Little Greetings

July 20, 2026 Bernadette

Basil shows off his whiskers while he naps.

Some little greetings from a few kitties left where I could find them? What and where they were made me take notice.

Somehow there was a tiny downy feather in one of the slippers I wear when I’m working in the basement. I never wear them outdoors. It’s possible one stuck to the sole of my foot when I was outside barefoot and it stayed on until I got to my worktable in the basement and put them on then rubbed off onto my slipper. Or purrhaps it’s that little feline magic of a greeting from them through something I might recognize.

A little greeting from a feather in my slipper.

None of the other cats come down to the basement when I’m working anymore. I’m not sure if there’s a reason for it or if they just changed their habits. My worktable can be pretty cluttered and busy but it’s always been that way and never seemed to get in anyone’s way. I constantly scroll past photos of heaps of cats on the worktable, in the big cloud bed, just lying around on the mats that cover the surface, lining up on the edge to watch me. After so many cats there dwindled to none it’s a little jarring. It’s probably one of the reasons I don’t get as much work done down there as I used to, even as I’m spending more time down there than I used to and creating more and more different things than before.

I’ll take it as a little bit of encouragement. Not sure if it’s any one particular cat, like Mimi who probably spent the most time with me, or all of them. That’s just the little tingle I felt when I saw it.

My slippers look a little ragged inside because Bella finds the material they’re made of to be a fine scratching material.

Calming Collars

Mr. Max's calming collar right where I'd see it. — Mr. Max’s calming collar right where I’d see it.

That’s one of Mr. Max’s calming collars on the rug by my foot. I have no idea how it got to that particular place but I know where it came from.

I had him wear them to help him feel more comfortable outside of the studio even as far back as 2023, the purple ones, then changed brands to the white ones in 2024 to see if slightly less expensive ones worked as well for him and Morty and for Basil too, and they did, until Mr. Max in 2025 learned how to take them off.

But we lost him on August 29 last year. In March last year he apparently learned how to remove that style and after removing two of them, and stashing them somewhere I wouldn’t find them, because I didn’t, I didn’t replace it. He had started spending more time downstairs, exploring more, and even though there was some hissing here and there he worked it out. Possibly he was removing them to let me know because he felt he didn’t need them anymore and that was how he let me know that too.

Last autumn, when I cleaned and reorganized that studio, I found one of his collars behind my materials cabinet. I held it for a while and decided I’d keep it somewhere in the studio. I ended up hanging it on the side of my easel where I could look at it as I worked and think of Mr. Max, who loved to be right there while I was working.

I don’t know how it fell from where it was to where it ended up, though. And if it fell straight down it would have ended up beside my easel, between the easel and the table next to it, because the front and back legs swing apart like an “A.”

It doesn’t matter. I felt the same tingle when I saw it. I’ll take it.

That’s one of Basil’s calming collars, one of the older purple ones he wore for years as he is in the lead photo in this post, that showed up right there on the floor some months ago. I hung it on one of the knobs on the tripod I have stashed in that corner. I don’t use that tripod very often but I know there wasn’t a calming collar on the floor there the last time I pulled it out, which was after we lost Basil in December 2024. And I don’t know how the collar ended up on the floor where I could see it. But I was glad to see a little hello from Basil, and felt that same little tingle when I picked it up.

It’s not surprising that calming collars might be an intentional greeting because both of them struggled with insecurities from earlier in their lives, and it was something I shared with each of them for as long as I knew them. It was part of the bond we had.

So much

I’m not surprised these small everyday things seem notable in my life right now. The amount of loss and all the complications of it still feel very recent in many ways. I’m grateful I have this time where I’m less busy in some ways, and less public with very few commercial customers anymore, just a once a week market, so I can take some time each day to let memories return and remember each individual cat in a space they loved. I’d rather they were here sharing this “quiet time” after all the years of busy days and nights, but I’m so glad a stored up a lot of memories for later all those years.

Pet Loss in the First Person

From the time I began writing about my experiences in pet loss, relating what I was feeling and thinking about it as I moved through grief, readers have thanked me, often in private, for my honesty, grateful to know another shared their feelings as they moved through grief, or helped them make a decision.

Thank you for following our grief journey after losing three members of our feline family.

I hope sharing our experiences have helped you in some way, as sharing my experiences with you helps me.

You can read all the articles related to their loss by tapping one of these images in the side bar and in articles.

Read more articles about Pet Loss in the First Person, my personal losses, about Pet Loss and other Essays on The Creative Cat.

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Copyright

All images and text used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission, although links to your site are more than welcome and are shared. Please ask if you are interested in using and image or story in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of an image or a product including it, check my animal and nature website Portraits of Animals to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit Ordering Custom Artwork for more information on a custom greeting card, print or other item.