Our good tabby-cat Hillary died this week, at the ripe old age of twenty. The house feels strangely empty. We miss his quiet, gentlemanly presence. He was a devoted friend, especially to my husband Tony. Evenings he would lie in Tony’s arms, paw stretched out to touch his chest, like a baby.<\/p>\n
When he was younger, the two of them would sometimes take a walk together around our meadow. Hillary would bounce back, tail fluffed, excited at having ventured into this scary place so close to the forest.<\/p>\n
The two of them also had a daily ritual. Until he was too frail to go outdoors, Hillary would walk to the mailbox with Tony every morning to collect the newspaper. I loved to stand at the window and watch. Tail aloft like a slender questionmark, he would stroll at Tony’s side\u00a0 to a point about halfway down the drive, where he would wait, invisible to any passing dog. On their way back to the house his pace quickened; once inside he knew he would receive a kitty treat.<\/p>\n
From the moment he curled into the palm of my hand as a tiny kitten, I knew he was a mellow cat. Mellow he remained, right up to the end. We buried him in the orchard, where the white petals of plum blossom will fall on his grave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our good tabby-cat Hillary died this week, at the ripe old age of twenty. The house feels strangely empty. We miss his quiet, gentlemanly presence. He was a devoted friend, especially to my husband Tony. Evenings he would lie in Tony’s arms, paw stretched out to touch his chest, like a baby. When he was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88,24,87],"tags":[416,89],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions\/108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}