It was just about this time 9 years ago that I moved from a little 2 bedroom 3rd floor place in Hyde Park, NY with really cool 2nd and 1st floor neighbors who said Hi, seemed to genuinely listen to “How are you?” responses and kept an eye for me and we bonded because I said Hi and listened back, and kept an eye for them as well and we all had pets to talk about when regular human stuff was just too maddeningly dumb to discuss without invoking discontented spirits.
2nd floor Tara and Blake had Reilly and Little Foot (cats in come home wave windows) and 1st floor Brenda and Bob had Sandy (dog in grass patch come home pets) and I had Bella and Shoes and then eventually Bella and Grayson. It was a wonderful little place and the moving away came, as it often does, for financial reasons, as the apt complex was going to be upping the rent on all the units only my job, though it most surely got the memo, just refused to acknowledge the memo and the idea of maybe trying to keep pace with the ever rising expense of the world, still hasn’t as a matter of fact thus I would eventually move again from this really nice little bigger place to where I am now for just that very same reason, or one of them.
But first it’s that nice little bigger place I want to talk about here and what came from it and what I’ve just had to had to say goodbye to.
Finding it came about through a friend at work and was where I would spend the next six years above the garage of a rather large house on a hill with a very cool landlady and soon friend, Celie, and a boatload of fur and even some feather.
I’ve written of this place often, the wonder of it in a Dr Doolittle sort of way as Celie owned an animal shelter just down the hill from the house but her house itself held it’s own when it came to housing fur and I would soon meet all of them and get to know all of their names which at first seemed an impossible task until it just, well, wasn’t, and that was one of the coolest of feelings you could imagine and that’s when I truly felt as if I fit in.
I got to know the dogs more quickly simply because to get to the stairs to my place I had to go in through the garage and into the mud room and the mud room was their spot, replete with an old couch, dog beds and cages with more dog beds and that’s also where I had to immediately brave-up as there were quite a number of dogs, some of which were on the dauntingly large side. I think I was pretty safe in the silent prayer that no one was going to eat me but still, you could have doubts when faced with the sisters, Eve and Senta, knowing that if they stood on their hind legs Grimm’s Big Bad Wolf would cut and run right then and there leaving a trail of pee with the witch not far behind.
The cats were fairly easy, it was just a matter of getting accustomed to each one’s personal boundary quirks without bleeding and also locales as there were the front porch cats, the garage cats, the house cats (in and out) the back porch cats and the sunroom cats. It was this last spot where I met a cat named Cricket, who Celie informed me was blind and mostly deaf and, after giving her a pet to introduce myself I picked her up and she immediately settled herself very comfortably on my shoulder with her head behind my ear.
It wasn’t too long into my stay here that I came to help Celie out with the gang on nights where she wasn’t going to be around by feeding everyone and I would make sure to spend some extra time in the sunroom when I got to Cricket who was always much more interested in that head behind my ear than she was in whatever was getting put in her bowl.
Then about 6 months into my stay I was talking with Celie and she told me that someone had dropped off a racoon at the shelter, in a box, with a cat bed and cat toys. Apparently, that someone had come across a young racoon with no mother around and thought to raise it until they realized the whole idea wasn’t as cute as they probably envisioned it to be and Celie said she was going to bring the poor thing up to the house and put him in the sunroom for the weekend until she could get him to her racoon-lady friend. Celie had a lot of particular animal-lady/animal-guy specialist friends. There was a bit of a concern though with a blind Cricket being in the sunroom with the young Racoon so I offered to take her upstairs for the weekend to make sure she was alright.
That was an 8 and half year weekend.
Now, admittedly, I knew that if Cricket came upstairs with me that there was no way I was going bring her back to the sunroom, not after getting a chance escape the din and busy of the downstairs and have a human all to herself. Bella wasn’t a huge fan and Grayson found her too weird for his liking but once she got some of her (things I would soon grow accustomed to) counter clockwise stress circles and some of her meows that sounded as if she was trying to raise the dead out of the way she settled down and started to take measure of this new world … and eventually to splash the shit out of the water in water bowls (a thing I would also grow accustomed to and spend quite a dollar on pee-pads because of).
Then, when I put her on the bed and sat her next to me, she did a little stretch with her back up against my leg and she was set. Over the next 8+ years there were only a few handful of nights where she didn’t have a shoulder to fall asleep on and I didn’t have a blind Linus blanky of cat to comfort me through my often furtive sleep.
Well, I had to say goodbye to that comfort, to my my Miss Cricket, this past week and I’ve been pretty messy over it especially as she had an issue with her mouth that I had made an appt to be seen but now kick myself for not just calling to get her in earlier. I know she had already started to slow down and I was worried for her then, a month or so ago, with her weight dropping, and she was already a featherweight, and I had her in to be seen then, but I should have brought her right back when I realized there may have been something with a tooth and it’ll take me some time to get over feeling like I failed her at the end.
She was though 17 or 18 years old maybe older, Celie estimated back when she had come upstairs with me to be around 8 and that was a rough estimate. And when I called Celie to let her know of Cricket’s passing as it was very important to me that I do so, even though she and I hadn’t talked since I moved out, she was saddened of course but happily surprised that her girl Cricket had found just the right human and thrived.
I know we’ve all dealt with this loss, me quite few times, and it is awful and heart wrenching and so amazingly difficult when there are no words to exchange, just hoping that something from the years together travels from one to another with a semblance of understanding, just hoping that love carries the hardest of days and there is a knowing.
And it leaves such a gaping hole and with Cricket that hole is a little bigger but I will always be proud of what I was able to offer her and what, she offered me in return. I was astounded everyday by her resilience and her smarts, her blind wandering spirit, the way she took in a breeze, either in a window or sitting outside, a little differently than other cats, like it just seemed to mean more to her,
the way she knew I had entered the room even if I were 10 feet away because she felt the air move and how that stirred her, with a cock of her head, to wake from her curl, the way she always knew by the smell and with her little brail cat wristwatch when it was dinner time … not hers, but mine and time to share it with me as she did every, single night.
She also over our years proved to be quite a muse, all of my gang have in one way or another been often subjects of posts here in the Attic, but none like Cricket who was a poet in her own right and an outlet for silly.
She was my subject when I experimented with poetic forms.
She had her own Blog once, just like the Attic, Cricket’s Cat Condo, where she posted her poetry that included comments from cat pals
She inspired many the poem …
A dVerse Poets quadrille from November of 2024 using the word “with”
I Alone … and Cricket the Cat (poem)
I alone
mostly
with intent
No sympathies fished
.
Alone
with company
only of a blind/deaf cat for dinner
and unknowing muse
of word’s dessert
.
Alone
I embrace Cricket’s solitude
as my own
with only laps and words
Needed for us to feel
in tandem
//////////////////////////////////////////
Another dVerse Poets quadrille from Decemeber of 2025. The word to use was “Hibernate”
Shared
Cricket the Cat can trouble
sleep
too with me
not sure which causes the other
if at all
possibly
blind antsy cat angst
or my equal dreading closed eye finds
shared
only to hold her to my chest
to hibernate together
closer
in kind
//////////////////////////////////////////
She has been a member of the Frankenberry Synchronized Cat Laying Team, parts 1 & 2.
PART 2
She could even get a little spooky for the Halloween Season …
I will miss you so dearly Miss Cricket, even Bella, who kept you at arms length all these years, will miss you. She’s been, I think, like or dislike Cricket, feeling your loss even just from the simplest of notions of absent company, the simplest of comforts of missing another being sharing your world and for Bella, you shared hers for more than half of her 14 years so it’s more than just simples.
No, I know that there’s something a little more there as she has barely moved off of the cat bed on the futon that, though rarely, only you slept in.
Love ya kid,
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