Ellipses isn’t the first pet I’ve had to let go due to death. These loses go back to the mid-1990s when I was with my wife and Rhett, the big mail yellow Lab. He was in the back of our old Volvo 240 with Judy and I when the vet came out and put him to sleep for us. He had lived to be 16, but he didn’t live forever. None of them do, as we won’t either. The issue with me, at least, is that each death has an impact in and of themselves, and then they go on to remind me of all the other little ones who have passed on. At some point you have to wonder when you’ll stop having little ones around you, until (again, for me) the idea of being alone of pets is more terrifying then the reality that they’ll eventually die.

While they’re alive they’re unequivocally loving creatures who enlighten each day just by being there. They are a part of the oasis of calm I can come back to every day after work, that special place called home.

In the case of Ellipse, I was reminded this morning how much she’d become a part of the morning routine. She quickly learned what the routine was and helped to reinforce it in her own sweet way. Every morning she sat on the edge of the kitchen table, looking and then vocalizing at me, to get out her food and the other cats. Then she’d jump down to the floor and look over the large water bowls and then back up at me if I hadn’t washed them out and refilled them with fresh water. They she’d walk over and delicately drink her fill. She learned from me, and in turn reinforced/trained me to do the little morning tasks.

Her not being at all her spots was all the more notable this morning. And it’s going to be that way from now on. The Gingersnaps are notably different and have their own personalities and activities. All of this will smooth out over time, but it’ll be like the lose of Lucy and so many others. They all had their unique qualities and their specific routines that wove themselves into your life to the point you never realized they were there, until they suddenly weren’t. It’s not so much I’ll get over this as I’ll learn to push this to the back of my mind, until the next time another one leaves.

Ellipses, a.k.a. Lipsey, left us today. She was the last of the original “generation” of cats that first came to live with us starting in 2007. Before then were we just dog owners, with a string of Labs going back to 1979 with Rhett, Judy’s first yellow Lab. It was Ellipse and Lulu who came to first stay with us when my oldest daughter came back as well from FSU in Tallahassee, followed by Lucy walking in the front door during a very hot summer day in 2008. Ellipses was adopted out of a no-kill shelter in Tallahassee. We suspect that she was first owned by a math grad student (hence the name), and was left in Tallahassee when the grad student had to leave. She was definitely an indoor lap cat and used to living a quiet pampered life.

She was technically a calico-marked long-haired Norwegian forest cat. But should would never have survived the land of her ancestors. She was too much a human companion, quite bright, and at times quite vocal. He bright and intelligent eyes were everywhere. She never missed anything. And when she felt like it (and she did a lot of times) she was everywhere in the house checking out every little nook and cranny. But her primary location in the house was in the kitchen.

I don’t know why she choose the kitchen, and specifically the kitchen table. But if she wasn’t out roaming she was there, resting, watching. Sometimes she’d leap up on the folded towels I’d leave next to her on the edge of the table. But if she was anything, she wasn’t a pest. She never went after any of the food we had out in the kitchen. She just watched and on occasion would lift up her nose and sniff.

She is survived by Ruby the yellow Lab and Annie the Doodle, and the two Gingersnaps, Bo and Luke. It’s a good thing we have them all. We’re down now to the number of animals we had back in late 2007. My wife and I have already asked one another if we’re going to get a replacement for Ellipse, but I think we’re going to put that decision off for a little while.

My last hours with Ellipse were last night, when I slept out in my lounger in the TV room. I wanted to make sure I was near in case Ellipse might need me. I fed her her last meal, and she bumped my hand for some rubs, which I gladly gave. In hind sight it was almost like a simple silent goodbye.

This last photo is where she was resting the night before, and many nights before that. It’s full of her hair, but I don’t care. I don’t know what I’ll do with it; probably clean it and wash it and put it back out in a corner for one of the boys to snooze in. But it’s empty of her outsized presence, like the house at the moment. A reminder that time marches on and all thing, cats and humans included, reach their end.