wreaths

Today has been a sad day, since our beloved neighbor, the mountain lion known as P-22, is no longer with us.  These top two wreaths are, to be sure, not funereal ones, but are seasonal, and to be found in the Farmers Market - the bottom one is formed by Gramsci curling his tail in a suitably wreath like design.

Even though P-22 was elderly, and, it seems, suffering in a number of long-term, feline geriatric ways, it was so unspeakably sad that he was hit by a car and badly injured, just a couple of days after the decision had been made to capture him for a health evaluation.  He wouldn't have passed that with glowing colors, of course, but he might have had a few more quiet months.  He was walking down our street just about an hour and a half before the accident: although we never saw him ourselves, he was turning up with increasing regularity on security cameras just two blocks up from us - which is unsurprising enough, since Griffith Park backs onto the street in several places (as well as onto our back yard, though our cameras have never captured anything wilder than raccoons and skunks and possums and once, just once, a grey fox).  It sounded as though he couldn't have been cared for with any more love and compassion than he was, during his final days.

We will miss knowing that he's out there, living invisibly just over our back fence.