u/AvidBokononist

In late March, one of my cats disappeared, Delilah. She's the second picture. She was obsessed with me, was more interested in seeing me than food, and would run up to me every time she heard me outside. The morning she disappeared I slept in. I have her on camera playing with a lizard, then running off never to be seen again. I feel so bad I didn't try taking her to a shelter or that I don't have capacity to foster any more cats right now.

When she showed up last January she was underweight and had mange. I was able to treat her mange and slowly built trust with her, and after her spay in May she started to trust me more. Last fall one of my other females I feed moved over to my house and Delilah and Charlotte started to become bonded and spent most of their days together.

Then there's Charles in the first picture. I haven't seen him in 15 days. He's the first cat I started feeding and the one who got me into TNR. He had a wound that wouldn't heal when he showed up, he taught me how useful drop traps are, and I had to accept loving him from a distance even after almost 2 years. I always wanted to try socializing him after my fosters get adopted but they are taking an unreasonable amount of time to adopt out and I didn't have a room to put him in. I know he might still show back up, he's a smart cat but he doesn't disappear for this long normally.

I feel so guilty that both of them suffered and I wasn't able to do enough for them. I've lost cats before, I've fed cats that I haven't seen in months, but I hadn't built a relationship with them like I have with some of my cats. I have 2 other girls that I can pet and are very friendly and a few males I feed and watch from a distance. How do you deal with constantly losing cats you care about and never knowing what happens to them?

Sorry my thoughts are all over the place and jumbled, I can't think about these two without tearing up and it makes it hard to type and think about.

Wanted to share 2 of my boys being cats

I started around February this year, 2 hours every other week and I'm already seeing major progress. I wish I had taken before pictures. I can shave my face without destroying my skin (shaving has caused lasting redness thats slowly healing finally!), it grows slower and I feel like I'm finally getting my face back. We're getting to a point where 2 hours is nearly enough for a full clearing except my upper lip which we haven't touched yet (and honestly isn't that bad relative to the rest of my face in terms of density). My hair growth is from overuse of steroids in the past, and while I still use them I use much smaller amounts and don't see much new growth but I'm pretty much going to be doing clean up until I stop. 🙃

This amount of swelling has been pretty typical for me, my hair is pretty dense on my chin still. I also forgot to take an NSAID before my appointment which helps a bit. I never have any scabs, just a super Chad chin and/or a double chin for 1-3 days afterwards. Recently we took a 4 week break since I couldn't take time off work, but we're back to every other week now. I don't know how people don't find this painful, maybe they don't have super dense hair but I'm usually very much done with my appointment at the 2 hour mark.

First picture is before my appointment (its hard to see all the lighter hair thats there), second is 4 hours afterwards.

If you're thinking about it, do it. It sucks growing the hair out at first, but idgaf anymore about it. It helps its so much less noticeable from a reasonable distance now.