Goodbye Frankie

Before July 17th, our Frankie became sick with an upper respiratory infection (possibly pneumonia) and we took her to our local animal hospital. The vet gave her an antibiotic but wanted to try a stronger one the next morning. We left her in hospital care overnight as we increasingly became aware it was all way more critical than initially thought.

Frankie didn’t make it through the night. I am devastated and will never recover.

Frankie wandered into my life, like all soul kitties: homeless, starving and originating from God knows where. I have had a lot of cats in my life, but she was special.. different.. perfect. She was perpetually on high alert with Diablo ears, dime-sized pupils and loaded for bear.. to take you down if you didn’t come proper. She spent the first month or so of our time together ending most petting seshes by chomping my hand, then running off to the end of our bed. She wasn’t feral, but she was easily over-stimulated and the energy had to go somewhere – it might as well be my hand.

She was cobbled together from every cat in the neighborhood, I think. She was a Tortie.. possibly a Torbie.. with one full orange tabby back leg, and another piece of one, with parts of the same spliced into her face. One of her cheeks was plush in stripes of black, gray and orange. She loved for me to scritch her cheek, while assuring that she was certainly part tiger, and could take Daddy out like a lame gazelle, if the notion struck her.

She didn’t like the idea of anyone petting her orange tabby leg though. It was the fluffiest of temptations for me and we discussed it often, but I never did get the go ahead to pet the “chicken leg” – at least not without a smackdown.

In opposition to her apex predator household status, she was a tiny, sickly thing when she came into our lives. She had an upper respiratory infection, even then.. and really should have been a goner before she even made it to us. It was freezing in January 2021, when this wet, little abandoned kitten climbed over or under our fence to sneak into our backyard. There, she was met by a barking German Shepherd that hemmed her in, under our boat.

Kenny saved her from Ziggy and brought her to me – then she and I fell instantly and deeply in love. She was so tiny, that she walked her skinny little ass easily between the bars of the child gate I put up to keep her out of trouble. But she turned it around, spending the next three and a half years chonking out, eating her weight in diet cat food and string cheese. Even a time-release cat food dispenser didn’t help, she’d just eat up Celie’s portion too.

She was a music lover and never missed a front row seat when Kenny would sing and play his guitar. She loved it when I would rewrite and sing songs customized for her: Frankie Shark doot doot dah doot doot; Won’t you take me to: Frankie TOWWWN; and you could summon her from anywhere with: Frankazoids, Robots: please report to the dance floor!

When my Frankie first arrived, I was as low as I have ever been in my life, what with the world in Covid. On top of that, extra special circumstances and great loads of stress were piled on us, and kept coming. Frankie healed me, time and again.. she knew when I was sad or fighting anxiety, and would lie on my neck or chest and purr till things got normal again. And if she thought I needed a bath, well by God, a bath I got. PfFt!

In time, I became severely allergic to her but she still slept with us at night. To her.. to us.. we were her parents. She wasn’t a pet, she was our baby. Although, she seemed to think we were really terrible at being cats.

I found some allergy relief by keeping a coverlet on our bed to protect the linens, and changing it out daily, for a fresh one. Cough and sneeze all you like, but getting rid of my Frankie was never an option. We were in this for the long run.

I wish I had known how sick she was, I had no warning that she wouldn’t be coming back home. Even when we dropped her off at the vet, she was loudly complaining from her bag in meows about having to endure a car ride, which she hated.

Tortitude. It’s real and my girl had a good healthy dose of it. I loved every bit of it. She was my favorite.. my familiar.

Frankie, you little shit.. I am destroyed with your death. I love and miss you and have been crying for two days! There are at least ten humans I would have traded your fate with. Kenny says it’s more like a hundred. In truth it might be every other person I pass. Excuse my inappropriate humor, it’s a coping mechanism.. I don’t know what else to say and Frankie isn’t here to heal me this time.

But frankly.. if I can’t see my Frankie somewhere again on the other side, I don’t want to go. And I sure don’t want to spend it with most of the people I meet.

Enough for now.

I have information to report on the house painting, but you’ll have to excuse me if it all has to wait a bit. All my attention is solely on my Frankie right now. Which is where it should have been for the past two months.

I send back any negative energy being sent to me, blessed and transmuted.