Our sweet cat Pippin passed away unexpectedly on Thursday, June 20, while Irene and I were away. She died in her sleep of uncertain causes, and I miss her in ways that are difficult to describe.
I’m writing this in the hope that a few notes about Pippin will help me rationalize my feelings.
Irene bugs me now and then regarding the fact that I don’t post many pictures of our animal family members here on this blog. She is right, and my rationale is thus: I post those pictures mostly on Facebook.
Why Facebook? I guess mainly because I try to use Facebook for short-form posts, and the most common of these for me is some cute pictures of our cats.
My wife and I love our critters, in particular our feline family. It has been the norm during our 27 years together for us to have something like six or seven cats sharing our household. This isn’t ‘by design’, but it seems to work out that way.
For the first time in a while, however, we are down to five cats in our house. And it is a hard change to accept.
It all started in August of 2014. Irene thought her Mother really wanted a companion cat, and so she went out and found what she thought to be exactly the kitten her mother desired: a Siamese – Balinese cross kitten, to be exact. The kitten was to spend a day or two in isolation at our house before making the trip over to the island to live.