In December of 2019 we were so lucky to be allowed to take Addie (named for Atticus Finch by her original owners) home from the school Sophie was going to. And I was so unhappy to have to take her back after the holiday break. Then along came COVID and Addie came home with us for that break, which turned into forever!
We were so lucky to have this wonderful woman in our lives for all this time. Addie was so affectionate, so good at munching things, including my finger, such a good cross-country traveller, and so sweet and loving. She had the most pink eyes of any pink eyes, and she could twitch her nose better than anyone I have ever known. Sometimes I called her “Addus,” and sometimes I called her “Adelaide,” because no beautiful woman should be named Atticus, “Addiekins,” and sometimes I called her “Addie-boobaladdy” because she was very silly. She loved all the nicknames and thought I was fantastic. She was pretty fond of Sophie too. She was always very good at eating things, but last night she just didn’t seem to want to, but it was pretty late. This morning I found her, sound asleep with her little eyes closed, but she did not seem to want to wake up. So I guess she took the dreamland boat across the rainbow bridge to Guinea Pig Lettuce Paradise, where all the Romaine is cold and crunchy, and all the baby lettuce and carrots are purple.
Later today we will help her rest under a mini Christmas tree.
Bye bye Love; I’ll always treasure you and miss you.
HA! I took this snap, just to see what I’m looking like these days while I tutor… and there it was… Tina Belcher, TUK shoes, and Tom (Robbins). Three Ts. Coincidence? Probably, she typed, with a wry expression on her face.
Lots been going on lately, not all good, but all different.
We said goodbye last week, to Baby Jones, or Jones, or Pinstripe Jones, as he was originally named.
Jones was a very sweet boy. He loved chasing the laser more than anything else, and he liked treats (Temptations) and wet food, and tuna. The funny thing about Jones, he always had his cuddle moments with me, but otherwise he kept to himself, and, just like Rosie, about two weeks before we could see he was sick, he started getting more friendly and cuddly with the other two humans I live with. He is the kitten I stole from a little girl while at the SPCA. Yes, I did that. We were in the kitten cage… she and her mom and me and one other person, and they released about 30 kittens that had just become eligible for adoption into the cage. It was like being in the glass case full of dollar bills from that old TV game show… you know what I mean. There he was, Jones, the striped boy I wanted. I tried to grab him, but he was like lightening around the cage and then, like that, the little girl somehow nabbed him. “I’m sorry; he’s mine,” I said, and took him and turned and walked out of the cage, while she and her mother stared at me with their mouths open. And just last week Jones died, too young, and with a very aggressive form of cancer. Am I sorry I stole him from a little girl? Nope. I’d take a short-lived Jones any day over no Jones at all. He was a very sweet young man. Sorry little girl. But, you’re in your teens now, and probably glad your cat is still alive. And I’m glad that Jones had us to live with in his short life. It is my feeling, having had a few feral cats now as pets (and Jones definitely was the son of a feral cat, and a bit uncivilized himself) that feral cats just don’t get the lifespan of non-feral cats. They have a charm all their own, and they certainly need us more, but they’re going to break your heart sooner than their more domestic brothers and sisters. I think the outdoor life is just hard, down to the cells and the bones.
At one point we had five cats here. And in the last three years, one went back to my mother (she had asked us to take two of her cats, and one, Henry, just never got comfortable around our dog, though our dog basically ignores the cats, so Henry went back to my mother who, after she gave us her two cats, went and got another one! So now Henry is with her, and her other cat, Joey, and is happy.), and Rosie, the feral tortie darling I rescued from a school parking lot that was wedged between I-95 and 295, succumbed to cancer (in her nose, and not treatable) in 2020, and Jones left us this year. It’s curious, because I was so worried about how Jones was going to take traveling when we move next month (in other news, we’re moving), and he always loved Rosie best of all; they often snuggled, and I have felt he’s missed her, and now he’s right next to her, together forever. I would have rather had Jones with me, but maybe he had other ideas about who he wanted to be with. I do think, having had five, that there is a limit to how many you can give good attention to if you have more than one cat per person. I know that we loved Henry, but it seemed like there was always someone else trying to get rubs first, and then add his fear of dogs in… it’s tough to give enough to all. And our dog is a fellow who doesn’t like to share his mom!
I was going to continue… but maybe that’s enough for today. Jones deserves his time, and so does my grief, which feels deep, as it always does when I lose a furry baby. It is down in there, burrowing away into my heart, and it won’t stay quiet for some time to come.
Oh, Baby Jones, Baby Jones, how I miss you. You had the softest most luxurious fur I ever felt, even softer than your long-haired brother. You had a sweet and gentle personality, and you were a big boy; you looked like a mountain lion until the day, oddly enough, you didn’t; you seemed to have gotten smaller overnight, and we should have known that it was not our perceptive abilities that had declined, but your physical ones. I love you, and you’ll always be so special to me, and I hope your journey was easy across the rainbow bridge to find your darling Rosie. Give her a kiss and a cuddle from us.
