Andy suspects Doug is up to something. Doug is putting together things, and seems about to leave. “What’s up?”

Dougy picked up on it, too.

Water jugs??? The kitty boys are perplexed. There’s plenty of water in their fountain. What’s Doug up to?

The kitty boys run over to the door. Doug’s about to leave, and this always interests them! (Perhaps because they get to run amok and play kitty games, perhaps because they get to snoop on places they know they aren’t allowed to be….)

I left to place dahlias on the family graves. The jugs were to water the flowers at the cemetery

 The kitty boys met my Mom (Jean Thomas) when they were kittens, and she worried about Dougy because he snooped all over the room she had at the care center. She was worried he would run away! I closed the door to contain him. He has continued to be a cat that follows his nose, excited by new scents. Andy was content to snooze on Mom’s lap.

None of the rest of these departed ever met my kitty boys. All loved animals and would have been delighted with them, I think!

I wish they were here to know the kitty boys, but time has its own schedule: In remembrance of those who passed before and who shared their love of God’s creatures with me.

Also departed, Jerry, the cocker spaniel who followed Grandpa Thomas home from his walks and whose owners recognized Jerry and George Thomas were buddies forever.  They gave Jerry to him. Grandma Thomas (Mary) let Jerry stay! Man and dog were best buddies till Jerry died.

And Laddie, Grandma McKenzie’s cocker spaniel -mutt mix, the first dog I ever knew, the dog that adopted my siblings and me and protected us when we grew up. (No photo accessible.) Laddie used to clean up milk messes and food that suddenly appeared on the floor, something that happened often enough in a house with four kids that he regularly visited at meal times. Of course!

And Peanuts Lee Thomas, my childhood dog, who was a puppy my Dad won in a pinochle game, or so the family tale goes. I suspect he just got him for me because all my siblings were graduated from high school but one, and my parents wanted me to have a companion… (I had exactly one photo of “Peanie”, as we called him, and it is missing.) He was a beautiful black dog with a white chest and something like seven white hairs in his otherwise all black plume-like tail!

And Freckles and Louie, my first two cats. As sad as it is that all these family members are gone, there is the joy of my memories of each and every one, human and animal, on this Memorial Day. That is why I left the house: To put flowers on the graves of family who helped me become the person I am. 

  When I came home from the cemetery, Andy greeted me by the door, and Dougy came running from the front room. As I suspected (notice the strip of multi-colored fabric stretched out between them), they’d played their little self-created game while I was gone.

Life goes on.