire their own BI to implement the intervention, which could be from 8 to 40 hours per week!

Going back to our analogy, we are not experts in helping kids with autism, but yet we needed to make some key decisions about what direction to take for treatment.  If I broke a leg, the process would already be laid out… But now we needed to become experts on the difference between ABA, RDI, Floortime, and a bunch of other therapies… And make a crucial decision.

In the end, we found that we had to be Sam’s primary advocate and make the best decision we could.  Again, based on a recommendation, we checked out Reference and Regulate, sorted by David Loyst, a former speech path.  We just didn’t think that ABA was best for Sam, and found that r and r just made better sense in terms of getting to the core problem and would likely be a better option than having Sam sit at a table and learn things through ABA.

So we did our homework, asked our questions, and by November, had selected a behavioural consultant.  There was a lot of paperwork to go through with our family doc and the ministry to get funding sorted out, but by December Sam had started his first session…  3 months after he was officially diagnosed.

When Sammo was about 2, we noticed that he didn’t have as many words or communication as Erica at the same age. For Sam, we attributed his speech delay with the fact that he was the second child, boys talk later than girls, and he heard 2 languages while growing up, which may have confused him.

However, looking back, there were a few other personality quirks- he liked lining up his toys, spun the wheels on his toy cars, loved to run up and down ramps, and looked at his toys, especially airplanes at certain angles.

Just before his 3rd birthday, my dad suggested a speech pathologist to help Sam kick start his speech, so we looked into a) what is a speech pathologist and b) how do you go about finding one. After some searching on the web, we got some information and started to contact a few speech paths about coming in for an assessment and the possibility of working with Sam for a few sessions. It turns out that going the public route meant waiting lists, up to 4 months, so we decided to go the private route, at least for the first assessment. We found a speech path, Emily, that was willing to come out and work in our area, so we invited her out to come see Sam.

When she arrived, she had a few games which she brought out and engaged Sam with.  At the end of the session, we had a talk and Emily said that she saw enough red flags that she recommended we test Sam for autism. As a parent who knew next to nothing about Autism, this came as a shock to the system, although by this time, we saw enough to know something was amiss.

The troubling thing was that everything was ‘normal’ for the first 18 months or so.  I have a number of photos where he was making direct and sustained eye contact like a normal baby his age should.  I remember he had lots of babbling, but then there were a few signs.  First, he would be laughing up a storm in his crib in the middle of the night.  Second, he did have a few single words, and did seem to learn new words, but he never really could build on the vocabulary and form longer phrases… And although he liked being around other kids, he didn’t really interact with them or have much imaginary or novel play with his toys.

The next step in our journey was to find out how to get him tested for autism.  Again, we ran into the public/private system where the former meant long waiting lists (up to a year!!) and so it was an easy decision to go the private route through Monarch house. I remember we took a short vacation to Whistler to get away and try to make sense of all this. The hard part was not knowing what this meant and what the future holds for Sammo.  Could he live a full life and have a family of his own?  Could he attend post secondary?  Could he become self sufficient?

When Sam took the tests, it was over 2 days, first with a speech path, then a child psychologist, and finally a paediatrician.  It was hard watching him do the tests as it meant he was stuck in a small room separated from us (although we could still watch) which made him very upset.  He was asked to do tasks which we knew were beyond him, and this was tough because every parent wants to help and protect their child.

By the time it was done, we pretty knew what the results were…

We went to see the Optometrist today, and the recommendation is that kids over the age of 3 should also have their vision checked. I was wondering how do you get a small kid to sit and peer through that big eye thingy (the one where you look at a chart and he asks you “Is 1 or 2 better?” while changing the magnification) and get a reasonably accurate response?
We’ve been seeing Dr. Wang for years, and the last time we were in his office, Erica was about Sam’s age (16 months).

Erica was first up, so I took her in and seated her in the big chair. On the LCD monitor, he then projects some clip art of common objects- a horse, a truck, a cake, etc. and asks what they are. I know that Erica know all the objects, but she goes all shy and whispers to me “I want mommy” but eventually comes around to answering. Dr. Wang is pretty soft spoken, but Erica was so shy that her answers were even softer, so I had to restrain myself from blurting out the answers. Anyways, once Dr. Wang was satisfied that she understood the objects, he then shrunk them down, and asked her to repeat the object names while covering one eye.

Next, he played a cartoon and watched her eyes as she focussed on the screen. From the tests he could determine that she’s 20/20 with a bit of far sightedness in the right eye.

I almost wish I got the kid version of the test rather than the regular “is 1 or 2 better?”

Everytime we come in, there seems to be a new gadget or test. There’s a camera which takes a photo of your retina, that was pretty cool to see… and to measure pressure, there used to be a machine that puffed some air on your eye. Now there are these eye drops that kind of sting and is like iodine mixed with glue.  It takes a few hours to blink that stuff out, but I guess it’s a better test.

It’s January 18th, I’ve finished chores for the day and both kids are down.  I have a warm drink, and nothing needs immediate attention.  What to do?

It then dawns on me that I haven’t written anything since Sam was born, and years from now, he’ll be asking why I didn’t write anything about when he was born?  Oops.

Thinking back over the events since last summer, I cannot remember a time when both Evonne and I have been this busy, given the events leading up to the move, the move itself, having Sam come along, and then Erica entering the Terrible Twos (TT).

I remember watching ‘The March of the Penguins’ and seeing the parent sit there in the worst winter weather anywhere on this planet- with an egg perched on their feet.  They have to go without food for months to take care of that one egg, while their mate travels miles, on foot, through some of the worst terrain to get to open water and while facing predators, feed like crazy to be able to feed their chick upon return to the nesting site. 

The thought crossed my mind- “are they nuts?”  Why would they go through all that?  Why not swim up to Australia and have a nice life there?

So yeah, during the tough times we sort of ask a similar question.  It’s funny how you hear that 2 kids are more than twice the work.  You don’t understand that until you go through it, and then it feels like 100X the work.  Taking care of one kid seems like Club Med, but for whatever reason, the second one changes the dynamics, and if your older one is still in diapers… then Ai Yah!  As one parent put it when asked what having 2 kids is like- “it’s terrible!”  🙂

Everyone also says that it’s tough now, but it will get better.  Maybe they are saying that just so we have hope and won’t flee to Australia… but we can see that once Erica is out of diapers and the TT stage, things have to look up… or will it be like month #2 of an Antartica blizzard with an egg on your foot? 

Anyways, I hope to get a bit more time to write about stuff.  For sure there’s lots going on, and the days/evenings are pretty full.  I found the birth announcement for Sam, which I’ll post here for the record.  Also for the record, Sam is doing very well, and he’s a good baby.  I’d say he’s “Textbook” for those who use the rating system from “Baby Whisperer” book.

This morning we woke up and was running through our plans for the day-  a nice brunch, pick up some end of season sale items from Canadian tire, have a nice afternoon nap, head on over to Caris’ birthday, movie, etc.

Then E tells me that she’s feeling some “cramps” since 7:30am.  Ok… it could be the Pecans and ice-cream we had last night, nothing to worry about.  We’re not due til September 13th.

Then the cramping becomes more regular, maybe a ‘3’ in intensity.  I start packing and rounding up stuff for the hospital real fast, just in case.  Around 11am, E places a call to Burnaby General- moderate cramps, but every 5 or 6 minutes.  She can still talk through them, so Burnaby General advises to wait until they are every 5 minutes and last a minute.  I then head off to McD’s for a breakfast run and when I return, things get a little more intense.  Gulp down food fast, we’re heading in after breakfast.

At this point, we’re very grateful that Elaine and Lauren stayed for one more night instead of going home last night as planned.  After we ate, I packed everything up and we headed out.  Elaine then took Erica to stay at Grandma’s.Finally, a chance to gun the big Merc down the road, but E reminds me that we’re not in “that much of a hurry”  🙁  We left the house at noon, and hit construction along the way, but still managed to arrive at 12:20.  I drop E off at admitting and parked the car.I run back to admitting, and find that it’s closed- go to Emergency.  I scanned Emergency for E, couldn’t find her so I assume she was already admitted.  Up to the Birthing suites.  E was already being monitered for the non-stress test, and the nurse tells me to go back to Emergency to check her in.  Run back down, deal with the chaos in Emergency to get the paperwork done, and back up to the suites.  When I go there, E was GONE from the monitoring bed, so I stood there waiting for help.  A nurse tells me to grab our stuff and head to #7, which looked really familiar, and it turns out it was the same room Erica was born in!

They had already broke her water, and she was on the bed with her old friend- laughing gas.  Ok, this is going to happen a lot faster than last time, so… I’ll get the ice chips.  No CDs, no tennis ball, just get down to business.  Lots of 60-70 second contractions about a 90s apart, full dilation, transition phase, pushing about 30 min, and at 1:57pm, Samuel Harry Lau was born Sept 6th, at 7lbs, 1oz!

Again, witnessing the pain of birth left me speechless, and seeing our son being born, and taking his first breath was every bit as special as the first time.  I’m going to grab some ZzzzZzzz, grab some essentials, take care of the cats and back to the hospital tomorrow.  We should be home Monday AM if all goes well.  Mom and baby are doing very well, and attached is a picture!

(Apparently when E arrived that the birthing suite, the nurse (Shirley) said that E looked a bit too comfortable, meaning she may be early… however they would take a look since E was Asian.  Apparently they expect things to move along very quickly if you are Asian, and the second one is supposed to be faster since your body “knows” what’s happening.  At this point, E was 6cm dilated, and they decided to break her water to move things along even faster.  Our Doctor this time wasn’t Carrie, but Dr. Dy who looked liked she just came from a Yoga class and did a great job. 

After we Sam arrived, we hung out for a bit and went downstairs to Maternity.  What a difference!  There was only one other family and we got a room to ourselves!  The other interesting thing was meeting the nursing staff, some of which we recognized from our first time through- and since it was our second time, they left us alone a bit more.  We stayed the one night, and was discharged the following day.  In and out in just over 24 hours.  One final note- how did E respond to the laughing gas?  I would say she was a bit less chatty than last time, but I found her asking questions of a “personal” nature of the staff (Where do you live, are you single, are you seeing anyone, etc.)  Ironically, she does this after a few drinks as well) 

 Well our first long weekend of the year… started off with the yearly visitation to Forest Lawn and Ocean View.  It was certainly a nice day, and great to see everyone come and pay their respects.  For me, it was an opportunity to show Erica the names of her and Great-Grandparents and Great-Great Grandparents!  In the future, I’m looking forward to a time where I can tell her more about family that have passed on.  I can tell her with a lot of fondness about what they did, what they were like, and how a part of them lives on in us.

I find it interesting observing how visits to the cemetary change over time.  The first few years it’s very sad and solemn, but over the years I think it gradually changes to a happier occasion, remembering the good times with other family members and talking about… well life. 

As I look at the dates, it’s hard to comprehend how quickly time has passed.  I like to think that it’s a reminder to focus on the relationships and things that are happening now, and not spend too much time dwelling on the past or future.

That night, e’s nose starts running like a drippy faucet, and yep, she’s got a cold.  Poor thing can’t breathe so she wakes up all cranky. 

Apparently there’s a difference between an Infant and a Toddler, and the line is drawn at 18 months old.  Honestly, I had no idea what the difference is… they’re all babies aren’t they? 

 Well e turned 18 months a few days ago, and I think I understand the difference.  With an Infant, you pretty much carry them around, watch them crawl, waddle, take some steps, etc.  They observe things and interact with a lot of curiosity.

 Lately we’ve been adding new phrases to our vocabulary:

 “Put that down!”  “Don’t poke yourself with the fork”  “Stop chasing the cats!”  “Why are you squishing your food”  “Hey, where are you going?  Come back here!” “Who turned off the computer?!” “Don’t open the cupboard and put the Tabasco sauce back!”

Yeah I think we know the difference now.  It’s like with her new found mobility, she’s continuously scanning the counter and table tops for interesting things to grab and experiment with.  She loves to grab a pen, spoon, anything that extends her reach… and uses it to poke, tap, drum, or fetch things.  Now she’s able to act on her curiousity, whereas when she was an Infant, she was pretty curious, but more passively so.  It’s interesting to watch her develop at this stage, but it also means parenting has taken on a very active aspect!

taking a walk with neighbours

Mealtime

So we haven’t gone camping since 2005.  Once in awhile I’ll come across some of our camping gear and reminisce, or make a trip out to MEC to check out some “clothes for baby”

Over Christmas as I was pondering what to get for Erica, I came across a kids tent in a flyer.  I remember that I loved to play in enclosed spaces- a big box for example, and I figured this is something she would like that doesn’t need batteries.  And of course, when we go camping for real, she’d be acclimatized to staying in a tent.  So I bought her 2 tents with a connecting tunnel. 

I also forgot another fact- cats like enclosed spaces too…  🙂

Just a few shots from the Lau family dinner… sorry I didn’t get shots of everyone, but there were a few other cameras around…