Almost another year goes by before I suddenly get the urge to blog.  Many ups and downs and waters under bridges - that Mull holiday seems an age ago.  However the core of that Mull gang have planned a week in a brilliant house by Drumnadrochit at the end of this month, probably be freezing but good to get away.

So I was thinking today, after having let next door's cat out of my flat and seen it was welcomed home by my neighbour who is ill with the flu, and i thought suddenly of my cat.  My then partner got her for me when our baby boy died, in the '70s.  She was only about 6 weeks old, and our other cat was quite keen to eat her - or something - so I slept on the kitchen floor (the days of coal fires in kitchens!) with her tucked into my shoulder and the other cat tucked into the back of my bent knees.  When he thought I was asleep he'd stealthily start to creep up to the kitten. I didn't sleep much those first weeks.  They grew to be inseparable and had 10 kittens.

Anyway. So what I was remembering this morning was the long time companion that kitten grew to be for 19 years. (Sadly we lost the other cat long ago).
She went through all my many ups and downs through those years just being her talkative, affectionate self.  She was my child and my friend, both, a constant in my life for those years.
And then I thought how we have to grow up and let go of things like that, feelings like that.  And I thought about how long I had really just wanted my first son back - he had been adopted, i was young, it was the 60s. Never being able to face the terrible irreversible mistake of it I just craved to be pregnant again, however as I've said, the next one did not survive beyond 9 hours.  Probably saved him from a mother who just wanted her first son back - this I suspect in retrospect.  A few years later and in along term relationship I discovered damage done to my tubes meant I could no longer have children and my cat saw me through that trauma, and all that followed.

So when my cat died it was devastating.  Many years ago now, but still I miss her at times.

And no, I could never contemplate having another cat, until very recently when I thought.. well maybe.. and then moved into a little house with a tiny garden and lovely neighbours who have two cats who have adopted me as their 'extra' and my house as an annex!

And what happened next? What - a year ago? I think. My Son got in touch! He found me! I am still in shock - still keep thinking - wow really!?! Amazing. He is amazing. He is a magician - no really - he is!! And has two young daughters!! I'm a bloomin' granny!  And it's amazing - no words can say...

Then last summer my little brother died so very suddenly. He had been so pleased about my son and had gone and spent an evening with him, said he was just like me - scatty, and mannerisms! I miss him so much. The one in the family who really got my art work - so got me.. the one I'd ask advice, or find peculiar and weird unbirthday presents for each year because he didn't like celebrating his birthday. So was always 'there'.  It was his birthday yesterday.
His eldest soon and wife are expecting a baby next month, so he will have been a grandad and would have loved it.

And so, life goes, so many things we have to let go of, or maybe just get used to living with - the desperately happy and the desperately sorrowful, and to remember it's ok to have a happy day, it's ok to laugh...