More socks and cat grief

I finished a new pair of socks yesterday. These are DRK Everyday Socks, in Gauge Dyeworks “Whiskey in a Teacup” colorway, and I used the grey contrast color for the toes, heels, and for a little bit of ribbing at the top.

I’m enjoying the DRK Everyday Socks – they fit my feet well, and the pattern is easy for me to memorize and adapt to my somewhat odd feet. I mentioned in an earlier post that I go up a size compared to what you’d expect because of the width of my feet, and I adjust the length so that I get a good fit on both feet, one of which is a full size smaller than the other (my right foot is a US 7 women’s, and my left is a US 6).

With self-striping yarn, I have to think ahead a little bit about the difference in length in order to get the leg part of the sock to match, but it was pretty easy with this yarn, because the stripe width is exactly the difference in length that I needed, so I simply started one stripe later in the sequence on the second, smaller sock.

I think the colors look nice with the Demeter Dress I’m wearing today, and will look nice with several other outfits too. But as much as I love the colors and the stripes, I do think I will probably get more wear out of solid/semisolid socks. Like the one I cast on for literally minutes after finishing these socks:

The yarn is Knitpicks Muse Handpainted in the color “Untamed”, and so far I’m enjoying knitting with it. (I also quite enjoyed the book “Untamed” by Glennon Doyle.)

The title of this post mentions more cat grief. Our Stimpy died on Friday morning last week. I’m glad I got to say goodbye to him, and we did know that it was coming, but that doesn’t really make it easier. And there just aren’t words for how brutal it is to lose two cats in less than a month. But we do know that his final weeks were so filled with love, and that we did the best we could have done for him.

He was my constant companion, and even more so than ever during his last two weeks.

I am devastated; I was definitely Stimpy’s person. If he could be touching me, he was happy, and that was true from the very moment we brought him home as an 8 week old kitten, along with his brother Ren, just over 17 years ago, right after we got married (precisely 8 weeks after we got married, in fact!).

Baby Stimpy, nestled against me as I worked on my laptop.

Heck, the whole reason we adopted Stimpy and his brother was because Stimpy kept reaching out to touch me from the cages at the Humane Society. I am a sucker for needy kitties.

He was a snuggly, derpy, aggressive (in ways both snuggly and not), playful, stubborn, feisty boy who had more than his fair share of health problems and visits to the emergency vet for doing stupid things like unzipping my backpack to get to a pack of rubber bands and then eating them.

He loved playing with toys, and became very possessive about specific jingle balls, and towards the end, a specific pink mouse toy. He *loved* Pink Mouse. He always would reach out to us with his paw and make us think that he wanted to be picked up, but that’s never what he wanted (he actually hated being held)…

Seriously, picking this cat up meant getting punched in the face!

…. what he wanted was to be touching us, to be in my lap, to be given scritches. In his final weeks, I tried to give him as much lap time as he wanted, and he wanted all of it. He’d always try to hold my hands down so that I couldn’t type or eat, which was a difficult way to wrap up my grading for the semester, but he got the snuggles he wanted and I hope he knew how deeply he was loved. It has been so strange, having the house to myself these last couple of days, but not having a Stimpy in my lap. I keep expecting him to clamber into my lap any second, but that’s not going to happen.

I miss you so much, Stimpy.

Goodbye, my beloved Stimpy. We loved you so much.