Goodbye to Friends

As the saying goes....time flies and events came and went for the past few months. Some very sad events, too. A dear friend from Luck died on Thanksgiving Day. MaryAnn Ormson and I were friends since the old "Nancy's Gifts" days which would have been about 1990. Many a good time was had at the Studio Works shop and at her home over the years. She was an excellent hostess and had a talent for decorating and entertaining. Her love of her family and friends was contagious. You just couldn't be around her without delighting in her grace and humor. She could draw people in and just made them feel special. Her son Jon and husband Al were already in heaven to meet her. I'm sure they had an exciting reunion where all her earthly pain was left behind. Many fond memories were left to us.

It set the tone for Christmas which was decidedly low key for us. As per usual the Etsy shop crescendo of the season had me swamped. This has been the case for years of being in retail and it goes with the territory. However, I had another member of our Catfish Corner family who was failing as well. My dear Samantha the Siamese was in trouble. Being 18.5 years old was the problem. She had been with me for so long and had been in perfect health for so long she was like the Energizer Bunny. Her recent weight loss had been treated as a hyperactive thyroid so she got a bit of medicine each day which helped, but as she became thinner and more frail the inevitable could not be ignored. We made it through Christmas and by New Years Day I knew we had to take the one-way trip to the vet. Our vet, Barb, checked her over and gave her an X-ray that revealed several large tumors on her lungs. It was a hard one, for sure. She had an extraordinarily good long life I had to keep it in perspective. 

Sam and Phoebe liked to enjoy the fireplace together.

Sammy showed up in our backyard in Luck those many years ago as a maybe 7-8 week old kitten. She had a collar growing into her neck that was the size of a quarter! I had Misha and Boris, the blue Siamese in the house already, so I decided she could be my shop kitty! What a riot she was. She loved to go for walks at noon and I had little harness and a leash that she would trot along on. When she got tired she would continue the journey on my shoulders. Occasionally she would get out on the second story deck, walk the railing and climb to the top of the building! This would usually elicit a phone call from the neighboring store informing us "Your cat is on the roof!". I would go and call her and I would climb on top of the air conditioner unit and lean forward so she could jump down on my back! This happened more than once. She was also adept at being a wall walker. We had a framing shop on site and had a carpeted wall that held the frame samples. She loved climbing it and hanging backwards. Such a character! We miss you, Sammi. It took the rest of the four-leggeds several days to quit looking for her.