Maisy

Is posting these pictures morbid or a lapse of taste?

Maisy the cat died yesterday.

As I wrote in this blog a month or so ago, she had been getting steadily - or unsteadily, rather - weaker as the weeks passed. She eats well, but has become thinner and thinner, with hardly any flesh covering her bones. In spite of her coat of fine fur, when we stroked her her bones were individually identifiable by our fingers, and she wobbled upon her hind legs.

I had had my first dental appointment for three years in the early afternoon. Upon my return I started to make myself some tea, then at Maisy's persistent whining, I fed her with half a tin of catfood, placing it in a bowl outside in the shade. A few minutes later, back at my desk, I felt suddenly faint and woozy for a couple of seconds (I have no idea why; perhaps I should go the doctors') so I walked over to the window to clear my head. Looking down into the garden, Maisy was lying on her side on the grass, half-way between her bowl and her daytime retreat on the patio. She didn't move, so I went down into the garden to look at her. Her eyes were open, her body warm but stiffening. Poor thing.



After Moonface & Tommo returned from work, we buried her behind a bush.
We had told Porks to expect the bad news, so she wasn't too upset.
Today, I cancelled the vet's appointment I had made a few hours before Maisy's death, to see how she was.


:o(

Saying goodbye

On Saturday our household shrank from five down to three residents. We took Rio to the North to study to become an engineer, and her boyfriend was left behind to live full-time at his parents' home, instead of staying several nights a week with us.

We'll miss them both. Moonface was tearful as we bade goodbye to Rio in her hall of residence, leaving her to settle in and make friends for her new life. But at home, waving off Jason was difficult emotionally. Both Moonface and I really like him - he's a nice lad, good mannered, conversational and (Moonface tells me) handsome as well. What we couldn't know, and what we couldn't say, is that we didn't know whether we were waving goodbye to him for the few months until Rio returns at Christmas, or forever if the couple split up. And, let's face it, that's fairly likely. Both Moonface and I left boy- or girlfriends at home when we left for university, and both of those relationships ended afterwards. Rio and Jason have been courting longer than we were, I suppose, which makes the outcome harder to predict. Two years is a long time at their ages.

So we shall wait and see, and hope for the best - whatever that is.


:¬/