Blessed Be the Meek. Siskiyou, the torti, is Gone.

Skinny scrawny stray and tame with a faded frayed pink collar.  That's her legacy--unwanted, uncared for and now dead.  She had end stage FIV.

However, in the end, she had access to love, warmth and a caring heart---mine.  She got petted and played with and doted over.  If only for five days, at least she had that.

I remember reading a debate amongst gypsies and an American dynamiter in For Whom the Bell Tolls.  The debate took place as they waited in a cave to dynamite a bridge during the Spanish revolution.

They loudly enthusiastically debated, while liberally drinking wine from wine skins, how long it takes to live a life.  "Can it be lived in a week?" one would suggest.  Another would say, "Can a full life be lived in three days?" Another suggested a full life could be lived in just one day.

The American dynamiter was having a love affair with a young refugee who had been captured, tortured and repeatedly raped before the Spanish rebels and Gypsies saved her, after this motley band had helped the last dynamiter sent in, to blow up a train.  They'd found her amongst the train ruins, and the old woman, of the band, drug her away through the woods as they escaped, sometimes kicking and whipping her husband, a slackard at times, to force his help.  The dynamiter ended up dead.  This American knew he probably would also.  So the love affair was doomed from the start, though they planned for a future, even as both knew there would be none.  Hence the debate on if a full life could be lived in a very short time.

I gave her a name before she died.

 Siskiyou. Remember her.

She lived a very full life.