In Memorium

And overdue.

Last fall, September, to be exact, our big fat cat died. Zeek, aka Large Marge, had been Under-the-Weather and Feeling-Her-Age-and Weight most of the summer, and finally, her fat ol' body just couldn't do more.

She stopped eating. She wasn't drinking. She wasn't playing, or moving, or fighting, or ANYTHING.

It was sad. She was very sick, and there was no hope. She shrunk from approximately 25-27lbs to 11lbs in a matter of days.

The things we miss:

Being met at the door when you came home. Meowing a "bless you" when you sneezed. Stepping around her dead-groundhog-by-the-roadside body when she was found a particularly nice napping place. Pacing between us and the in-trouble Howler, because she was going to make sure Her Girl was okay. Hearing her purr, rooms and sometimes rooms and a staircase away. Begging from the supper table (or worse, strolling across the table during supper--BAD KITTY!) Cat feathers all over the carpet...Daily.

The Howler, even as a pinchy-touchy-grabby toddler held a special place in that Cat's heart: Zeek never, ever deliberately scratched or bit Our Girl, unless she absolutely had no choice--and could effect her escape no other way. Zeek also missed Our Girl when she wasn't at home.

Zeek will also be sadly missed by:

• various pizza delivery persons, who always said, "Tha's the bigges' cat ah've ever seen in mah whooooole life."
• the neighbor's Jack Russell terrier, Bo, whom she would torture by sitting just out of his reach, and not moving until/unless he lost interest in barking at her.
• neighborhood children who would, upon meeting Zeek and our other black cat, Scout, would see one, then the other, and think that Zeek had magic powers for changing her size and fur length.

A Rose By Any Other Name

The other day, the Howler's take-home papers included a green page of practice printing. Her printing is improving.

She was told to put her name on it, apparently, first and last, and she printed her abbreviated first name, followed by "Mumple"

She said "Mumple" is much easier to spell. That one letter difference between that and her legal last name must be a killer.

Maybe You Had To Be There

Second graders now journal. At least, the Howler's class does.

It's fantastic--and I'm serious. It's always a pick-me-up on a bad day to dig out what she's written in her journal.

The journal pages have prompts on them, and believe me when I say my girl is NOT into thinking over-much on what she's going to write. She spent the month of November writing about the picture at the bottom of the page.

The ones that prompt about her parents are the best. If it asks what "my parents don't like me to do" she'll list the neighborhood children she's not to play with. If it asks what she would do if she were her parents, she says, "go ise scatting"

The best ever, though, came in December's--which came home today. It prompted, "Before I go to bed I" and she finished the sentence with "mucky fart"

The creative spelling is adorable, but seeing her father's quirky slang is about the best thing I've ever encountered. It even beats the time she kept asking "Where's Daddy?" and after the zillionth time she asked, I told her "he exploded." So she ran to the basement door and yelled down to him, "Daddy, you ploded?" (it was hilarlious how she said it, added to the fact that he had absolutely no clue what she was saying or why she was saying it.)

Maybe you had to actually be here to appreciate it.

Finally!

The Howler is 7 3/4 years old. And this year, she finally decided to not be totally freaked out by Santa.

Her first Christmas (at 9 months) she was freaked out by even an overstuffed chair in the shape of Santa. We have pictures of her sliding off it, with a look of abject terror on her face.

When she was 2, Santa was not not not allowed in our house. Gifts or no gifts, he wasn't coming in. She didn't sleep the week before Christmas, knowing that we were lying when we promised that he wouldn't come in. Gifts were put on the porch about 1am, and dragged inside while the Howler stood on the steps watching. She wouldn't even come all the way downstairs until she witnesses for her own self that Ol' St Nick hadn't been in the house.

When she was 4, I took her to WalMart for pictures. The photographer made her cry when she said, "Now we'll take your picture with HoHo, okay?" Poor photographer girl was totally thrown when the Howler went into shrieking hysterics--I kept saying, "it's just a picture! it's just a picture" and you can see in those portraits that the Howler wasn't entirely sure we weren't going to have Santa pop out of the canvas to get her.

She's less afraid of vampires and goblins and ghoulies at Halloween. And the Easter Bunny was never a problem. Apparently, my Howler keyed in on the fact that normal people do not like OPK so overly much, and anyone bearing gifts with no strings attached is up to no good.

She also believed that I, her mother, was in on the conspiracy.

At 5, she watched her brother pull on a Santa suit over his street clothes. During every step of the process, she asked, "Is dat weally you in dere?" Backing up one foot at a time, until she was attached to me like ugly on an ape while asking. By the time he got to the beard, she was wide-eyed with terror, clinging to me for dear life.

The girl's got issues.

I have one picture of her with Santa--from 2008, with Blondie in it too. Blondie's grandma thought I was insane when I handed her money (she said she wanted to take them to the Mall to see Santa) and insisted that if the Howler got anywhere near Santa to get a picture. And that I didn't care who else was in the picture with them. Period.

We tried to take her to see Santa in a low-pressure sort of way. But even walking in the nearest mall door to his setup put her into Clingon Mode. Once, just once, I got her to walk past the guy and wave. And I paid for that for a week of endless questioning, stressing over whether or not that was too close for comfort.

This year (or last year, such as the case may be) her father took her to the mall for some Christmas shopping. He got her near Santa--near enough to get a picture of her with him. Just the two of them.

She decides, just at the time when our Santa days are numbered, to be okay with the guy. Go figure.