And a moment of remembrance
Pierce reigned through the first two rounds of the tournament. He was the only one among us who held on to both of his teams. And, oh, are those 2 teams both from the ACC? Why yes, Pierce’s Clemson and N.C. State join UNC (Jim) and Duke (Libby) as 25% of the Sweet 16. So bite my toenails, Joe Lunardi, who I am convinced lives in his mom’s basement and gets invited to parties only on the chance that ESPN will show up and film him swirling his hand through the queso, then licking each finger, one by one: “First 4 in, First 4 out.” He probably lowers the festive vibe of those parties as soon as he enters the room. “Shh. Don’t refer to the champagne as bubbly or else he’ll bloviate for 1 half-hour on bubble teams.”
(For those who blessedly do not know who Joe Lunardi is, he’s a self-proclaimed “bracketology” expert who ESPN invites on broadcasts of basketball games to make predictions on where those teams will find themselves on the March Madness brackets. This isn’t a week-before kind of thing. They start it up in January, and for two solid months of watching basketball for the sake of watching basketball, we have to endure the announcers who say, “Joe Lunardi this….” or “Joe Lunardi that…” And weirdly, Lunardi trashes the ACC every year and is convinced ACC teams are barely worthy of consideration. Like every year.)
But back to our family bracket. Pierce, Jim and Libby made it through to the 3rd round, as did the 5-pack, Beth, Karen, Elizabeth, Martie, Caroline, Katie/Dave, Claire/Sam, Rowan/Simon, Rhyne/Zibba, Elaine and Mike P.
Poor Robert, Dottie, Sarah/Kiran, Christine, Gordon, Ellie and Dub lost both of their teams in the first round. The balance of us lost one in each round, though Carl and Susan made it cleanly through the first round only to lose both in the second round.
That’s really the only update I have on the games, but if you’ll indulge me, I want to tell you a little bit about Jinx, a longtime Cat Commissioner, who left us yesterday.
Jinx spent his first week with us under the bed. We kept the room appointed with what he needed to eat, drink and take care of business, but he must have done all those things at night because we never once saw him without the shelter of a bed over his head.
That he even found himself in our home was a bit of a fluke. The shelter called to ask if we could again foster the two gray tabbies we’d returned a week earlier. One of them developed a respiratory infection and the shelter needed them removed from the general population. We arrived with our carrier and only then did they said, “Oh, by the way, they have a cage-mate we need you to take, too.” Jinx was a foundling, and living on his own before being brought into the shelter had shaped him into a perpetually anxious kitty. An anxious kitty with a perfect little black nose.
Just a few days into the second foster, The Brothers made it quite clear they had no intention of going back to the shelter a third time, which meant we had to confront the Jinx Question. Adding The Brothers meant we’d have three cats. Julep would be the tween sister to these two knuckleheaded Toddlers. Could we really contemplate having four, which is technically one cat shy of the crazy cat people at the end of the street?
But like Julep, Jinx was a tuxedo cat. That couldn’t be a coincidence. He had also recently ventured out to sniff my hand and accept head scratching. A little more each day. He was so tender, so wanting to trust that we knew there was no way we could send this sweet kitty back.
And so we became a four-cat family: The Brothers and the Pandas. Jinx was at home. We were his people. Yet every day was hard for him. He was always sure we were going to eat him, stick him in the washing machine, cut him up with a chainsaw, whatever. He didn’t cuddle with us, and his eyes shone with terror when we’d pick him up. But he craved our company as much as he craved head scratches. He wanted to be near us, to trust us. He just couldn’t turn off those flight instincts.
Jinx disappeared as his first Christmas with us approached. Gone for 3 days. Thinking of how protective I now felt about him and how scared he must be, I was so sad. On the third day, I got a call from Mike while I was shopping in Pier 1. While in the basement wrapping Christmas presents, he’d seen Jinx poke his head out from behind a tower of junk (which tower, you might ask, since we have so many? IDK). The other shoppers in Pier 1 congratulated me as I crowed over the phone about the Christmas Miracle.
He disappeared during a windy thunderstorm a year or two later. And perhaps the single cutest thing I’ve ever seen was when first the tips of his ears, then his saucer-sized eyes peered over the rim of a shallow pit left by the rootball of a fallen tree in my neighbor’s back yard as I called his named and raked my flashlight beam across him. I wrapped him up in my coat and again crowed about miracles.
He stayed closer to home after that. He liked napping on the back porch and sometimes venturing down to the flower garden. His black fur soaked up the sun making him almost hot to the touch. Long after The Brothers gave up on curling up with one another, Jinx would still seek out Julep for some maternal head-licking and a warm and safe place to sleep.
Jinx was his normal self when we left for Florida, but when we returned last week we knew something was off. By Friday, he was diagnosed with cancer, and yesterday, we laid him to rest with the help of my childhood next-door neighbor, a vet, who came from Virginia Beach to gently shepherd him on. We spent our last moments with him on the back porch where the sun warmed his fur and the breeze fluttered his whiskers. He didn’t look scared anymore.
He was so so so so sweet.
MeggityHoff 