In some ways this is a summer to remember: it was a perfectly average summer for us in terms of temperatures and rainfall. In other ways I’ll get to, it was, on balance, a summer I’d just as soon forget.

Here is a histogram that depicts in red the average number of days (usually for highs) and nights (usually, for lows) that we experience in each temperature range. We only see 2 days 100+ per June-August summer. In blue we see that this time around we had 4 such days, but that’s still within the variation as indicated by the bars. So in the end this is a remarkably average summer. There is only one temperature range, nights below 60 degF, in which we had 9 such nights, compared to 4 on average, and that is outside of the error bar.

Now the devil is in the details, of course, and the detail is that three of those four days above 100 degF were in the realm of 107-109 degF. And we just got an extraordinary taste of what became a new world order for others.

An alternative view: the actual numbers, including rain. Just a few tenths of a degree difference in the high and low average temperature. The mean for the whole summer varied just 0.1 degF from the 1948-2012 average.

Athens got less than the average rainfall over the summer, but not too much less. We got 0.01" more than the average, which is to say, we got smack on the average. Still, the devil is in the details here too, and we went for weeks several times without rain. And again, nowhere near as extreme as others saw this summer.

How did the rest of you in the US do? Pictures!

It really looks like in most places where it was the hottest, it was also the driest. Misery compounded.

And now, a partial explanation for the blogging hiatus, and yes I know I’m burying this. I think I can see in retrospect that I spent most of August in a kind of perpetual crisis mode, an ongoing medium level anxiety attack, from which I’m more or less recovering. I think much had to do with having lost three cats during the past year, two of them this summer. Individually I can handle such losses, but I think these imposed a cumulative sense of despair that I didn’t realize was mounting. It didn’t help that I had to deal with some bad behavior in others during the course of the summer. There are several other more personal issues that I try to keep from getting me down, but under the circumstances I think they managed to overwhelm me.

I’m not looking for sympathy here - I’m way beyond the need for that, and others deserve sympathy more than I need it. I’m just trying to explain a couple of things as best I can.

I did write about Bart, when he died at the end of the year, last year. He was fairly old, and we knew this was going to happen. Oddly, no photos of Bart ever made it to the blog.

Memeow, our Katrina kitty, died in June. We didn’t know how old she was, but since we obviously got her in 2005, she must have been at least eight years old, and probably considerably older than that. She had had hyperthyroid problems for quite a long time. We tried both dietary and medicinal means of controlling this, but she simply wasted away.

Here’s Memeow, a year ago. I didn’t write about Memeow in June, and I think that’s a sign that I was beginning to have some trouble.



I think the big shock was Harry Pewter, who apparently suffered what in retrospect we and some vet specialists think was a heart attack. Heart attacks in cats are rare - cancer usually gets them first. Harry had been losing weight during the summer, and then one night midsummer, spent half an hour crying in pain, clearly completely out of it. He was oblivious to us during this attack, just one howl after another, every few seconds. We’ve never seen this happen before, and we’ve had 35 cats over as many years. We gave him 60 mL subq hydration, and that seemed to help. Still, he gradually stopped eating and was gone a month later, at the beginning of August. I think that’s when I sort of lost it, in a very quiet sense.

Here is Harry, three years ago. I didn’t write about him either, but I did have a conversation with Robin about him in comments. I think that’s when I started to realize how small griefs could accumulate.



Most of the remaining seven cats are geriatric cases. Our youngest, Gene, is 8 years old. I don’t like to look for trouble, especially when it comes free of charge, but I’m expecting to lose another one or two before the end of the year. Violet is 18 years old, according to our vet’s records, and while she’s plugging along she’s lost her hearing and has become very feeble. I cheer for her each morning when she goes out through the cat door to the back deck to sleep most of the day. I get up in the middle of the night when she has the terrors, and talk to her until she’s ok.

Squit is losing weight, and is now firmly in the elderly cat-egory. I’m concerned for him, and only a little less so for Maxwell, who has become thin during the summer, and subject to puzzling sores and scabbing. Maxwell is 12, and Squit is probably 15 or 16 (remember that most of our cats are strays, so we don’t know their birth dates).

So some things just had to give way for awhile, and I just had no enthusiasm for blogging. As I told my sister, I just didn’t want to share like I had done in the past. There were other things that I simply had to do, but I took little joy in doing them. The bad behavior people made sure of that, and I do take some pride that I didn’t burn any bridges by telling them what I thought of them. Or killing them, for that matter. I learned that ignoring bad behavior people, if at all possible, can bring its own peace. I learned that I needed to do (and not do!) a few things for myself. I learned that I needed to say no to some, and to acquaint those ones with the idea of appreciating those of us who have trouble saying no. I think things are improving, and hope to get back to the blogging in a more consistent way.

Thank you for your patience!