The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything

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This is Call Me Donovan, episode 42, recorded Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024.

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I think I'll just skip with the intro music because this episode,

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this this is a sad one.

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You'll recall in my previous episode, which was actually yesterday,

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I mentioned that we have an older cat.

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His name is Tashi.

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He's the the oldest of the remaining cats,

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and he's the only one left inside.

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At one point over the years, we had a total of three cats inside.

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And yeah, that that was that was a that was an adventure.

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We had Shade, we had Gracie and we had Tashi.

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Shade was the first to pass away.

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And then we rotated Gracie outside because

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she was just a wild child, if you will.

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And oddly enough, she seemed to really enjoy and thrive being outside.

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So that that was good.

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But unfortunately, one day we.

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Had not seen her in a little bit, and she loved to climb and just hang out in trees.

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I mean, this cat, she wound up there.

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There was something that went through the cats out,

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the remaining cats that were outside at the time.

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And it messed with their vision, and she actually lost one of her eyes.

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So she she was basically like a pirate.

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Small little brown fuzzy thing that kept gnawing her hair.

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And she loved to get up in trees and just.

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Hang out on branches, and I'm you know, I'm thinking

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I can't even get up in a tree and hang out on a branch,

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and I still have both my eyes.

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But we one day we were we were outside

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and we were like, have you seen Gracie?

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And I'm like, no.

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So I just happened to walk around and we were on the deck

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and happened to walk around and found her laying there.

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And I don't entirely know what happened, but.

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We dropped Tashi off at the vet yesterday, my wife and my daughter did,

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because he, as I mentioned previously, was having bowel movement issues.

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I mean, he basically could not shit.

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And they did the X-ray and they discovered that the old boy

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was impacted severely fecal impactment.

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It happens to humans, too.

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But his was so bad that it was starting to interfere with his other organs.

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So he needed to stay overnight and they were going to

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to basically give him some stuff to try to soften it up,

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maybe even an enema and all of that.

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And, you know, we we hoped for the best.

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But this morning around eight o'clock, I guess, my wife's phone rings

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and she puts it on speaker phone.

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And the lady on the other end, I don't know if that was the vet

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or if it was the lady at the front, but the vet is Dr. Hill.

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She's a vet veterinarian in Osceola, Osceola, Georgia.

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Today was the first day I actually met her.

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Very nice.

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But they called to let us know that Tashi did not make it through the night,

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that he had started responding.

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He had actually eaten a little bit.

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But this morning, no, he had not made it through the night.

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Of course, I wound up having to finish the phone call because

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my wife burst into tears and I mean, she did her best.

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She tried to hold it together.

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But I finally just had to tell the person on the other end

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on the other end of the phone, thank you.

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We'll we'll be over there shortly.

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And we appreciate you.

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And of course, then my wife had the task of going upstairs

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and letting our daughter know.

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So we went over there and we we got him.

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He's got little they they gave us two little mementos.

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They did his little paw prints and they he was swaddled up,

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you know, in like a blanket type thing.

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And Oriana had texted Tyler and Tyler

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had let Devin know because Devin really doesn't pay attention

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that much to our family chat.

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And that the Tashi had had passed away, but first,

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Oriana had texted Tyler to say, hey, when you when you wake up,

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let me know, because she wanted to call him.

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So she did. And we've got this particular tree.

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It's it's actually been nicknamed the graveyard tree.

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And keep in mind, we're in the south.

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So as the ones that passed away

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or where they passed away, where we could get to them,

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they have been buried around this tree.

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They've been put in a box.

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Any kind of little keepsakes or whatever we wanted to put with them.

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They were buried around the tree.

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So it's nicknamed the graveyard tree.

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It's a Bradford pear tree.

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I hate the damn thing.

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And one day it's going to come down.

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But for now and for ever since we've lived here since 2006,

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it's known as the graveyard tree.

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So I told Oriana to ask Tyler if if he wanted to be,

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even though he's in Washington, he's in Seattle,

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if he wanted to be a part of us laying Tashi to rest.

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And and he did.

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So I set the tripod up, got my phone and did a signal video call.

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And so he was able to watch me work my ass off.

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To dig this basically three foot by three foot

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by one foot hole to lay Tashi to rest in.

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And he's in a box.

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It's an Amazon box, but you know, he's in a box.

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He's got a plastic bag, which is something he always loved to chew on.

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And a couple other think

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we had these collars

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that none of them really took to wearing.

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So he would play with it.

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So it's in there.

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He had this little fluffy ball Oriana put in there.

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And so, yeah, 15 years old.

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And we have two of the

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two, two outdoor cats that are part of the the crew there.

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The quick story is we are used to and I think I've mentioned this before,

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but we used to joke that we bought a cat and house came with the cat

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because there was this cat that my wife,

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I guess she's the one that named her Musi.

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She was around the house.

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And of course, she got pregnant and then she got pregnant again.

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And I think she may have had three litters.

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I'm not sure.

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And that's the reason why I wound up fixing,

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you know, spayed or neutered 18 to 20 cats at one point.

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I did lose my sanity there, I'm pretty sure.

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But we only have two, Josie and OJ.

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And OJ is actually named because we had we had a cat out of one of the

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one of the letters named Oscar.

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And so OJ is named for Oscar Jr.

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So we just call him OJ.

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No, he does not. He's not orange.

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He doesn't look like orange juice or anything like that.

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It is OJ. And then we have Josie.

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And then we have this black cat with this

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the white markings that almost look like a tuxedo.

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He took up with us a year or so ago.

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I used to run him off all the time.

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And then finally, I just gave up because our sunroom,

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we don't actually use our sunroom for us.

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The sunroom is used for the cats.

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One of the windows is is held up so that they can come in and get out of the weather.

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That's also where all the food is.

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And they just, you know, they'll they'll hang out in there.

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So eventually I gave up trying to run him away.

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I was like, well, the crew's dwindling.

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If if he'll he wants to hang around, you know,

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what's one more mouth to feed, I guess.

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He's still skittish of me.

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Most of the time he runs from me, but he's

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he's fine with with Lee and Oriana.

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So that's what we have now.

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We have no we have no indoor animals anymore.

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And my wife was talking to a friend and former boss of hers,

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letting him know, I guess, texting maybe.

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And he said, well, you know, the best way to fix that is you immediately

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get another pet.

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And my wife is like, no, you know, that's that's

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you got to have time to grieve.

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You got to have time to mourn.

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And that's disrespectful to the memory of the pet that you just lost.

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And I said, yeah, I agree with you.

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Plus, a little selfish part of me is I'd like to reclaim my house

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because the cats of the years have done so much damage.

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All my carpets have to be replaced in the house.

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Every damn bit of it because of either throwing up or mainly just that.

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Throwing up.

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We had one cat that used to urinate on the carpet all the time.

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So, yeah, I probably have about 20, 20 or 30 thousand dollars

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worth of repairs that need to to take place.

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And plus, you know, when we when and if we ever get to that point,

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we're not going to put down carpet again in all areas where some places

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may have carpet, they still have carpet, they have carpet now,

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and some places will have some kind of a different type of flooring.

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But needless to say, today is not not been a an easy, an easy day.

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And on top of that, I've been trying to I've got these five PCs

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that I'm trying to get ready to go for one of my clients,

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and I'm trying to image their older machines onto these newer machines

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because I don't want to go through the hassle

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of trying to get all the software reinstalled.

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And it's a difference between a a an MBR style

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and a UEFI style, or I should say a legacy boot versus an EFI boot.

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And that's been fun.

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And at one point I had it working.

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Everything was seemed to be working great.

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I rebooted and it all blew apart.

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So the reason why I'm doing the imaging for like the fourth or fifth time.

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And I said, this takes about 20 minutes.

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Fuck it.

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I'm going to sit down and record this episode and let you know that Toshi.

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I think it's Rainbow Bridge.

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So I like to think that I'm I'm stoic most of the time.

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But, you know, this was the cat that I wished for.

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And I'm going to miss the dude.

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I mean, 15 years.

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He was more than a pet.

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If you have animals, you know, part of the family.

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And I honestly never thought that I'd be that kind of guy.

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You know, I was I was raised by especially a father

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who in the in my younger days would have been the type that if

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if some stray dogs or stray cats or something just showed up

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and a cat wound up having litters, those cats and the mother

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and the young kittens would wind up in a sack somewhere in a river.

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As he got older and mom wound up getting her first indoor dog

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and all of that, that that changed.

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But yeah, it's it's rough.

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I said, I'm going to miss the dude.

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And I know it's rough on for Oriana.

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It was like her child.

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You know, she's she's expressed to me that she's

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she's probably going to be one of these zoomers that her children are going to be

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pets. She doesn't really care about getting married.

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She definitely doesn't care about having kids.

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She's just going to have pets.

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And for the longest time, as I said before,

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he hung out up there in her room.

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The litter box was upstairs.

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We just in the last month or so moved the litter box downstairs

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because he started hanging out down here because of we're presuming arthritis.

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At least that's what the vet said.

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So you got any if you're a pet owner, got a furry family member.

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Do me a favor.

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Hug them. Give them some treats.

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Tell them you love them because you just never know how much longer they got.

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I mean, we knew he was older.

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We knew he had we discovered when we took him to the vet back in February

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that he had a kidney disease, that he was he was living on

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borrowed time or a short amount of time anyway.

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We just didn't expect it to be this year, this week, this day.

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But I guess now he does have an opportunity to find out

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what the answer to life, the universe and everything actually is.

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He wasn't much for fish.

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He loved chicken and he loved hamburger. So

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Toshi, thank you for being

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cool cat that you were.

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All right. That's all I got till next time. Take care.