We had Gable cremated after the vet put him down last week because we want him with us and we couldn’t bear the thought of his body being just thrown away somewhere. He was a part of our family in life and his memory will continue to be in death. Having his ashes, we’ll know a part of him is still with us.

His ashes came in the mail today. Yeah, in the mail. Talk about your emotional whiplash. I came home to find a big package on the front step and I got a little bit Christmas morning excited, wondering what cool thing Beth had bought or Zoe’s Bubbe sent her or I had ordered for myself and forgotten about. Then I saw the label and I knew it was Gable. I went from goofy little thrill to crushing sadness in about 2.4 seconds.

I brought it in and left it on the table. It took me awhile to open it. I didn’t want to face the finality of it. For the last week, I keep momentarily forgetting he’s gone and thinking I see him. Every dark shape on the floor when I’m locking up the house at night is Gable. Every night, I start to open the front door to call him in for the night before I remember he’s gone. I keep forgetting he’s gone. It still doesn’t seem real. Opening the package, holding his ashes in my hands — that would make him gone.

When I finally got around to opening the package, I was surprised. I was expecting something drab and utilitarian. For one of our old cats, for example, Boris, his ashes came in a big steel can with a plain white label. That’s not what was in this package. For Gable, they put his ashes in a really nice stained wooden box with his name on a plaque, something suitable for display on a fireplace mantel. Peeling away the bubble wrap to find this beautiful box was like a punch in the gut. That’s when it really hit me that he’s gone. Holding that box, reading his name on the plaque — that’s when it really hurt, even more than a drab can would have.

So Gable’s up on the mantle now in his beautiful box, with his name on the plaque, looking oh so suitable for display, and it’s oh so wrong. Gable doesn’t belong in a box up on the mantel. He should just be here with us, alive.

We had to put one of our cats to sleep today. It was our oldest one, Gable, given to me 12+ years ago by an old girlfriend of mine, Kelli. My nickname for him was The Big Man. He was a tough old bastard and had a number of very expensive hospitalizations over the years, but he always bounced back. Because he was a tough old bastard. This latest one, though, was too much for him.

He developed a cyst in one of his eyelids and it was starting to get infected. The vet said surgery was the only way to treat it — cut it out rather than drain it. We had a long talk about anesthesia risks for an old cat like Gable and she said she thought he’d tolerate the procedure okay. And he did; it was the recovery that got him. He just stopped eating and drinking and got weaker and weaker. Then he disappeared for two days and I thought he’d gone off to die on his own. And then yesterday he turned up again, looking pretty ragged but alive.

We took him back to the vet, who thought giving him a blood transfusion and rehydrating him would perk him up enough to start eating again. It didn’t. In fact, he just deteriorated overnight while he was there. When we got there this afternoon, he was on oxygen, was mouth-breathing, and was obviously on his way out.

So we took a few minutes with him as a family, told him how much we loved him, gave him lots of pets while Beth and Zoe cried over him. Then we held him and said goodbye while the vet put him to sleep. He went easy. He went knowing we loved him. He went knowing he wasn’t alone.

I snapped these two pictures in his last minutes.

Beth saying goodbye.

Beth and Zoe with Gable, just before he went to sleep.

…and one last picture of The Big Man from when he was doing okay. This is from about six months ago, when he was on the mend from his pneumothorax hospitalization. Look at my tough old bastard, wearing his bandage with aplomb and style. Even a chest tube couldn’t keep him down.

I’m really going to miss him. He was a great cat.

More fun with flickr. Beth and I went to our favorite greasy spoon restaurant, Twain’s, for some late night chow tonight, and of course I took the new camera.

Being of negligible photographic talent, I’ve compensated for this by specializing in what I call stealth photography. I eschew the viewfinder and instead point the lens in the vaguely general direction of whatever and then I hit the shutter button. Et voila: artsy photography!

I actually manage to get some good stuff this way sometimes. This is my favorite shot of the bunch from tonight.

We have a shweet new toy — a Canon SD500 digital camera. I’ve been wanting a new digicam for awhile now and have always coveted the Canons, and then last night Beth and I wandered into an electronic store after having dinner out and she just suggested, out of the blue, “Let’s get one” and zeroed in on the one I liked. Who am I to argue with thinking like that? So expect to see more pix showing up around here.

Here’s one from tonight, of Beth and Sammy in bed.

What’s wrong with this picture is that this is a king size bed, the king ain’t in it, and it’s full already — and Sammy’s on my side. But shooting the picture was fabulous.

This entry is primarily a note to myself so that next year I’ll remember these things. (Assuming I remember to pre-read this entry in the pre-Independence Day run-up next year, of course.)

For the second year running, we watched the CBS Radford Studios fireworks show from east end of Moorpark Park at Lauren Canyon Blvd and Moorpark Street. 6:30 p.m. arrival gives us decent (if slightly illegal) parking and plenty of time to block out a picnic perimeter. Fireworks start around 8:45 p.m.

We found ourselves next to Stephanie & Co again this year (Katie’s godmother) and we all agreed that we’ll band together next year and make a community party of it. We’ll need the following items:

1. Hibachi for on-the-spot grilling
2. Chainsaw for the stupid tree at the eastern edge of the viewing angle
3. Lighter fluid — not for the hibachi, but to assist in setting up the perimeter. People won’t stand in front of you if in front of you is in flames.

The view from the grass is fine, but sitting on the sidewalk side of the fence accomplishes two things: A) a slightly better view and 2) keeps late-arriving nippleheads from standing there and blocking everyone else’s view from the grass. Towels or jackets laid out there pre-need “save” it nicely.

Extra personal note to myself: remember to get illegal “dangerous and insane” fireworks ahead of time next year. Why should the Indian family next to us get to have all the explosive fun? FYI: Real sparklers would be a nice touch.

Sammy is fitting right into the household. She even does email.

There’s nothing quite like folding several pairs of your wife’s ratty old granny panties to completely suck the romance out of a marriage.

Beth has a recurring bad habit she indulges in that drives me absolutely batshit. She has not one but two cell phones — one personal, one from her new job — and she routinely leaves both of them at home when she goes out at night or on weekends.

It annoys the living piss out of me.

Take tonight, for example. She and Zoe went out for “a little while” two hours ago with the promise that she’d bring some takeout home for dinner. It’s now 9:00 p.m., there’s no sign of them, and I’m freakin’ hungry. So I called her to see what’s what and to find out when she’s gonna feed her man after leaving him home alone to wash the dishes and clean the kitchen disaster area from his Father’s Day dinner last night.

I called her work cell phone. It’s ringing on the entryway table.

I called her personal cell phone. It’s ringing in her office across the hall from me.

Great. Redundant communication modes rendered useless because they’re here and she’s there. Great.

I should count my blessings, though. If she had the phones with her, she would have called me about nothing 19 times already.

Resistance was futile, I have been assimilated. Chez Atkins is now one with the Jack Russell Terrier nation — little Sammy is ours.

There were three other people at the Burbank Shelter who wanted her this morning, so that meant another raffle. After losing Saturday’s raffle for the first Jack Russell we wanted, I had been hoping to avoid another one. No such luck. So now I needed luck. And also people skills: I had to thin the field.

It was me and three women who wanted Sammy. Two of them were sisters and were clearly trying to game the system: only one of them really wanted Sammy but had brought her sister to double her odds. I resented that strategy for two reasons 1) it cut into my odds, and B) I thought of it first but didn’t have anyone to partner with me today. So the old maid sisters were doing the old double-team thing. Bitches.

But the third woman… I sensed weakness in this one. I chatted her up and we got to talking about how cute Sammy was — and then I laid it on: full-thickness guilt trip carpet bombing. How Zoe had cried her eyes out Saturday when we lost out on the other dog. How Beth couldn’t stop talking about this one. How we had visited Sammy here at the pound every day for the last five days. How Beth had bonded with Sammy and knew in her heart that “this is the one.” I laid it on thick, boy. And it worked: she dropped out of the drawing. She leaned in to my ear and murmured that she thought I should have it and that she’d look for a different dog. And so I had cut the field by 25%. I was ashamed. Barely.

Then they passed out tickets and drew the winner and the winner was me and in-your-face, old maid sisters, for trying to game the system! I took your little cheater vote-padding tactic and negated it with my pitiful tales of woe manipulation skills and you were rejected! Whooaa!!! And besides, one of them adopted a chihuahua after I got Sammy, so they got a dog after all.

So now we have to wait for Sammy to be spayed before we can bring her home. She’s scheduled to have it done tomorrow, so we’ll have her by tomorrow evening.

Arf.