ode to a cat and a crazy old man

The Cat
My parents called me tonight, mainly to tell me that they had to put down the family cat, Kiko, today. She had not been well for the last few weeks, and didn't even want to be held the last few days. She was just hiding under a loveseat. Poor kitty. She would have been 13 next week.



The Crazy Old Man
The summer between college and my internship I worked in a group home. Actually I worked in two, but the one I mostly worked at had 3 men living there. They were more high functioning than the people at the other group homes, and we were trying to help them to be even more independent.
James was a 40ish guy, whose speech was really hard to understand, but he was funny, and he was very sweet.
Bobby was 35, and he had the mind of a 4 year old roughly. He was in a wheelchair, because he had drop seizures all the time, so if he was standing up and had one of these, he would fall down. This had happened a lot in his life, so he had permanently puffy eyes where he had fallen on his face many times, and missing teeth. He loved Free Willy and Parent Trap and liked to listen to Kenny Rogers when he was going to sleep. He developed a little crush on me and freaked out my last week of work, but that's another story...
The third man in the house was William. My dad works with 2 people who used to work for that agency and just found out from them that William died within the past year. He was 70 when I worked with him 7 years ago. He had mental illness and for many years of his life had lived in his own apartment and his sister helped him out a lot. When she died, William went into an institution for a while. When I started working at the group home, he was just moving in. He was a hilarious old guy. He was either really happy or really grumpy. I worked 2 - 10pm, and at 2:30 everyday I would go pick up the guys from the main building of the agency where they either worked or had school during the day. When we would get home, William would sit at his spot at the table, and most days would stay there until he went to bed, except to go to the bathroom. If he was in a good mood he would talk incessantly, and loved to tease. He was a big fan of the old Disney Treasure Island movie, and sometimes he would talk like a pirate for days on end! He also loved 60's Batman. He would talk about that for days on end too, listing off the actors' names and the characters' names. "Burgess Meredith" is one that I remember him saying many times! If he was in a bad mood, he would just sit quietly at the table, occasionally mumbling grumpy things. On these days, he would often say "I don't like it!" He liked his coffee super strong and thick. He was pretty picky about food, and the other guys loved things like pizza. William would rather have a plain chicken breast microwaved. When we would ask him how it was, he would say "Scrumptious!!" with a roll of the "r". When my dog had puppies that summer, my co-worker and I took the guys to my parents' house to show them the puppies. William pretended he wasn't having a good time, but then at one point, he got sort of silly and kept telling me he was going to sneak inside my house and raid my refrigerator. He brought that up several times after that day too! Another funny memory of William is that he always fully undressed in his bedroom before he showered, so he would come down the hall to the bathroom, slowly with his walker, completely naked. Even though William could be a crochety old guy, he was very endearing, I thought. I was sad to hear he was no longer alive. But it is fun to remember him again.