meals and cats and figaro

sunday's breakfast was grits, which i hadn't made in a long time. we used to have it for saturday breakfast . . it was quick and easy to make when running out to a music lesson or dance rehearsal.

 

 last night's dinner . . which was really good. i sautéed kale and onions and mixed them with toasted pumpkin seeds, quinoa, black beans and fresh scallions with a tahini/tamari/lemon juice dressing. it was a deliciously ella recipe (she has a restaurant in london called plants, and several cookbooks and a popular instagram page). actually, the recipe called for edamame with zucchini, but i substituted with what was in the refrigerator.

 

the cats have taken to pulling at the bottom covering of our chair. we thought we were so clever to recover the torn material with an old drop cloth cut to size, but they just tore that also and then cricket climbed in. now we'll just try leaving it without any bottom covering. of course, i think they will then begin to pull at the stuffing behind the springs. it's a very old chair, one of my sister's cast offs, so we might decide to not keep it at all, though morgan suggested a sturdier piece of material or plastic.

i took zuzu to another vet appointment today (cricket always comes along). the doctor flushed her eyes and said to continue with the ointment. i'm thinking of changing their kitty litter brand. we use a pine litter which seems extra dusty these days . . maybe it's been irritating her eyes?

chanda stopped by for lunch. she's been dealing with a lot of bureaucratic red tape applying for some summer intern positions and it's been stressful. everything is done online and you can't even stop by the registrar's office or an advisor's office without making an appointment (online). 

it's now a year since little figaro died on march 21, 2022. i've been missing his sweet self . . 

 

he was so little when he first arrived, and it was hard keeping his face clean.

with korrina . . 

and his litter mate candy (now named ludo).

paper bag play . .

he liked sleeping on my lap as i worked at the computer . . (as zuzu is doing as i type this post) . .

 

and sleeping on korrina's lap, christmas 2021 . .

with morgana, same christmas . .

helping chanda with her school work . . 

a kiss for aurélien . .

 

 

 fooling around with pluto . .

more playtime with pluto . .

waiting for dinner . .

and hanging out together by the window . . 

you're always in my heart little figaro . . 

missing figaro every day and even more yesterday and today

my beloved spring peepers . . 

----

getting ready to install a new hot water heater and a new chimney lining . . . not at the same time.

writing on a thursday morning

it's thursday morning and i was just finally sifting through the photos from the month of march and clearing out the ones i don't want to keep. time always surprises me with how it slips by as my last post was march 6th, a few days before greg and i went out to the house with little kitten figaro, who actually was no longer such a little one, but a seven month old growing cat. we had such a lovely time as we went for many walks along the beach and had delicious dinners of fresh fish and vegetables that i had brought with us from the neighborhood green market. i also finally got into a rhythm with my knitting and began work again on two projects i had neglected: the moving forward wrap and the grounded poncho. little figaro was very quiet and slept a lot in his favorite spot on the rocking chair (though he did do a little bit of hunting for bugs in the sunlight along the living room windowsills). we thought he was missing pluto, but when we returned on tuesday the 15th, we realized that he wasn't well. i can't even remember what tipped us off to his being sick . . was he unable to keep his food down? did he stop eating? was it because he didn't bounce all over pluto and the apartment like his usual self? i took him to the vet on wednesday and the vet palpitated his abdomen and said she felt something there and so wanted to do an x-ray. we were thinking maybe he had eaten a hair elastic, though i was a little doubtful because the hair elastics were something he played with very seriously and thoughtfully. (after losing many beneath the stove, he batted them carefully around the kitchen floor so that they wouldn't slip under again.) the technician took him to be sedated and x-rayed and i went home to await the phone call saying he was ready to be picked up.

i returned in the late afternoon and sat with him on my lap while we waited for the veterinarian to explain the results. when she came in she was apologetic and brief. they had found his thoracic cavity to be filled with fluid which was of a yellowish tint and sticky. they drained some of it off, but as he had woken unhappy and non-compliant, they couldn't get as much as they wanted. the result was that he was very ill with an untreatable viral disease. if we wanted we could try a medicine which was not yet authorized for any vet to use . . so there was nothing she could do for us.

 

i took him home. i was so stunned. i think i was in a daze. i know i felt desperate. he was so little . . so young. he was supposed to live with us for a very long time; instead he was so very, very sick.

it was hard to explain it all to greg and i kept jumping around with what i wanted to do. we finally agreed to give the medicine a try, but it required us to give little figaro injections, which was not easy to do as he was very wiggly and the medicine burned as it went in. his reaction was not the best either, as he sat with a vacant, catatonic stare for several hours afterwards (he had a similar reaction coming out of the sedative after the drainage and x-ray and spent most of tuesday night awake, staring off into space). by friday (the 18th of march) the fluid had built up again and we took him in to have it drained for a second time, with a similar reaction coming out of the sedative, though they supposedly tried a different kind. we then decided we could no longer do the injections, he was so frail and unhappy and so were we. i kept hoping for a miracle, that only two doses could cure him, but that was not to be. on monday afternoon we napped together and when he woke he climbed onto my chest and meowed plaintively in my face, and i knew that he was in too much pain.

i've been through the death of seven pets throughout my life, this time i was undone (we all were). what did i miss? did he get his vaccines too soon? did he get too many? maybe too much deworming medication? was he under too much stress playing with pluto? did he need a different diet? it's nonexplainable. one of the vets who helped us emphasized that he lived longer than most kittens who contract this disease, meaning he had a happy and healthy home. do i see the cup as half empty, or half full?

figaro was incredibly affectionate, smart, playful and loquacious. he used to play catch with me, especially when i was making the bed. he'd bring his favorite floppy toy or hair tie onto the bed and i would throw it off countless times as i fluffed the sheets, blankets and pillows. he would hear one of us getting his and pluto's food together in the kitchen and come running in to meow sweetly and incessantly that we needed to hurry please, he was very hungry. he always chirped and purred when he climbed onto any of our laps, letting us know that he wanted to see what we were doing and be a part of it. he slept every night either curled up with pluto at our feet, or curled up snug and warm, next to my heart. it's hard to accept that he's gone.

 

hartsdale

friday

took figaro in this afternoon for a second draining of his chest cavity.

 

just resting in the morning . .

thursday night

playing yahtzee with chanda and greg . . 

 

a beachy week . . with figaro

greg and i drove out to montauk with figaro tuesday evening, march 8th. his work decided that everyone should start going into the office three days a week which would mean that we could no longer spend a full week out at the house . . so of course i wanted to immediately go out to the house and spend a week there. between taking care of the kittens and helping with kendall, we hadn't gone for that long in months.

i realize that when i let a lot of time lapse between posts it's often because someone has died . . aunt evie, uncle bill, mom, dad . . and pets: xena, jack, hermione, madeline. figaro.

so here's our last visit on montauk with figaro . . (which i'm actually posting april 14th) . .

fooling around on the dining room chair in the sun while greg worked at the table. he loved napping next to greg during the day.

i don't know how to explain the feeling i get when i think of him . . it's different from my memories of xena, hermione and madeline. the three of them lived to be 17/18 years old. within the pain of missing them there's a sense of contentment. not with figaro. with him it's all turmoil.

 

i think i have a hard time letting go. i think grieving is really a lot of work that we don't want to do . . don't take the time to do . . probably because most of us don't know how to. we think time will take care of it (there's a saying about that, isn't there?) but i think there's more to it, well, at least for myself.

thursday's walk on the beach with greg and the seagulls . . 

 

thursday's sunset . . 

and thursday's dinner (which i brought out with us - carrots, turnips and potatoes from saturday's green market and the chicken from our local butcher).

----

friday at ditch:

there's a surfer out there . . the little dot in the center . . 

back at the house figaro was stretching after a long nap . . and after eating he went right back to sleep and slept until around 2 in the morning . . i woke up and brought him into bed with us. i thought maybe he was just becoming more independent . . but really i think he wasn't feeling well.

----

saturday around the house . . 

morgana's seashells from chritstmastime.

i realize now that i didn't hear any peepers this year . . 

you can see both of his third eyes in this photo which is an indication that a cat isn't well. 

beans, mushrooms and small beef sausages over quinoa.

----

sunday we took a drive to sag harbor . . 

i stopped at the variety store for sugar and cream yarn, we looked in the bookstore . . 

and had lunch at the health food store (i love their black bean chili and tend to always order it). we ended up getting an extra burrito because the person at the order counter wasn't paying attention and mixed things up.

we bought some groceries also . . brought them back to the car and then went for a walk along the dock . . 

ready to head home . . 

checking out my yarn purchases . . 

i hope to get started on some solid green napkins soon . . the multi-colored ball is for trim on a doily.

watching a movie with me . . 

getting distracted by a bug . . 

playing a game of yahtzee (greg won the two games we played during this visit).

 

----

 

monday . . 

 

 

figaro says my moving forward wrap makes a cozy bed.

 

evening at ditch . . 

monkfish from stewart's fish market where we stopped sunday on the way home from sag harbor.

----

tuesday . . 

we visited the library as the renovations were finally finished. it had been closed since 2019, and they had temporarily set things up in a trailer.

last lunchtime visit to hotel beach . . 

in the evening, after greg finished work, we packed the car and drove westward . . home.