Today I delivered my little foster Mo kitty to her new home. She’s had a rough road but she’s now a normal, horrid little kitten who feels wonderful, and I miss her terribly even though she kept breaking everything she came into contact with. She’s been at my side 24/7 for over five weeks now, and it’s a huge adjustment to not have her sweet little face peering at me from her perch on my shoulder.

I also made the very difficult decision to move my kitty Vincent to the store in the hopes of adopting him out.

His unprovoked aggression toward Miss Dinah Fantastico has been increasing, and Sunday afternoon he tried to kill her. I think he would’ve succeeded if I hadn’t gotten him off of her (and been bitten in the process)–it was frightening and left me very shaken up for the rest of the day. My mood has been pretty decent the past couple of weeks I’ve been off a medication (which really deserves its own post–I think I’m leaning toward risking long term physical health problems if it means I stop wanting to kill myself all the time), but I crashed pretty hard after that and I’ve been crying for two days straight.

I know, logically, that I’d never intended to keep him–I brought him in because he was an abandoned pet and it was winter, and just couldn’t find anyone to take him–and in some ways he always felt like a visitor. I know, logically, that I have spent two years trying to get his aggression under control both medically and behaviorally to no avail. And I know, logically, that if he ever succeeded in killing Dinah or causing lasting damage, I would never forgive myself and likely never recover.

It doesn’t change the fact that I feel like I’ve failed him. That if I just work harder, I’ll find the key that makes him fit in here.

But really, that’s been part of the problem: I’ve known since last year that he needs to be in a different home, but I’ve tried to manage the symptoms and after prolonged periods without incident–which only happen because I keep them physically separated so much–I start to minimize it, to believe I can manage this.

So I have to do this now when the terror and physical scars on both Dinah and me from Sunday’s episode are still fresh.

Between him and Mo kitty, my heart is entirely broken.

And I genuinely wonder how I encounter so many cats on a daily basis who have been abandoned by people–how anyone can just discard them like they mean nothing. Family pets who were doted on as kittens but kicked out the door in adulthood. Even knowing this is the best option for him, I am so ashamed and angry with myself. How do these people live with themselves? How can they look at these innocent creatures and cast them aside like garbage? How can they devote months if not years to them and then abandon them?

The inhumanity of humans enrages me sometimes, yet I still feel like a bigger monster than them all knowing that I’ve left him in a strange place and he doesn’t realize I’ll be back to see him again tomorrow (and the day after, and the day after, until someone falls in love with him as I did).

He will go nowhere less than the very best of homes, but that’s little comfort tonight as I miss him.

I’m on the board of directors of a not-for-profit, and I ended up taking home one our charges on Saturday to observe over the weekend before I could get her to a vet. She’s going tomorrow morning to be checked out, but in the meantime she’s now eating well and looking a lot brighter.

Her name is Mo, and she’s very tiny, very adorable, and very likely to improve your Monday.

Tonight’s the night, y’all.

I think this feeling is…excitement? Nervous excitement, like it’s Christmas and my birthday and someone else’s book release day that I am inexplicably stupidly excited for and anticipating. It’s difficult to describe, as I don’t really get excited about–or happy for–things anymore, but this definitely fits the bill, I think?

I’ve taken the long weekend off to write (major progress fixing some things in Livi #3 on Friday; not so much yesterday; trying to get new words in today and tomorrow–and it’s funny how being able to focus on writing makes me, however briefly, able to stop thinking about not being alive for a time, right?), with my scheduled Twin Peaks viewing tonight at 9pm. I pulled out the cherry pie I’ve kept in my freezer for a month, got some donuts (I don’t even really like sweets, but IT IS TWIN PEAKS NIGHT), will brew some coffee (black as midnight on a moonless night, tyvm), and I’m making brie and butter baguette sandwiches.

I’m trying to keep my hopes and expectations reasonable; I have nearly twenty-six years of head-canon built up, and Lynch’s works never go the way I’d expect them to. But as long as Good Dale makes his way out of the lodge, I think I will be satisfied.

If you’re watching tonight, feel free to @ me on Twitter and we can obsess over it. <3

I have no idea where tonight will lead us, but I have a definite feeling t will be a place both wonderful and strange.

In the meantime I’ll fall again down the rabbit hole of Audrey/Cooper fanvids…

OR IN SEVEN HOURS!!!!

The past two years, I’ve unfortunately been to a lot of funerals. I realize part of it is my age (mid-thirties), when the loss of people in one’s familial and social circle becomes more common, and that this will become more common is something to adjust to. But it was easy to begin to see death as always something that came too soon—particularly in the case of my niece, who did not see her thirtieth birthday, and I must be getting old because losing Aunt Judy at sixty seems so young to me now.

But my grandpa passed away early morning this past Wednesday, however, reminding those who loved him that death can also be the natural conclusion of a long life well-lived.

My grandfather, Clifford Charles Purdy, was born July 4 in 1914. And no, that year is not a typo; he was nearly one-hundred-and-three when he passed. He oversaw a century of change—not merely technologically but medically, his eldest child being crippled by polio just before the first vaccines were made available. (And to think in his lifetime he saw both vaccines rise in use and now fall again disturbs me often.)

While in recent years he had normal short term memory issues and various health issues throughout the years, there was no drawn-out illness that plagued him. Right up until he broke his hip last month, he lived by himself in his own home still (thanks in no small part to my aunt’s dedication in checking on him and his pets daily).

Grandpa was a true example that a sharp mind does not need to come from traditional education; during his youth, it was common for kids to not finish school (I’m not even talking secondary school; I mean eighth grade) for a variety of reasons, but that never stopped him from often being the smartest man in the room. He taught himself the fiddle in his youth, he debated politics with my father for hours. He was the only other writer in the family that I’m aware of, and had serialized short stories published in local papers in his youth, as well as poetry. (I have always wanted to read these, but if copies still exist, I’ve never seen them.)

His home was filled with artwork and needlework by his sister, with photos of his many grandchildren and great-grandchildren looking up from frames on most surfaces, and his bookshelves held copies of some of my books as well. He read an early copy of Solomon’s Seal in 2013, and said with a sigh that I was never going to be a bestseller with all the cursing in my books, but this is the same man who kept copies of newspaper articles I wrote in high school twenty years ago, so I’ve no doubt of his pride in me regardless of my frequent use of “motherfucker”. He had tremendous compassion for his grandchildren (checking in frequently when I was seriously ill three years ago), and was natural in his role as family patriarch.

For Grandpa, pride in his appearance—both physically and metaphorically—was paramount. He was always a snappy dresser, looking his best no matter where he was, and even in the hospital his first concern was whether his hair was combed and he looked presentable. (He, of course, looked fantastic, and still had great hair.)

With his special Akubra hat sent by my friend Danni for his 100th birthday.

He had been a church-going man most of his life—which might be why my mother gave up trying to take me to Sunday school as a kid, she knew what it was like to be dressed up and made to go every week, and took pity on me—and that continued even into his later years. I even remember his look of disappointment when I was in my late teens and explained that I didn’t go to church because I didn’t believe in that kind of thing.

Then some years ago, he and I were sitting at his kitchen table, discussing the paranormal and spirituality. If I recall correctly, there might’ve been beer—at happy hour. And he said when he was a young man—about eighteen—he read Darwin’s Origin of Species, and that made a lot of sense to him, and he decided that evolution was true and when we die we die.

And I looked at him and blinked for a moment, processing this, and asked him a few more questions. It turns out my church-going grandfather—who, at that point, still went every Sunday—had been an atheist for the past seventy years. But putting on his Sunday best, meeting with the community, and taking part in that ritual was very much part of who he was, even if he personally was highly skeptic.

I do believe this was one instance where my very smart grandfather was perhaps incorrect, though.

Shortly after his hip surgery last month, when he came out of the anesthesia, he described for my aunt the party he’d gone to the night before.

Far left, Grandpa’s brother Jim; middle left, Grandpa. Date on the back is 1932.

Grandpa had survived nearly all of his family, except for his cousin who was in a nursing home and also over one hundred years old (about one-hundred-and-five, I think?). And at this party, his whole family was there. His mother and father, his brothers, his sister with a cat under her arm (look, I told you I come from a long line of crazy cat ladies), his wife. Everyone there was already dead except he said his still-living cousin was in attendance.

Later that day, my aunt came home to a phone call, however, that said cousin had died in the night.

That dead people party (with bonus cats) has fascinated me for weeks, the idea that everyone has been waiting for him, and I hope on some level when he passed, he remembered that feeling of joy and sense of going home. And while his living family celebrates his life tomorrow at his funeral, perhaps everyone who has already passed is celebrating him as well. This is one death where it’s difficult to be truly sad, because he lived independently on his own terms, he lived an amazing life and passed peacefully, and he taught the people around him how to live with grace and dignity. His life is one I think we all aspire to, all wish our loved ones could have, a lengthy time in this world to do good and then get to rest at last.

I would say “Rest in Peace”, but I expect it’s now happy hour in the afterlife, and he’s partying instead.

Goodbye, Grandpa. Please ask Aunt Marjorie to bring some cats when the party eventually comes for me too.