Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
Templeton does a little bird watching from one of the rear windows in our old house. That house was much more modern than our current house, one of the things I miss is the many windows and the great views into the backyard. And the air conditioning. And the two-car garage. While we had nice neighbors on either side, in general I much prefer our current neighborhood, and I certainly don’t miss the commute.
A picture from 2001 of our cat Templeton, this picture has been offline since I took my old site down a while back. He was a handsome little fellow in a gray tuxedo coat and would transform my thinking about cats. What a blessing it was to have known him.
After the arrival of Trixie, Boo decided it was time he was moving on and packaged himself for transport.
I took this with my little Canon mirrorless camera but the light levels were so low that the image quality suffered. I really enjoy the concept of mirrorless cameras and would like to use them for most of my non-wildlife photography, but it will mean moving away from Canon for the first time ever as they are deliberately (and perhaps understandably) holding back on designing good ones until the market matures. Sony has some full-frame models that would have better handled this scene, if I had to choose today I’d probably go that route, but the expense of buying new lenses is holding me back at the moment.
I’ve never put this picture of Scout online before as it’s just a simple snapshot from when she was around one year old, but I was editing it today and my eyes filled with tears and I had to put it aside for a while. It caught me off guard, as while I will go to my grave missing her, she died two years ago and usually by now the sense of loss isn’t quite so pointed. Besides I’ve edited other pictures of her recently with only the expected dull ache of distant loss.
I suppose it has as much to do with Emma as Scout as I’ve been thinking a lot about her recently. Grieving for her got interrupted with the health problems the other pets had and as needs must, we focused on the sick more than the dead. They were both far too young when they died, especially Em, and while we tried everything to save them, ultimately their fates were out of our hands.
The silver lining, of course, in outliving our pets is that as sorry as I am to have lost Scout and Emma, I’m happy to have welcomed Boo and Trixie into our home. Only I hope I won’t grieve for their loss for many years to come.
I don’t think I’ve put this picture of Scout from 2001 online before, she’s sleeping on my side of the bed in the master bedroom of our old house and had been with us for about 5 months. Right from the get-go she climbed on to my chest every night when I went to bed.
Sam enjoys the warmth of the sun as he naps in our living room.
Our snuggly Sam has mostly returned to form after a difficult couple of years when he lost both of his older sisters, he has been glommed all over me this weekend and when I get up steals my spot, then when I return lets me pick him up and he goes right back to snuggling. The one thing we’re working on is that he’s not ready to let his new sister Trixie snuggle up with him. Bless her heart, she keeps trying and will approach submissively so he can lick her head, but he’s still rather agitated and will end up nipping her and moving away. There has been some progress and I think he’ll come around, we’ve had some snuggly cats before but Sam is in a class of his own. I think he’ll appreciate the extra snuggling partner that he hasn’t had since Scout died.
A lot has changed since I took this picture of a sleepy Sam a few years ago. The mattress and box springs of the bed he’s sleeping on have been replaced, and we took the bed off the frame so our aging dog could still get up on the bed. The curtains have been replaced with knockout shades that do a much better job of blocking out light.
But the big change for Sam was that then, he was the youngest of three cats, and now he’s the oldest of three. The deaths of Scout and Emma have been hard on the little fellow. Yesterday he was fed up with his younger siblings and swatted at them if they even came close, but last night went a little better. He climbed in my lap when I went to bed and then Trixie jumped up and lay down on my chest. She stayed for a little while but then she snuck down to curl up beside him, a maneuver she’s tried a lot lately, which usually ends with Sam swatting or biting her and then running off. I reached down to pet him and he stayed for a while, but then got up. To my surprise though he didn’t leave but lay down beside me with my leg separating the two of them, and both seemed happy with the arrangement.
Trixie was gone when I woke in the morning, but Sam was back in my lap.
When I got up off my couch I had to laugh when I saw the expression on Emma’s face. Her bewildered expression might have been explained by her wondering why we had adopted young Boo and brought such change into her life, but in reality she was reacting to the heat of a summer night. The picture meant a lot to me at the time, as she had hung out with me more and more that year and, rather than retreat to the cooler basement, she chose to stay by my side instead.
I’ve been sitting on this picture for a while, rather than posting it, as it reminded me too much of her suffering at the end of her life and the pain and frustration of not being able to save her. As time passes, though, more and more it’s gone back to reminding me of the bond I shared with my sweet Em.
… and boy is it angry!
Sam’s “shadow” was of course Emma, who came over when she saw I was photographing him. Emma, the cat who hated to be photographed, but photobombed every picture she could.
The ever-helpful Samwise back in 2013.
Boolie 