Caturday

Jake is giving me his "I know more than you think you do" look.

George is snoozing on the heating pad. By habit, he left enough room for Gracie.

"Come into my lair..."

"... and die!"

It has been almost two weeks since Gracie's death. I think George is missing her. He formerly would jump up on my bed after I got into it almost every night for some attention. He and Gracie almost seemed to be racing as to who got there first. He'd wait his turn if she did. If he got here first, a lot of the time she'd push him aside and then he'd come back after she was done. He has only climbed up once since then.

I found some old photos of her. When she was a kitten and a young adult, she loved to get up on things and lie there. I have photos of her perching or lying on my TV, a CRT monitor and my microwave. I had a dresser and a tall bureau that were separated by the width of a closet door; she would jump up on the dresser and then across to the bureau.

One time I was watching "The Life of Birds" on PBS; she jumped up into the TV cabinet and went behind the TV to try to find the birds. When she came back out the other side, she was clearly puzzled about where the birds were. After that, if there was a nature show on the TV, she would just sit on the floor and watch it. I don't know if she knew that the picture wasn't real or if she thought that the TV was protecting the critters from her.

Gracie wasn't totally a one-person cat. When she got to know someone, she would come to them and accept her due. She and I bonded, though, and if someone else was petting her and I called to her, she'd come over to me.

I miss her, a lot. But to be fair, the saying I heard once that three cats are nearly twice the work of two was, in retrospect, pretty accurate. And I feel a little bad for saying that, as if I'm trying to assuage my missing her with a bit of selfishness over one less litter box to clean, one less can of food to open and one less food bowl to wash. (There's probably a song in there.)

Too early to write this stuff, it feels as though I'm picking at a scab over a hole in my heart. Lord, do I miss her.