Goodbye Ornette

Ornette the cat
Ornette the cat

Every year I write Ornette Coleman’s name in that line on the Harris Jazz Fest survey where they ask you who you would like to see at next year’s fest. Nobody pays any attention. Or how about Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, Hamid Drake or Pharoah Sanders and Yusef Latef and Archie Shepp before they die.

Ornette the cat will take his last trip to the vet tomorrow morning. We would have taken him out there this morning but Barry Brown was off. Ornette stopped eating today so we get the message. He is outside as I write this, sitting in the garden. He is one cool cat and we are going to miss him a lot.

9 Comments

9 Replies to “Goodbye Ornette”

  1. …. how many toes does yer cat have anyways??? looks like he had potential as a pugilist with those big hams, great photo.

  2. Whenever I’ve had to put a cat to sleep, I was always overwhelmed by the cliche “a huge, cat-size hole in my heart.” Tomorrow Ornette will no longer be suffering – but you will. The only comfort is knowing that out of all the billions of cats in the world, Ornette’s life was filled with love and luxury like very few others enjoyed.

    T. & W. & I send our love to you both. Like the Tin Man said, “Now I know I have a heart, because it’s breaking…”

  3. I worked with Wes today and this sign was under a tall tree at the first house we visited:

    “If tears could build a stairway, and memories a lane, we’d all walk up to heaven….and carry you home again.”

    Goodnight, Ornette

  4. I’d wish him good karma, but he’s already had the best because he was a cat.

  5. Ornette is in KITTY heaven, playing and being his own bad self with other cats and selected humans. He’s saving a place for all of us. xxoo, Maureen

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