As expected, we said goodbye to our little buddy today. I described Rio's origin story in detail yesterday, and predicted that he did not have long left on this plane of existence. It was true. My daughter went home for lunch today, and was able to hold Rio as he died, as if he was waiting for her before he finally let go. We are all sad, but I choose to temper that with being very happy that we got to know him at all, and grateful that he stayed with us as long as he did.
He was born a feral kitten, caught when he was barely two months old, and a right pain in the ass when he was a youngster. He always thought he was tough, but we were onto him from the start. Little wild boy liked to sleep on pillows, and when he thought no one was looking, he liked to nurse on my daughter's earlobe. He also was notorious for biting Cricket on the butt. In fact, that was always my favorite story: I was sitting at my computer in the house in New Mexico, before we split up the GKs, and Cricket was sitting on the ottoman next to me. Rio came up, looked at Cricket and then looked at me. You could see the calculations going on behind his naughty yellow eyes. He looked at her, and he looked at me. And then back at her, and one last time to me, before he lunged, bit her butt, and ran off when she shrieked. He knew exactly how much trouble he would get into, but he did the math and decided it was worth it to bite the butt.
Just like humans have favorite colors, we associated Rio with yellows. My daughter always chose yellow collars for him, as if it were how he preferred to dress himself. I offered to take her to the plant nursery today to pick out a good perennial for his grave, and while she declined, she did ask for something with yellow flowers. I would have liked to put in a forsythia, but the location wouldn't support it. When I arrived at the nursery, there was a giant yellow columbine that looked enviable, but the ones available in pots were much too small for the occasion. Gold coreopsis was everywhere, but it wasn't what I wanted. I finally settled on a daylily, a variety called "Monterrey Jack," with creamy yellow flowers with a rusty orange eye. (I also grabbed a "Judy Judy" for myself, but promised to trade rhizomes with my daughter one day in the future, when the clumps of daylilies are big enough to split.)
We gathered around his gravesite early this evening, and had a small ceremony. We talked about him, and then we buried him, amending the hard clay soil with a little store-bought garden soil so that microbes could return him to the earth, and the daylily would have a better chance at life. The kids had a beautiful boulder to use as his grave marker. It was a lovely goodbye to a truly good friend.
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