I’m still dealing with Ellipses’ final exit, but as I was sitting and talking with my wife, she noticed the beautiful sunset just outside our back door. In a metaphorical sense it is a fitting reminder that ends are not all dark, but like a beautiful sunset, herald the end of one day and the start of the next. It seems fitting that this is a fine way to think of Ellipse leaving us. She has left us a rich history of mutual memories, and plenty of photos I’ve taken over the years of her and all the other creatures who’ve lived with us. Those that are still with us are moving around the house as they are wont to do. The girls still come up to ask for rubs and to remind me when it’s time to be fed or to go out for their walks. The boys come up for their rubs and to remind me when they need to be fed.

Ruby just turned 10, and with a lifespan in our house of around 15 years, that means five more years of spending my life with Ruby. When it’s her time to leave I’ll deal with it accordingly. Now’s the time to make sure I gather enough photos and memories of her while she’s still with us, still hale and hearty. Annie, her constant companion, turned 3 this past St. Valentine’s Day. If the Lab lifespan is any indication she’s here for quite a long time. And the boys will turn three in early October. Again, if Ellipses’ life span is any indication, they’ll be around for quite a long time as well.

It has taken me at least a decade to be taught by Ellipse, Lulu, and Lucy how to live with cats. They’ve all taught me well, and the Gingersnaps and I benefit from the training. I look forward to many more good times with the four footers.

And the theme will continue to change for a while. I’m not quite satisfied yet.

I have been using my first Olympus E-M5 again, the one I purchased January 2013. I bought it back when Lucy was still alive. I have the session of her checking it out when I first pulled it out of the shipping box from Amazon. It had developed a crack on the bottom edge of the pull-up LCD, and so I put it in a drawer thinking I’d get it fixed by Olympus, when I could get around to it. It sat in that drawer for a year until I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I pulled it out, put some super glue on the crack, and continued to use it. While the world goes ga-ga over the latest Olympus camera releases, I continue on with the original body that started the current revolution. I still find it’s as good as the day I purchased it.

I’ve taken everything off the body and put on the newest 14-42mm kit zoom, the EZ pancake. With that combination and a spare battery I’ve been going around as light as possible just so I can have something with me a bit more sophistication than the iPhone. No, I’m not backsliding on the iPhone. The built-in camera is still excellent. But I like to have my options open. That’s why I keep turning back to my Olympus cameras.

Today my wife and I went out for Sunday lunch at Chuy’s on I-Drive. I love the place for its food as well as the wild color scheme around the restaurant. I came back home and worked a bit with the raw files using Lightroom 6.4. More to come…

Here’s Lucy checking things out. The other two cats, Lulu and Ellipse, don’t care. The Gingersnaps, now that’s another story. They seem quite curious about my camera gear.

The boys have continued to grow, consuming a constant flow of kitten chow and canned cat food, and expelling a constant flow of kitten pee and poop. In between the trips to the litter boxes (there are two) they’ve been playing with each other intensely as well as with me and my wife. The way they leap about now, if they had wings like sugar gliders, they’d be literally flying around the house. Which I find simultaneously cute and frightening.

The Gingersnaps have also started wearing little kitten collars with bells. I had to bell these cats just so I can find them when they’re moving around, especially under the furniture, something they’ve instinctively done since the first day they came to live with us. Greebo is too busy tracking Ponder on the floor to properly model his collar, which is why the eyes are slitted and the head is a bit blurry. Right after this he made his pounce.

Both cats have also learned how to be held in my arms so that I can rub their briskets and stomachs. My oldest daughter and her boyfriend starting working with the boys when they were tiny kittens old enough to be held. When I hold them this way and rub them their purring goes up considerably. They love to be held this way as long as I’m calm and gentle and not aggressive. When I stopped long enough to use the Olympus to grab this shot, Ponder decided he wanted to swat at the lens; this is a mid-swat photo.

Some of their other little activities include:

• Their desire to give me lots of licks on my face. They both come up, sit on my chest, and groom my face. And of course they purr the whole time.
• Burrow under the covers. It’s been cold of late and they burrow under the covers to get next to me and warmth. That tends to freak me out when I’m sound asleep. So I carefully lift them out and put them in a “nest” made from part of the blanket next to me, where they go back to sleep.
• Chasing their toys all over the floor. Their favorites are round balls with a feather and a bell in the middle. Second favorite is a feather on the end of a string. Third is the laser pointer.

They’re still loving little guys. They’ve filled the void left by Lucy. I can’t forget little Lucy, but these guys are the perfect replacement. I almost let them slip past me; it’s a good thing I didn’t. It’s almost as if they were born just for me. I’m so glad they’re here.

It’s been decades since I was around kittens this young. I had to be careful in the room with Sunshine. She didn’t know me and was very apprehensive to have this big stranger around her kits. I kept it low and slow, and kept my distance from her and her kittens as much as possible while taking photos. But I did manage to get away with a few, such as the wriggling pile of kittens trying to find mom for food. Or at least that’s what it looked like from my height.

We tried to take photos of one of the gingers as well as one of the calicoes, but the calico wouldn’t stay still long enough to have his/her photo taken. In any case I had my daughter gently handle them as Sunshine the mother was used to her. Sunshine was already showing signs of agitation at my presence, and the last thing I wanted was to put my scent on her kittens.

I might drive back up next weekend to see how much they change in a week. If I can’t get back up there before next weekend, then I won’t be able to see them until the first of November.

I don’t know if I’ll adopt one of the kittens to replace Lucy. I’m not at that point yet, and it’s going to be a good two months before they’re old enough to be adopted, so I can put that decision off for a while. I’m heading into the end of the year with four-plus weeks of travel split across two trips. I have enough to think about as it is.

Gear

These photos were taken with the Olympus E-M10 and the Panasonic Leica 1.4/25mm set at f/2 and the Olympus OM 1.4/50mm closed down to f/2.8. It was very dark where mother and kittens were located. I juggled between apertures that would allow for reasonable depths of field and shutters fast enough, letting the ISO automatically compensate. As a consequence all of these photos are high to very high ISO.

We do not remember days, we remember moments.
Cesare Pavese, from This Business of Living

It’s hard to decide where to begin with little Lucy and big Max stories. They were both such larger-than-life personalities. That’s why their leaving left such deep voids in Judy’s and my souls. We still have two other cats and Ruby the yellow female Lab. So I decided to approach this as only an engineer can, in alphabetical order. We’ll start off with Lucy, the first Official Arcane Science Lab Mascot.

Lucy’s Arrival

Lucy officially came into our lives 22 August 2008 when she walked through our front door. Three weeks prior to that momentous day our next door neighbors had asked my wife if she’d put out cat food and water daily for two cats that they’d been feeding at their front door. My wife did this until that first weekend when I saw her ready to head out the door with another meal for them. I took the meals over and that’s when I first saw Lucy and another cat, a male ginger. I don’t know why I paid such close attention to Lucy, and I don’t think I ever will. But I did and from that moment her possible fate gnawed on my conscience. I wasn’t worried about the male ginger, as he was another neighbor’s cat and a fat freeloader. Lucy was just the opposite, frail and thin, at least to my eyes. That’s when I started to up the feedings to twice/day.

I kept those feedings up until the next weekend, when my concern over her well being grew ever greater. It was hotter than hell that August and the idea of leaving Lucy outside to fend for herself was getting to me. So one day, on a whim, as I was walking back from dropping off another meal, I stopped in the middle of the neighbor’s yard so that Lucy could still see me, and then turned back to look at her, and waited. Lucy wasn’t eating yet; she was watching me. We made eye contact and then she started eating. I stayed until she finished, which didn’t take long. When she looked back up she started to slowly move towards me. I waited until she got close, then I slowly turned and slowly walked back across our yards to my front door, always stopping long enough to see if Lucy was following. For the first two days she stopped, apparently afraid to leave the feeding spot.

But one day she followed me completely home as I’d hoped, and sat at the front door and meowed. I went in and got new dishes of food and water and fed her a second time. I figured she was still hungry and I was right. She started coming to my door every day, which was fine by me. The next door neighbors were home from vacation anyway.

Lucy’s outdoor living on my doorstep lasted for just several more days until one day I opened the front door, stood aside, and waited. Lucy looked up at me, then inside the door with the air conditioning flowing out, and made the decision to come on in on her own. That day was 22 August, and that started a long deepening relationship between cat and human. And two square meals per day in air conditioned comfort.

Origin Questions

I have no idea where Lucy came from, but I have my theories. When Lucy first came into the house she was wearing a flea collar. When I took her to a vet several days later I was told she’d been spayed. When I asked the vet where she might have come from the vet said she’d been raised as a lap cat and wasn’t really an outdoor cat. That lap cat behavior didn’t fully (re)establish itself until around Christmas of that year.

That meant, to me, that Lucy either ran away or was just simply turned out. Considering that 2008 was the height of the real estate collapse, where people were loosing their homes right an left, over time I came to believe she was turned out, or more precisely just left behind when a family left their foreclosed home. The reason or reasons why will never be known.

It meant I didn’t know her real age. The fact she was thin due to lack of proper nutrition didn’t help. She might have been anywhere from 1 to 3 years of age before she walked through my front door.

It took Lucy until Thanksgiving before she “became” the Lucy I’ll always remember. Before that time she was shy, backing away if I got close and stayed near too long. I made sure to feed her on a regular basis and then just let her eat. She managed to fill out during that period. She explored all the rooms in the house and all its hiding spots and would set up “shop” in different locations. She would seemingly disappear and put me in a panic until she either walked out of a hiding spot or I managed to stumble upon a spot. Her favorite resting spot was in the kitchen next to the washer and dryer when we were washing the blankets and towels. When they came out of the dryer still warm, I’d fold them and then stack them on the kitchen table to be put away. Lucy would home in on that pile like a heat-seeking missile, where she’d zoom to the top of the pile and then sit and watch everything happening around that part of the house. August to Thanksgiving 2008 was Lucy’s getting-to-know-us period. The house must have seemed chaotic to her, with two Labs (Max and Ruby as a puppy) and two other cats (Ellipse and Lulu). But she adapted to them and they to her. After that she made up her mind to adopt a person, and she adopted me.

The Long Stay

Lucy integrated well into the household. She would have her moments with the other two cats, especially Lulu (everybody had moments with Lulu). She knew the drill about vet visits; she had no qualms at all about being put into a cat carrier and taken in the car to see the vet. I made sure to put her in the front seat. She’d talk up a storm and I’d reply back in a soothing tone. Once at the vets it was always a time of intense curiosity until the vet came to visit.

The photo at right shows the first time I took her with Ruby to the vet. Ruby had been born August 23rd, one day after Lucy showed up. We wouldn’t get Ruby until eight weeks later, at which point she was an instant object of curiosity for all the cats.

Lucy’s reaction to both Labs knocked down a common myth about animosity between cats and dogs. It didn’t exist, at least not in our household. All three cats loved to rub up against Ruby as a pup. I have to wonder if they thought of Ruby as a very big kitten.

Or perhaps it was because all the cats, being female, had deep maternal instincts that crossed species boundaries. Whatever the reason, all the little creatures in our household lived in relative harmony, except for the occasional standoff between Lucy and Lulu.

And that lasted all the time that Lucy lived with us. Whenever Lulu and Lucy got within seeing distance of one another, Lulu would start up a low growl that would set your teeth on edge. If it kept up long enough I’d call out to Lulu to knock it off. And she understood enough that it did stop.

How Lucy Got Her Name

Before Lucy was Lucy, she was called Gertrude by the next door neighbor. The neighbor is originally from Quebec, which may have something to do with the name. I personally feel Gertrude isn’t a fit name for man nor beast. I think Gertrude/Lucy felt the same way.

Lucy had been in the house for about two weeks when one day she decided to visit the back master bedroom and check out the bed. While sitting quietly and thinking cat thoughts, Judy came in the room and happened to notice her up on the bed. She walked over, bent down to say something nice, and while she was hovering over Lucy, Lucy reached up to bat her face away.

Lucy’s reach was with claws still retracted and was meant as a simple bat to get Judy back up a bit. The paw bat was strong enough and accurately placed such that Lucy, even though still recovering from her outdoor life stage, managed to put a little bruise Judy’s lower eye lid. There was no pain involved and she didn’t notice the bruise until a little later. When I saw the bruise and heard the story I immediately thought of Peanut’s Lucy, who was known to whop some of the other characters. I told Judy and from that time onward Gertrude was Lucy. And I think Lucy approved, because she quickly came to respond to that name.

How Lucy Won My Heart So Deeply, And Vice Versa

That process was pretty much over with me after those first two weeks in August. But winning Lucy’s heart took time, and required I just give her plenty of time and space to adjust to life in the house and come to see she was OK. As I wrote earlier I didn’t know how old she was, or what led up to her being homeless, or how long she’d been homeless. But I do believe that animals are not stupid. The bond of animal-to-human love and trust is easily built as well as broken, and while it can be healed, it takes time. So I gave Lucy all the time she needed. I made sure she was given ample food and water and the protection of the household. And over the next three months, her little soul did indeed heal, and I do believe, heal completely.

I knew it was healed when one day, out of the blue, she started to walk around my ankles, purring. And I don’t mean soft purrs. Lucy would purr like a motorboat. She’d be loud enough that even with my damaged hearing I could hear her standing straight while she was on the floor. That was around that first Thanksgiving.

From that point forward she made it her duty to visit me, especially when I was sitting in my lounger. She would patrol the house and on her way through the TV room, if she spotted me, she’d pick up her pace and then make a running leap into my lap. The first couple of times it was a bit startling, but I quickly grew used to it and would look forward to her visits. I give her rubs and she’d settle into my lap and purr, purr, purr.

After determining that she was going to adopt me, she also checked to see if we could sleep together. She started to check that out by first sleeping at the foot of the bed. Later, after she grew comfortable with that, she would come up, curl up into a ball, and snuggle into my midriff. More than once when I woke up in the middle of the night I had to be careful not to squash a little cat. But that never happened, and she kept that up, especially during her illness.

During her illness I would reach down to rub her head and tell her how I loved her. Outside of taking her to the vet that was about all I could do. I’m pretty certain she understood the emotion if not the exact words. And it helped sustain her so that she lived a little longer.

She was like any other cat. She loved to play with toys, both conventional and 21st century. Her favorite conventional toys were the kind that she could play cat soccer with on the floor. Our house has tile flooring throughout, the easier to keep it clean of messes. It makes for a marvelously low-friction surface for rolling objects, for which all the cats found useful. But it was Lucy and Lulu who took the most advantage of the tile floor for playtime. The 21st century toy she loved most was the little red laser pointer. I would send her scampering from one end of the house to the other, and up walls, trying to capture the little red dot.

What follows are a few more photographs, in general chronological order. The final photos at the bottom are towards the end of both Lucy and Max.

This photo shows Lucy’s one special house spot. It’s an old cabinet in front of the main window. We’d feed and water her in this one spot. Lucy would eat and then settle down to look out as the world passed by, one paw drapped. My daughter says that windows are like TV for cats.

There’s no other way to describe Lucy except as an exceptionally sweet and outsized personality in a small cat body. If her physical size had matched her personality she’d have been tiger-sized. Which makes why she was abandoned by her original owner(s) even more inexplicable to me.

It was the exposure to that outsized personality followed by its loss that has left such a painful void in my soul, every bit as big and painful as Max. She was around during some of the most tumultuous times in my life, providing solace and a barrier at home against an indifferent world. I foolishly thought she’d last nearly forever.

I’ll always remember these years I’ve enjoyed with Lucy, all her purring, the morning wake-up walks up my chest and into my face, the mischievous playfulness, and especially the unconditional love she showered me with. She broke just about every myth and convention I’d ever heard about cats and owning a cat, and all in a good way. She had her moments with Lulu, but everyone has had moments with Lulu, and to be fair to Lulu she’s been quiet and mopey with Lucy gone. She’s missing Lucy too in her own way.

Finding Lucy was one of the most improbable moments I think I’ve experience in my life. Yet I know that there’s lots more like Lucy in the world, and they need the same care I gave to Lucy. I guess it’s just a matter of time before I we find each other – again.

Today is one of my harder days to go through, if not the hardest.

Today I had to take both Lucy and Max to the vets and put them to sleep.

Lucy had developed feline pancreatitis, feline cardiomyopathy, and small cell intestinal lymphoma. Of the three, the lymphoma might have been put into remission with current veterinary medicine. But the first two combined to cause her to not be able to keep food down. She would eat for several days, only to go into ballistic vomiting where she’d loose everything. Over time she dropped from 12 pounds to 4 pounds. She was slowly starving to death amidst all the food we could feed her. When I returned from a business trip and was told she’d dropped to four pounds, I decided to put an end to this. What we were doing at the vets was only postponing the inevitable.

Max developed complications from being an old Lab. He was fourteen years and ten months, nearly 15 years. Max developed canine Cushing’s Syndrome. It affected his hind quarters, especially his ability to stand upright. It also made him incontinent. The worst part of this only lasted the last two months, but it was rapid and deleterious. It took Judy and I to lift him up around his hind quarters. Once up he would slowly walk, but then would collapse when he stopped. He was still up for walks, having walked just yesterday evening. It wasn’t a long walk by any stretch, but it was still a walk. Just as he’d done starting at five months, he would bark at me to take him out.

One key reason for all this happening today is my need to travel for my job. I was in Killeen Texas for a good two and a half weeks right before this. I knew the animals were ill, but I had hopes that Max would last a little longer than he did and that Lucy might be on a path to remission that would allow her to live with me a little longer. But that wasn’t to be.

When I returned home late Friday I could tell that Max was in pretty bad shape. When I checked on Lucy at the vet’s the next morning I was told about her drop in weight to a little over four pounds. That’s when I came to the decision I had to let them both go. I had hoped this wouldn’t happen like this, but life at time boxes you into hard decisions that have to be made no matter what. This was one of those times.

Today was touching all the way around. We took Max to a McDonald’s next to the vets and got him his favorite, a basic vanilla ice cream cone. Meanwhile, the vets, knowing what was coming, had given Lucy all the Fancy Feast she could eat. She made a meal of four cans worth. We all knew she wouldn’t keep it down for very long, but Lucy was happy, as was Max, and that was all the really mattered.

When we got into the vet nearly the entire staff crowded into the waiting room where Max was lying, just to say farewell. He was something of a local celebrity there, and everyone knew Max and he knew them. Lucy had also become their cause célèbre, and everyone wanted to see her get through her medical challenges. But we’d all come to the honest conclusion that wasn’t going to happen.

In the end I held both Max and Lucy. I held Max’s head in my hands while he went to sleep and Lucy in my arms.

The photo at the top probably expresses the odd tie between the two of them best. While neither one came into this household together, they grew to tolerate, and then to stick by one another. Somehow it seems fitting they both left together.

That’s it for this installment. I needed to get this posted to mark their passing. I’ll be writing more in the days ahead as part of a personal healing process. Right now I have two voids in my soul, one big and one small. They’ll fill, just like all the others have (we’ve kept Labs for the past 33 years). I’ve written about all I can for now without loosing it.

Lucy will remain the mascot of Arcane Science Lab for the time being. The photo on the masthead was taken a few years back with my smartphone. I was in the TV room with a blanket over my legs. Lucy had crawled up into my lap between my knees, snuggled in, and gone to sleep. She’d started that back in November 2012 when I had my left knee partially replaced. She knew I was sick and in pain and would spend the night with me while I slept in my recliner as my knee surgery slowly healed. She was there for me when I was in pain. I tried to do the same for her, but it just wasn’t to be.

Lucy’s been back home for over a week now and is eating steadily. Her weight dropped three pounds during her sickness, from 11 down to 8. I remember that was her weight when she first arrived back in 2008. I’m hoping to get her to eat more and get the weight back on. Otherwise she’s perky and energetic (when she’s not napping around the house like the other two cats).

The rose was taken at dusk tonight. My wife wanted oven-baked wings so I took her to a local spot that fixes them the way she likes them. The roses just happen to grow right next to the wing place. She was happy with the wings, and when she’s happy I’m happy. And why not? She’s been through a lot lately. In a way, my wife and my cat have been paralleling each other, fighting illnesses and getting excellent medical attention.

The photos were taken with the Olympus E-M10 and the Panasonic 25mm f/1.4 and pulled directly off the E-M10 with the Olympus Android app to my smartphone. I then pushed them up to Flickr off the smartphone. The only problem with doing it that way is I can’t add Flickr tags and a title before the upload like I can from a desktop browser (Linux, Mac, or Windows). But I’m going that route simply because I need to break out of the post-processing rut I’ve gotten into over the years. I’m almost a slave to Lightroom and I needn’t be. The Olympus OM-D’s have built-in “art” filters that can give a nice effect when combined with some halfway decent composition. The Lucy photo at top was made with the black-and-white grainy filter, while the rose was made with the pale and light color filter, which I have come to like these days. The processors in the OM-D cameras are now fast enough that using them is no longer a liability when it comes to shot-to-shot timings. There is no noticeable delay using these filters, unlike when I use equivalent filters on my E-P2 (which I still own).

I’m headed to Japan in two weeks on a three week business trip. I’m taking one of my E-M5s and the E-M10, along with the Olympus 18mm f/1.8, 45mm f/1.8, and the Panasonic 25mm f/1.4. I’ll throw in the chargers, some batteries, and some extra cards, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll do some post processing on my iPad Air 2. I’m going there to take a lot of photographs during my off hours, and I’m accepting the results that come out of both cameras. I’m concentrating “capturing the moment” and “telling a story”, not on some fancy Lightroom settings.

Wish me luck.

She’s been the beneficiary of some top-notch veterinary science through my local vet (Williamsburg Veterinary Clinic), which is appropriate given how she’s the official ASL Cat Mascot. First that science kept her alive and got her through the worst part of this whole episode. Lucy’s to the point where she’s now reacting to me like she normally did, following me around and giving me meows modulated with her motorboat purrs. She’s not back up to eating full meals in one sitting (she’s almost free-feeding, eating a bit, then resting, then eating more), and that worries me, but I have the following (possible) diagnoses from the vet as to why this may be and what’s really going on.

1. Cardiomegaly with no no evidence of congestive heart failure, and
2. Cat pancreatitis (ran some panels and waiting for full results).

Based on what I’ve read the pancreatitis makes the most sense and can cause a lot of other problems in cats, including heart (#1 above). She showed the symptoms for #2, and I have to believe this is the problem. Pancreatitis in humans is bad enough, causing great abdominal pain and killing the appetite, but for a little cat it has got to be even worse. I’ve been giving her foods that are pure, or nearly pure, protein, such as the Goya mackerel and Purina’s Beyond Wild Salmon Recipe which is grain free. The problem with the Goya is it’s packed in brine, but I can wash off the excess salt before giving it to her. The key right now for feeding is no carbs, very little fat, just mostly protein. I’m in the process of following up on a suggestion by one of the tech vets to feed her roasted chicken. This is just pure chicken that’s been roasted with the fat cooked out a bit.

So far she’s been pulling through like a trouper. Since getting back home a week ago she’s back to exploring the house. She’s cleaning herself, leaping about her cat tree, scratching on her cat tree posts, and doing all the typical cat-isms you’d expect from a normal healthy cat. Today she was following me around like the old times, talking to me up a storm. She’d follow me to some spot where I’d be working, then sit somewhere nearby while I did some sort of chore. I’d move on and she’d be my little shadow. She’s been leaping up in my lap when I sit, and batting at my hands playfully. It’s the old Lucy that I haven’t seen since December. I didn’t realize how much she’d changed over that short period, and how much I dearly missed that part of her personality.

The problem with owning a pet for many of us is we love it when they’re healthy, but don’t know squat what to do when they become greatly ill. Having a pet is like being married, or having children. You’re committed to them in sickness and health, for better or worse… And so I take care of her needs when she’s ill, just like I’d take care of my wife and my children. As long as I’m able, anyone in my household will always be under my unconditional protection, even the little four-footers.

So Judy took her back to the vet’s this afternoon. And while she was there Lucy had another throwing-up session, except this time it was clear with a little bile in it. All the fish she’d eaten was apparently farther down her GI tract.

I drove straight from the office after leaving work a bit early to the vet’s. I met my wife there and then with Lucy, and finally the vet. While my wife and I were alone in the visitation room waiting for the vet, Lucy was brought back in to us. At first she was quiet, but then she began to move around the room, checking things out. She seemed to rally quite a bit and was soon walking and jumped up on the bench, moving from one end of the room to the other, and even rolling over playfully on the floor. She was her regular kittenish self (she’s always been the most playful of the three cats).

While she was active I took a number of photos and posted them on my Flickr stream. I intended to post them here, but instead I picked these two photos of Lucy to show her at her best. They were taken by me as soon as I got home from our wedding anniversary cruise back in September 2014. I’ll always have all the photos of Lucy, and I’ll cherish them all. My only regret is that I never seemed to have taken enough of her. But that doesn’t mean I can’t remember all the other little Lucy incidents and stories.

You can see just how cute and playful she could be in the second photo. And for whatever reason, the light coming into the room that day seemed to fill the air around her with a glowing energy. Almost angelic.

Lucy was always claiming any box or bag on the floor as her own. She’d jump in and roll around to make some noise, then poke her head out to see if I was paying attention. Then she’d give me those big round cat eyes for a moment and then shoot out like she was jet propelled. None of the other cats would do that except Lucy. And every time she did it I’d laugh. I think that’s what she wanted to hear, my laughter.

I may very well be heading into the ultimate end state for Lucy, where I have to put her to sleep. I want to give her every chance to come out of this and live with us a few more years. She rallied well today and so I gave permission to the vet to have her scoped next Monday just to see what might be wrong and if it’s fixable. But I have to be prepared for the worst. Animals don’t live forever, any more than humans do.

I never thought I’d be this attached to a cat the way I’m attached to Lucy. I have no idea how old she really is. She became our third household cat in 2008 during a very hot August. Our next door neighbors had left for a vacation and asked if I’d feed and water two strays that had appeared on their doorstep. One of them was Lucy. So every morning and evening I’d go over with food and water for both. I wasn’t trying to be sneaky, and Lucy wasn’t dumb, so she started to follow me back to my house. I started to feed and water her at my front door. Then one day, not long after she started to follow me home, I opened the front door and stared down at Lucy. She stared back up, gave me a perfunctory meow, and walked in the front door to live with us.

And here, I believe, lies a small problem with how I relate to Lucy. In spite of her kittenish behaviors and her thin body when she first arrived, Lucy may be a lot older than I think. She was already fixed and had a flea collar on her. My theory about Lucy is that she was left behind with one of the many houses in my neighborhood that got hit with foreclosure. When the owners left one of the houses behind, they left Lucy as well. Lucy could very well be a senior cat; I just don’t know. Regardless she’s had seven wonderful years in this household, and I’ve been blessed with seven wonderful years of her presence.

Once in the front door I gave her another dish of water and some of the cat food we fed our other two cats. And that started a seven year love affair between a cat and a human. Lucy really did love me. She’d come up in my lap, no matter where I sat, and purr like a motorboat. I’d give her rubs and she’d purr even louder. After a time she’d leave, check out the house (we laughingly called her out guard cat) and come back for another rub session.

As our “relationship” progressed she’d meet me at the garage door when I’d come home. At night, when it was proper time for bed, she’d come get me, purring all the while, and herd me back to bed. Then she’d jump up on top of me, walk up my chest, then drop down sphinx-like to stare into my face. That was my cue to give her more head and ear rubs. Finally I’d gently move her off, turn off the bedside lamp, and slowly go to sleep. Lucy would curl up beside me and go to sleep herself. In the morning my personal purring alarm clock would wake me, and the day would start anew.

The house is empty right now and lonely without her, in spite of having my wife, the two Labs, and the other cats with me. Lucy was my cat and she loved me with a fierceness I’ve only seen in one other animal, my long-since deceased black Lab Katie. And I have to now admit, I love that little cat back just a fiercely.

I didn’t realize until I started to write this post just what period in my life Lucy was around for. 2008, the year Lucy arrived, was the year I changed jobs for the company that would eventually lay me off in 2013. It was the same year my wife had to have her artificial knee replaced with a second operation because they’d botched the first operation. 2011 was the year I blew out my left knee and the start of a year of constant and increasing pain. 2012 was the year I got my left knee partially replaced, and 2013 was the year I was laid off. And Lucy was there to witness it all, and a lot more. When I had my knee surgery Lucy was my constant companion while I was down and out on my back. Lucy was especially attentive as only a cat can be. When I started to travel for weeks at a time, loyal Lucy was always there to greet me to give me ankle rubs and purr a hearty welcome. Only Ruby the Lab was as attentive (and she still is).

I’m going to show this last photo, because it’s of Lucy in the vet’s office. She’d walked over to me and settled on my left leg, just like old times. I lost it badly at that point, and I’m still losing it when I see this photo. My wife took it for me.

And for those who think I live under a rock, I’m aware of Leonard Nimoy’s passing. A child of the 60’s, I was fortunate to see The Original Series when it was first broadcast. I was mesmerized by the Vulcan as well as the series. To drive home Vulcan superiority, here’s a photo of Spock with a cat. This is a scene from the last episode of season 2, “Assignment: Earth.” It was the last TOS series I remember before the horrible third season started with “Spock’s Brain.” After “Spock’s Brain” I never watched another episode of TOS until it hit re-runs. I’ll always have the first two seasons, especially episodes like this one. With a Cat.

Lucy is at the vets this weekend. She’s been there since late this past Thursday, on an IV solution to get her strength back up. Before she was taken to the vets by my wife, she’d stopped eating nearly everything I could think of to put in front of her, and wasn’t drinking much at all. She’d been ill with something since this past November when she started vomiting about once/week. We took her to the vets, and tried out some anti-vomiting medicine, which seemed to help a bit. But about a week ago she took a turn for the worse.

Although we have two other cats and the two Labs, Lucy really is mine. The house is very empty without her. There’s no Lucy to run up into my lap in the evenings when I’m sitting in my chair. No Lucy to come out late at night and herd me back to bed. No Lucy to sleep at my feet, no Lucy to walk on my shoulders and purr in my face in the mornings.

I’ve checked on her every day including today, and she looks and acts a lot better than she did this past Thursday. She comes over and talks to me when I visit. I think the hardest thing for me to accept out of all this is how I almost killed her with kindness, thinking I could figure out what was wrong with her. Owning a cat doesn’t make you a cat expert, no matter how long you’ve owned here, and no matter what you’ve read over time.

She’s been in the household since 2008. That’s seven years. She’s had a good life with good food, toys, places to play indoors, and regular vet visits. Hopefully she’ll be around another seven years. If not, well, I have a lot of memories, and there are no shortage of little guys and gals who need rescuing. But Lucy will always have a special place.

In 2008 she picked me. I didn’t pick her. And she’s been a loyal little thing ever since.

Lucy has also been coming over more often to look for comfort and rubs from me, her Person. The photo above is typical of Lucy putting her head down on my midriff and looking up for rubs. She purrs like a motor boat while I rub her. Her favorite rub spots are around her ears. Note that these are slow, gentle rubs. Cats are not dogs, such as our two Labs.

Today I took her to the vets for her annual shots. I also took Ellipse to check the weight. Surprise, surprise, both cats showed noticeable weight gains, even Lucy. So while Lucy might be throwing up occassionally she’s keeping enough down that she’s gained about a pound and a half, which is a lot for a little cat.

As is so typical both of them meowed all the way over to the vet. Once there, they stayed quiet and in their carriers (or very close by). Cats are smart and have long memories. The vet is very good and gentle, but cats don’t like to travel and they are supper cautious around the vet and his assistants.

I came home with a new cat food (Royal Canin vet diet) formulated to be easier to digest as well as having less odd-ball ingredients. We’ll try this out for the rest of November and see how Lucy reacts. So far she seems to like it. But I know one thing, no more Purina Fancy Feast. It seems to cause more upsets with Lucy and Ellipse than I want to clean up.

But not because of image quality. The three images in this post are from that camera. They were taken with the GX7 and my Olympus 1.8/17mm. And from what little I was able to get, these three and others, the GX7’s image quality was just shy of incredible. I wish the GX7’s handling was better than it was, but it was so bad for me that I returned the camera. My review of the camera is here: http://www.thewsreviews.com/2014/10/panasonic-dmc-gx7c-body-only.html

I’m not normally in a regretful mood, but right now, I truly wish I could have kept the GX7. I purchased the Olympus E-M10 in its place, and at the time, for about $50 less than the GX7 on sale. I’m pulling together a small collection for a review of the E-M10 and the 1.8/17mm on Thew’s Reviews. The E-M10 is an excellent camera and I’m glad I have it, but there are the moments when I wish I could have kept the GX7.

This little guy belonged to my girls when they were babies. They’re in their mid-to-late twenties now. I’ve given up a lot, but I refuse to give this little guy up because of the memories.

I’m still entranced by cats. Cats came into my life in a permanent way very late for me, some seven years ago. After spending over two decades living with Labs, having cats turned out to be something of a shock. Not in a bad way, but any way at all. I’ve never ever thought of myself as a “cat person,” but here they all are, here and in Gainesville and Tallahassee. My oldest daughter has two and my youngest has one, and considering getting a second as a companion for the first.

I don’t know how it turned out this way, but Lucy, the last to arrive at Casa Beebe, is my cat. She comes into my lap, sleeps next to me at night on occasion, and purrs like a motorcycle when I rub her head. From time to time she attempts to talk to me. She loves it when I pull out the laser pointer for her to chase. When she needs to visit the vets I’m the only one she will allow to take her. She even misses me when I travel, sticking close when I get back from my trips.

Scary times for little cats. We’re headed into another summer thunderstorm season in central Florida. When the skies rumble loud and low enough to feel it in the house, the animals hunker down. Lucy was heads up looking around until the thunderclap arrived, and then she wiggled down into the cushions on my deep leather chair, wrapping her tail up under her chin.

It’s coming up on six years since she walked in through our front door. But I don’t think she’ll ever forget being turned out by her former owner to fend for herself. I don’t think it’s anthropomorphism on my part to express this for her.

Tonight was a cat night. I needed the little guys to do their cat thing, and they may have picked up on that need. In Lucy’s case it was discovering a bag that I would have sworn was too small for her to fit into. She’s about 9 pounds soaking wet. But I thought she might like to play with it, so I just dropped it on the floor. Lucy loves to shred paper because of the sound. Instead she literally took a running dive into the bag, wiggled around so much she rolled herself over in the bag, and then popped her head out to look around. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t hold the camera steady. Lulu, the bottom photo, was too dignified to be any part of it.

I’m still working with black and white via Silver Efex Pro 2. After all this time I’m beginning to learn that harshness is not conducive to monochrome printing, but instead, softness. In particular I’m pulling the structure slider more and more to the left, with my typical structure preset on Silver Efex at -30. What was surprising was the last photo. Although I have my E-M5 set to no contrast and natural color, the light was such that I had to pull contrast out of the photo even more in post, both in Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro.