Kate Rivet

Hi everyone!

I know I’m doing a terrible job at keeping up these days, but I’m promising now that I’m going to try to do better. If you’ve seen any of my Instagram posts, you’ll have seen that we had to say goodbye to my male Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Seamus, on October 1st. My baby boy had severe mitral valve disease as well as issues with his tricuspid valve amongst other heart issues, and to keep those in check, we had to give him several medications. The diuretics we had to put him on to keep him from going into congestive heart failure are very hard on the kidneys, and it came down to a conversation with his cardiologist about what was a friendlier death for him, heart failure or kidney failure. In the end, his kidneys were the better option, so we cut back as much as we could with his heart meds.

For the past … maybe month to two months, he had been slowing down — something I figured was probably because he was almost 12 years old anyway, which is pretty old for Cavaliers — nearly all of them have heart disease if they make it to 10. On his 12th birthday, September 27th, he visited the cardiologist for his quarterly check-up and pending blood work, he was the same as last visit. The next night, though, she called us personally — his kidney values had more than doubled, and that meant they were shutting down. We tried a last-ditch medicine change, but literally a day and a half later, we had to cook him eggs and by night fall, he wouldn’t even eat those. He also refused his meds, so I was woken up just before 5 AM Sunday to say goodbye to my baby boy.

It’s been a bit of a hard go, but I’m so grateful for the 19 months we got of borrowed time with him. You always hear that grief is a strange thing and different for each person, and it really is. I never felt this way when we said goodbye to my two cats, nor my earlier dog, but Seamus was truly my best friend and the loss of him has hit me hard. I’ll be fine for days, then I’ll spend an entire night crying. It’s a huge adjustment for all of us, especially Seamus’s ‘puppy’ — our other Cavalier, Maggie. She’s 11, and knock on wood, has been fine — and although she was confused for the first few days, I have to say she’s living her very best life now.

Maggie is now enjoying rides to anywhere we can think of she can go with us, she’s having snacks that were forbidden with Seamus here because he had to be on an extremely low sodium diet, and she’s finding joy in life for maybe the first time ever. It’s been wonderful to watch her come out of her shell, but occasionally it will be a reminder of something or other that Seamus would do and a wave of sadness will wash over us again. As I said, though, we’ll get there — it will just take a little time to find our new normal and get used to it. The day we had to put him down, I went to my chosen tattoo studio, Carson Street Tattoo in Pittsburgh, and had my artist Mark tattoo Seamus’s paw print onto my bicep along with his birth and death dates. It’s really helped me heal a bit, and I’m glad I had the foresight to get an ink pad and make that print the day before we had to put him down.

In the writing end of my life, I was doing pretty well on my London story until I set it aside because Seamus needed a little extra TLC. I’m thinking I’ll either add to it for NaNoWriMo (which is just about a half a month away!) or write the sequel to the story I wrote a few years ago that I’ve let bounce around my brain ever since. I think it will be very good for me to get out and see my fellow writer friends and get back into the groove after a highly unproductive year or two at this point, and maybe I can rediscover that fervent passion I’ve always enjoyed.

In reading news, I recently decided to dive headfirst into the Outlander series, since most of my friends are obsessed with the books, but more so the TV series. I read both Outlander and Dragonfly in Amber and binge watched season 1, and I have plans to start on season 2 fairly soon before I dive into books 3 and 4 before watching season 3. It’s definitely been intriguing, and not something I would usually pick out for myself, but I’m really enjoying it! I never thought I’d see the day where I could hardly put down a historical romance, but there you have it.

Well, I think I’m going to go enjoy this beautiful fall day — it’s going to be almost 80 degrees here in Pittsburgh! — and I hope you all enjoy yours too!

Until next time,
Kate