Because of our impending move, our house is under siege from moving-related chaos. We are trying to get rid of as much stuff as possible. For one, and perhaps the most obvious, we don’t want to move more than we have to. For another, it helps decrease the clutter so our house will show better.
One of the things that we decided it was time to part with was our baby grand piano. We got it eleven years ago, shortly after we bought our very first house in Phoenix. A friend of a friend was going through a divorce and basically gave it to us. We paid her $25 and then an additional $75 to have it moved. It worked out great because we had an enormous empty formal room and the piano complimented the space perfectly.
Since then it’s been moved to Jacksonville (first into an apartment, then into our house there), then up to Nashville. We never play it, so we figured what better place to try to sell a piano than in the Music City?
Wayne listed it on Craigslist and within the first day we had it sold. However, that’s when my nostalgia kicked in.
Wayne and I never played it, but there was someone in our family who’s enjoyed that piano almost every day since he joined our brood: Mr. Meow.
He’s quite the musical little fellow. In Kitty Quirks: The Funny Little Ways He Says “I Love You” I explained that one of his ways was to serenade us. He actually does this by plucking the air return vent like a harp, but I can remember a time or two that he stomped on the piano keys also.
Mostly he just liked to sprawl on top of it like a lounge singer. But he also used it to keep watch on his brother or sister (or whatever friends Murph might have over) and as a sort of “safe base.” (It’s weird how it was understood by all that if he ran and jumped up there that he was to be left alone.)
Now it’s gone. His perch, his safe base, his piano. Because in the end that’s what we called it. Not “the piano” but “Mr. Meow’s piano.” I was really worried how he’d take it, but he seems okay. I think his hardest adjustment so far has been forgetting his safe base no longer exists when Tabby comes after him. (Luckily this isn’t happening as much, but it has happened a couple of times lately and he’s had to do double time to make it to the kitchen counters which have become the new “base.”)
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