Peso wanted to be a tree, holding a bird's nest, for Halloween. I think he did a sweet job of it.
You can read all about Earnest's celebration of the dead, and other Halloween-ish antics from the barnyard, over at Tails & Tales monthly short story publication [it's free].
We lost one of our eldest cats, Inky this week. He was 22 or so and had come to us many years ago from the shelter, after his owners died. There was some trauma in the house in the end and I do not know how much of it Inky saw. He was always stoic and friendly, never pushy with the others and liked to ride on my shoulders. He had a good death with Catfish looking on, wrapped in a polk-a-dot blankie in front of the heater. I buried him under the lilacs along with so many others.
There is often a shift that occurs after a death in the herd or cat room. Inky always slept, for the past few months anyway, in a basket on one of the perches. He chose to stay on the ground in his final few days, but nobody claimed his basket. Then this morning, I saw that Francine was sleeping there. The empath in me wants to think she waited for the energy to shift, to give Inky time to leave, and to respect his space. I'll stick to that story.
