Thursday, October 29, 2009

Colorful Bob


The original of this picture of Bob was taken when he was about a year old, visibly still a young cat, looking very alert and wild in the tall grass at the edge of the yard. Bob was maybe born in 2002. He wasn't very old at all.


I scanned the picture in, and Photoshopped it, the summer of 2006, when I was taking Photoshop my 2nd summer in school. The original is a tall young orange cat in green grass. The colors were changed with exaggerated Curves, and I textured it with a filter. One of my favorite Cafepress t-shirts has this image on it, and it makes an interesting mirrored fabric at Spoonflower. Mom liked the t-shirt.

Now those images are just going to make me sad. Bob died today. I wish I had taken just 10 minutes, in the rush to get out of the house to the airport, and held him on my lap and said goodbye.

Goodbye Bob. I love you, even if I couldn't be there with you.


Many thanks, beyond thanks, to Larry who is making it possible for me to be here in many ways, including taking care of poor Bob.

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

I arrived here


On October 25. Well, not on heron-back, although I did fly. I usually take the train, which I love. It's not that I don't like flying, which I do. It's the getting to the airport, and all the fuss there which I don't like.

This time, flying meant I could bring frozen Cornish pasties, which are a specialty of the old mining town I live in, where my mother was born. We enjoyed them for dinner that night. (Although I suspect Spinach-mushroom-cheese, my favorite, is not a traditional flavor... My mother was surprised by it. She said, "Who would guess spinach could be so good".) She sometimes made pasties when we were kids.

If I flew back, I could take yakisoba. The refrigerated kind, which are the only ones I know with the real seasoning packets, are not currently available where I live.

I got out for a walk for the first time today - but she came back early from her meeting; she collapsed after lunch and asked to be brought home. She doesn't remember it, but I don't think she's going out again.

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Thursday, October 22, 2009

Bob in Summer


This  is Bob, taken several years ago, on the balcony, where the cats lived happily and fairly safely for years. He's called Bob because he has no tail.


He was born in my bathroom, to a feral cat I'd just caught after fishing for for 2 years. They had a big dog cage, with a small carrier for a hidden nest, and a litter box. The bars were far enough apart for the kittens to come out through them and make friends. (The mama cat, although she was never touchable, learned her name and came when she was called. She was the only one who got down off the balcony and back up onto it all the time.)

I didn't know in time that kittens need to be handled before weaning age by several people for them to become tame, so they weren't very give-away-able. But they didn't survive the dangers of this hillside (dogs, cars, coyotes, raccoons, foxes, a great horned owl, maybe bobcats, bears, or mountain lions) very long once they didn't live on the balcony anymore, so for several years Bob has been the last one left of 2 litters of feral kittens. His wily mother Ugly vanished a couple of summers ago.

He has always been very affectionate with me; he liked to chew on the hair on my forehead, and sleep right by my shoulder when he got the chance. He had been getting skinnier maybe since summer, but the last week or so he went downhill very rapidly. We just took him to the vet on Tuesday, and learned he has stomach cancer.

And I can't even stay with him for the week or so he has left. I am leaving this weekend to visit my mother; in any other case I'd put off the visit for a while, but she also is very unwell.

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