View from the North 40: My apologies for the cuteness overload

I was going to move on from the whole drama of my illness, but I have one more thing to say about being sick and then I’ll let it go — my pets deserve a shout out for their cuteness during my time of need.

It all started with the cat, Tony-O, who thought my having a fever was about the best thing ever, like having a cushioned furnace tucked into “his” bed, which, as a bonus, had a quilt and a down comforter add under his fuzzy blanket to give it extra cushiness. His life couldn’t have gotten much better that first, feverish night.

The problem came the first morning after getting my fever. That’s when I tested myself and found I was positive for COVID. I told the cat that medical guidelines say pets can get it so he shouldn’t be sleeping in the bedroom. This went double because he likes to snuggle near my face, which had basically become an illness volcano emitting virus-laden gases and fluids. With as hard as I was sleeping, I wouldn’t wake up to fend him away.

The cat, though, was having none of this business of being locked out.

He held a resistance sit-in at the closed door, complete with protest songs and chanting in his native tongue. Since I wasn’t sleeping, I got up to get my own water. The cat, of course, took this as invitation to take his rightful place on the bed. He doubled down on his resistance efforts using his claws to dig into the blankets as effectively as chaining himself to the frame.

Fine, I told him, but he wasn’t allowed in my face, and if he got sick, I wasn’t going to feel guilty.

To be fair, it’s not so much that the cat wants to be in my face. That’s just where my hand emerges from the covers to, normally, scratch his head, ears and face. It’s just convenient to have my face there, too. When I start falling asleep, which means my hand relaxes and stops executing its cat petting duties, my face is within easy reach so he can stretch his legs out and cram his paws over my nostrils to wake me up.

To fend off the cat aka “quarantine” him to the foot of the bed, I kept my hands under the pile of covers and pushed on him until he left to slump uncomfortably over my feet. Sure, there was plenty of room for him to curl up on the blanket, but the posture of lying in an awkward lump over bony feet paired better with the disgruntled look on his face.

The horses responded on parr for their unique and polar-opposite characters.

If I could’ve flopped open a gate and turned them out on pasture for a few days, I would’ve. But, no. Moose and Squirrel had to have their manger filled with hay once a day no matter my state of illness.

I’d layer on the winter wear, as one must this March, and shuffle out to the hay bale to feed. It was a slow and pitiful process.

So wrapped up in getting through this chore in all my misery, I was almost done before I noticed that Moose, who is endlessly curious about everything going on around her, was not eating.

She was just standing at the fence watching me. While Squirrel, infinitely more pragmatic, had already determined I was fine because I was still able to fulfill my servant duties, Moose stood with her ears pricked forward and head turning left and right, tracking every one of my trudging trips back and forth, one pitchfork full at a time, between hay bale and feeder.

I knew that look. How many times over the years had I stood assessing the health of one of my horses that way.

You could see her telling Squirrel, “I don’t know what’s up, she just seems off. No sign of a limp, so not lame, but look at her. She doesn’t have any energy, she’s breathing hard from very little exercise and she didn’t call out ‘Hey pretty girls’ when she came out here. That’s definitely not like her. I wish I could get a hold of her and check to see if her gums are pink, or white, maybe put my ear to her belly and listen for healthy gut noises. This is so frustrating.”

Squirrel wasn’t without sympathy. She trotted over first each feeding time and willed me to have the strength to feed her faster. She’s supportive like that.

Moose, though, kept a watchful eye on me, providing a daily analysis of my progress for four days, when I finally showed signs of improvement. Even then, one ear tracked me until she declared me well.

So cute, right?

Tony-O, however, had to wait more than a week until I tested negative before he could take his rightful place sleeping by my face. The first night he wasn’t sent packing to the foot of the bed, he peered into my face over the edge of the covers, then spent a few minutes purring and trampling me head back and forth before flopping belly down over my face.

I don’t know if it was a sign of affection or some kind of feline revenge, but after I saved myself from suffocating, he settled into his normal spot. I woke up hours later with him still snuggled under my chin and his head resting in the palm of my hand.

I mean, c’mon, how cute is that.

I hate to be one of those smoochie-koochie-loves-my-fur-babies-to-bitses kind of people, but here it is: These three definitely earned a status upgrade from “four-legged freeloaders” to “non-tax-deductible hairy dependents.”

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Dying from suffocation by cat after making it through COVID would be doubly ironic since the dictionary definition of my last name is “death by suffocation.” Imagine the headline: “Local writer and COVID survivor, Burke, burked by her own cat” at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .