Farewell....

I should not be having to write two posts like this in less than as many months.

Keiki Kaikaina, I miss your crotchety little self so much already.

I remember when we went to look at this litter of kittens.  Mom was a gorgeous, solid black.  Dad was a black & gray mackerel tabby.

And every single kitten was a carbon-copy of Dad.  The five in your litter, plus the two from a previous litter.

And there you were, four and a half weeks old, the runt out of a litter of five.  Tiny little thing!

Hubby was standing next to an armchair as we chatted with our neighbors and learned you and one other kitten were still up for grabs.  The others were spoken for.  And really, you all looked alike, so it wasn't like we were choosing on looks.

Hurling your little self at that chair, you pulled yourself all the way up to the top before launching yourself at Hubby, climbing him like a tree, to settle in, curl up, and take a nap right there on his shoulder.

A nearly six-foot climb had to be exhausting.

All four of us looked at each other.  "You've been chosen," our neighbor said.

There was no doubt.

There still isn't.

Hubby was your person, through and through.

I've known this day was coming, when I'd have to say goodbye.

I didn't like it.  But I knew.  And I tried to be ready.

I wasn't.

Prairie-dogging.

In the last couple of weeks, I've reminisced:

• Bringing you home for good, and trying to get you to sleep in a little bed on the floor that first night, because it had worked so well with Po on her first night.  Nothing doing; you needed your person.  Hubby hardly slept that night because you curled up under his neck.
• Watching you bounce around after Po...who was terrified of you.
• Realizing you were too little to clean yourself without falling over...so we had to bathe you.  (Po was not motherhood material.)
• Getting bathed twice because you jumped in places you shouldn't have: the toilet and the tub, respectively.
• The night we thought you snuck out, and we searched the bushes in a panic...only to find you, behind some shelves and a filing cabinet, taking a nap.
• You getting stuck up on top of the refrigerator.  More than once. And crying for us to come get you down.
• Having to put pie tins of litter around the house, because your bladder was so tiny that you couldn't make it to the back of our small apartment to use the big box...which was probably too tall for you to even get into.
• Your first collar being so small that we had to cut it and heat-seal it back together so it wouldn't just slide off your neck.
• Watching you turn my father-in-law into a big pile of goo when he first met you.  You guys were buddies from that point on.
• It was terribly amusing to watch you bounce around the house, hissing for no reason other than the fact that you thought it was cool.  "Look at this!  I can make a cool sound!"
• It was heartbreaking to watch you grieve when Hubby's dad passed away.  You were never quite the same.
• Being startled by hearing you talk to yourself, and having it come through the baby monitors.
• Discovering that you'd broken the second-to-last bone in your tail...months after it healed.  I still don't know what you did.
• You're our only kitty who would religiously follow sunbeams around.  Or any source of heat, for that matter.
• The funny way you would lay, with your front paws extended all the way out in front of you, and your back legs stretched out straight behind you.
• The way you stomped all over the linoleum at our last home in Columbus, just because you could make noise when you walked.
• Your little feet were still almost kitten-sized, even at 13.  They were so cute.
• Your obsessive love of ice cream...even today, you still had remnants of Red Velvet Cake ice cream stuck to your ears.

Keiki ~ 1998-2012

The house will be much quieter with you gone.

The others don't talk to themselves like you did.

The others don't Wookiee-purr like you did.

You were so very special.

I miss you, you little goober.

And when you see your grandpa, tell him we miss him, too.