Preoccupied by time passages

Now that I'm back at work, and The Big Project is almost wrapped up, I am able to search the internet at lightening speed for the arcane and frivolous. Today I discovered Kitten Rescue Cam, which captures shelter babies doing their thing at Kitten Rescue in Los Angeles.

They are awesome cute, no doubt about it. But they have me feeling melancholy about my old Joe. My big old tub of guts. My dear, sweet 20-year old tomcat is dying. He's in no pain now, and no major change in his condition is predicted for the time being, but the fact is, he is very old and has irreversible kidney disease.

Looking at these kittens, I feel a longing. I adopted Joey from a local shelter when he was (best guesstimate) a three-year-old. So I never saw him as a kitten. How I wish I had! I've seen him move from a young adult, lean and always eager to rough house, to a fat middle-ager who discovered the joys of sunning his big belly in afternoon light, to a sedate senior citizen who wants nothing than to curl up beside me and purr. But I never saw him as a kitten.

This is how I imagine he looked, soft and tiny and just learning about the world around him.

Joey is one of the gentlest creatures I've ever encountered. What a privilege it would have been to have seen his precious soul every day from beginning to end.

Well, that was a first ... and second

I wrote up my holiday cards last night* and found myself inscribing two of them the way I never, ever thought I would:

Enjoy your first Christmas as Grandma and Grandpa!

Because I do the cards alphabetically, the first one went to an old boyfriend. His oldest, a daughter, gave birth earlier this year to a baby girl they named Fiona. It's always made me happy that this ex and I have managed to stay in touch. He's a good and decent man and his esteem is important to me.

The second went to my old boss, Ed. His only child, a daughter whose leukemia is in remission, just had a baby boy a few weeks ago. Ed is over the moon delighted. Not only does he love being a grandpa, he's thrilled that his daughter is healthy. So scribbling that mention of "Grandpa" on the card made me especially happy.

But here's the thing: My friends are becoming grandparents!

Oh well, as Petula Clark used to sing (and I am certainly old enough to quote Petula Clark), "It's a sign of the times."

*After all, Hanukkah begins Sunday