Chasing Lightning Bugs Studio Blog

i guess i can't avoid this any longer. friday was a sad day around here. we had to bury our little thieving cat, crabby. she died in her sleep on the neighbor's porch. she had come home the night before. jumped up on the windowsill in the kitchen to eat and drink. i thought that maybe she was coming out of her strange wild phase that she's had for the past few summers. and was coming back home like she's been doing every fall. but i suppose she was coming home to say goodbye.
tom left work.....i hated texting him the words 'crabby's dead'. but that's all i could get out. i was sitting on the front stoop of the studio with her wrapped in a blue towel, on a green wooden chair, with a little tortie foot peeking out. the mid afternoon sun baking down on us. feeling empty and sad. and then tom was there, lifting her and carrying her to the crabapple tree. he knew just what to do. where to put her. under her favorite bench, under her favorite tree. it was a hot humid day and he dug through the hard earth, digging through roots with sweat dripping off his nose. and then he went hunting through her pilfered stash to find the perfect one of her stolen treasures to keep her company. a little knit purple and white rabbit. and one of the last of her gifts, a yellow plastic rose that she left in the back of the yard about a month ago, sits on her grave with a heavy gravestone.
i haven't been able to write on her blog yet.....i feel like there is more of her story to tell. although the stolen treasures have stopped arriving in the yard, i think her gifts will continue.