Friday.

O No.. it was the rending of space/time as felis fidelis aka Sierra took leave of the room and entered whatever satori is on the highest-priced menu of superior unparalleled universes.

'Missed' is hardly the word for the void this guileless creature leaves; one more Loss within the moribund kultur which she somehow made to seem almost-tolerable.. with no more than the gesture of a paw or that little pre-jump wiggle ... as a cat measures the distance of a leap from floor or other object --> to a lap.
'Guileless'.. think about the tiny number of bipeds who can earn that appellation, (nor do we ever expect that indiscriminate attachment of the canis variety -- in a cat? And yet)

11-6-09, a Date which now swamps-out even those pathetic war and assassination 'dates' which crowd the sentient memory of all hoary witnesses
..to the price of o'erweening hubris amidst that Other-fog: hypocrisy ... in decaying empires.

The very-last rose on the bush outside back door: bloomed for the occasion.
If this was not a Sign, certainly it was a {sigh}
(Send $10 to your local non-profit non-kill pet-oriented group?
Just a thought, as from the often lovely Mutts daily 'cartoon' == in the Reality section of most newspapers.)

Apropos, in this same Month of Death -- or maybe the whole year (??)
[Hopefully.. it was Terry P's DEATH who appeared to handle the matter. Wryly.]
..brought the denouement of my HS science teacher Melvin C. Malow.
[aka 'Muy' as in muy malo -- 'very bad' ... to the Español speakers.]

At ~86, he had seen a lot, educated legions of the unwilling, dilatory and even sarcastic charges under his tutelage. Apparently lacking the curmudgeon-gene ... this worthy retained a measure of optimism throughout all the years that the sea of declining wit, reducing intelligence and rising mechanical pursuits seemed to be swamping his tiny boat.

Muy's laissez-faire attitude towards my projects -- including the key to The Lab and even the STOCKROOM -- probably saved me from a life of some tawdry form of bizness thievery / the forced-inculcation of all those daily Lies by which consumers are fed dreams-with-a-Catch.
I was also granted access to his library of (lots of piano -- an instrument he played at professional level) 78s and later, LPs. There is a Don Juan Fantasy (Liszt) for which he had the score. One Simon Barrere (the Horowitz of his day -- before our times) performed flawlessly this contrivance to exceed the acceleration-rate allowed by merely-human fingers. There are 1/128th-notes [5 bars!] within.
PS: Barrere died at the keyboard. How Perfect a denouement! n'est ce pas?

Muy played Brahms Intermezzi and Schubert Impromptus with aplomb.
(Recently he taught his friend "how to play a Beethoven Sonata".) All of the above enabled me to transcend the daily idiocies of the Military-mindset all-around us both; next to matriculate-in-The-Institute™ cha cha and subsequently ... find the niche made por moi: entailing neither profit nor product nor Lying-fucking-Ads for such.

Apropos: Sierra had early-on manifested a decided preference for similar music; this discovered, incontrovertibly, when a (Schubert) song caused her to get up and sit in front of the speaker (what does a cat know about the 'stereo triangle' ?!) rapt -- Is the word -- until it finished. (No, not Nipper the RCA dog: but This Cat. (She was becoming progressively deafer.) She had reacted similarly to some Mozart, before.


Vaya con Espiritu, fellow subversive and nonpareil, indescribable feline.



I expect I'll find an older shelter cat.. in time; a simple way to honor Sierra.
These are first to go amidst the est. 5 MILLION * cats euthanized annually in the US; these animals may suffer the most, perhaps:
their grief in the loss of an owner/staff of many years' duration would be immeasurable ... as they sit in a cramped cage amidst unfamiliar noise.. and all the rest.

* http://www.foxnews.c...33,351571,00.html

Ed: s/annually/daily

Thanks, Wade -- I know you know about cats.

She was ~ 16.8 years old; counting my time with her in Rent-A-Cat status -- the neighbors' cat with issues with their toddler, of the usual kind -- I had her companionship for 6+ years.
This is 'average' for US cats, so many being on cheapest supermarket bargain-kibbles with trash inside. On a decent diet she should have reached mid-twenties.

My 'decent diet' since late '05 could not undo the earlier dry-food-only diet, neglected dental cleaning (some cats drink enough; most do not -- Sierra was one of those, as I observed her water use.)
Still a guess though, as she had wet people-grade food here and so needed less additional water ie. my 'data' isn't necessarily relevant. A nasty incitement of those awful What-If?s, though..

(A refuge for old or dying animals of many species -- the rich pay more for lifetime-care there, to support their considerable pro-bono works) -- a 34 yo cat died recently; last week a 24 yo.

They eschew allopathic meds except in certain specific cases (where they actually work and do not create insurmountable Other problems) and they feed a very well-tailored healthy diet to each species; not a single thing from the supermarket. Etc.

They deem that a 'normal' cat lifetime is more like mid-twenties -- and have the stats to show how this might be correct.

And yes I'm aware of the attraction of running water for many -- as many owners never even discover.
Many but not all: I tried a small fountain with Sierra; she ignored it. Others would make a fetish of visiting for a sip several times a day. As I said: she Would not have drunk enough; this opinion is echoed by the Vet who wrote Your Cat; she has practised 28 years, is an attorney and ... at one point was at executive level in a 'major' pet food corporation (Purina? -- not revealed) and she avers that, many many cats live a life of incipient dehydration -- unless fed complementary wet food, preferably of actually nourishing quality. That means: sans carbs they cannot process/do not need and the garbage within slaughter-house debris (much of which should have been burned) == common in US pet foods, even some expensive ones.

Yes, Sierra died at the 'average' age -- but well in advance of what might have been. Causality cannot ever be found now, in any event.
i
Squeak (outside cat) gets healthier weekly and shall profit from this-all experience and delving. He actually looks sleek now and knows it: lots of grooming. No prior history on him, but he was pretty scruffy, had untreated ear mites, worms etc. as he sat crying in the rain in 3/08. Decent care is as rewarding to the onlooker as to the subject, I see.

(Probably toomanywords, but I'll try anyway)

But this is about Sierra (solidarity with her living cohorts) -- who was elderly-enough that, had she not 'chosen' me first and I her and.. somehow she'd ended up in one of those places ??
(before or after the family arrived ~ 40 mi E. of Reno where there is winter snow etc.)

Emotional paradigms don't translate well to Boolean, we see. Can one 'prove' that the suffering is greater when a decade (say) of conviviality is suddenly rendered into separation / strangers / new and loud noises, etc.
VS a shorter experience of similar intimacy ??

As to the arithmetic: Muricans appear to be unusually adept at rationalizing the treating of a 'pet' - an animal (any animal) as a toy-for-the-kid (and if the cute puppy becomes a dog requiring daily multiple attentions, or little Genghis suddenly becomes hooked on Magna-VisceraBlaster on his Wii-Wii? why: send the no-longer-wanted thing off to the pound "for a new home.") yaSHURE ... in the Disney dream scenario.

At 5 million and counting (cats only) -- my drop in that ocean of miserably betrayed creatures and their fate offers no statistical comfort at all -- maybe because such attitudes re. animals-as-things (with few Rights. Yet.) is so deeply a part of our flushing-down-the-toilet any-hard-choices mindset: I don't see the 5 million lessening.
It can't, because I also don't see any signs of increased maturity.. elsewhere.

Emotional 'logic' (when I found Sierra's staff was leaving and I could officially adopt her) could have been:
she had a cyst on her side*, was 'old' via US-lowered life expectancy. Do I want to pay for the same sort of open-ended vet-bills [I now know fershure] as precisely mirror the bankruptcy-producing $$-rituals for bipeds??

That question never arose
(* ..and I had to Tell Them about the cyst! many months before: about which they subsequently did nothing, as with dental.) Did I mention they were/are-still(?? hmm..) Republicans?
thus maybe looking for best ROI on the deal. Any deal. Needless to elaborate: I made the appointment immediately + the dental cleaning while anaesthetized, etc. Cyst was benign.

But actually I don't know next fershure:
sometimes eye-contact is Enough and final -- as with Sierra way-back. Age/appearance not even a factor there..
The second time she sauntered down my gravel driveway and right up to me, I'd have catnapped her if it weren't just Wrong (well, wrong.. in a milieu where animals still have 0-choice and virtually no Rights.)

I'll practice with some hours of cat lap-sitting/socializing at a local shelter -- I can weight matters towards 'older' but instant-Chemistry at any age cannot be superseded in such matters, I wot.
So maybe we're both 'right', even if

A=B, but in this math B!=A
complementarity Fail. aka:

The heart has its reasons which reason alone shall never conceive
-- Pascal, IIRC

:-þ

for all the unspayed and the other common contributory neglects, millions of fine animals Shall continue to be slaughtered.. taking a toll too upon the dedicated people who HATE having no other recourse than that.

Nobody can competently do the triage, though -- re. the cute puppy/kitten as, no matter what their choice that day -- most of the animals they see won't be around in a few weeks. Fortunately locally, Brighthaven's head is a great blurb writer and has gotten many adoptions for special critters via her descriptive writing and a large network: some drive hundreds of miles. Drop in the ocean, but then when you go swimming you don't worry about all the ocean you'll never experience. I guess.

But if I won the Lottery despite not playing: I can see where a few $Millions would be going.

--as to that 'time' factor / though here turned orthogonally re. say, real-time pain:

Turns out that.. euthanasia (for cats, specially) is far from a trauma-free 'procedure'.
Even with the surgeon-friend of neighbor at work, the first try for a vein in leg failed. Further, there appear to be no (injectable) anaesthetics yet developed by the Medico-industrial complex which 'work' very well -- even to dull senses for insertion of the hyarge 2-stage catheter device.

I shall next attempt to discover if Anyone in the Vet Industry, Schools etc. are paying the slightest attention -??- to the matter, in search of YAN patentable nostrum. They sure as hell do not seem inclined to make this search for any altruistic/humane reasons, near as recent experience (including of others) demonstrates.

Nothing is ever 'simple' except for the simplistic-minded majority.
{sigh}