Magee and Colby

The kitties are settling in...

Magee is the one on the right. They're a little hard to tell apart in this photo. :)

Magee is very, very affectionate and while she's not a replacement for Lestat, she is already making herself a very loved part of the household. She will sit on your lap for hours and rumble away in a very quiet purr.

Magee

Is Magee the cat for us, a companion for Colby and a new little creature to take into our hearts?

We don't know yet, but we've made an appointment to go see her tomorrow at the house she's being fostered at.

She's just over a year old and was a stray picked up as a dirty thin kitten from Hornby Island. She'd been living rough for a while the shelter people think. Her torn little ear speaks to that. Lestat had an ear like that-- he wasn't living rough but he was a bit of a scrapper in his youth.

She's apparently a bit handshy at first, but with a sweet personality. I hope there's a bond.

This is how we picked Colby---looking at pictures of local adoptable animals and making a list of possibles. When we met Colby there was an instant bond and we barely glanced at the other cats I'd selected on paper. She sort of threw herself at us, and from Magee's description it's doubtful we'll be greeted in the same way at first.

It's a big decision and I thought I'd wait much longer after Lestat was gone to go searching, but I am missing having a second cat in our household more than I thought. Not missing Lestat more than I thought (I miss him sure enough), but missing two cats in general as well. Two hopeful faces at breakfast time, two furry bodies warming the end of the bed, twice the trouble, twice the purring.

If Magee is not a match, as may happen, there will be others I know, but we both think she has an appealing little face and I'm a sucker for a hard luck story.

Mosaic Path Idea...or what to Do With All Your Weird Junk

What to do with all those miscellaneous things in our lives? Rusty tools and broken teacups and bits of pretty rock sitting on your windowsill and things you somehow can't part with....well, you COULD line the pathway to your house with them like this home on Denman Island.

The crazed lamphrey eel tile below is what first drew my eye of course....

But there were Mexican clay pots, runestones, marbles, and plastic insects set into the concrete, slivers of stone and glass glittering in the sunshine: the effect was enormously appealing and I found myself mentally evaluating the contents of my own personal odds and ends for a reincarnation in something similar. Recycled debris as art at the entranceway to one's home: your neighbours will know you're not boring.

Bluebell Garden

We visited this garden towards the end of the Mother's Day garden tour last weekend. It had the feeling of a hidden parkland as scrubby trees and fencing was the only view from the street. Best things here were an ornate fountain spouting water from lions heads--exactly what I want for the courtyard for my villa in Rome or for er, somewhere in my present garden.

Gave me great ideas for using bricks to floor my patio and the artful use of screens and lattice work and climbing vines to create the feel of outdoor rooms. Also liked the use of mosses and woolly thymes among stones.

This garden made me envision mass plantings of bluebells under my own trees. Thousands of bluebells. I loved its nut-tree orchard and blossoming trees.

I was happily gifted at this stop with a hankie full of white Star of Bethlehem flowers and bulbs. I was assured that they would soon explode in my garden everywhere and I may yet regret taking them, but they looked lovely here.

Thanks All

Here's a pic of Lestat's grave in the ferny-mossy-cool-and-shady corner of my garden.

Thanks all for the hugs and visits and phone calls and comments in the past week. Nice to know other people understand that a pet passing away is not an easy thing.


I also want friends to know that I have come to the peaceful conclusion that it was the right decision to put him to sleep. I think making the decision and making the appointment was the hardest thing. Followed only by the mental turmoil and re-visiting the decision over the next days that followed before we actually went to the vet. I think I did almost all of my grieving before his death and it's heavy work and an unhappy place to be. My eyes felt too heavy from so much crying.


But last Thursday, the fateful day, Lestat woke me up at about three in the morning, nuzzling my chin and cuddling into me, and I felt this curious, almost physical sensation of peace about what I'd decided. Hard to explain but since then, even through the vet appointment, and through his burial in a catnip-lined grave, I do feel a sense of okay-ness even through my sadness.


And it was a very nice thing, too, that the weekend right after this all happened was both the Denman Island Garden tour and the local Mother's Day garden tour. Two days of wandering through flower gardens is good for the melancholy. I will be posting pictures of the gardens soon.

Saying Goodbye

Tomorrow I'm saying goodbye to my dear old cat, Lestat.

He's been a companion for twenty years and I feel so torn apart inside right now. I miss him already.