I got home from Italy last Tuesday night, 15 days earlier than I’d planned. There were so many things I’d hoped to do during this last stay: interview a local olive oil producer, visit picturesque Abruzzese villages and monasteries, maybe even meet some expats I’ve found via online groups. As it turned out, all of that would have to wait for another day.
After my slightly manic jogs through Rome, Genova, and Venice, I arrived at the house on January 3rd, where all hell broke loose. I was winding myself up to write a post detailing the many things that went maddeningly and comically wrong, how everything I touched in the house seemed to go to crap in my hands. But that’s all trivial now.
A few days into my stay, my darling little (big) cantankerous-yet-cuddly cat, Trinny, wound up in the hospital back in New York. There had been signs that something was off, but those signs had led to a diagnosis and treatment that were fairly unremarkable. As it turned out, some of those signs were red herrings; something much more serious was going on. Fortunately, I have a wonderful catsitter who managed the situation with the vets involved and did a heroic job of keeping calm. But I needed to get home fast because the situation was grave and deteriorating rapidly.
Maybe I’ll have the heart at some other time to write about the string of odd events that seemed to want to complicate my getting back. It did feel like there was something in the air there in Fossacesia. The bottom line is I landed and hurried to the Animal Medical Center to find that Trinny had shown some improvement on steroids. The doctor advised me to take her home and hope that improvement continued. I’m heartbroken to say it didn’t, and I’ve had to say goodbye to the little one who shared my apartment and helped make it a home for ten years.
