Krusty Mermuls Muffin
There’s a giant hole in my heart today. This whole week, really.
Sunday morning a member of our furry family passed. The dear, sweet, sometimes-cranky, always chatty, constantly licking Krusty Mermuls Muffins.
I want to remember the memories, not be haunted by the image of his lifeless body that I found outside Sunday morning. An image that I constantly feared, wanted to deny would ever happen. But it did.
I paused when I got up, still blissfully ignorant. It was later than normal. He hadn’t spent the early morning meowing for his breakfast. Getting up I didn’t see him inside, but it was a sunny and warm morning, he was probably outside basking in the sun.
He wasn’t on the back porch. I opened the gate to the side yard and saw his form laying at the back of the garden. “Oh there you are…” I started to say, but before I even finished the sentence I knew immediately. Something was wrong. Knew before I saw the injuries to his head. Knew from the stillness, the lack of reaction to my voice. I stepped up and saw what I never wanted to see. I stood over him and tried to deny it. NO!! Oh no, Muffins, NO. And I began to cry.
I ran inside, hysterical, and managed to tell Andy. I took him to his body. And we cried. Spent too much time trying to figure out what happened. It doesn’t really matter; the end result is the same. Muffins is gone. We buried him under the rose bush; Andy dug the hole, I fashioned a cross and found a rock to mark the spot.
Krusty hanging out in my drawer
Our dear, sweet Krusty. Who first came to us not too long after we moved into this house. He acted like he belonged here, but from all accounts looked pretty stray. He wanted love, but was afraid of it. Andy started feeding him. I thought it not such a good idea, that Kitty would hate this interloper. But of course I have a soft heart, and didn’t really mean it. Logic and emotion aren’t always on the same page. We fed him, petted him, played with him in the yard. Eventually we let him inside.
Andy started calling him Other Kitty. Which, since we already have a cat named Kitty, I was not going to allow. This one had some mangled fur, he looked kind of wild. Krusty Kitty, I suggested. It stuck.
Of course, he had many knicknames. Our cats all do. He was vocal and had a distinct meow. Liked to talk and announce his arrival, or let me know that he was ready for breakfast. He mur-mur-meowed. He sometimes said hallllow.
His second name became Mermuls. Or, anything that started with M. Andy liked Mustang kitty for awhile, which fit his wild nature.
Early on he just hung out outside in the yard. Kitty hissed at first, then tolerated. He hunted not for sport, but for dinner. He killed and ate quite a few bunnies. He brought countless lizards into the house, more than a few mice. Being on a canyon had afforded him some good hunting ground.
Lazy lovable Muffins
We found out later from our neighbor that he had originally been our landlord’s cat. The landlord had a few dogs and a few cats, and this one just didn’t really like them. He’d come and go. And when he moved out and rented the house, Krusty was nowhere to be found and didn’t go with. So he became ours.
We almost lost him 2 1/2 years ago, so losing him was always a fear. He’d had a urethral blockage, far too common in male cats, and he came very close to death from his whole system backing up and poisoning him. So close that the emergency vet told us he’d never seen a cat that sick recover. But he did. He was strong.
The night that he came home from his ordeal, I slept next to him in his makeshift bed of towels on the living room floor to make sure he would be okay. I skipped a good friend’s wedding to watch over him and administer his meds. I doted over him. We both did. Our bond with him changed after that. He knew we had saved his life, I think. Even if he didn’t want to take his medicines. He became less wild. He spent far more time inside. But he still went out side to go to the bathroom; he didn’t like his litter box.
Krusty's tongue hangs out for the 8763634 time
His most recent nickname was Muffins. Another derivative of the M names that Andy regularly came up with. He was getting a bit fat lately, a lot more lazy. He was definitely starting to show the signs of being older. Of course we don’t really know how old he was.
We taught him to play without scratching us (too much). We gave him the love and attention I think he lacked or pushed away as a youngster. He loved us, and boy did we love him. Even when we called him a cranky old man for hissing at the newest members of our cat family.
Ironically, the Krusty that came to us with mangled fur became a kitty who was borderline obsessed with cleaning himself. Probably a habit from living the hard outside life. But the cushy inside life offered much cleaner hanging out, and less animal carcasses, but he still licked himself silly. And he had this thing, if you’d interrupt him while he was grooming, many times he’d sit there with his tongue hanging out, sometimes for a good 10 minutes. Oh the laughs, the belly-busting laughs we’d have. We’d call to the other to quickly grab the camera to document Krusty and his ever-loving tongue. With the amount of pictures we have of his tongue out, you’d think he was like that all the time.
He was dearly loved and will be dearly missed. RIP Krusty.
Kitty and Krusty hanging on the front porch
