First the good news. The harpsichord is now upstairs at my house.

Several members of Grace’s staff brought it and carried up the stairs for us.

Eileen is already working on reassembling it with better screws.

We threw the keys on the marimba loosely to make the whole process easier this morning. I am a happy camper about this.

On the other hand, my beloved cat, Edison, seems to be slowly giving up the ghost. Yesterday he refused all food and seemed more wobbly than usual. Remember he is both deaf and blind. He has been crying more and more which is a bit heartbreaking. This morning I found him in a pool of his own urine. I try to comfort him. The only way to do this is to touch him so he knows someone is there. He can probably differentiate between the humans who are caring for him by smell and gestalt.

I am thinking about how we will handle this. I had thought I would take him to the vet to be put to sleep. However, on reconsideration, that trip to the vet was one of the traumatic parts of Edison’s life. It seems dumb to put him to sleep for humane reasons and make part of the process one of the things that disturbs him most. He may go unconscious (or even die) and that would make this decision moot. I will be contacting the vet soon to discuss strategy with them. I am willing to administer a sedative or a lethal injection myself. It will have to be an injection since Edison is not exactly eating right now.

I have called Elizabeth and apprised her of what’s going on. Edison was originally her and Jeremy’s cat so they are very attached. In the mean time Alex will probably take Edison’s death hard since she is so attached to him herself. Elizabeth and Alex are coming tomorrow so Elizabeth can consult with some drawing students she is going to teach here in Holland. We will watch Alex for her. I wanted her to know what she and Alex were walking into. Usually Elizabeth and Jeremy are pretty straight forward with Alex. So I’m expecting it to work out fine but be sad.

I wasn’t too broken up until Elizabeth thanked me over the phone today. Then I lost a bit of control. Ironically I think we lost our phone connection right at that moment.

Eileen thought I should send them a picture of Edison which is something we have done a lot of to keep them connected. But I demurred and Elizabeth agreed that she preferred hearing stuff on the phone.

Back to some good news. It looks like we are going get even more shelves. When the Grace people were here, Jim the buildings and grounds guy, asked if we needed more shelves since there are some that Grace is getting rid of. Cool.