So I was already doing that, when suddenly my beloved queen and soul mate cat also started falling ill. To our utter devastation, she was revealed to have a terminal illness and would not recover. So staying up all night, I also was taking care of her and the male we took in only the previous month. This was emotionally and physically exhausting.

My queen passed on June 1st and I continued spending a lot of my time and all night taking care of the elderly male for several more months. But during this time, the losses did not stop. One of the other outdoor strays we cared for had gone missing, turned up with a bad face injury and kept his distance. The next day he was gone and we never saw him again. Until like I forget like a month+ later, his body was discovered under our neighbor's home. He was a really good boy too and we have no idea what happened to him.

A couple months after this, the body of another cat was found on the road in front of our house. He wasn't part of our crew, but still terrible. Our neighbor had given us usage of his outdoor security cameras, and it was discovered what happened to that cat. No one can understand how it happened, it looked like some freak accident, because our neighbor on our other side was driving very slow going over a speed bump and somehow that cat suddenly appeared and was struck by his back wheel.

A few months later, our newly adopted super old man decided it was his time after a few days of sudden sharp decline. After this, we were lining up the next outdoor cat to bring in, who was prone to being a bit sickly and was in need of our special care. Taking him to get checked out, we got yet more devastating news that he had feline leukemia which was HIGHLY contagious and had a very bad prognosis. He didn't come home.

So yes, that was five cats buried this year and me running on not enough sleep for 7 months because this saga only ended last month. And I had plans, man. I wanted this to be a good year, I was like, I'm going to start journaling and try to have a good year in spite of everything else. And life was like NOPE. I haven't even touched my journal since like May and I'm pretty sure one of the last entries I wrote was about being upset about my queen's diagnosis. I feel like I haven't done anything for myself or at all this year beyond just existing and being cat nurse. And I feel like I can't get my hopes up for the new year because look what happened last time. If I say "it's gonna be a good year" again what am I going to lose this time?! Sorry, rant over, I'm just hesitant and fearful.

We did check out the next cat we were looking to bring in, and she was all clear, so there was a small positive in all that. And she's been great so far, except that she is extremely scared of the vacuum to the point where she took off and pissed on my bed and created 12+ hour laundry that day. So... lol.