I don't want to write tonight. Not because I don't have anything to say, but because I want what I have to tell not to be true. I drove home this morning, picked up my dogs from "camp," and had been in the house less than five minutes when my phone rang. The man was calling, and I was ready to tell him all about how I was being swarmed with furry faces who missed me. But the sadness in his voice was palpable. His news was worse than I could have expected. His kitten Constance, the little highlander survivor from the first litter he cared for, passed away this morning. She had fallen awkwardly out of a tree last week, and given herself a hernia. While she was having it surgically repaired, she was spayed at the same time (so she only had to go under anesthesia the one time). Without a necropsy, there's no way to know whether she developed a complication from the surgery, or picked up something else unrelated. She hadn't been acting herself since the accident. Whatever happened, it is a crushing heartache for my man. He has infinite love for the creatures who share our planet, and he easily gets attached to those who share our lives, even for a short time. He was deeply invested emotionally with Constance. He promised that he was going to have his housekeeper's son adopt her, but I secretly suspected he was going to end up bringing her home with him. I was going to let him, I had decided. Now her life has been cut tragically short, and my man is hurting in a way I can totally understand, but can do almost nothing to comfort from such a huge distance away. This was so unexpected, and I wish I could be there for him in person.
During his travels, someone told my man about a figure from the Sunni tradition who gained the name Abu Hurayrah, which translates to "father of the kitten." This man kept the mosque for Muhammad, and was said to care for all the stray cats in the vicinity. While my man was raising two litters of kittens, and putting out food for some strays he couldn't catch, he said they were going to have to give him that nickname as well. There's a saying that you can judge a man by what his cat thinks of him. My kitten daddy must be one amazing man.
Some of today's photos will be repeats, but I think today will be a retrospective dedicated to Constance. I'll get back to other things tomorrow. If you can, spare a little love for my soft-hearted man tonight.
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