Karenzia and Lullow

I was restless last night after John got home from work. I wasn't even fully awake but I just could not fully get back to sleep. It's been an emotionally exhausting past few days.
Sunday I got word that my mom's best friend passed away. My mom said it best: "Just found out today that my dear friend, Karen, whom I've known since third grade, passed away this past week. This picture is her taken with Caleb and Rachel in 1994 at the Puyallup Fair. She was a wonderful Auntie to them. She and I were crazy about horses when we were kids: we wrote stories about horses, collected ceramic and plastic horses, rode stick horses in her back yard, pretended we owned herds of them and named each one, planned to co-own a horse in high school, and even took riding lessons. Then when we outgrew that, she was "best man" in my wedding, visited us in Vermont, sent us care packages in China, and always has kept in touch. I can't believe she's gone. I'll miss you, Karenzia!"
Karen always made us laugh. All of us. Not just us kids but my parents too. She was one of the strangest, funniest people I'll ever know. She was always the art guru as well. When I started college and signed up for an art class, she and my mom took me out to an amazing art store in Seattle that they knew about and Karen knew exactly what I would need and knew the difference between different supplies when I couldn't tell a difference. I once took the wrong bus from downtown Seattle back to school and got very, very lost. She came and got me and took me back to school. I was so grateful to see someone I knew in a city I was still unfamiliar with. I'll miss you, Aunt Karen.
And although some may think it a much less painful loss, the loss of a pet is still heartbreaking. Yesterday my mom's kitty back in Washington had to be put down after going into diabetic shock. Her name was Mungo Jerrie but most commonly known as Yellow. I've always thought of Yellow as my mom's cat because she simply adopted my mom from day one. We adopted her and her sister Red when I was 10 or 11 in China and she just immediately appointed my mom her closest subject and that was that. Every afternoon my mom would take a nap and she'd take her place on my mom's stomach. This routine continued until literally last week. No other cat (or person) dared disturb her. We jokingly called her "the Queen" because that's what she was. She had this ROYAL feel to her. We've had several cats since getting her and she has posed her rule over all of them, including her own sister. And despite her being the smallest of them all (she always seemed to stay the size of a kitten), they've all obeyed and bowed to her authority. She rarely used brute force. It was always just the "look of death." You got that look and you immediately decided it was a good time to leave the room. She also had a very sweet side. She loved to roll outside in the sunshine but rarely spent time outside for any other reason. In her youth, she'd catch birds in mid-flight while she played on our rooftop in China but she lost interest in this childish activity as she grew more mature. Occasionally you'd catch her playing in the livingroom by herself and if she spotted you watching, she'd slink away, MORTIFIED to have been seen being so childish. She had the softest purr I've ever heard and she was one of the softest cats I've ever pet. Her coat looked like she used to be an orange tabby and then God took a bag full of calico dark tones and sprinkled it all over her. In the sunlight, you could still see the orange stripes. Her face was a checkerboard. One lip was tan, the opposite eye was tan and the alternates were dark.
Yellow and my other cat Orange have traveled more than many Americans ever will. They flew across the Pacific from China to the states.
Yellow's biggest quirk: she ate wool. My dad had some wool socks and we always had to keep them out of arms reach because she would literally grab them, hide, and eat them to her heart's content. You'd find their pathetic remains a few days later, a sock full of holes well hidden under the couch or bed.
When they had to put her down yesterday, the vet told my mom they'd put her in a box so they could bury her. When they brought her out, she was in a white box with a white rose on top. My mom just lost it when she saw that and was very touched by the gesture. I told her that kind of burial was only befitting of the Queen. We miss you already, Lullow.