Sweets Hill

(this place didn’t have a name, but it does now, at least for me)

They’re all special of course. All of our fur that mean so much to us, that provide us so much comfort. Fur that remind us of our human and give us reason to come home. There are obviously people reasons as well (though don’t flatter yourselves, the recommendations you may come with are often vastly inflated) but sometimes there is fur that just transcends.

Sweets came about this place motherless along with Toons, tiny little fox pups that Celie took in as she always does with any that need a place to be saved from the not to be saved.

Sweets? The name? I thought of Sweet, a favorite 70’s band and their biggest of hits that I played endlessly on 45 to my mom’s sure headache back then, the obvious “Fox On The Run”, obvious to me at least, though I guess I’m dating myself there. Celie added the “S”. Perfect.

Toons? He had something of an oversized cartoon looking noggin when he was small and he had/has issues that were best left to cartoon. There was also another added “S”, Toon to Toons. His issues led him to his spot with an occasional parade of puppy pals up the hill. He couldn’t be allowed to fend for himself but still, he found a place to lord.

Sweets though, could fend for herself … until she couldn’t.

She could grab this hill and own it. And she did.

There was a magic with Sweets, a happy innocence, an almost romantic thing (for those that may allow) that gave you insight to what could be just minus the conversation, a watching her from my kitchen window as she waited, on so many mornings, sitting in the sun around the backyard pool, or hangin’ with her cow buds, for the release of her friends out the back kitchen door from the confines of a night’s sleep for a bit of play.  A waiting then skittery screaching laughter as she ran with the gang. That magic, innocent, romantic thing. A Sweets never been seen before run the hill kind of thing.

After Celie’s bottle feeding of her and her adopted brother she eventually came to be part of the house, Toons as well, though his was more a small corner.

But Sweets ran around her corner and through the gamut of cats and dogs in the house, underneath a Bella the Bird, a speedy, check check arm’s length run around the kitchen on a daily basis into the living room and then into the sun room until she discovered the sun room’s cat door.

There was a come and go for a little bit and then there was a hill.

Her hill.

I never knew where she was on this hill, except on those mornings. I just know that she was Sweets and this was hers. I always imagined her, like my found stray Grayson in his time before I convinced him to come inside, sitting on some high spot surveying her lands, her holdings.

For just the pure romance of the thought maybe they’ll tell stories of you Sweets, those that come about this hill in the future knowing only of legend, only a simple sign “SWEETS HILL” tacked and hanging  askew on a decrepit old house, like some scene out of a cliche’d post Armageddon flick, legends of a pretty, sleek fox who ran with cows and horses and dogs and cats, who skittered and fox giggled with utter abandon around these holdings letting all that came to pass know that it was hers.

Maybe.

A bubble.

A bubble of time where things didn’t change and she was just Sweets, for the longest of stretch, a glorious time it seems now. Sweets who was there waiting on these mornings to run with her friends, while also waiting for a handful of breakfast. An everyday where Celie and I would note her yes or no comings and goings and wonder of her happy and also note with concern if she missed a comings.

A bubble.

You missed a comings Sweets, inside this bubble.

Bubbles burst as I held you in my arms, both of us broken, the first and only time you let me touch you.

Dammit. God dammit.

Sweets, you were a wonder. A magic. An innocent.

Mornings will never be quite the same on your hill.