Little Poems For Ellie

You trace an unformed square
with your footsteps
lightly walking
the four corners of my bed,
jump at my pillow
walk to my right foot
across
to the left
and up to the other side
of my head.

What will I do without
our rituals?
Your licking of my ankles,
legs, arms, after a shower,
your push of any closed door
I dared to hide behind,
your rustle and tear
of errant paper or plastic--
always knowing
how to master my attention.

What will I do without
your jump up to the food chair,
paws perched on the arm
in anticipation, chirping.

What will I do without the soft
cool sweetness of your ear,
the smooth roundness of your paws,
the milky white chin
your warm body resting
between my breasts.

What will I do
without the one
who always loves me
no matter what?
________________

I can't imagine my life
without you
always said it would be
the worst with you
but I see you laying listless,
eyes glazed
semi-conscious,
your little heart beating hard,
your jagged walk---
how can this happen so fast?
Your breathing slowed,
you crawl away
to a cool patch of floor
while I press the whole
palm of my hand
against you, over and over,
I don't know if more
for me
or for you.
_________________

I vacuum, and in ten minutes
you've pulled out 20 tufts
of fur and spread them
all over the carpet.
You pee on the floor
by accident,
rip holes in the duvet
with your claws,
wake me up 3 times,
knock bottles off
the bedside table,
vomit in the dark.

But you cuddle
under the blanket
your sweet chirping
conversation
and tinkling of those
caged ball bells
and purrrrrrrr
while staring at me
with the funny bug eyes,
makes me forget
all the rest.
______________

I remember the two of you
tiny kittens
that first night home--
I came into the bedroom
to find you curled
together in a circle,
ying yang,
in the center of my bed.
______________

I don't want
this jagged hole
cut into me
not ready
no
never will be
don't want this dead
emptiness
inability to eat
or sleep or think
all a fog
and then the waves
surfacing
from nowhere
sobs in my car,
at my desk,
at the kindness
the sympathy of my friends--
don't want the crater
gouged into me
where you once
were.
_____________

I love that you
let me stroke the bottoms
of your paws, kiss your nose,
finger your ears, rub
underneath your chin,
pet your belly,
scratch just above
the tail, curl my arm
around your rounded body
as we sleep.

David's Thoughts About Ellie...

(David wrote this and posted it on his blog...)

At seven o'clock yesterday morning the tops of the tallest trees and steeples in my neighborhood disappeared into a fog that, hiding the highrises, obscured the last one hundred years or so of construction in Buffalo and charmed me with a little century-old illusion of a city as Stanford White and Frederick Law Olmsted and E.B. Green and Frank Lloyd Wright and god intended it.

Brenda and I had to pick up Ellie from the weekend and overnight emergency vet clinic at Main and Kensington and take her to her usual vet on Sheridan. Eddie had been a frequent visitor there in his last years to get his blood sugar checked. It's a good thing that Ellie, whose visits to the vet were highly unpleasant for vet and cat alike, had never been sick as far as we could see. But cats are mysterious creatures. Every time Brenda brought Eddie home from the vet Ellie attacked him. "But what about all the times he attacked me?"

My last trip to the vet was three years ago to visit Eddie. He was very sick but he was still the same old Eddie. He couldn't wait to get out of that cage into Brenda's arms. He couldn't eat but he tried, he kind of licked at his food. He was hooked up to an IV but then so was I at the time -- I'd just come home from the hospital with a PIC line in my arm (a percutaneous intravenous catheter) -- to me it meant recuperation. Underweight and, under the influence of prednisone, hungry all the time, I waited a little bit guiltily for Brenda so we could go to Anderson's across the street. She didn't want to leave him. I bought her a sandwich but she couldn't eat it. I made her take it home. The next day she came back with her mother to be with Eddie in his final moments.

Ellie got very serene and lovie in her old age. Unthinkable a few years ago, she let me pick her up and hold her a couple times recently. She wasn't always like that. She used to hiss at me from time to time and hated it when Brenda went away and left her in my care. She moped for weeks when Eddie died. She sat in one spot in the middle of the apartment for hours. "I am not moving from this spot until you bring back Eddie."

She suddenly got sick on Sunday. I got to the emergency clinic in time to join them on the floor and wait for the vet. It was all she could do to pull herself up on her gimpy hindlegs and wander a few steps in search of a place to hide before collapsing on her side, her big eyes wide open unblinking and glassy. One whimpery little growl was all she could muster as the vet poked and prodded her and scooped her up off the floor like a ragdoll and took her away for bloodwork. "If I wasn't so sick I'd have this vets eye out in a second."

Yesterday morning when we picked her up to take her to Sheridan we got a little glimpse of the old Ellie when she didn't want to let Brenda put her in her carrier. So instead, though she hates the car almost as much as she hates the vet, she watched the foggy world whiz by as I drove and Brenda held her on her lap and cried the whole way. Maybe Ellie was thinking that wherever Eddie had gone, that's where she was finally going too.

We visited her in the afternoon. She looked a little better, a little more alert. I wanted to get her some furniture to rip up but she wouldn't have been up to that, she wouldn't even come out of her cage, though she did get up and move around a little and claw at Brenda's finger. We brushed her and stroked her and kissed her until she got tired of us. Then Brenda sang to her as she'd sang to Eddie and then we went home.

I don't believe in god or heaven or hell but I do believe that if there's some place where good cats go when they die it's the same place where bad mice go when they die and bad furniture goes when it dies and Eddie is there waiting to settle a score.

Ellie, sitting atop my headboard, which she liked to walk along as though it was a balance beam.  

Ellie when she was younger and chubbier.  

Ellie...

My beloved kitty died this morning. She was 15 1/2 years old. She was by my side everywhere I went. I am heartbroken...

And here we are together. I love this photo of us... 

Here she is just last week, always wanting to be petted.  

Here she is climbing up the screen...I don't have the energy to re-size this right now. She is not doing well. We have tonight and then to see how she is in the morning. That's all I can do right now is wait.  

Ellie in my dresser drawer 

Here is my favorite photo of her...the Princess Bug Eyes 

This is my 15 year old cat Ellie. I am posting this because she is very very ill. I don't know what will happen tomorrow...not even writing will make this any better...