The vet had suggested euthanizing Sugar Ray last week, but I felt we needed a full week to say goodbye to him. it was very sad for us but probably merciful for him when the time came. We are so much kinder to our pets than to each other. I have watched many friends die of cancer after undergoing endless chemo and operations and being in pain for months upon months. Often they die in hospital, connected to machines and far from their homes and their lives and their intimate friends and loved ones. Sugar died at home. She gave him a tranquillizer and he lay in my arms for twelve minutes, cuddled and getting groggy. Once she injected the lethal dose, he was dead within 15 seconds. She said his heart must have been failing for the drug to work so fast. Woody dug his grave beside the beautiful stairway next to our house and planted one of William Radler’s double red knockout roses on it. Sugar is next to his lifelong buddy Puck and I can look out my office window and see their graves. Now we have only three cats to share our home. Not since 1980 have we had only three. We’ll go along with that for a while. Truthfully it was much worse leading up to his death than after it. I wept of course and we were very sad, but the decision was necessary and we are slowly moving on. Xena is probably the hardest hit of the cats because having been a street kitten whose mother and two siblings were killed, she knows about death. She woke me four times that night seeking comfort, two times the other nights since. Sugar Ray’s cousin Mingus looks for him and howls some, but he has his two ladies to look console and distract him. Xena has been particularly attentive to him, washing him until he protests. Willow only had a couple of months with Sugar before he began to decline so she misses him the least. Since he had lost control of his bladder seven months before his death, I have begun the process of cleaning up and deodorizing all the places he regularly pissed. It will take some time. I try to work on one area a day. I don’t mind the work. I finished reading the mss. that will form the basis for conferences in nine days when the class begins on June 13^th. Thursday I worked all day weeding my eight raised beds. I was sore and tired but enjoyed going out to Moby Dick’s for our annual anniversary dinner. We bring a bottle of champagne. I had lobster and steamers, as I do every year. The steamers were huge this year but as sweet as ever. It felt good to be able to work in the gardens as I had not been able for the last four years after my knees began to prevent me from doing most of the physical tasks I enjoy. Woody is cutting all the “grass” and weeds so we can walk around more easily and use some of the areas we like. The huge rhododendrons I planted in 1971 are coming in full bloom. They make a rhododendron forest in back of the house with a red stone meditation path wandering through them. Today Woody will continue with the mower and the path will once again be easily accessible to us. Right now some areas have weeds up to my hips. Last night I had supper with some local women. Earlier in the week I had lunch with my friend Gigi, who has been depressed. I wish she didn’t live in Brewster, which is three towns away. I’m trying to see her every two weeks, but can’t do it during my juried intensive poetry workshop. She is a very dear person who has been through a lot [two bouts of breast cancer and a very serious case of lyme disease that developed when she was up in Canada and far from medical attention].It will be hard to get together in the summer with all the traffic blocking our way to each other, but we are making plans about how to do it. After the death of my BFF Elise last year, I try harder.