My cat died tonight. I think I need to say that out-loud a couple of times just so it sinks in.
I was running a basket of laundry back to the bedroom while Luke was not eating his dinner in the highchair. I passed Ben sprawled out on the living room floor. “Hi, Kitty.” I stopped two steps later. Ben hadn’t responded. His eyes were open but he didn’t look at me when I passed. The part of me that gets that he’s gone, got it right then.
If you are half as tired as I am this morning, then you’re not ready to work yet either. Here’s a bit of silliness I found in my inbox this morning, for those of you that might be described as having a case of the mondays. I’m regifting.
In an unprecedented alliance, the likes of which have not been seen since Janeway made treaty with the Borg to defeat species 8472, Meeko and Luke have struck an accord.
Luke, naturally, takes no quarrel with the cats on principal. In fact, he’s generally in favor of them with a degree of enthusiasm that often takes them aback – aback couches, atop of furniture, over baby gates... any port in a storm. You can imagine, then, my surprise to find Meeko willing sitting next to Luke and purring while Luke laughed himself silly and jingled his new little toy.
Ben came in nursing a limp tail last night. It was still flying at half mast this morning so I called the vet.
When Ben doesn’t feel well, he takes to sleeping in strange places. I’ll come around the corner and find him sleeping against the wrong wall or under an uncustomary chair, maybe the wrong side of the bed. It’s funny that we’d even notice such a thing, but of course we do. By mid-afternoon he was getting positively cuddly with me. “Okay,” I told him. “Now I know something’s not right.”
There is some kind of cat party going on in yard. I don’t understand it. One night earlier this week, a cat was hollering outside. Shawn and I counted our fuzzballs and found them both, safe, whole, and accounted for. The howling continued. Shawn poked around outside looking for the source. It turned out to be a brown tabby who set up camp on our back door mat and refused to leave. I’m serious. I could look out the back door right now and odds are 50/50 that he’d be there. I half expect him to look up at me and say, “Nevermore!”
My family recently lost two pets. Melvin and Max were wonderful cats in their own ways. Max was ornery, loud, and topped the scales at 20 lbs in his healthier days. He could slice you up like swiss cheese while purring at you, unless you were my mother, for whom he had a devotion that is rarely seen in a cat. I think he fancied himself the husband and my father the pet. I recall my dad telling me once that he returned home from work late and found my mom asleep and Max stretched out beside her on my dad’s side of the bed. When Dad tried to move him, Max growled at him.
It was holly jolly Christmas around here. At least it was mellow and pleasant. We attended a few parties and visited with family. I took every opportunity to drink spiced apple cider before it goes out of season, and I got myself a kiss under the mistletoe.
Many people have asked how the cats are taking our new family arrangement, especially Meeko.
Ben, for his part, barely seems to know that there is another person on the house. Aside from the fact that we are frequently holding something that makes us less efficient head scratchers, I'm not sure that he notices or cares. We could be holding a large sausage. In fact, a sausage would be more interesting. It might be salty.
This may sound weird, but you know where one of my favorite places is? My car on a hot day. It's about 84 degrees outside right now, according to my handy-dandy desktop widget, anyway. My car has been parked out in front of my office all day in the sun. It's probably another 10 degrees hotter in there. I just took a break to fetch a snack, and got that lovely moment of slipping into the car and shutting the door, and letting the heat just soak into my skin. Nobody likes that but me, I think. Not at 94 degrees, anyway. It's stuffy and hot and it wraps around you like a hug.
So I'm back from my Christmas adventures. We did a few days with my folks in Napa and a few with Shawn's in Santa Cruz. That's what we've been calling "running the family gauntlet" around my office. A pleasant time all around.
