Sometimes Memories Rhyme

For some reason I’ve always remembered this photo of my Kublai from sometime in May, 1996, with my Pentax film camera, looking at me through the frame of the bishop’s weed stems along the front walk, the warm late afternoon sun highlighting the rich mahogany tint in his fur so he’d stand out against the sunwashed leaves reflecting on his eyes, the same shade of pale green. Yes, all those details. There are times when I wish my memory for visual detail wasn’t so deep, but most of the time, and at moments like this, I am deeply grateful for my rich visual memory of these moments.

Especially when for years I thought I’d somehow lost this photo. Sometimes favorite photos do get lost because they aren’t “stored” or kept together with other similar things in one logical place. They end up on the refrigerator and then when you clean it off they go in a drawer, or maybe they go in a frame in the bedroom, but then you move cat things to the living room and things are separated or organized differently.

But his intent expression, focused on me, communicating, in that lovely setting, I absorbed each detail and could visualize it as if it was in front of me every May and June, the months when bishop’s weed sprouted its Queen Anne’s lace-like flowers and the sun came around the spruce to illuminate it all and create longer dark shadows underneath and behind. And Kublai sketched into the scene with burnt umber as the sun brushed just enough detail to put the shapes together and realize a rather large black cat was studying you.

This past winter when I dug into my bins of photos, at least now all bins and envelopes collected into the studio, I finally found the whole envelope separated from where it should be because I had it out for the reference photo for A Rosy Glow, painted in 1998, and along with finally finding these two photos of Kublai found others of Stanley and Allegro and Sophie that are just daily cat things but so precious now in memory.

What was he communicating? He would travel on to his next life on September 19 that year. His will was strong but his muscular body was weakening with a condition for which there was no diagnosis at that time, and which responded to palliative treatments until it didn’t. I felt him slipping away. He let me know he was holding firm, and he knew I was doing all I could to keep him here. But we were both aware of what might be ahead.

Below, another angle of him at that same moment, and in studying the negatives I see that I took this photo first, then likely walked around to the right, around the rhododendron still monopolizing that corner of the porch, to see if I could catch him behind that leafy cover and purrhaps between the stems of its blooms…and so I did.

One of the reasons this image came to mind so often in the past decade was that Mimi loved the front walk, especially when the sun came around and she could nibble her catnip and then roll around, curl up and nap on the warm concrete. So many times I resolved to find that photo and then photographed Mimi, unknowingly in many of the same places and postures. Here she is from May 2024; especially sweet because she would leave for her next life on August 10 that year. I know I had always tried to get a photo of Mimi to match the photo of Kublai in my memory and I was pretty sure I hadn’t achieved that. But little did I know that as I took photos of her through the years, especially during the months of her last summer, that there was a rhyme scheme between the eras.

And there she is in one of her pauses between visiting individual catnip plants, moving in and out of the sun and shade as we knew, as Kublai and I knew, that her will was as strong as it had ever been, but I also felt her slipping away.

And sometimes when I followed Mimi, and I know she tried to match what I was visualizing as she always did, it had always been her little game with me to read my mind and resist, and then find the spot and the pose I’d been imagining, I thought of them both as one being, one continuum of guidance and protection. Bridging them was Cookie, who was never in the front but definitely in the back yard and especially the garden, the three were all one powerful presence for me.

Below Mimi gives it one more try though she’s tired by now. I know that I never sensed that continuum, that lineage of cats who came into my life and played that role as I rescued and fostered others and learned and still learn my trades and continue to make this house a home, the rhyme pattern from one era to the next, until now, when I’m kind of on my own, but by now I should know how to be a grown up and not need guidance, right?

They may only be with me in memory, but they are always with me in the sun sparkles and deep shadows of late afternoon, tending to evening when the veil thins and we are, in a way, all together.

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Note: It’s likely Kublai had an auto-immune condition related to his severe allergy to flea bites from back in the decade before monthly topical treatments. Autoimmune disease had been identified in the 1950s and in the following decades puzzling human diseases were found to actually be autoimmune conditions, but study was focused on humans. It was no surprise when it turned out animals suffered from it as well and diagnoses began in the early 2000s. We’re pretty familiar with it now.

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Below, I’ve included my annual story of how Lucy brought Mimi, and with her the four siblings Mr. Sunshine, Mewsette, Giuseppe and Jelly Bean, to our feline family. There are no real beginnings and endings, but a continuum.

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Pet Loss Posts from Previous Years

July 10, 2007, We Lost Lucy, But She Brought Mimi

 Your petite silhouette lingers

long, graceful legs tipped with soundless slender paws

the waving tendril of a tail that curls in a perfect circle

as you pause in your eternal dance

and enrich my life,

awaken nascent creative visions

and laughter at the silly joy of youth,

yellow eyes illumining my world

leaving rainbows in your wake;

the images you inspired in your brief existence

ease the sadness of your leaving,

as I remember and render your antics

I can share you with the world.

Remembering Lucy.

Original poem, “Lucy” © 2007 Bernadette E. Kazmarski

. . . . . . .

July 10 is the day we lost Lucy, but she brought us Mimi and the Four Siblings.

A day filled with such extreme sadness and joy, and forever change. We remember Lucy, and thank her for her gifts.

On that day, no coincidence but an intention, after I had returned from taking Lucy to be cremated, as I and Cookie and Kelly and Peaches and Namir gathered at the basement door to remember Lucy in one of her favorite spots, Lucy’s mother appeared, very pregnant, waddling off of the brick path to the water bowl she was accustomed to drinking from.

Lucy’s mother was, of course, Mimi. Mimi’s “owner” had several unaltered cats but I had convinced them to give me the kittens, and Lucy and her siblings had joined us the previous June. Lucy’s siblings were adopted but Lucy was not. She was a happy kitten in a house of seniors until the following spring at one year old she was diagnosed with FIP. She lived three more months. Her loss was heartbreaking at her age with then incurable FIP, and coming after the losses of four senior members of our feline family in the previous 12 months. But she also changed the lives of five other cats—Mimi came here with the little beans at three days old, had no more kittens and loved her indoor home. Lucy’s half-siblings had a life they likely would not have had of Lucy hadn’t called Mimi to the garden that day.

And together they all healed me from the devastation of my loss. I will never forget that I can heal. Lucy joined with them on the day they came here, July 29, and is part of them forever.

I didn’t catch Mimi’s photo that day until she had walked back into the garden.

Below is the water bowl Mimi drank from, with forget-me-nots gently floating in it. Though Lucy had left us, she brought Mimi to us, pregnant with the four beans who became the Four Siblings who changed all our lives here. Mimi entered my heart when I saw her in my garden, and perhaps I entered hers as well.

And Mimi also tells her story…

I know that one of my daughters lived here because I saw her at the window and talked to her at the basement door too…I didn’t really understand what happened with her because I went on and had more kittens, but one day I felt that daughter calling me, telling me to come over here, to get this lady’s attention. I did know this human was very sad about something, I could feel it coming from her whenever I was near—all of us animals could, even the senseless chipmunks…

So began Mimi’s story of this day. Last year Mimi was still with us for this anniversary, but this year they are all gone. Of course, I knew this would happen, a few years from now, but even on that day when I saw Mimi in the garden, then two weeks later when she arrived with the kittens, I knew this day would come. I’m so grateful I spent so much time making memories, photos, art, writing, they are all forever a part of me.

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Links to Mimi’s story, and my writing about this…

From Mimi’s point of view in Mimi Mewsing.

For my first annual presentation at Pet Memorial Sunday I told the story of My Loss and Redemption.

And how They Rescued Me.

. . . . . . .

And more photos of Lucy

I took a series of photos of Lucy the same day I photographed her on her “beach towel,” that pink and gray rug that she loved to lie on in the sun coming in the basement door. They have a very special quality. Enjoy.

A Little Beauty

The series of photos below is on film. I’d been experimenting with lenses and exposure times and other techniques just before I’d gotten my DSLR and took these photos of Lucy in her last month, some black and white and some color, that were haunting in their intentional distortions of light and color. With all the costs of Lucy’s treatments for FIP after all the costs of losing four seniors the prior year, and then the arrival for Mimi and her children, I couldn’t afford to develop the film right away, and it sat for three years, waiting to be rediscovered. I had digitals and some other photos on film but kept remembering this series of photos and kept looking, until one day I got back to developing rolls of film that had been waiting, and there they were. And just like the series with Namir and Cookie and my garden I also preserved what we looked at that day, and the memories of all that lived in that moment. I will use one later today for another little dedication to her.

Lucy was a little beauty, and as she gazed out into the back yard through the basement yard we enjoyed a little beauty together.

The photos above were not modified in any way, just taken with the 50mm lens with a magnifier and a filter that diffused light areas, so the sunlight on Lucy’s sides is flashed out. It was taken in June 2007, and Lucy really was that slender; she was a slender kitten, but was just beginning to lose weight.

Below are a few of the things we were looking at out that basement door, as I took some time on a lovely morning to wander the garden and let my eye and my camera do what they would, something that has always eased my troubles as I clearly saw Lucy’s decline. Sometimes magic happens that I don’t even know about, and that was especially magical when you had to wait for photos to be developed.

The fleabane having a celebration.

The columbines looking like a cloud of fairies above a swirl of blue forget-me-nots.

White daisies, symbols of childhood innocence, and purity, floating among shadows and light.

A dandelion poof…for a wish to come true, perhaps?

And then I wandered back to Lucy, sleeping on the steps, waiting for me.

I wish this photo wasn’t blurry; I know she had sat up, then crouched back down again, and with a manual-focus camera I couldn’t catch her fast enough, but I love her shadow in silhouette, and perhaps it’s blurry for a reason. She has cast a long shadow on us, but in a good way. The photo tells its own story.

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Lucy was one of Mimi’s kittens from a litter the previous year, as I tried to work with the owners of Mimi and a bunch of other cats. Lucy’s siblings had been adopted, but Lucy was not. Her curious and lively kitten presence through the last months of Sophie’s and Stanley’s lives enlivened us all as my house, after four losses in one year, dwindled down to four senior cats: Peaches, Cookie, Namir and Kelly. But after her spay in April Lucy was diagnosed with FIP. She lived three fairly healthy months, then seizures began the night of July 9, we took a trip to the emergency hospital but I knew that was futile and desperate. I called my veterinarian the next morning. That afternoon I took her to be cremated then came home and, standing at the basement door with the four who were left, we saw Mimi, and it all came together. A few weeks later Mimi and her newborns joined us, and the rest is history.

About the photo

I had to recreate the photo of Mimi on the garden path. I watched Mimi drinking from the water bowl then sniffing around the patio. I suddenly realized the import of the moment and ran upstairs to get my little digital camera. Racing out on the deck, but trying to be quiet so I wouldn’t frighten her off, I saw Mimi sitting at the end of the brick path. By the time my camera woke up and got ready to photograph she had gotten up and walked off into the greenery. I took several photographs and waited to see if she’d come back out, but the memory of her sitting there stayed with me. Later, after she’d come inside, I took a photo of Mimi and photoshopped her to be much wider than she is and added her to the photo I’d taken that day. I know it’s not authentic, but looking at it brings it all back for me.

About the litters of kittens

They had several unspayed females and found it nearly impossible to catch them between litters, nor to find a vet at the time who would spay a pregnant cat. Poor Mimi, with six litters, I’m so glad she came in when she did. I’m not sure she would have survived many more.

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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.