All Things Orange Monday morning is drippy, gray in the Safeway parking lot. On my way in to school I stop in for Fuji apples. My errand sends me past the survivors at the floral counter where, at that hour, some bunches huddle like refugees – tipped out of water, wilted. Orange tulips hold my eye and slow me down: The bunch is so beautiful I think the ridiculous thought of buying them – to rescue them from the murky backwash of this corner and to warm my blue gray classroom. While gazing, I get it. Carlos is calling me. I’m missing my kitty. I wonder how many sorrows will silently trundle into my classroom today?

The rich petals remind me of the story of Hurricane Katrina bringing Alice out on an airplane with Carlos shedding furiously in a cat carrier. Yep, I’m looking at flowers and seeing the rich, reddish-tone the stripe in Carlos’ lush double-coat. I can feel the pleasure of petting my orangey cat as I hold the bunch of tulips close to my cheeks. Simple stories occur, of times when the master comforter waited until I was in bed, and then down from the sewing cabinet to jump onto my bed and flop his infamous fifteen-pound flop. I’d laugh, stroke him, and then drift. Or he’d listen sympathetically if it had been a day that brought tears. These fine, orange tulips remind me how Carlos graced my life with his attentive green eyes, luxurious welcomes and lavish fur. His story shortens to a week ago. The last time I saw Carlos -- but I just can’t think of that right now. I stuff the bunch back in the water.

Walking briskly past the pre-made salads, I’m asking myself how a feline affects me so much. How can losing a mere kitty reduce me to such grief? The entire week has been intense emotion along with the hard work. Answers?

Necessity drones on, but it is not what makes poets write. Orange tulips that beckon with flame petals, the lolling cat that looks up from lying on my paperwork with that quizzical, “Do you have to do this?”… These moments matter and they bid us smile or cry, admire, inhale and even try to write. Even while Carlos was comatose, with as yet undiagnosed diabetes, there were warm hues of the color wheel during tender moments.

Finally I’m at the check out. I have spent my half-century and a few years learning how to be strong and now I’m questioning this pattern. What if weaknesses are wiser? Maybe this vulnerable, quick cut that draws tears is not a bad thing. Perhaps, the same way joints wear out in our later years, so does the cushion against life’s joys and pains erode, and as we get older, we have less insulation? Maybe grief helps me empathize with my students’ lives. Even students, who are as transitory as the flowers, get into my heart. Missing a kitty this morning, I think of my fourth graders, some of whom will lug heartaches and loss into our classroom today.

I’m a lame grocery store philosopher. What really comes home, as I take to my car, is having no choice in the matter of grief. I can only struggle to adopt the manner in which I will deport myself while grieving goes on.

It began, one night a few weeks back, with me cross-legged on my futon holding a damp, limp cat that had suddenly lost a lot of weight. I’m weeping and he’s acquiescing. I know I’m helpless, so I cry on email to my boyfriend, who does foster care for felines. The phone call response is that he’ll look in on Carlos while I’m at school in the morning.

That last week had some hope, but Carlos stopped eating and lay listlessly. I learned to give him subcutaneous fluids. Bob came over and hand fed him from a small tin. After trying antibiotics with no response, we arranged the vet visit. When the diagnosis came back, there was no practical way any of us could monitor Carlos’ health and give the necessary injections at the right times. The vet did give Carlos some medication to stabilize his blood sugar, but we had to decide.

No, really it all began back in October 2005, when I met my daughter at the SJ airport, holding Carlos in a black mesh travel carrier. His mournful green eyes trusted me as I murmured apology for another vehicle ride. Evacuating from Katrina, he had spent over a week in a pickup truck with a pit bull. Carlos had just sung another blues set for that airplane full of souls and shed most of his hair into the carrier. I thought I had outgrown pets, but this was a special need, so Carlos moved into my small apartment.

Carlos’ backstory was told me when Alice and I talked on the phone and agonized over trying to find an alternative to euthanasia. Alice told me when she met him living in a West Seattle house occupied by several twenty-something-year-old men who had dogs. They say Carlos came from Utah in the back of a U-Haul van piloted by a woman who dumped him there with her brother. The brother later held up a bank and was jailed, so Carlos was on his own, hunting outside and sleeping inside. When the young men were evicted, Alice drove over and climbed in a window, finding Carlos sleeping on an old mattress in the attic. She had no carrier and put Carlos into her car where he promptly went ballistic. There are claw marks on the inside car roof today. Carlos’ life with a young woman in Seattle was good. Alice and I recalled how Carlos had always pulled off a triumph in the eleventh hour, but we racked our brains about what to do about this diabetes.

Alice and I wept concluding that euthanasia was our only answer. We scheduled it for Friday afternoon. Thursday morning I had coffee with Carlos in Bob’s study before I went to school. Bob had done a patient, tender job of caring for Carlos, taking him home to better observe, while I maintained my usual hectic teaching schedule. I could tell that Carlos like the study and really liked Bob. When I opened the study door, Carlos stood up and greeted me and then he even ate food on his own, actions he had not performed all week. He actually looked the best I’d seen him in over a week, which was pathetically joyful to me. I was so glad to see him better, but it made putting him down even more painful. I stroked his fluffier fur and we “talked.” He seemed so confident, whereas I was broken-hearted. It was a wonderful, typical morning coffee with him, the last time I saw “Carlitos Curlytoes.” Nevertheless the burial was planned.

Then Friday midday there was a call on my cell phone at lunchtime in my classroom. A very animated voice, Bob’s, told me that there was a vet tech who wanted us to release Carlos to her care. Bob had already called Alice and it was agreed. Carlos went back to Harbor Vet for the medicine to stabilize his condition. A quiet young woman, Nel, was his project. Carlos lives to be a fat, fuzzy cat that makes people happy. And, at the eleventh hour, he pulled it off. The vet tech, Nel, has a one year old who loves Carlos. He’s fine, managing diabetes now just with special diet food. Imagine, the big orangey on a diet!

Recently I told my story of the last time I saw Carlos. A fifth grade boy in my class crumpled into good, healthy sobs for a kitten who had died two months before. We were sitting on the carpet and friends around him patted his shoulders and said kind, consoling words, like “it’s okay, buddy.” Even dead kitties deserve tears. Grief needs to be observed.  ¶ 2:50 PM