Stress, Chocolate, and Kittens

Today, over at The Lipstick Chronicles, Rebecca the Bookseller wrote about a study that linked stress with weight gain. Like Rebecca, I can’t believe it took a scientific study to reach this conclusion. I’ve been under a little stress the last few years and I’ve gained almost fifteen pounds. Never mind that I’ve also been spending a lot of time with my bum glued to my chair as I work on my writing. Never mind the slowing metabolism of being in my mid (okay, late) forties. I blame it on stress.

Or perhaps my own method of dealing with stress: chocolate. Specifically Lindor Truffles. When I got on the scale last week and saw the numbers had taken another upward turn, I made the difficult decision to give up my daily stress-buster dose of chocolate.

Which is creating more stress.

Then a friend of mine gave me an early birthday cake. A chocolate one. Oooo, it was good. Hey, you cannot refuse chocolate when it comes in the form of a birthday gift. That would just be rude.

Speaking of stress, Sammie is not doing well. Eating is becoming a real battle. She’d been doing better for a week after I started her on torbutrol for the pain. But today she seems to be having trouble with her tongue again. I’m debating whether to up the dosage on the pain medication or to hope she re-learns how to keep food in her mouth while supporting her efforts with syringe feeding. She hates syringe feeding. She did manage to clean up a bowl of tuna while I was out, but I’d like to see her eating something other than people tuna fish, which on its own isn’t a nutritionally sound meal for cats. But at this point, I’m thrilled to see her ingesting ANYTHING.

Then there are the kittens. I’ve not written about them up until now because they also have me stressed out. Last fall someone dumped several cats here. They were all wild and all but one disappeared. We have coyotes. However, I continued to spot this same long-haired black cat all winter and would occasionally leave food for it (I didn’t know at the time if it was a male or a female) in the barn. Then, this spring, SHE presented us with two kittens in that barn.

Wanting to gentle the kittens so that I could find homes for them, I started playing cat whisperer to mama cat. I got to where I could touch her and pet her while she was eating. I actually kind of liked her and contemplated getting her spayed after finding homes for the kittens.

Friday morning, mama kitty was killed on the road in front of my house. We won’t discuss this. Let’s just say I was not happy and leave it at that.

Now I am surrogate mother to two wild-as-the-wind kittens, who, thankfully, are old enough to live without mama. I have managed to gentle one of them (I call her Sophie) enough that I can pick her up for brief periods of time. However the other one (I call her Chickie, short for Chicken Shit) thinks I’m going to eat her for lunch and won’t come anywhere near me.

I would like to get these two socialized before they are out of the cute stage while they are still likely to attract an adoptive home. But Chickie isn’t making it easy.

In the midst of dealing with Sammie’s illness, I don’t have the energy to deal with the kittens that the universe has seen fit to deposit in my life. But I can’t just do nothing. There are coyotes out there.

And don’t suggest I keep them.

Chocolate. I need chocolate.