Friday morning

Still missing my buddy.

I realize I never had any real sense of his mortality. I had somehow kidded myself, on some non-rational level, that he would live forever, and I had a certain amount of emotional equity invested in that. He was my touchpoint to sanity when things got too crazy for me in the outside world, but that somehow led me to view him irrationally - as if he were some sort of leprechaun or Puck who would always be present in my life.

Every living thing comes into this world, stays a short time, and then is gone. We humans make a big deal of our existence because we're so self-centered, but compared to the mountains and the sky, even the longest-lived of creatures is here for just an instant.

I valued Beasley for his consistency in an inconsistent world, but as I look back on it, Beasley was not all that consistent. He was certainly less consistent than Smudge. He was prone to spells of depression where he would sit in a corner, facing the wall, for a day or two or three. He would occasionally go outside for days at a time and refuse to come in. He was much more likely to pee in the laundry or a shoe than the other cats. Smudge can be irascible and grouchy, but Beasley was much more likely to be passive-aggressive.

Two of the hang-around cats, Binker and Grey, have come in and now don't want to go back out, so I'm back up to my three-cat indoor staff.