The Wind And The Wynne

(Note: My landlady owns an animal shelter and I have an apartment above the garage of her home which is just up the hill. She herself has quite a few fur and feather here but there can also be a good bit of traffic from the shelter, a sort of half-way house if you will).

They started out as a Fabulous Five, a litter of inseparables that began here at the house along with their very noisy, very scrawny momma-cat, made their way down to the shelter and then, after one had found a home, returned uptop to the sunroom, though a little ring wormy, as a Force of Four, then it was back down to the shelter again, to isolate that ring wormyness, then a sad loss of a little long hair, to a now Thing of Three and then another to a new home and a Tale of Two who made their way back here once again, one more new home and then to just a One of One, White Nose, or as I called him, Wynne. White Nose – “W” N” – Win – Wynne.

It was a name, really, just for me as he wasn’t around long enough for the introduction of it to Celie and her son Matt or to get comfortable with it as we had to say goodbye to him earlier this week. But, and as I’ve mentioned in the past, he needed a name. Everyone needs a name, even if it would have been simpler to just not give him one as having to just say goodbye to “kitten” would have been so much easier.

I also shouldn’t say “we” when it came to the saying goodbye. I wasn’t there for it, I was a coward. Matt was there. He was the “we”. He cried, and he’s been through this kind of thing before. I tried to distance myself remembering my Blink, that damned little dynamo of kitty humor and life, who bounced and bounded everywhere she went, with china shop abandon, and, though she was with me for less than six months, just broke my heart when she left. I mean, really crushed me and I’VE been through this kind of thing before. So when Celie told me Wynne’s time was probably short I opted just for the attention he cried for in the mornings when I would make my way downstairs, his belly now a pufferfish, picking him up to just cradle him and then I would walk away. Did I mention that I was a coward?

In my weak defense though, he wasn’t like Blink. Though he spent some time with me in my place he much preferred to be downstairs, much preferred Celie and Matt and the crazy of the dogs and pups (the youngest of which loved him to a pulp) and the other cats to the confines of my apartment with the old girls. Blink, on the other hand, loved our/my spot and owned this place in her short time. Plus, Wynne liked being able to go outside, no, he LOVED being able to go outside. A spot in the sun, a patch of grass, with a bit of a breeze, a Wynne found wind at the top of this Celie Manor of Fur and Feather on a Hill? That was Wynne’s glory.

Why do I even write of this, of a kitten who wasn’t going to escape a cat disease? One who wasn’t here all that long, barely 6 months and wasn’t mine? Especially after I’ve written a remembrance for all of my fur who were, but who spent way more time? I don’t know. Celie will tell you she’s inured to this kind of thing now, after all her years of running an animal shelter, of being on the recieving end of fur stories that don’t end well, of the wildlife that is dropped at her door because of heartlessness or stupidity or the cruel reality that we humans can pose or with a finality clearly evident or a future that will require constant care. But I know that even though she may claim otherwise she always holds out hope and that is why she does what she does to such great effect and that’s why some of the wanting end up here. She knows that some of them land in the middle and come out the otherside. In that gray area of the maybe not definite. Thus the maybe Wynne.

She’s often told me how Wynne’s litter of kits was special, how she’s never come across one just like it, one so full of personality and kitty wit and she’s got quite a history with such so you take that telling to heart, gospel. If you had walked into the sunroom during the Force of Four’s stay here you would have been overwhelmed with the noisy rush of fur to your feet like a gray wave ready to drown you in cat happy.

And Wynne was always the first one you noticed, the first one you picked out in that original Fabulous Five, the one you picked out in the Force of Four, the one you picked out period with his distinctive, handsome little white nose. He was the one who stood out. And if you didn’t pick him out? He’d let you know it.

I think I write of him, even though his here was for such a short time, because I and Celie and Matt hoped, beyond hope, that maybe he might have been in the middle, and maybe could have come out that otherside.

And maybe I write of him because … oh, well, just because. Because he deserves a few words after having not been given a chance.

Wynne.