there’s a noble soul resides in you,
enchanting your three humans,
bound by your beauty and grace,
mystery, adventure, failing kidneys
you with your fiery eyes, your
odd hungers and 3 a.m. run-abouts

“I sometimes longed for someone who, like me, had not adjusted perfectly with his age, and such a person was hard to find; but I soon discovered cats, in which I could imagine a condition like mine, and books, where I found it quite often.”  Julio Cortázar (1914-1984), Argentine novelist, short story writer, and essayist, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

Gypsy Rose died a few years ago and I’d commissioned a set of paintings from Gretchen just in time. Dahlia lives at the Gyp’s house now and I have Baxter living with me, but Gypsy is still much missed and forever loved.

© 2016, poem and photograph, Jamie Dedes; Original watercolor painting of Grandkitty  Gretchen Del Rio, All rights reserved

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