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In my sunlit bedroom on the fourth of June, I held Ticia in my arms as she fell asleep for the last time and slipped away across the Rainbow Bridge. Our little old lady cat was nineteen years old, and dying from kidney failure. I sang to her, but it's hard to sing when you're crying.

My biggest fear had been that she would crawl off under the bed while I was somewhere else, and die alone with no-one to hold her and soothe her. I was especially worried about the week-long vacation we have planned for August. We were able to save her from that, and give her comfort and love in her last moments.

She found us at the Cat City shelter, in Seattle, on the Third of November, 2015. Or maybe I should say that we found each other -- I coaxed her out of the box on the floor that she was hiding in, gave her some skritches and pets, picked her up, and cuddled her in my lap. The shelter staff told us that she'd never allowed that from anyone else. I thought I was mostly over the untimely loss of Curio back in July, but she must have sensed that we needed each other.

They told us that her name was Morticia (though it was soon shortened for daily use), and gave us the Rudolph-the-Red-Nosed-Reindeer dog toy that had arrived with her at the shelter. From that and her affectionate personality, we could tell that her previous Person must have loved her very much. We never found out what happened to them.

In addition to petting and cuddles, I found out on the way home from the shelter that she also loved music. She had been meowing and restless, but settled right down when I put on a Heather Dale CD. She was also very fond of cellophane "crinkle balls" -- she would often carry one into whichever room I was in and set it down where I could see what a good huntress she'd been, while making a peculiar bark/growl that I called her "hunting call". In her younger days she would chase after them -- it was a reliable way of getting her into a room when we needed to.

She took over the spot on the bed that Curio had occupied. I sleep on my side, with my arm up beside my head, and that's where she loved to sit, while I scritched her tummy and waited for sleep to come. In the daytime, she spent a lot of time on Colleen's lap, getting treats and attention.

She did not get along with m's cat, Cricket. Actually that's an understatement. We never found out why. (Cricket, when asked, would only say that it was from a previous life and none of our business. A cat thing.) We had to keep them in separate rooms. But both of them were fine as long as they had their people.

She was timid with strangers, and would hide under the bed the first couple of times a new person came into her room.

I had been singing to her, and N and I both took pictures. When Stefan, the vet, came back from giving Cricket her Solensia shot I picked Ticia up and carried her to the white chair in the corner of the room -- her favorite chair -- and talked softly to her as she fell asleep, her head resting comfortably on my arm.

• The Rainbow Bridge
• Ticia's page
• Photos
• Vet@Home (site can be viewed in Dutch, English, or Spanish)
• Dierencrematorium Haaglanden/
• Aiming to double cats' lifespan by improving kidney function | The University of Tokyo

Bad week. I mean, really not a good week. It had its bright points -- most bad weeks do -- a common thread of love, friendship, and care. And grief is lessened by being shared. It was still a bad week.

Thursday our dear old-lady-cat Ticia crossed the Rainbow Bridge. There will be a full post in a day or three. Meanwhile if you're triggered by such things you'll want to skip over 0611Th. And maybe Wednesday and Friday.

Not a totally lost week, though; I got in five walks (missing Wednesday and Thursday -- see above), and wrote a Songs for Saturday post, along with my usual Thankful Thursday.

Linkies: Ukraine and Moldova on course to start formal EU membership talks in JuneSailing Alone Around the World, by Joshua Slocum - Standard Ebooks Disordered, Deficient, Dehumanized: How the Language of Aphantasia Research Shapes What We Think About It (more on Friday),

‘Happiness is not just about GDP’: ambitious plan or utopia? (More, including the whole report, on Saturday. Up to you to decide how it compares as Utopian fiction to The World As it Ought To Be, by Naomi Rivkis, which is the subject of a Goodreads ebook giveaway, and also on sale for $2.99 until the end of this month.)

Rage-inducing: DOD Officially Drops 180 Faiths From Military's Recognized Religion List

See you later this week.

( Notes & links, as usual. CW: pet death )

Not a good week, for reasons I can't quite identify. Maybe it's the chronic pain that the 3g/day of paracetamol my GP suggested did little to touch. Maybe it's anticipatory grief, knowing that Ticia's health is declining. Maybe it's thinking about how little I got done. (And less about how little I got done in the last week, and more about the last year. Maybe the last half-decade.) Maybe it's worry about my son, trans and out of work in the nightmare that the US is becoming. Knowing that if I hadn't moved here, he could have moved in with me. Knowing that the US isn't going to get much (if at all) better in my lifetime. All of the above, I suppose. Much of it stuff that I have no control over. That doesn't keep it from being depressing.

And it's not that I didn't get anything done -- I did. I got my US taxes computed to the point where I could (and did!) file an extension, went for a walk every day (two shorter than usual but all over 2/3 of a kilometer), and learned a new word (zemblanity, the exact opposite of serendipity). But it wasn't enough.

Well, at least I can look forward to our trip to Majorca to see the eclipse in August. Provided it isn't ruined by things I can't control, but can't help worrying about.

Linkies: How British beavers help fight flooding from climate change : NPR Zorn's lemma ("The Axiom of Choice is obviously true, the well-ordering principle obviously false, and who can tell about Zorn's lemma?") Woodturning: A Different Take On Cubes! -- I find this guy's woodturning videos incredibly soothing. Mostly at 2x speed, with the sound off, but that's because of impatience. Which isn't really the point. Snails, Monks, and Murderous Rabbits: The Weird World Hidden in the Margins of Medieval Manuscripts. Celebrating Thirty Years of the Internet Archive with the ‘Class of 1996’ (and what does it say about me that I remember all that).

( Notes & links, as usual )