Lives of Kitty Daddy

Blood On The Snow

2011-01-26T16:52:00.000-08:00

for an unknown cat

It was another vague, grey afternoon, with a dirty overcast sky and a large amount of dingy snow on the ground. At least it gets a tad warmer when it's like this; the humidity comes up a little, there is hardly any breeze, and the snow seems to smoke a little as it sublimates up into the ethereal regions.

I sat at my computer doodling around, accomplishing nothing but an advanced case of boredom, and noticed Cider and Malcolm at the patio doors, yowling and with hackles raised, as they faced off a big tabby male on the other side of the glass.

He seemed little concerned by the two inside; he turned and sniffed at a hewn branch left over from the fall's prunings, and when I walked over to get a little closer look, seemed not to see me at all. So I leaned in, a little closer, just to observe him with our two indoor cats, who now looked as though they might square off against each other and forget all about the intruder, the outside man.

But I leaned a little too far, of course really hoping that he would notice me, since I was interested in seeing what he would do. He glanced up, then, and I got an instant reaction, that of a cat who was no real friend to humans. He looked somewhat feral in other ways, too, well-groomed, but with somewhat muddy feet (the hind paws and shanks were white) and the full jowls of the classic unneutered Tom. I was sure, as he leapt off the patio and then sauntered off, picking his way casually through the snow, that I'd seen him a couple times before, but these glimpses of cats round the neighborhood from my back yard are fleeting and sketchy at best. I never really knew this cat at all.

And good riddance, Malcolm and Cider seemed to say, as they rubbed protectively against the cuffs of my jeans. I could see that in all probability this was the reaction this cat usually got from animals and humans alike.

I stood there, a long minute or two, watching as he ambled along to the path Seuss and Teresa have worn through the snow that runs diagonally to the corner of the foot of the yard and on to the sidewalk. And he was simply walking down the middle of the sidewalk one happy moment, master of all he surveyed, until Reggie happened.

Reggie is a Keyshond who lives in the next house south of us who loves nothing better than running full tilt up to the fence where it runs along the sidewalk and then barking his fool head off. Everyone that lives near here gets used to it; you have to. I nearly fell off my bike one time as I was pedalling past and he surprised me, bursting as he does from under the thick blue spruce that he uses as cover for his ambushes. Apparently having known him since he was a puppy didn't give me a free pass; this troll under the bridge simply had to be endured.

This big burly cat, however, arched his back and electrified his tail, hissing, I imagine, as he ran backwards across the mound from the snow plows and out onto the street. I gazed horrified as I saw the SEATS bus coming along at a fair clip, not ten feet from where I last saw the big Tom before he disappeared behind the snow bank. I was out in the back yard in a flash, but not before a lady driving a schoolbus had stopped at the scene, which the SEATS driver had failed to do.

She was bending over towards the cat, who, confused and stricken, was humping jerkily along the sidewalk toward the lilac bush in the corner of our yard.

"Is it yours?" she asked.

"No, but I think he belongs somewhere around the neighborhood."

She left saying she hoped he was all right; I was at a much closer angle and already could hold out little hope.

Thank God I had had the presence of mind to dig my gloves from the sleeve of my coat before I went out. I bent over and tried to grab the cat, which wasn't hard, but then he turned on me and began to shred the tough canvas outer shell of the gloves, while hemorrhaging freely over them as well. He didn't want any help, apparently, from me.

It was time to call for reinforcements. I called Teresa and she contacted the Animal Control officer, Willa, and called me right back. I was able even in the state I was in to describe the whole incident very clearly with little embroidery, because it had all happened so fast, faster than any nightmare or horror story. Besides, the cat was coughing and hemorrhaging his insides out as I stood there and talked, and there was nothing I or anyone else could have done.

The cat crept off through the snow, hemorrhaging now great gouts of blood, and was lying by the compost box, which stopped his progress along the fence. Reggie had begun to bark and nose around, as close as he dared, and I yelled,
"Reggie, get back! You've already done enough!"

At this his owner came out, acting, like all dog owners, including me, as if it was some problem that was going on near the dog but that really had nothing to do with the actions of their precious pet. I explained very briefly what had happened and the owner said, somewhat sourly,

"I'll take him inside then," and walked away, as if he was sorry his dog would miss all the fun.

The cat lay very still, not visibly breathing, with the bright red blood still dripping from his open mouth. There was something about his fluffy tabby form stretched on the snow and the bright pool of blood that had collected beneath him that caused any hope of his recovery to die within me, at that moment. A passersby strolled past and noticed me, and then the cat I was standing over, and heard all about it. He walked on and wished me a nice day.

Officer Willa showed up with a carrier and a large fluffy towel, wrapped him in it, the cat showing no resistance or sign of life, and she was gone. And so was another cat that nobody ever really knew.

A Christmas Night

2010-12-25T17:34:00.000-08:00

A conversation with an elderly cat after the pubs closed.

I am a regimental cat, and have always been. My name, as nearly as I can put in your talk, is Maou-wow.

Now, the stars shine very brightly. It is very cold, and a persistent breeze blows through the trees, and along the declivities in what was the ground, all the hollows are bathed and drifted now in sparkling snow.

But some years ago, there was another Christmas, and a great storm which rose, they tell me, strong enough to shatter the tree-tops.

Nevertheless, on that Christmas Eve, the officers around the big house, and all their cats and dogs, revelled in their holiday mood, because theirs had been a great administration of color, pomp, and circumstance. The Empire was safe, at last, and everyone was home. The cadre had their best garments on, and all the swords and scabbards were polished to a degree which, in the moonlight, lent to them an otherworldly gleam. One might've been watching Arthur's court, on the very eve of battle.

Daddy, whose name was Maouwoo, had gone up to the highest oak to branch a twig of mistletoe, Mommy had brought out her best pies and biscuits. As a matter of fact, the oven had been burning bright for days, and it's very hard for some one like me to describe it all, seeing how I am only another cat.

But I do see it all, and just about the time the Missus takes the cover off the pan, there is a big, "Hurrah!"

And there it is. The family, the regiment, and all of their friends, the officers in all their glittering fineness, sitting at dinner, the roast and the turkey steaming, smelling incredibly, the puddings and salads waiting, all glowing and standing as if they were Lords and Ladies of the Court—

Then there was a persistent racket.

Mao-wow!

All of them, in the midst of the great ritual, heard it.

Mao-wowoo!!

And they stopped, even the orchestra, and began, in the great state room, to search around. Surely with so many officers and ladies of the Scottish Fusiliers we would find the source of such distress!

Mao-waowoo!

Under the floor boards of an old porch, which was shut up from inside traffic and no longer used, a subaltern named Regg found the source of the cry: a beautiful female cat with six kittens. She heard the tromping and lightfooting (You understand, I am joking) around on the floor above, and began to speak to all of those assembled, in such voice as she could, and they ended up saving her, and her bonnie bairns, my ancestors.

Why sir, she became a kind of mascot, as did all her sons and daughters. These brave lads carried her into the Crimean War, and the Fusiliers always won every battle. They knew if the enemy shot them all dead, or blew them up, Mollie and her sons and daughters would fight for them, and settle the score.

I believe Mollie, my grandmere, died several years ago, and, if I walked over there, in that yard of all our deaths cumulated over the years, I could still find her tomb. Her babies and their progeny are still roaming about the grounds; we are a very "cat-loving" regiment.

I believe I hear one of her sons, a cousin of mine, that big ginger Tom, over there by the colonel's grave:

Mao-wooo!

The monster storm

2010-12-12T00:21:00.000-08:00

The wind is howling now round the corners of the house, and the snow falls steadily, erasing the last traces of autumn from the earth. I keep a late watch, after having slept through the early evening, troubled by dreams of the homeless and destitute in a faraway corner of the country where there was no mercy.

Our cats lie huddled in chairs and cramped in cozy scrums, sleeping, after having watched all day long as a torrential rain washed through the streets and saturated the yards. They certainly keep better track of what's going on outside than any number of weather experts in their computer labs: cats watch the skies, the movements of the animals out there in the wild, and sometimes, perhaps, they ponder what their own fates would be if they were to be forced out into the hostile world once again.

This monstrous storm turned around, pivoting on what is called a dry slot, a short period of time when the youngest of coed show-offs were parading around one last time in shorts and Daisy Dukes. Then the storm drenched us, and finally dumped its mother lode of snow and whistling gales upon us, just as it had planned to, all along.

The cats always know what to do, and anyway, if they're ever caught short, and are forced to make a decision, it doesn't take them long to realize that the best course of action is to take no action at all, and sleep. So while I fret and pace and worry about the ever-increasing velocity of the wind, and wonder about the immensity of the storm, they are each individual anchors of peace and calm, with much more wisdom and equanimity in dealing with these anomalies than I could ever muster, with my poor human brain, my gigantic ego, my conviction that if I only go on thinking about a thing long enough I'll somehow solve it.

This storm will pass, and it will likely be only the first of many. So often in my life I would be stuck around this time of year, having gone to the old Cistercian monastery near Dubuque, to study with the monks and to celebrate a kind of resurgence and reawakening in my life which had occurred around Advent Sunday. Invariably, during the week after Thanksgiving, the really foul weather would hit, and I'd find myself facing the long drive home through sub-zero temperatures, icy roads, and swirling sleet. Nevertheless it was a progress I made on a yearly basis, because some things are simply best in the observance, and grow better as we continue to observe them, regardless of the hardships or the consequences.

Nowadays I keep close to home with my cats and my wonderful spouse, Teresa. I may be sleepy, grumpy, housebound, and altogether not really good company at times, but as I grow restless or seem to be despairing, I look to Teresa cooking in the kitchen or reading a book, and to my cats, sleeping or quietly watching at the windows, and realize that life could hardly be better than it is right here, at little expense to me, and it certainly could be much, much worse.

As always, there is something to be said for the fact that one finds himself alive, on any occasion, but how much better to realize that one is truly blessed, and lives amongst the blessed, in a charmed sphere such as is our home.

So, sleep on, my babies, through the storm. The Kitty Daddy will be here when you wake.

Pictured above: James, PeeWee, and Sylvester on Kitty Mommy's quilt and chair; Jolie napping on her favorite bed; Wolfie asleep at the end of the big bed downstairs; Spike looking both fluffy and somewhat gaunt and elegant in his splendid black fur; Jolie, on the verge of waking, in another favorite space

Bunny

2010-12-08T22:01:00.000-08:00

This time of year, we put our traps away, concentrate on keeping our house warm and secure, and venture out only for the necessities of work and walking our wonderful dog, Seuss. Mind you, in the days when Mouse haunted my heels, he rarely missed a chance to scoot outside and try to nibble at some frozen grass stems or lurk beneath the truck, waiting for me to coax him out. But now that he's gone, my excursions out into the frozen void are solo, with only the unblinking stars and a bare maple to ponder.

Our kittens (the four trapped beneath the University Motor Pool facility) have all been shipped out, through the good services of the local animal shelter, to foster homes. We are lucky, in a way, that we had them only long enough to note their beautiful traits and their absolutely bonny natures. That is, we didn't get all hung up on them, waiting for some prospective adopter to call, until we couldn't possibly make a decision anymore because we had fallen so in love with them. I am sure Boo and Ash, Jimi and Alvin will find wonderful homes, and be a joy to whatever households they come to inhabit.

At this moment, I hear their imputed mother, who was trapped along with two of the kits, crying in the downstairs bath we now use for a kitty quarantine. When one enters she in always up in the little window, in a flash, and rarely comes down into the little loft I have built. Such is her fortitude and determination that I saw her shaking with the cold, leaning up against the window, freezing, while she leant her head into my caressing hand and let me stroke her flanks. She will be a wonderful kitty to have around any one's house, but right now the main project is getting her to accept people and come down out of that window.

Bunny, Teresa calls her. That's fine with me. Bunny is a rather bunny-colored (or hare-colored, if you're British) girl of very slim and petite size, with that ticked and tawny coat that allows one to hide very well in tall grass, the better to sneak up on mice and voles. She also has beautiful gold-green eyes, a soft, plushy coat, and very soft paws for a supposedly "feral" cat. Now that she has overcome her fear,and purrs and leans her head into my hand when I pet her, and calls through the door when she feels neglected, I begin to doubt that she was ever in any way feral--at least, we wouldn't blame a human for acting as she has done to support a litter of kittens in a hostile and friendless world.

So this, it seems, is to be my great gift this Christmas: another lost soul brought back from the gates of certain death to live in relative comfort and security. And someone to lick my hand in thanks, to purr, to nod and wink on my comings and goings, another one who trusts me, and who will live with me, who was written off for no good ages ago. So we continue, on into the Christmas season, here at the big white house on the corner, a cargo of ballast, condemned souls all, feeling our way towards some better life.

Intrepid Kitty Trappers

2010-11-24T15:23:00.000-08:00

For several years now we and a wonderful lady named Mary Blount have been involved with the trapping of cats in our area, some of which activity I have reported here before. Lately, Teresa had word of what could be two litters of kittens, and several adults, living in the wild area between the University Motor Pool and the Iowa River, and bedding down beneath the trailers which have housed the Motor Pool offices since the tornado which destroyed so much of Iowa City. For two nights Teresa trapped a total of two kittens,and a recent tabby mother. Although reports indicated as many as two litters of six, four had already been captured by a Motor Pool employee, Carolyn, and we have the happy office of housing two of these, Boo and Ash, until the local shelter has tested them and they are old enough to be adopted.

We also have the two kittens Teresa trapped, and the mother, although we are unable to determine at this point if she is the mother of any of the kittens we currently are fostering. As the weather is changing now, quite dramatically, it must be incredibly hard for those cats who have been forced out of someone's home and who must seek shelter where they can. As Thanksgiving draws near, and the joyous holiday season brings thoughts of home and our loved ones to mind, our thoughts will also turn to those who are so much less fortunate, who shiver and struggle in the cold of what is still, even in this season, a very cruel world.

Meanwhile, the latest stupid video from Kitty Daddy productions, which features a tumbling act provided ad lib by Boo and Ash, our smallest and most merry charges.

The Death Of A King

2010-11-20T20:32:00.000-08:00

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of kings...

One muggy night in July, I ran over Mouse. I can't dress up that fact, after mourning and brooding over it for a good four months, to make it look like anything other than what it really was.

This blog was dead since then. I could not write, and had a hard time even thinking about anything more than my normal daily maintenance, because Mouse had a habit of following me round the house, going out with me into the yard, sleeping at my feet wherever I slept. Many times I let him outside with me, because he was such a good companion, never straying towards the busy street, always content to quietly chew grass or jump on voles hidden in the turf, while I sweated and did my work. But always, Mouse returned and barrelled his big glossy head into my leg, or rolled over for a belly rub, expecting me to reach down and stroke him, something that could be a risky endeavour, if he was in a certain mood.

For although Mouse was a kind of prince, or an angel of light, he also had a very bad habit of biting down very hard on people, from time to time. When you consider that a bite from a cat the size of Mouse entails deep penetration of the upper and lower canines that equals about one and a quarter inches, and that he liked to raise hell from time to time amongst lesser kitties, and that he would brook very little human interference when he was in one of his many moods, you begin to form a picture of a beast that was almost beyond our capabilities of domestication.

Mouse, in himself, was the very reason for the housecat's specialty, and the reason why bobcats still run wild. Any larger animal with his kind of genetic wiring would be simply unmanageable. Mouse had also begun to engage in a pissing contest with James, since we had adopted him, because, apparently, the idea of a cat that had only been lately neutered as an adult and came into the house smelling like that was some kind of unforgiveable threat. Thus, we spent a portion of our days cleaning up with Zero spray and paper towels. So we got to know how it feels to work as a lavatory attendant.

But all these negatives do not, and never could, explain Mouse. For one thing, he was, very steadily, without fail, the best cat-in-residence to care for any of our foster kitten litters, happy to spend hours washing and cleaning them, fighting and playing with them, strengthening them and teaching them. Some of our older cats have given up this task, and simply ignore kittens on the premises, or hiss at them if they come too close. But I never once saw Mouse offer anything but a generous wash and a good going over to any little tyke that sidled up to him. He was just that way.

Then there was his beautiful voice. Mouse could speak his version of Feline-English better than any cat I ever knew. Miles, my first great cat, was an excellent communicator, and had an operatic voice. He would stand at the door and say, very clearly, "Mow? Out?" If you had seen him working his jaws around those inflections and broad vowels, you would not laugh, you would believe he was trying to say exactly what you had just heard him say.

But Mouse would give you the exact address where he was determined to go, and a brief explanatory note indicating what he was planning to do. This was not done out of subservience; to Mouse, it was a matter of common courtesy. I have heard many cats before and since then that vocalize in ways extraordinarily expressive. Our latest crop, the litter of White Tips, speak several languages, most of which I don't understand, and one that I always do. Yet Mouse was more direct than this. He spoke your language. And if you didn't get it, he'd bite your damned hand off. This is really practical communication, worthy of diplomats.

One afternoon, when my heart problem forced me to lie down and pull the covers up to wait for death, Mouse was there. He rooted the covers away from my chest, and began to dig and claw at my bare chest, underneath which my heart was jumping around like a scared rabbit in a fast and sickening atrial fibrillation. Finally, he started to bite at my sternum, even though he was having a hard time with the very thick, tough skin there. I very quickly reprimanded him, and he decided it was probably impolitic to start eating me before I actually died. Unfortunately, for Mouse, I had to scruff him and pull him away. He told me afterwards, in sign language, out in the yard, that he thought that he heard a vole scuttling under the turf of my chest. I survived.

Mouse was a giant, and looked bigger because of his glorious, white, silky, flowing hair, noble, gigantic head, and huge bushy tail. He was really a tabby-and-white, though, and had ear tags of black tabby, two spots on his back, and a raccoon tail that could frizz out to about four inches in diameter when he was excited. His two paws easily covered my palms, when he stood up on them, and he was a very full bundle to carry, as I did so often, when he sneaked out behind me into the garage or out into the backyard.

His last night, I suppose I went out to smoke a cigar, and came back inside. Since we have so many cats, and since Mouse rarely jumped into my lap, but would always stay several feet from me, curled up on a rug or a chair, I didn't realize, this time, that he had slipped out. When I pulled out of the garage later that night I returned to find him lying in the garage, obviously in the process of dying from a broken back and internal bleeding. I will spare you the details.

I had saved this cat Mouse from certain death, and now I had killed him. What a man of woe I am! I remember now the night I rushed to the local animal shelter. Teresa volunteered there that afternoon, and had called to say they were euthanizing Mouse because he had bitten a volunteer. I unscrewed the hinges of his padlocked cage because the director couldn't find the key, and I carried him out in my arms. Shortly after we got home, of course, he tore half my lower lip off after I tried to keep him out of a fight with Malcolm, and I had to go the hospital to stitch it up again, but I knew I had a new friend. All my best friendships started out this way.

You have to understand that I speak as one already condemned, about another condemned brother I thought I'd saved, only to kill, in the end. I suppose I will write more on this, as time goes on, and my memories heal, but as for now, I must echo Teresa, and many of our cats:

"I miss Mouse!"

Ah! Sunflower

2010-07-29T00:04:00.000-07:00

Ah! sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller’s journey is done;

Where the youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves and aspire;
Where my sunflower wishes to go.

William Blake (1757-1827)

In Memoriam

2010-05-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

Few writers ever wrote a memorial for dead cats.

Yet every time I pick up, pet, or groom my older cats, Lila, Gordon, Sylvester, or Jolie, I think of the fact that we will not be together forever, and that someday I will give them a final grooming, as they lay in state, with that kind of dignity that only animals seem capable of gathering about them, and I will bury them out beneath the old Douglas fir, and surrender all but their memories to the great mother who guides us all.

Today, I have been thinking of little Charlie and Esther, who died a day apart and are buried here, and Shelby, one of the Little Girls who are now four: there is still Sheila, the mommy of all four little girls, but Shelby died so miserably when we first brought her home, and, perhaps, were a little too quick to get her spayed, when what she really needed was an adjustment period to get overher exposure to the kitty flu and the new environment.

Charlie never had an even break. He was the most beautiful little blonde tabby male I'd seen before we had Sunny and one of Claire's little boys, who were adopted and went on, hopefully, to lead wonderful lives with their new humans. Charlie came here to us because, as Stacie at the shelter told us, his foster mom had returned him, since her husband, for whatever reason, laid down the law and said no more kittens. I have no idea what really went on, but what I noticed about him was that he always looked as though he was apologizing, as though he was fully conscious, somehow, what an imposition his presence was, and only wished to create no trouble for the humans around him, even though it was we who were most responsible for his unwanted presence on this earth.

He would sit on top of Fuzzy Bear, a large teddy bear I had owned for several years, and knead and knead it with his tiny paws, and look up at me so wistfully my heart simply melted, and I found myself wishing I could do something for him, whatever it was that he needed.

Whatever it was he needed, perhaps, wasn't to be had, on this planet. He stayed with us a few days, could never hold his food in long enough to digest any of it, and soon died. The next day Esther, a bright little tuxedo girl, who ran and played with us for about two weeks prior to Charlie's demise, also developed a strange digestive problem, and died. Seeing these kittens stretched out on the floor in their final rigors may have been something that shocked me further into a realization of the preciousness of this transient life, and for that, I suppose I am grateful, but I would gladly do without that realization in order to have them back, with the right drugs and the right knowledge, in order to see them both grow up and go out to be adopted and become adult cats.

This is not a world where the weak or the sickly are given much of a chance, mostly because we are wired, biologically, to focus on the winners. We like to think of ourselves as a nation and a race of winners, but this is surely not the message the good Lord gave us, nor Buddha, nor the example of such people as diverse as Mandela, Mother Teresa, Francis d'Assisi, or Stephen Hawking, to name a very, select, few.

In time, I will forget having written this, and I will forget most of my own troubles, which, after all, are only sufficient unto this day. But I will never forget Charlie, his beautiful beryl eyes, or the bright and merry spirit of Esther, or the sufferings of Shelby as we tried to keep fluids in her, and make her more comfortable.

Somewhere, there is another world where these beautiful creatures reside now, and I will not be sorry to leave this one for the next, if it means I can sojourn a while with them, and with all the other bright spirits I have known and who are now passed from us. Meanwhile, I will think of you all, and bless the short time I had with you,

Miles,
Dickens,
Bullwinkle,
Charlie,
Esther,
Dagen,
Pistol,
Marvell,
Lyly

to name only a few of the wonderful four-legged folks I have been privileged to have known.

I know that those of you who follow are thinking of your own dear departed as well. Bless you, and bless them.

The Coming Of The Plague

2010-05-29T04:43:00.001-07:00

I rose a little before dawn today, with no really noble reason, or any industry in mind. But cats needed to be fed, boxes cleaned, dog taken outside, and I myself was in such a state from some kind of allergy or hay fever that I could barely see out of my eyes, or breathe through my nose. I've been running or trundling about the place now for about an hour and a half, I succumbed to the desire for yerba mate, and a decongestant, and really could use a sweat and a shower, but I'm putting that off for now. As it is I'll probably work up a good sweat vacuuming later, and chasing down pee stains and stray litter kicks, and the shower will just have to wait till I get up sufficient steam to make more headway into the progress of the day.

Thistle and Gordon, since they always were designated Princess and Lord, since their arrivals here, have taken their nobility to heart somehow over the years, and it's somewhat sad to see how they hold themselves apart from, and a little above, all their housemates. Lately, they've both decided to shun Kitty Daddy, maybe because I quit kowtowing to them, and I can't yet get them to come in and eat at their (and all the other cats') mealtimes. Often these peculiarities in a cat's behavior are transient, and usually there is no reason at all for it. It seems Lord Gordon stopped trusting me the last time I had to ambush him and stick him in a carrier for his visit to the vet. I believe Thistle's problem started around the same time too, but with her, she also seems to really despise eating in the bathroom with the four little girls and Wolfie. Wolfie hates it too, but he gets to go into the tub and is protected by the shower doors; Thistle has to suffer depredation from Sugar and sometimes Talia, both of whom are something like bullies around nearly everybody, at times, including Malcolm and Mouse. It's so wonderful, in a kind of human, sentimental way, to see a scrum of kitties on the stovetop or in a chair, but it has nothing to do with sentiment, from a cat's point of view, and I'm sure any one of the members of the scrum is capable of jumping up and scratching his bedmate's eyes out in a trice.

Cats do what they feel like doing, whenever they can get away with it, and rarely feel like they have any strictures on their behavior at all. Right now, Sugar is being very companioniable, but if I ever once try to pick her up or even fondle her in a little too familiar way, she'll cry her tiny baby cry, whine and kick, and get away from me as if I was the Great White Satan himself. I'm happy, right now, simply to have her around as I type, and she's happy too. So let's leave it at that.

Overnight, Khan got sick with a honking and miserable upper respiratory phage, and I came down with something so like it I wonder if we have a case of the H1N1 attacking both beast and man. I know I'm miserable, as far as respiratory and digestive matters are concerned, am alternately sweating and chilling, and Khan is suffering badly from what must be gut-wrenching sneezing fits, wheezes that sound like a form of asthma, and the acne under his chin is even bursting open a little, something that usually stays in the sooty blackhead-like stage, and can be scrubbed off when he allows it to be treated. So, my beautiful boy is a shedding, snuffling, hacking wreck, I am so congested I can barely breathe or see to type, and in a matter of days the whole houseful of us will probably be near to despair from an overwhelming, pervasive illness, and one that causes cats even more suffering, it seems to me, than it does to humans, since we have so many drugstore palliatives that would stretch a cat out dead as a doornail if you tried to administer it to them. So I can be grateful, while having what seems to be a bad summer cold, while I still pity the little furries for the havoc it wreaks on their delicate systems.

At least Seuss seems to be a kind of Ironsides, when it comes to health. Walking above five miles a day probably has a lot to do with this, whereas with me, in this season, the more I walk outdoors the more hay-fever like symptoms I have, and the less I can really do about it. Looking at Khan, though, this morning, I realized I was lucky, and blessed to only have such a problem that can be easily mitigated. He spent the night on the stovetop; apparently the residual heat and the light from the hood are really comforting to cats, and I notice that the sicker ones like Wolfie and Khan retire there often.

Drive To Work

2010-05-27T10:28:00.000-07:00

Today I offered to drive Teresa to work. I was able, amongst other stories, to tell her something about the over-dressed geek in the Lexus next to us, the faux-hippie in the van ahead, and several other scurrying, rushing creatures that Kitty Daddy would just as soon have crushed and shredded with his fine sharp claws. Teresa sat there and took it all, as usual, in stride, and told me I better go directly home before I got in trouble.

This, in itself, was an invitation to trouble. I have never gone home when bidden to, even by the gendarmes, and more often than not, after closing the bar or coffee shop I had sought refuge in, was found with a friend or two at a kind of after-hours ritual, proclaiming impromptu verses regarding the stars and the night breezes.

But this early morning thing, now, when things don't seeem right, when even old Deano and Frank would be headed for a bed, somewhere, what do you do then? I decided on Firestone, because I knew my old truck was ready for an oil change, a rotation, and another discussion of its superior capabilities, unparalleled yet in a truck of its size.

These boys are so efficient, they soon got rid of me, and I had to start walking, round and round, up and down the tiny downtown. I found out really early on that downtown is not what it once was. It's hard not to miss it completely. You need to be paying attention walking through it or you might just end up in the river or Goosetown.

First thing, to get a cup of coffee. It never occurred to me to go to an actual coffee place. Maybe I was simply on autopilot, and was thinking of a much earlier time, when a downtown was populated by bakeries, cafes, and the kind of "filling station" where you could get gassed up and stop in for coffee and a donut. The only place I found open was the Deadwood, where Jim, the owner, was helping clean up and counting the night's receipts. I found out something about an old friend of mine, and moved onward, remembering quite a few of the same kind of late-night discussions I mentioned above from a former, long-ago time. Mainly, I just wanted to catch up with someone that I had known for so long, and had only good memories regarding.

Jim's information led me to the Prairie Lights Bookstore, a place I generally avoid, since it seems to be about everything antithetical to literature of any kind, and has no other ambience to recommend it. The little owl-like woman who tends the front counter barked at me as though both my shadow, and my old friend's name, were posted on the corkboard down at the post office, and I thanked her and left. There is more soul in a newspaper kiosk than in a place like this, maybe just because they hire so many forgettable poets and lecturers on the New Yorker circuit on their seasonal schedule. There is a season for these things, you know. Poetry was not meant for co-option, and will never (though it almost seems to have) succumb to the machinations of publishers, the academic year, or the scribblings of chalk-dusted beards waiting for the next big break.

Now, thru all of this, remember that I walk in my imagination as Kitty Daddy, no superhero, cat in size of a man, no superpowers at all, as a matter of fact, but someone who peculiarly lapses into a mode of thought similar to the homeless cat, an animal not liable to be seen in daylight, and who expects to have something heavy and sharp thrown his way as he goes about his peciliar rounds. So, you see, this morning I had been running true to form, had managed to annoy or somehow get in the way of nearly everyone and everything I'd made contact with, and wished I was back home with my littler brothers and sisters, away from the increasingly aggressive and angry people I saw around me. Even Teresa had seemed bristly simply because I'd offered to drive her to work. But, since I don't generally care what anyone else thinks (the greatest gift from a power above that ever came down this particular pike) I went on about my business, eager to see who and what else I could thoroughly screw up.

"Everywhere is war…" says Bob Marley. But he said it, and died, long ago, now. Still, everywhere is war, and although we try to keep the bloodshed oceans away, the oceans of blood that are spilled will soon be lapping at our doorstep anyway. The first sign you will see of the bloodshed's approach is just such anger and discontent in ordinarily civil people. The last thing to worry about is the things cats, dogs and red-tailed hawks may be up to in the course of making their livings.

I walked around the block to an old favorite of mine, the Iowa Book and Supply Store, and had a very enjoyable talk with an employee there. I was here in the spring of 1971, when the front was blown out, and a gasoline truck was overturned in Clinton Street, all over the illegal bombings in Cambodia. And there I also found my friend. I am very glad he has work in such a friendly place. May neither of us be tempted to darken Prairie Lights' doors again. It seems like a Kitty Daddy-like thing to do, but just because these people were nice to me, I bought three books when I had been looking for only one, one which they didn't, in fact, have. Retailers, take note. There may be more than one catlike person walking, shopping, spending time amongst you. We respond very favorably, with our wallets, to petting, and very negatively to harshness.

Back out into the day, I looked across at the pile of stone that comprises the Pentacrest, thinking to save it for another day. Or, perhaps not. Four or five blocks later I found my oil changed, my 12-year -old truck renewed, at least for now, and I had a bunch of new poetry to read to my kitties.

Ivy sits and snuggles on my lap, so I have to clench my legs as I write this. No problem. The customer is always right.

Malcolm's Meat

2010-05-27T03:16:00.001-07:00

Malcolm won't tell jokes
though this is not to say
he's not for joy bespoke
rolling a vole like a honeybun
after playing him half a day—
he knows such fun.

Malcolm won't tell man,
sorry as humans are
unable, quite, to stand;
attacking where we cannot flee
bleeding on vast fields of war
our miserere.

No. Malcolm's a cat,
he's all for some bright peace,
a litter of begats
all crying at his quean's sweet tits
'til heart's surcease.
Here, now. Life's just it.

Sky and universe above,
the makers of this dread
bless all Malcolm's love
because to kill a thing to eat
and follow, push, or shove
is well, and meet.

After all, it's only Malcolm's meat.

The Moon, My Friends, And Me

2010-05-27T00:30:00.000-07:00

The full moon is shining brightly enough to read a Dylan Thomas poem by, it's after midnight, and I'm wondering where the day went. The truth is, Kitty Daddy snoozed and read all day after suffering a long period of atrial fibrillation, which just wouldn't quiet down, for several hours this (yesterday) morning. But when he woke, he found that several of his best friends were up and hanging about the bedroom door, just waiting for a chance to bite his toes, climb his legs, and tear a few new ventilation holes in his tee shirt.

Life around here is like this. Teresa's up early every morning, with a dozen errands and tasks of her own, but Kitty Daddy is up then just as often, with his dozen or so things to do, and places to go. Feeding twenty-five cats and a dog, now, that requires a run to Paul's discount and Leash on Life at least once or twice in a fortnight, and each full forty pound bag of food will be empty and stuffed into the garbage a fortnight hence, having never really known its predecessor. Likewise, several boxes of cat litter from Wal-Mart (sorry, but theirs is the best) and a couple bags from Hy-Vee will have met their date with the recyclers, or added to the bulk of the landfill west of town.

Then there are new leashes and toys for Seuss, and the little rolls of bags that end up containing his daily productions, gleaned from his walks and his small, occasional deposits around the yard. The kitties seem to want to contribute as much as they can, as well, and their pee-balls formed of the wet, expanding bentonite or corn-cob litter can fill up a fifty pound garbage bag every week. We don't mind all this, and hope that in some far future time the geologists of that day will be digging out diamonds and strangely-formed geodes that were once humble poop.

Of course, thoughts like this don't just jump out in the imagination while Kitty Daddy or Mommy are running their daily or nightly course, they come of long talks on a rainy day, and long thoughts sitting up at night on the stoop, watching the moon, Mars, and the bright stars tracing their majestic paths across the night sky.

But never once does Kitty Daddy feel alone. No matter how long he's been up, or how many naps he took during the day, there was always a friend around, watching over him, sitting patiently beside him as he slept, or beaming down on him from above. It could be Sylvester, rolling over on his back for yet another belly rub, it could be Mouse speaking in his soft, melodious voice from one of Seuss's beds—Mouse seems to have taken them over—or it could be Seuss, old gentle soul and boon companion that he is, rolling and rolling in the clover and tall grass while Kitty Daddy looks on, and strokes his glossy black flank.

I've mentioned before the number of times we need to vacuum in a week, and just how much cat hair we collect from the lint trap in the dryer, but I've never mentioned except in sardonic tones how much it means to me to do this. Our more long-haired cats, like Sheba, Mouse, Claire, and Khan, are shedding everywhere they go; and I acknowledge that we don't groom them anywhere near as much as they need to be groomed. So, they groom themselves, a little at a time, rubbing and wallowing along the chair covers, around the corners, along the baseboards, and I am a collector, following behind like the little moustacheoed street-sweeper man at the end of Mr. Peabody's parade of history in the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. But it almost never feels like simple drudgery, even though I sometimes feel trapped in a life gone beyond my control.

Right now, as I was watching the old moon, I thought again of her slow process across the dark sky, and feeling in my bones and old, aching back, the fact that she has done this now for untold ages, wending her gorgeous and stately way through countless nights, pointing the way for weary mortals trekking vast distances of earth. I realized again what a gift it is to never be alone. To never be without comfort, to never experience pain but in the midst of stalwart friends, to live and to be variously sad or joyous, enclosed by a warm and loving circle of little beings who seem willing to live as much for me as they live for themselves—all this, for the price of scooping out a litter box once in awhile.

For never once was I sick, or angry, or in deep dumps, but one, if not several, of these small furry ones came forward, to lick my hands, to gently knead my jeans or tear up my shoelaces, to bury their head or expose their soft bellies in absolute fealty and solidarity with my poor human anguish. An anguish, I might add, sooner solved by them than by the aid of doctors, with their pills, their science, and their impersonal pledge to help the distressed.

So, what would you give, to have friends like these? Would you complain if you had to scoop up and deposit their poop, much the same as you would if you were an orderly in a nursing home? Would it seem an imposition to you to nurse them when they were sick, or stay up a night and sit with them? And to run to the store, to bring them their vittles, would that seem like such an almighty hassle when they waited for you a long hour on the steps, while you were gone to the woods to hike amongst the trees, or gone fishing, or, had simply stormed out of the house, to expressly "get away" from them?

The moon, she sails on, living a kind of existence that, for someone like me, with as short a time as I have here on earth, is really unfathomable. A robin cries half of its full-throated song, fooled by her light, shining now almost as bright as day. The robin soon falls asleep again, while, at the garden window, the Black Prince Malcolm watches me at the corner of the stoop, who will lay himself at my feet when I come back inside. He will stretch out impossibly long until I bend and stroke his skinny belly, and once again acknowlege the fact that he is the longest little kitty I have ever known.

This is a life worth living, amongst many possible lives that may not be. This life of Kitty Daddy's is something, a whole lot, more. At moments like this, I am only sorry for that part of it I sleep through. For, after all, it keeps me from my loved ones, my comrades that will live, and die, now, with me.

Meanwhile, I am awake, and the moon is sailing on, down now behind the honey locust. She will disappear, towards dawn, in her vanishing act to light up the night around the other side of the world, but right here, right now, asleep, awake, I will be with my friends.

Kitty's Back (for Claire and Jenna)

2010-05-21T17:31:00.000-07:00

Catlong sighs, holdin' Kitty's black tooth
She left to marry some top cat, ain't it the cold truth?
And there hasn't been a tally since Sally left the alley
Since Kitty left with Big Pretty, things have got pretty thin
It's tight on this fence since them young dudes are musclin' in

Jack Knife cries 'cause Baby's in a bundle
She goes runnin' nightly, lightly through the jungle
And them tin cans are explodin' out of the 90-degree heat
Cat somehow lost his baby down on Bleecker Street
It's sad but it sure is true
Cat shrugs his shoulders, sits back and sighs
Ooh, what can I do, ooh, what can I do?
Ooh, what can I do, ooh, what can I do?

Catlong lies back-bent on a trash can
Flashin' lights that cut the night, dude in the white says he's the man
Well, you better move fast when you're young, or you're not long around
Cat somehow lost his Kitty in the city pound
So get right, get tight, get down
Who's that down at the end of the alley? She's been gone so long
Here she comes, here she comes
Here she comes, here she comes

Kitty's back in town, here she comes now
Kitty's back in town
Cat knows Kitty's been untrue and that she left him for a city dude
Well, she's so soft, she's so blue
When he looks into her eyes, he just sits back and sighs
Ooh, what can I do, ooh, what can I do?
Ooh, what can I do, ooh, what can I do? Alright
Ooh alright, ooh alright
Ooh alright, ooh alright

Lyrics by Bruce Springsteen
Incredible music of Bruce and the E-Street Band on The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle

Jenna found!

2010-05-10T19:32:00.000-07:00

Jenna found!

A few minutes ago, I received a young man named Gary Lee, and he bore some really great news, namely, that Jenna had returned home. Of course this was the occasion of a general celebration amongst us poor humans, and also amongst the cats, although it's rather difficult to get the kitties to celebrate when they don't want to, dang 'em. But we all DID celebrate, as best we could, anyway.

So Jenna is back home now, and promises not to wander out in the storm anymore.

Our Own Private Pseudotsuga

2010-05-08T12:11:00.000-07:00

Ahndest du den Schoepfer, Welt?

There is a very tall Douglas fir standing off the southwest corner of our house. She has grown tall enough now, and is old enough, that I wonder whether I should rightly say, "Our house stands to the northeast of a very tall Douglas fir," as she is, after all, very likely at least as old as the house. Older, then, than many people, older than the age of terrible and violent storms, three-day coastal rainfalls, older than cell-phones, dial-a-prayer, or the "high concept" behind the personal computer on which I write this. She is enough a landmark, and a personality in her own right, perhaps, to have her own address, and to include me in her census form, but regardless of any of these considerations, she will stand, a long time, until her roots tap out, and she dies, mainly because she is not growing in the great Northwest in which her ancestors evolved. But, God willing, she will outlive me, stunted and deformed as the climate here in Iowa can make her, and it's a good bet she'll never complain, no matter what mayhap.

I, on the other hand, share a kind of title to this noble creature with Teresa, and I reckon that all our cats and the dog have something of a share in the forty-five feet of her, if you can think of her, still, as property. There are three dead souls of tiny cats reposing beneath her boughs, a place where catnip has, somewhat miraculously, though not mysteriously, by any means, sprung up. The cats, and I, are grateful for her patronage. So I think of this tree sometimes in a very atavistic way, as if she were a kind of goddess, or, if not a goddess, a particular friend, the kind of friend those in monastic circles or convents used to be warned about. And, best of all, my friend the noble fir, next to whom I am lucky enough, or blessed enough, to live, listens with a kind of quiet grace to all my maunderings, my frustrations, my foibles, without a word of censure. This tree may be the best friend I have in a pinch.

Now our cats, even the largest, Cider, Mouse, and Jimmy, all stand about a foot tall. On my best day I measured five foot ten inches tall, though I have shrunk somewhat, something I see now as a gradual process as the younger, brasher animal learns, and is repeatedly burnt by a scorching, bruising world. One shrinks because it would have been better, in so many situations into which one blundered, to have remained in a shell.

But, because I am human, I have constructed over the years something almost in remedy to my shell, the shell into which I habitually have shrunk, and I can climb this stairway we built, and stand on this deck, constructed of the bones of this very fir's ancestors, and contemplate—well, whatever I choose to, sky, street scene of rude boys and shameless youths, the neighbors' yards or my own. But most often, as today, this afternoon, I see this fir. Her branches wave and rock in the wind, and I know at times a gentle sigh escapes her. Doves nest in her branches, the remains of kittens who were very ill, and could grow no more, and died, are sheltered down amongst her roots, and a thousand people benefit, in one way or other, from the very fact of her existence every day. I stand here, on my deck, a man of middling height, way in the middle end of my wayward life, and I listen, I marvel, I wonder, standing halfway up her glorious height, because it is my nature to do so.

This fir, she is speaking, perhaps singing, something that would provide an answer for me, or perhaps would confuse me even further, but anyway I can't hear anything but the gentle sighing of the wind in her lovely trailing branches, the branches that I watch, year after year, renewing themselves, breaking under the weight of ice, growing rusty for a week in the late summer, and budding out a lovely shade of green in spring, continually building something that only a great Love beyond any mortal's ken could have conceived. It can be as big and mysterious a puzzle as I choose to make it, I guess; somewhere, where thoughts and ideas really matter, these things are all worked out, and there is no doubt whatsoever. should probably go along with the plan, at least, for today.

I walk back down the stairs, inside again, and Mouse and Pippin are fighting, Jimmy's tail is twitching, as though he is ready to spray something, and Seuss, although he is quite stoic in some ways for such a bouncy young retriever, is nervous, and sitting on pins and needles, uncertain how he should react to all this. So many cats are a great trial for a hunter, bred to be still and then take action only at someone's command.

"Take it easy, buddy," I tell him. "Let's go find you a tree."

There is more to Kitty Daddy than "just" cats, although they make up the most of him. And everybody else, too, as far as he can tell.

Jenna Lost In A Storm

2010-05-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

A kitten we raised back in November of 2006, named Jenna, has been living just down the street from us since these wonderful people adopted her. She has grown up to be a beautiful and long-haired tabby and white, and has brought much joy to her household of animal lovers. The other day Teresa ran into Bonnie, Jenna's "mommy", and learned that a small (or great, depending on your point of view) disaster had struck.

During the thunderstorms on Saturday, it seems that Jenna got out of the house and hasn't been seen since. Bonnie has posted flyers and notified the Iowa City Animal Care and Adoption Center but has had no word yet as far as I know of Jenna's whereabouts.

These photos were all taken while Jenna was small, and, obviously, was the darling of both Mouse and Sylvester, along with several of the other older cats. She now has a very splendid bushy tail, is very friendly and flirty, as becomes such a pretty girl, and she should respond to a gentle call and a little patience if you happen to see her out and about. Her family is emailing me some recent pictures of her and I will post these as soon as I get them.

Jenna, your family loves you and misses you very much! Please come home! And remember not to run from someone who may read this and recognize your peculiar markings as your very own. You notice she has an entirely white right front leg, white paws, and very distinct tabby markings on her back. And a big fluffy tail! These next photos are of Jenna grown up.

Kitty Daddy would appreciate any leads as to her whereabouts, and meanwhile, the search continues.

In the above, it is the little kitten that is Jenna. Where we see Minha, a black and white kitten we fostered, in the bed on the left photo, it is Jenna who is somewhat blurry on the right. Picture quality suffers when a kitten is always moving and we're shooting in natural light! the other pictures, #2, #6, #7, and #8, counting down from the top, are of the full-grown, glorious Jenna, whom we all now miss and love.

Kitty Daddy's Home Stand

2010-05-05T05:56:00.000-07:00

Teresa, my lovely, was absent from the house on business for ten days, and I must admit that Kitty Daddy was in full animal care mode during most of this time. Inspiration, I suppose, was there in plenty on a minute-by-minute basis, but very little of this inspiration made it through to the blog. Thus I failed in my promise to keep Teresa updated on the pet scene on the home front during this time. Little annoyances abounded, however, as they will do when you are facing twenty-five cats and a dog in a house of this size alone, a big toe cut by a carpet nail the cats had scratched into where the carpet meets the kitchen's vinyl flooring, various small nuisances created by cats' upchuckings and destructive instincts, the constant need to care for the carpets, the floors, and now, in this season, the lawn and gardens as well. A weed whacker went south on me, and Sears seemed incapable of repairing it correctly—having to ship it to Chicago, whereas I could have had old Elmer down the street get it running in a quarter the time and half the cost. The dog, Seuss, though sweet-natured and very polite, and highly trained at this point in his young life, still needs walking ever day, at least once a day, and at times, when the dry spell was over and the rains came and went, with temperatures climbing towards 90 despite the early season of the year, the gnats and mosquitoes now became a problem for allergy-suffering Kitty Daddy, and something of a problem for Seuss as well. Then, Hy-Vee, once a really great place to buy a pack of cigars, almost doubled its prices for KD's brand, claiming an accountant's oversight had created the artificial (and money-losing) low price.

Thinking to cut out at least one aggravation, Kitty Daddy went shopping around the town for good cheap lunches for the suddenly single male, and found that a good burger and fries served on a plate usually took away a good ten bucks, these days, and of course you have to tip these diligent students who work for peanuts in these places, and that the very gas he burned in coming to and fro and cruising, looking at the swollen river, visiting with friends, and sharing a moment of fellowship somewhere in air conditioning cost quite a bit as well. Comparing the cost to what boarding for Seuss or cat-sitting for 25 cats so that he could have gotten away for a day or two altogether, however, it looked as though KD could probably have eaten three square meals a day out somewhere and cruised to his favorite seafood and catfish places along the river and still saved money—but the further he drove, he found, the more his worries and troubles multiplied. The kitties and Seuss were always lined up waiting for him when he got home, the house was a little less tidy than when he left, and he was tired from all the driving and the relentless soporific of all those meaty proteins and fats circulating in his blood stream and taxing his liver.

So, one day, last Sunday as a matter of fact, Teresa came home, while KD was taking a little cat nap, and all these duties became shared once again. The satisfaction in keeping the cats and Seuss himself were, of course, immeasurable, and, although they sometimes don't seem to express themselves very well, I am certain that the animals here at the white house on the corner appreciate KD's homestand as well.

And it really isn't that hard at all, with, as they say, a little love to leaven it all with.

Beautiful Day, a Fable

2010-04-21T13:34:00.000-07:00

A beautiful sunswept, breezy day orders up, from on high, a long list of animal and plant activities, while the Kitty Daddy has only to sit and take note. There is a certain singing, a resonance in the breeze, just as there is a smell of lilacs and blossoming crabs and someone's over-generous spreading of bone meal. A mixture of salt and sweet, of sour and foul. A week of dry weather has brought out the perennials in our gardens, even though the soil is caked and crumbling to the touch. Their taproots, grown and extended for many long seasons of rain and drought, reach far down into the earth, which, though it seems dry, is brimming with water a couple feet down below.

Several of our cats who are not basking by the deck doors are up in the rose garden window, watching Seuss, who chews his nylabone and snaps at flies, as he sits contented in a bower of shady grass and dandelions. They wish they were outside as well. But, Kitty Daddy thinks, what would become of the wrens, who have begun trumpeting their water falling call, what would become of this year's cock robins, surveilling the yard for a bug or a worm, how would Mama Cardinal, building so assiduously her nest in the juniper hybrid, escape? For the cats are the most proficient predators of this world, who will quite cannily kill anything, sooner or later, they cross paths with. Kitty daddy's babies cry to him, then, from the window. "Let us out, they say. Let us kill this one bird!" Would that they were allowed into it, the od predatory thing inside Kitty Daddy thinks. There is no escaping death, anyway, as Kitty Daddy realizes, for all these green and mortal things. But the cats would hurry death's entrance wherever their shadows fell.

Kitty Daddy observes last year's nesting place for his tribe of pet wasps. They began to build their nest in an old upturned coffee can stuck on a fencepost last summer. Kitty Daddy was looking for earwigs, which crawl up any vertical object like a post or a strut and repose in the underside of old cans or pots during the daylight hours, after which they climb back down and destroy daisies and coreopsis and even spiky echinacaea, nibbling away at the petals and the beautiful yellow of the stamens until nothing is left. When he lifted the old coffee can off its post, he was greeted by an angry swarm of vengeful wasps, and dropped the can down into the jungle of the garden floor. After he recovered from his stings and his surprise, he very carefully lifted the can back up from the jumble of weeds and flower stems and set it back on its post, figuring that maybe the wasps were a good thing. For the rest of that summer, whenever he was out in the garden, near the stoop, the wasps would visit him, singly or in twos or threes, and sometimes light on his head or his arms. But never once was he stung again, and there were no more earwigs amongst the daisies at all.

In the fall, he sadly observed the decline of the wasp tribe, and as the nights got colder, he could, with impunity, lift the can off its post and see the remaining wasps clustered together, sleeping, apparently, too cold to move until the sun was high in the sky. Their nest hung empty and brittle now, like an old dead root. There were less of them every day, and occasionally he would find a bee, too, or a butterfly, or even one of the few remaining earwigs, nestled in a hollyhock, cold and wet. He knew that the earth these creatures could live in was dying, and winter was coming, just like a cat, into the small world of the yard, and that there was nothing that would escape its icy claws, its voracious fangs. It seemed the giant cat winter had padded in on little paws of frost and now was killing everything in the yard. Soon there would be nothing alive but ice, and snow, and the cold winter sky.

He saved the wasp's nest, a few days after the last lonely wasp had dropped, frozen to the earth. The bees were gone too, having slept their last sleep in the last withering stalk of hollyhock. The first blizzard came, and buried everything in an unbroken shell of blinding white.

But today, as he throws again the little mouse toy, and the remarkable little girl Holly races off to retrieve it ahead of Mollie and Lenny, Kitty Daddy reflects on something new he has seen and heard and smelled in the vastness of their yard. It was in the smell of the lilacs and the crabs, after all, and he could smell it, for once.

Holy, holy holy, it said, through its sweet smell, there was no mistaking.

And up through the ground, though it was really far too tiny a sound for any human to hear, all the tiny sprouts of a thousand different kinds of plants were singing, in the exact same key as the lilacs' fragrance.

Holy, holy holy, they sang. And then, again,
All is well, all that is broken shall be made anew.

And down in the ground, beneath the post where the old coffee can hangs, he saw a wasp. The new wasps were hatching and making their way, newborn, up out of the dry, crumbly ground. Then two wasps, and then three. And while one flew into the bottom of the can, the other two flew all around him, as he watched, in a series of Immelmanns and loop-the-loops, all round his head, as if to greet someone they only knew by an unknown kind of memory, and then they too lighted and crawled inside the can.

Holy, holy, holy, their wings were singing, and the wren joined in, and a robin, watching from the rose bed he had just dug up, sang its own arpeggio of joy, while all the world around him, the real, actual world of green things, growing things, and those things just born out of the ground, all of them sang,

Holy, holy holy,

So now Kitty Daddy sat and threw the little toy mouse again, and felt the sun's burning kisses on his face, and thought of the breezes that were blowing, the leaves unfolding, and all of the animals that he loved so much who were coming back, and wondered if it could ever possibly end, so strong a force it was, as it sang so loudly now to him, in his inner ear, in his mind, where all the good things he had ever thought of had come from, and little Holly, the beautifully perfect little calico cat, came with her tiny white paws holding a mouse in her jaws, only a play mouse, of course, but she presented it once again to Daddy, only to have him throw it up against the wall, as she kneaded his chest with her paws and purrred, so loudly it rose above the whine of a huge turck ascending the hill,

Holy, holy holy,

Mollie, who had run very hard to beat Holly to the mouse, jumped up on the arm of the chair, and they both ended up on his lap. As they purred and flexed their very prodigious claws, it was obvious to him that life would go on, in any matter or wise, no matter what else may occur. Then they all settled down and had a very nice nap.

Outside the house, the singing, and the burgeoning life that sang it, went on all day…

Beating The News

2010-04-17T09:57:00.000-07:00

News reports today have described a gigantic volcanic eruption in Southern Iceland—not a place I would have thought had a southern anything. But I guess even the North Pole has a south side. In fact, it's south on all sides. But the volcano near Eyjafjallajokull glacier is spewing a huge column of ash and grit, since the magma cools so rapidly beneath the glacier floes before exploding upwards into the air. This has caused a no-fly warning over much of Northern Europe, since the grit and ash can play holy hell with a jet's engines and cause a crash.

But increased volcanic and earthquake activity, wierd weather, the threat of a global pandemic, and the increasing number of sunspots are only a fraction of our concerns these days—the United States is extending its fruitless chase for Al Qaeda into the mountainous regions of Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan, and, as everyone knows, Pakistan, along with neighboring India and China, all possess nuclear weapons, and it's questionable whether any one of these countries will continue to be friendly with its neighbors, or us, for much longer, and God only knows when the Yanks will decide to give up and go home. When the oil runs out, is my guess.

Then there are the doomsday scenarios we keep hearing about, and picking up on the internet. You know, the Mayan calendar that signals the end of the last of five ages on earth? the end being December 21, 2012? And it's not as if it was simply the last page of the calendar, and it will just flip over to a whole new year. The calendar goes back some 26,000 years, so don't you think they would have simply gone on, if there was going to be any more time after that date? There also seem to be a large number of cosmic coincidences, fantastic alignments of planets, a peak in sunspot activity, a predicted perfect storm of perfect hurricane weather, and even an alignment with the supposed center of the galaxy, which contains, after all, an enormous black hole. Oh, and the economy is tanking, with no sign of any recovery around the corner. But we may all end up with some form of health care, mostly consisting of free flu shots, and higher income taxes.

You know what I would do, if I were you? Sit down in a comfortable chair and wait for your cat to discover your lap. Notice the deep, throaty purring, and the sheer pleasure of its velvety fur, the beautiful markings and the precise placement of its whiskers. Outside, if you can look out from where you're sitting, note that the lilacs and the dandelions and violets are all in bloom. It's bloom time for the apples and tulip trees as well. The sun is shining and it is altogether a brilliant, cool spring day.

Does your cat seem concerned? Should you be?

Three more senseless short films about cats

2010-04-14T09:09:00.000-07:00

These candid moments were shot on a lazy morning around the house, just as most mornings can be, as Kitty Daddy recovered from a particularly long and beastly episode of irregular heartbeat. I realize that Pee Wee in particular has his own fan club out there, and am trying to do what I can to make sure you can keep up with his splendid progress towards adulthood.

The others who appear next, Malcolm, Sylvester, Mollie, Holly, and Spike, all deserve fan clubs and, perhaps, individual homes of their own, but for now, they are with us, and, as you can see, quite comfortable.

Addendum to "Cat Scratch"

2010-04-10T06:14:00.000-07:00

I must make a note here that during the entire time I wrote the piece below I was besieged by very friendly kitties—especially Lenny and Ivey of the White Tips. Climbing up my bare legs with tiny razor-claws extended for better traction, trilling and purring up a storm. And they haven't quit until just now when I got up, finally, and let them lead me back to the downstairs bathroom, inside which their breakfast food bowls still stood only half-eaten. Or half-full, depending on what kind of outlook you habitually take.

These kittens are still available, by the way, through the Johnson County Humane Society, although with each day it becomes a greater hardship thinking of them gone from us—a possibility, mind you, only a possibility. Otherwise, they are with us to stay, and it looks as though they have found a home here with us already.

Top: Lenny looking out as Ivey looks at camera
Left: Spike in residence atop Seuss' crate.

Kitty Daddy's Cat Scratch Award, 2009

2010-04-10T05:08:00.000-07:00

It seems I've been writing these little stories for well over a year now, and I have yet to derogate against anybody or anything except certain principles, broad, general ideas that seem unwarranted, unwise, or simply a bloody shame. As the Rutger Hauer character, Roy Batty, tells his "Maker" in the movie, Blade Runner, it seems that I now have "something a little more radical in mind".

Sometime around the middle of December, in the depths of deer season, a man named Raymond Goebels, Jr., was out hunting south of Marengo, a town not that far from where I live, and noticed something unusual in a tree. It seems that after he scoped the object and found it to be something looking very like a mountain lion, he called around to make sure it was all right to shoot the animal. Which he then did. He said later he planned to stuff the animal, where I'm sure it will gather dust in his den, gazing blindly out of glass eyes, while he cleans his arsenal for many years to come.

Mr. Goebels, I am certain you felt as though you were doing something that was your right, and you did well to find out if your anticipated actions were within the scope of the law before you took this beast's life. I doubt that you are a bad man, doubt very much that you are either a redneck or a "rabid hunter" or that you deserve any of the things I have read as commentary from those people who automatically exclude hunters from the tribe of humanity. I also don't know whether it is a good or a bad thing that there are mountain lions to be found in a state as overrun with people, and as devoid of any truly wild areas, as Iowa.

I was first taken hunting at about the age of eleven or twelve. I believe I shot a squirrel or a rabbit or two in my time, and have been there when ducks, pheasant, and deer have been shot. I don't presume to guess whether these animals suffered, or that their species were diminished by my actions, but I do know that I don't hunt any more, and just have no heart for it any more. I look at it as a good thing that one of my oldest friends, an excellent shot, knowledgeable woodsman, and great hunter, has declined in late years from participation in any blood sport.

You can see how well-informed I am on any aspect of this subject when I say that I only learned of this incident earlier today, from an email someone sent me, with a link to the news article as it appeared on KCCI.com (Des Moines). And I would actually like to see a few less deer grazing on city streets, and in people's back yards. I'm not in any way competing with them for food, but some things that they (and rabbits, ground squirrels, and voles) tend to nibble at I am very much in favor of—certain young trees and shrubs, mostly.

But I must explain what I think of something like a mountain lion, appearing anywhere. I suppose in my mind it's much like an eagle, a hawk, a wolf, or an owl. I simply can't get past the idea that these animals are precious, and it doesn't matter to me how many of them there may be, I hold them in a class that should be excepted from any laws that permit their being shot, or even shot at. I would have said, when I was first trying to sum up make ideas, and my feelings, that I think of these animals as rare jewels of tremendous value—but I don't know if the world truly needs more diamonds or pearls; and I can't think of anything that is disturbed if one of them is thrown away. There are simply some things, like big wild cats in the Americas, which are too valuable to lose.

I can imagine some neocon who listens to Rush Limbaugh every day, as one of the eight in your hunting party may well have been, crowing with delight not at your kill, and not at the simple beauty of this beast even when dead, but cackling with glee all the way home thinking of the number of tree-huggers that would be upset about this. And I'm going to ask a favor of you, Mr. Goebels.

The next time you see something like this in your scope, treat the event as if you were alone, with your gun, with all your woods experience, and listen to what the woods are telling you. Listen to your heart. Is this something that is better served by being let alone, or by dying, simply because you have the means to kill it?

I have to think that anyone, no matter who they are, and what their inclinations, would take a deep breath and do the right thing. That is, I think, in this situation, to turn on your heel and pretend you never saw it, meanwhile praying to your "Maker" your grateful thanks at having seen something so incredibly rare, and beautiful, and so deserving of the right to live.

Meanwhile, though, because of what you did that day, I'm afraid you must receive the first annual Kitty Daddy Cat Scratch Award. Don't be shy, Mr. Goebels, you earned it.

Picture courtesy of KGAN. News article here http://www.kcci.com/news/21974337/detail.html

Le Chien Qu'appelle Seuss

2010-04-08T00:10:00.000-07:00

le chien qu'appelle Seuss connait que je ne me couche pas par deux jours

Bright Rain Night (for Claire)

2010-04-07T23:51:00.000-07:00

Weather you couldn't name,
Spring leaves sooner came.
Now, it's raining, right.
Anyone'd fail on a rainy night.

Anyone'd fail on a rainy night,
Wrong turn heading home,
No one waiting, in the light,
would you've known?

Starry seas again,
Waves overwrite the stone.
A larger sky will dawn someday
Than any sky we've known,

If life and all you knew
began one rainy night
and died in blind miscue
would eternity requite?

Or, would it be all right;
would you've even known?
—A larger sky will dawn someday
Than any sky we've known,

Than any sky we've known

Copyright • Thos A Smith 2010

Happy Spring

2010-04-02T15:45:00.000-07:00

After a week of incredible weather Kitty Daddy, who springs from two families of old-time farmers and woodsmen, knew it could only end in wind and storms. We switched from a number of pleasing outdoor activities and quiet nights spent watching the moon to the great indoors, which generally means playing the stereo and catching up with the cleaning, which never really ends around here. The kitties and Seuss hole up in quiet corners and try to stay out of the way of the thunderous whining roar of the vacuum, and the house is electrified by all that fur getting sucked up into its mouth and into the filters of the air purifiers. It's darker, suddenly, and the vague sense of disquiet caused by the sense of stillness in the charged air outside seques into silvery sheets of falling rain. Down come the maple catkins and up come the coreopsis and mint leaves, pushing and growing like, well, weeds, the very weeds that have yet to be hoed under and pulled up.

If it wasn't for spring, I'm sure that we would all fall into a kind of waking doze, like old folks sitting on a porch on a sultry day, and we'd never snap out of it. But as for now, the house is clean and getting cleaner, the kitties are well-fed and napping, Teresa is out walking with Seuss in the rain, and KD has a moment to sit and reflect and puzzle out another piece on the mysteries of life—living with quite a few vibrant and sometimes contrary personalities, each with their own needs, idiosyncracies, and special traits.More later on this note—hope you're having a happy spring too.

Above: Shooting stars at Rochester Cemetery; hepatica and a trillium at Sugar Bottom; a violet. Left: a peaceful evening at Kent County Park; below, harebells at Rochester Cemetery.

The Cat-Proof Stew

2010-03-29T17:32:00.001-07:00

It's important for animal care people to take care of themselves—think of me not as mere Kitty Daddy, but like your mother, you know: "You need to eat!!"

Although it's never that hard getting some rest around a place like this, especially when all our babies have been fed and received their meds and are lounging in a state of utterly bland serenity on any horizontal surface that seems comfortable, I sometimes get up from my couch or the day bed and feel like I really need to accomplish something. Well, there's plenty of daily maintenance—vacumming, sweeping, culling cat hair from the furniture and then going outside to have a good smoke and sneeze and a wheeze—Kitty Daddy also cooks, from time to time, and, as always, those recipes we inherit in our childhood from the same moms and aunts and uncles who were always encouraging us to eat are still the best.

I had an Uncle Emil who frightened me somehow. For one thing he had tickled me into a state of apoplexy more than once, and he always was there, wanting to take me to the town dump, to go out into his garden or yard and rake leaves and hoe the weeds, but he was never above slipping a june bug down my back when I wasn't looking, and he had many stories regarding the Pancake sisters and the old river town I (and he, in an earlier generation) had grown up in, that I suppose he always seemed like some kind of benign wizard: benign, yes, but, still capable of crazy wizardry beyond my ken, so I had to watch him carefully, in much the same way that Ben now watches me, although I can't really think he's actually scared of me when he curls up so contentedly at my feet.

But several times a summer the benign wizardry of this man who had married my father's crazy sister Ruth emerged, just as the sunflowers, cabbages and tomatoes in his huge garden began to take hold, in what I can only call a state of glory. We would be invited, en famille, to partake in a wonderful stew of his own device, with large chunks of beef and every kind of vegetable you can name. Sweet corn, green beans, lima beans, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, turnips, celery, all from his garden, and, of course, side relishes of tiny green onions, radishes, fresh-baked rolls and heaps of dairy butter, while Aunt Ruth had made a distinctly Southern kind of sweet iced tea for the beverage.

I still make this stew, in an amended form, and the whole point of this article is to make you hungry enough to try it yourself. The major thing to remember is that since it has absolutely no meat of any kind in it, it suffices as a lenten stew, and the cats who normally hound you for a snack of your dinner most of the time will leave you utterly alone. There is just something about vegetables—onions, chives, carrots, and the like— that is inimical to cats, abhorrent, and, shall we say, to be shunned.

So the obvious way to have a nice peaceful dinner in a houseful of cats is to eat this way. They'll leave you alone, and you will be gladder of that fact for every mouthful you taste.

Boil up nine ounces of lentils in cold water. Start chopping your carrots, onions, potatoes, turnips, and celery while they boil. After about fifteen or twenty minutes add the above hard vegetables to the lentils along with some chopped broccoli, the green tops of the turnips, fresh chives, oregano, sage, fresh ground pepper and a small spoonful of black bean garlic sauce. Also, a cube of Knorr's vegetable broth, a large can of chunky tomato sauce, a can of diced tomatoes, and a can of mushrooms. Brussels sprouts are a favorite in this stew with us; if you dislike them, leave them out. the piece de resistance for this stew is the textured vegetable protein used in place of the stew beef. If you can find it (it's available at the Stringtown Grocery) these meaty chunks soak up the juices and flavors of the stew, and become very toothsome, wonderfully meat-like morsels in justa few minutes. I usually put them in near the end.

I have abstained from measurements as much as possible, simply use a big pot, only enough water to boil the lentils, and whatever quantity of vegetables you think four people can stand to eat at one sitting. That should work out fairly well. At least it does for me.

The importance of seeking cats

2010-03-28T18:54:00.000-07:00

Tonight Teresa went out with a trap and a can of mackerel to do some trapping. I stayed home, to clean out litter boxes and hold the fort. We have quite a pride of cats, and I always feel as though someone should be here with them. But as she left, I thought I would have a private conversation with the great goddess, as she is represented by the nearly full moon, to help us. After all, she governs cats and all those animals now associated in the Christian mythology with the devil. They do a splendid job of demonizing those things which were once sacred to a prior god or goddess. At any rate, we believe the cat Teresa set out to trap may be pregnant, and we know she lives in an area where many busy folks—hospital employees and students—come and go, and are liable to feed her scraps from their lunches. All which might make her harder to trap.

We live in an area where such circumstances are common. Students will keep a cat for their time in school, and then drop it or lose it conveniently when they graduate or move on. I have seen the results of this over and over again, and am committed to doing whatever I can to stop it, and you should be too.

If such a "wild" cat, dismissed from its former home, is lucky enough to be caught by the animal control officers, it has a limited time to wait for its adoption. It receives shots, is neutered, brought up to a good standard of health and nutrition, but, more often than not, is never adopted, and is then euthanized. When this spring's crop of kittens begins hitting the shelters, all such older cats, perhaps bearing the scars of their former lives, missing the sparkle of youth, will be put under the needle. Although all they ever wanted was a home and someone to love, they will die in the hands of the very people who tried to save them.

In your own neighborhood, there are cats that have not been spayed or neutered, that may never have had any real contact with a human. These are domestic cats, and the reason they exist on this earth is because of a human contact, many millennia ago. They now exist because we, humans, allowed them to be domesticated in the first place. Should they now be forgotten, because we have moved on to other distractions such as television and the internet?

Don't let the voice of your own apathy instruct you. There are many reasons why these cats should be captured and seen by a veterinary. Mainly, they need to be neutered. Every year, thousands upon thousands of domestic cats are born to become feral scavengers living mainly in the wild, living from whatever scraps they can find. The damage such cats wreak upon the environment, to songbirds, and to tame cats who are allowed to roam at large near their homes, is incalculable. These cats are the most efficient predators in any neighborhood, and the effects of their predation, though such effects may not be readily apparent to you, are equivalent to their formidable abilities.

I'll be going out with Teresa later on to check on our progress under the light of the waxing moon. Thank goodness we have a clear night. We have been out before doing this in a driving rain in December after our devastating tornado destroyed St Patrick's church and a few feral cats took to living in the ruins of the rectory. (Which see) I imagine we will be doing this for the rest of our lives. If you have ever released an unspayed female or a potent tom into a convenient cornfield, because you had better places to go and better ways to spend your time, and the cat was simply a hassle, we are two of those who are doing our feeble best to clear away your dirty little secret. Bless you, pilgrim, I hope life changes you for the better. Meanwhile, we continue, as always. There is little time, and many, many mistakes to try to make up for.

Please, don't make another one. Spay or neuter your cat, and, if you can't keep it any longer, turn it in to the shelter or the local chapter of the humane society. The wholeworld, in its own way. will thank you for it.

A Rake's Progress

2010-03-28T11:25:00.000-07:00

For several months now, we've been raising a little boy kitten we named Pee Wee, Jr., after his mother, a neighborhood cat who was known as Pee Wee. Reports had it that Pee Wee had been pregnant, had been taken care of intermittently by neighbors, a lady we know and two neighbor boys, that we know of. At some point Pee Wee had her litter, and nothing is known at this point if any other kittens survived. We know only that Pee Wee began to make her appearances around the back yards in a neighboring town with a tiny charge, and that she also appeared to have a prolapsed uterus, not something very comfortable to think about, and probably extremely painful for her. On the last day she was seen, the kitten was captured, and Pee Wee somehow got away, although a blood stain was seen in the area where she had been. We can only assume that now Pee Wee is dead, beyond Rainbow Bridge, in a land where all her pain and travail is past.

We took Pee Wee Jr. at a very early age, and we both spent many happy hours heating KMR for the little mite, and nursed him on our breasts, holding the bottle at the prescribed angle, watching carefully while he bullied the nipple and greedily sucked up the "formula". I know that for women, breast feeding is supposed to be a tremendously satisfying experience, and I have to say that there is something psychologically embedded in this man, as well, as I recall that the hours I spent cradling Pee Wee on my chest while he fought with the nipple were amongst the happiest I have spent in a good long while. A very serene, placid, feeling of eternality emerges like the feeling I had occasionally working as an orderly and nursing assistant, where the very lowliest of tasks could become the most enjoyable and, once again, eternal, feeling—as if the action I was taking to care for a patient and the feeling it produced transported me to a place beyond fear and death, and transformed sometimes squalid surroundings into a vision of something like heaven on earth. I carry such memories and feelings with me always, and know that they are with me forever, because they were imprinted on my soul.

And even now, though I may be struggling with my lack of verbal facility to describe them, I can see that something far deeper and more important than the mere words I may conjure to describe this experience may be emerging from my mention of these things, because certainly, kind reader, you, too, have such feelings nestled within you, if you have ever nursed the sick, or held a loved one, or cuddled a weary and frightened animal. There must be something quite heroic and infinitely good within all of us, and if only we could cleave to these things, we would be more like the gods or goddesses whose examples we aspire towards, we could become more like the angels, and less like the savage that sometimes reigns within us.

Well, having been raised in such circumstances, and knowing only love and tender care, you might imagine that our little "Peewers" has grown like a weed and covered a lot of ground—and you'd be absolutely right. Pee Wee is now a half-grown beautiful tabby and white, with pretty white paws, a freckled face that ranges from white, a pale beige, gray and black and large, fearless amber eyes. He still gets angry and tussles with one's hand or foot if it seems to be in his way, or if he's nudged or moved a little out of position as he sleeps or snuggles on my chest, and he likes sometimes to burrow with his head under your arm, and he has a grip of iron. But when he is simply napping, he curls up against you or on you with complete abandon, and the feeling is, once again, that of a perfect serenity and peace.

So we love our little Pee Wee, and envision great things for him. He may develop into the kind of tom that Sylvester has proven to be, a truly noble and and great soul, and a joy to have around the house, always there when you need him, and content to simply sit and purr, purr, purr. And that,by the way, goes a long way toward producing the almost hypnotic effect of holding Pee Wee: his frame is still small and somewhat pint-sized, but his purr and his little protest noises and his talk is loud and clear. the message is pretty easy to read, too: he loves us, has claimed our hearts, and means to stick. That's all right with us; we're glad to have him. I should mention that he was ill for a brief period, with a very vicious abdominal complaint, but that was taken care of with Flagyl and a switch to a hypoallergenic food, which he devours with great gusto.

Images: Top: Pee Wee this afternoon in the lap of luxury, between Audrey and Lila; Stella in foreground. Bottom: Very tiny Pee Wee beside the carrier that was his house for a few weeks in his infancy, taken last fall, I believe.

Rainy Day Acrobatics

2010-03-24T08:21:00.000-07:00

It's a rainy, somewhat dreary day here at the house on the corner, and Lenny, the solid black member of the White Tips, is alternately biting my naked toes and climbing on me as I sit at my desk. Speaking of cats climbing and being generally preternatural in their superheroic activities—you know, most ordinary cats can do most of the things that Batman does, without seeming to even try very hard—I thought I'd include a link to a site a friend sent to us.

The video includes cats climbing up the corner of a house, and leaping atop doors, amongst other stunts. We photograph our own cats sitting high up on the pantry cupboards, the fridge, and the banister above the stairwell, without begging the question of how they got up there: well, we certainly don't put the there to pose them, we cme along and decide they're really cute sitting up there, and take a snapshot. But we have never caught them doing some of their most daring aerial escapades, such as climbing a sorry, battered mahogany doorframe to get atop a door, or vaulting to the top of the shower stall. So this will have to suffice, for now:

http://cuteanimals.todaysbigthing.com/2010/03/17

Spring Wedding Bells, And More

2010-03-22T06:20:00.000-07:00

After our snowstorm, the effects of which didn't last very long, Teresa and I met some friends of ours at a very, big, BIG, splashy wedding. I think there were actually more bridesmaids and groomsmen there than any wedding I'd attended previously, and while they all individually were introduced and many amusing stories told I thought back to my marriage to Teresa so many years ago. The time has flown, and there have been multiple additions to our family since then, but I have to think our own personal plan, if we ever could be truly said to have a plan, as such, has worked out for us and for our own goals at least as well as anyone else's that I can think of.

We are lucky to live in a town with few status freaks, very little upper class richies, and few really poor people, if you leave out the constantly changing faces of the thousands of university students, who probably make up the largest percentage of both the richies and the poverty-stricken in the area. Of course, students are supposed to be poor; and I doubt that much good can come of a college career spent wearing designer clothes, living in a house your daddy bought for the purpose, and driving a sports car. Since I don't really know anyone that drives the kind of supercars I enjoy reading about, and don't really know any roads you could drive such a car on around here anyway, I am always amazed when I see someone under the age of thirty parking a Lamborghini downtown. What could there possibly be left in your life to aspire towards, if you'd spent your youth whizzing around in something like that?

Well, just perhaps, you might get interested in kitties or in walking dogs down at the local shelter, since you can't have a pet in your posh student pad, or in your crummy dorm room either, for that matter. They certainly need the attention, and enjoy getting out of the cages to be nursed, run around outside, petted, or otherwise shown that someone cares a little for them, in their very sorry state of temporary incarceration. Just to prove my point, although I didn't really have any idea what I was doing when I took them, I include a few snaps of beautiful babies we rescued from the shelter, as they were just this morning, making do in the luxurious splendor in which they while away their post-shelter lives.

I'd like to think that all of our kitties have completely forgotten they were ever in a shelter, and the way several of them are racing around, fighting, yowling and hissing, I'm bloody sure of it. There's much too much going on in these kitties' present to allow them the time to reflect back on their past lives very much. Well, fine, kids, I'm glad we can provide you with so much in the way of recreational opportunities.

And by the way, the four White Tips, and Hollie, are all still available for adoption, and can be seen and test-driven here, and they all could still be reasonably classed as kittens, being still under a year old. They are also thoroughly socialized to humans and used to being around other cats, know which end of a dog is which, and seem generally suited to apartment or household living, have had all their shots and inoculations, and are, as Teresa often says, quite bonny. I suppose I should add something in the way of reflection on the marriage scene, since I started out this piece with a reference to Saturday's event. Well, cats are easier in many ways than a wedding, or a marriage, either to maintain or to manage, and in many ways quite as rewarding. Perhaps, and I add this advisedly, more so.

Above: Audrey, Mouse, Stella, Wolfie, Sugar. A gauche, James. Below, Khan greets the morning sun with a touch of the red-eye that has plagued him throughout his life. Still beautiful nonetheless.

Ode For Holly (and the rest)

2010-03-20T07:37:00.000-07:00

The calico kitten Holly jumps into the window, looking out past the film of last year's spiderwebs, and all the smudges, and the steam from little kittens' noses, generations now, that have smeared it long before she came into this world, into this house.

Everything is white now, overnight, the storm blew in from somewhere further south, where everything is warm, and spring flowers bloom, and birds flit back and forth from budding lilacs gathering twine and branches for their nests. Against the snow light from outside, black Malcolm looks up from all his majesty, and once again I wonder how could all this beauty be so lavished on this race, so magnificent in every cell, and how then could this one girl, Holly, or this one chap, Malcolm, have even more than all the rest?

Holly sits awhile, happily alone, though all her littermates are gone, and all the White Tips roam the house beyond the door, her boy PeeWee off on some mission once again, and even Kitty Mommy left this morning, while Daddy plays his loud guitar, not very well.

But, I tell myself, she is a queen, she needs a throne, and this is hers, proud to be alone, and stately in her loneliness, she looks out at the snow that soon will be gone, at the maple where the squirrels flit and quarrel and chase each other's tails, and in her beauty I can read all the hint of summer yet to come, and all the sweet transience of life, and in her gaze, the intimations of the coming end, which improbably may be sweeter than all the rest.

She is truly the mistress of all this she surveys, and knows that this is hers, her principality, her auspices, and here she will reign, no doubt, a good long time.

Night Moves

2010-03-19T02:47:00.001-07:00

I woke early enough to have been up with the monks I once spent so much of my free time with, at the New Melleray Cistercian monastery near Dubuque. And it was them I thought of, waking: Father Sam's firm belief that the "Hound of Heaven" would be tracking me for the rest of my life, and that my earlier abortive career as a rakehell, and even my recent conversion and devotion to the blessed Virgin were only the prelude to a life to come which would be spent, largely, suffering the pains and distraction of this world and offering it all up through the day to a Being who was capable of stealing into my soul's heart and illuminating every crazy angle, every dark shadow. At the end I would find myself to be an ordinary mortal, and beloved, quite an extraordinary thing indeed.

If Father Sam were around now, I would have to tell him that perhaps it was a Cat of Heaven who stalked me, all my life. Certainly there has always been a cat around, nearby, no matter where I went, and, whenever I found one, I found a friend, and an unusual bond sprang up between us.

Cats make perfect stalkers for souls, and they operate in a way remarkably similar to the modus operandi of a Higher Power. They seem to be there, in the way, at times, when their presence is a complete nuisance, and they usually are reminding me of something I'd rather overlook, mostly my own busy-ness, and my inability to simply go with the flow and let things happen. They may seem to disappear at times when I most want to have a cat or two near me, and I want a little comfort: but then, like the Supreme Being, their agenda for me is different from the one I have set for myself, and whatever it is that is their will for me simply doesn't correspond very well with my constant need to be comforted or reassured. As a matter of fact, several of the senior cats around here, like Mouse and Jolie, seem to think a little pain and alone-ness may be a good thing for my soul. How do I strengthen myself and build my inner resources otherwise than when I am frustrated and alone?

So my cats are the cenobites in this little monastery of mine, and as I have heard several Abbots mention during a homily, I take on this job only to find out how incapable I am and just how capable my higher power can be. If it were not for that last fact, certainly I would be closing up a downtown bar every night to this day, and wondering how in the hell I was going to get past the gendarmes to get home.

So, keep it up, cats. Be as nuisancey and annoying as you may: I know you're only at your preferred form of prayer. And, Higher Power who I choose to call Great Goddess, or call variously according to whatever mask You are wearing today, keep chasing me, in my own chase for all these things that are not, all these confusions and distinctions without a difference. I will certainly let you catch me in the end.

Images of Evil Cats

2010-03-18T06:18:00.000-07:00

From the Uncle Remus story, "How A Witch Was Caught". The large and incredibly evil black cat is actually a witch in cat form. I recall that the miller's wife, who was the witch in question, was burned at the stake. Uncle Remus as much as admitted to the little boy that he'd never really seen a witch, but that if he saw a coon's tracks, down by the creek, he knew old Mr. Coon had been along there.

A not-very-evil looking black kitty, decidedly more friendly than some of his literary fellows, and a classic vintage as well. Can make an old-time boozer like moi thirsty just thinking about it, but now I'm just here for the cuddles.

A Bohemian hangout on the Left bank in Paris. This is a poster advertising a tour of the premises. By Theophile Steinlein

An IWW symbol for sabotage, meant to scare employers. Created by Ralph Chaplin.

The two above from Wikipedia's article on black cats.

These images really seem to provide the ignorant and superstitious with a justification for mistreating, torturing, and killing cats. It's enough for me to know they are sacred, as are dogs and pigs, to the Mother Goddess. I believe in following her lead wherever possible. And I must admit that I've never met a truly evil pig, or spare rib, in my life, though there are some dogs I had my doubts about.

Thinking of Uno

2010-03-18T01:39:00.000-07:00

Now, late nights after midnight, Leo has found its way to the center of the sky, hanging there in silent majesty above our back yard. I don't necessarily want to be up, just to see a few constellations, but the time I recently spent in hospital, problems I had with an antibiotic, and a continuing itchiness have all contributed to some sleeplessness. There are usually a few cats awake, and they keep me company. I suppose I get a lot of thinking done this way, and manage to catch up on old correspondence, and, finally, catch up with myself.

Since spring is definitely signalling its coming as well, I would say all our housebound animals are getting a little twitchy, itchy or not. Teresa took two of our toms, James and Gordon, to the good vet down in Kalona for their checkup, and we found that suddenly they weren't at all as enthused about leaving the house as they normally seem to be. Gordon's soft low throaty cry, and James' pretty trill, were still emanating from the cab of the truck where I had stacked their carriers even as Teresa pulled away into the foggy morning. We found that Gordon has some serious gingivitis, James is as fit as a fiddle, and of course Teresa scored some good food buys at Central Discount and the Stringtown Grocery. But I'm afraid I missed all that, until later: the fatigue of another long night had caught up with me and I was slumbering.

I never dream about cats, specifically, but I sometimes think that certain of the people in my dreams might actually be cats, masquerading as humans in my subconscious. As a matter of fact, I'm up right now, writing this, because I had started thinking about a tiny little "Leo" we had with us for all too short a time; this was Uno, the sole kitten Talia, our polydactyl, produced, shortly before being spayed and coming home with us. Little Uno was in trouble the moment of his birth; and it seemed he had caught the upper respiratory problem that was raging amongst Talia's sisters and her mother, and which, in the end, probably killed him and his Aunt Shelby. These cats were found on a farm after the farmer and his wife went into a nursing home, and I believe they were exposed to the usual bugs in the animal shelter before they came home with us, and their systems simply had no means of fighting off the infection. We are probably lucky four of them survived, but I still feel badly about Uno and Shelby, wondering if I did something wrong, wondering if I could have saved them somehow, wondering.

And before you know it, I'm wide awake again, standing out on the back steps, gazing up at Leo. I pray for all these cats I have known, both living and dead, and if you are troubled by the plight of the homeless or unwanted cat, or dog, or human, it would probably help you out as well, if you prayed for them all, prayed for a better world where the lowly and weak are treated in accordance with the significance of their having survived up to this point, with love and respect.

I know that if you follow this blog you probably do these things anyway. I should be grateful, I know, and I am, for your readership, and for all the animals we have managed to help out, a little. There were certainly three or four clustered together with me on thebed and about the room, just now, that would not have seen the light of this day, or Leo burning brightly, or anything at all, after a certain point, if we hadn't brought them home with us. As for the sixty or so kittens we have fostered and who were successfully adopted, I am sure they are safe and as happy as cats can be, and a great blessing to those good people who have adopted them.

So, God bless you, and God bless everyone I have been connected with over this animal business. It is so much more than a pastime, probably a passion, and someone as self-centered as I am needs a driving passion to keep him in this world. As for little Uno, my little lion, and his Aunt Shelby, I trust that the great one who watches over us all has you in her keeping now, where I also long to go at the end of this sojourn in this vale of tears.

Pictured above: Uno, as he was on the last day of his short life; Tommy, another wonderful little lad I was sorry to see go, even if it was to be adopted by a wonderful young couple; Talia, within a very few days of her confinement, giving birth to Uno, and being spayed; and our biggest litter of kittens, all beautiful babies who were soon adopted after their return to the shelter. Blue is up front, and Fozzie, Ozzie, Midge among those in back. I'll have to check with headquarters to remember all the names to set down here.

Das Punctum Pruriens

2010-03-08T00:58:00.000-08:00

. . . das Böse, das Uebel und der Tod sind es, welche das philosophische Erstaunen qualificiren und erhöhen: nicht bloß, daß die Welt vorhanden, sondern noch mehr, daß sie eine so trübsälige sei, ist das punctum pruriens der Metaphysik, das Problem, welches die Menschheit in eine Unruhe versetzt, die sich weder durch Skepticismus noch durch Kriticismus beschwichtigen läßt. —Schopenhauer

. . . it is wickedness, evil, and death that qualify and intensify philosophical astonishment. Not merely that the world exists, but still more that it is such a miserable and melancholy world, is the punctum pruriens of metaphysics, the problem awakening in mankind an unrest that cannot be quieted either by scepticism or criticism. (Schopenhauer, WWR II, 172, tr. Payne)

I was up at a late hour, for us, after eleven, anyway, and I had looked up "evil" in the Catholic Encyclopedia after having seen a television show that attempts to be what I would call naughty, or racy, or crazy. It involves vampires, which are not, and a cable television subscription, which we have not, so Teresa had checked it out from the library on DVD.

The whole thing reminded me of an essay by James Baldwin, in which he mentioned having seen The Exorcist. Certainly, he wrote, if there was a real evil at work in the world, it would have better things to do than turn a twelve-year-old girl's head round backwards, and have her kill a drunken British director.

But the Catholic Encyclopedia, and many other sources I was referred to by the lame, best-available search engine, did little to enlighten me. Perhaps evil was simply a word we used to label anything untoward which happened to us, perhaps it was a misunderstanding of the actions of nature, perhaps it was a sociological phenomenon, or maybe the supposed absence of God had something to do with it.

I was further confounded by something I'd found in an old favorite of mine. In the entire works of Joel Chandler Harris, as he writes in the character of the revered Uncle Remus, cats are only mentioned twice. Both times, they are actually witches, and witches, most generally, are skinned and have their insides turned inside out before their hides are burnt.

Up till a few years ago such statements would never have bothered me. My reading list throughout my life has varied widely, and I notice that any particular concern for the well-being of animals has never been a great salient point for any of my preferred authors. Of course many of them were great drunks, hunters, wife-beaters, fishermen, and outdoors-people, but I can't recall a single one who decried the outrageous abuse of animals that has continued throughout the recorded history of our species. Upton Sinclair did not write The Jungle in order to save any steers, but merely wanted to point out that the conditions which drove the poor to work in such a place were, to say the least, inhuman. And, as I said, the Uncle Remus character always seemed more interested in making a great impression on the small auditor in his charge than on the predicaments his stories' subjects were left in.

"Did Brer Wolf die, then, Uncle Remus?"

"Well, I don't 'zackly know 'bought dat, now, honey, dat's jest de way de story was tole to me..."

And so on, throughout thirty thousand years. At least, those years that we have a record of. So if there is something like evil afoot in the world, perhaps we have no way of identifying it, at all, because even if we did notice something amiss (the bombing of civilians in a country said to contain a handful of terrorists and a lot of oil) or the wholesale slaughter of animals simply to feed the insatiable desire of the public for a burger any time of day or night, and the necessity of keeping our streets clear of diseases and accidents which might be caused by animals roaming at large— even if we do notice something irrational and, well, beastly, about these processes, we won't be able to express the question in the right way to get any answer out of anyone who might be in a position to render a response. (As in the little boy and Uncle Remus.)

I wasn't too frustrated, finding no answers that availed on the internet. For anyone who has used this particular reference source for a number of years, it has become more and more obvious that its utility as a research tool has declined as its revenues have climbed, and soon, it will take its place alongside television and radio as another pathetic vehicle for what appears to be an already moribund capitalist system. Meanwhile, I happened to look around me.

Here was James asleep on the little bed by my guitars, within inches of my head. On my old chair, Khan, Malcolm, Sugar, and Mouse were lying in an untangleable confusion of fur and paws, while Sylvester lay sleeping on the old pillow beside them. Jolie hovered, and, a few moments later, when I went upstairs, Sheba curled herself round me as I walked, while Thistle waited to take her place in the wings.

It occurred to me, at that moment, that, as wary as all these animals are, as cagey, as nimble, as wise as every one of them has always been from the moment of birth, they trusted me, and actually sought out my company when I wasn't even seeking it or paying any attention to them. If there was any real evil around, to any of us, they certainly weren't aware of it. And they are always aware of much more than I could ever be.

I believe that cats such as these can tell you, better than any human, just what evil is, and where it comes from. But perhaps you need to back up a little from your inherent closeness to any situation about which you have doubts: in other words, drop the machinations of your mighty, rationalizing brain. Do they seem worried? Are they fretful?

You might ask yourself whether your cats have problems separating themselves from you wherever you sit, and as you walk, and, if they seem particularly glue-like, sticky, that is, and if their purring seems awfully loud, I would say that, contrary to Uncle Remus, evil is probably nowhere near. I will go further with my thesis and suggest that anywhere you see a cat, there the boogieman is probably not. After all, they have hundreds of millenia of further evolution telling them, down in their core beings, whether a situation is safe or not. We are the dumb neophytes in this milieu.

There's a good chance your cat is trying to tell you something, such as, All is well. Fear not. I would advise you to listen to it. Just as you would any other bright angel. And, if you are capable of listening, then kneel, pilgrim; you are in the presence of something holy: trust what you hear.

Charlie and Esther in Heaven

2010-03-07T15:50:00.000-08:00

In our back yard, really, the side yard, close to the sidewalk, an immense mother Douglas fir stands, and I've always thought of her as one of the greatest living members of our household. Although she stands on a spot that may, at any time, be compromised by some decision of the power company or the city magistrates, she is the single greenest and largest living being for some distance around during the very coldest months of snowy frozen barrenness, and she also communes, in a visual sense and in other ways, perhaps, aesthetically, with our neighbor Brian's two beautiful blue spruce, which, because of their very prickly, bushy, and somewhat closed architecture, are the home for numerous juncos, chickadees, and grass sparrows, who are always welcome, as with anything living or green, throughout the icy winter months.

As I have written before, our population of kitties has had several negative fluctuations, namely, the deaths of such promising young kittens as Dickens, to whom most of my life efforts since have been dedicated, Shelby, a sister of Sugar, Stella, and Talia, and Charlie and Esther, who passed away rather suddenly before a proper diagnosis of their problems could be made.

Charlie was a very young and scrawny kitten who liked to curl up on an old Teddy Bear of mine, and we fostered him because his foster mother was told by her husband that she could no longer perform her fostering services for the ICACAC. He was very meek and mild, and (I realize now) very ill.He also had the most beautiful beryl-colored eyes, and he always seemed to be looking up at me rather apologetically as I worried over him and cuddled him, something which made his illness and passing even more difficult. Perhaps in that knowing feline uncanny way, he knew he was not destined to be around long, no matter what we did. It must have been traumatic for him to have been placed with a person who then had to reject him and return him to the shelter. For our own part, we were not knowledgeable enough to find a vet to administer Panacure, or Albon, or any of the other meds that we now know can stop nearly any kitten disease of the alimentary tract in a couple of days. He was dewormed again, on the advice of someone at the ICACAC, and grew weaker and more lethargic, and, in a couple of days, had his last little afternoon in the summer sunlight, at the garden window, and died.

Esther had died the day before. For two weeks or so she ran, raced, and played about our house, and cuddled with Emma, an older and similarly black and white tuxedo kitten. She, like Charlie, had a problem of losing everything she ate, not vomiting as in a bowel or stomach obstruction, but in that troubling and insidious way that some kittens have. She, like Charlie, would eat almost anything with a great appetite, but then, in several hours, she woud poop it all out almost undigested. For the first year that we fostered for ICACAC, these things happened, to these two and Dickens as well, and we received only the most superficial of answers or help from the animal shelter that had asked us to foster them. It was discouraging, and it's no wonder it's difficult for these paid local "animal people" to find many willing fosters for kittens. When you have no support or backup, and the only answer seems to be wait and see, or have a kitten euthanized, because its problems are simply too much trouble, anyone might become discouraged.

By the way, if what I write here angers you, because you are an employee of the "Care and Adoption Center" in your home town, perhaps you could turn your anger into something useful, and deal with your kitties' foster parents as something more than amusing freaks, or as "interested amateurs", when they offer to help out, or try to contact you with a sick kitten. If you could possibly treat your "amateurs" and volunteers as if they were at least as valuable as the animals themselves, or as at least as worthy for offering their help, you might get a lot more people who were willing to get involved. Just a thought…

In the bathroom we have committed to the raising of kittens, where I found these two kittens stretched out dead, on two successive days, I began to lose faith, and was in danger of becoming somewhat hardened to this task, which I had promised Dickens I would continue as long as I was able. I must admit the Johnson County Humane Society has been more helpful and more supportive in every way, since we began to keep kittens for them. They are committed to spend their last dollar on the life of a sick or wounded animal, while it is quite obvious that the Iowa City Animal Care and Adoption Center is populated by people who are there for the paycheck, and who have only funds left-over from the police department's squad car and weaponry budget. This budget includes money to pay for enough phenobarbitol to euthanize the city's entire population of cats and dogs, but it cannot include the element of committedness and caring that is essential for animal care providers, that is, if we are to continue to care for our lost-and-found animals at all, and continue calling ourselves their care providers.

So, Charlie and Esther were dead, and no one at the shelter were particularly interested in what became of their tiny corpses, although one employee, who had been singularly uncaring and unhelpful when these two were dying, on visiting and seeing the hole I had begun to dig beneath the mother fir tree, mentioned that I might want to bury them a little deeper. After all, it was summer. And I dug, heart disease, sorrow, frustration and all, down through her roots until I came to a very stony, cold place that seemed like a good level for two such unwanted and misbegotten animals. We buried them there. Because of our own prayers and our reverence for nature and our respect for the individual lives she spawns, the place has become a holy place, a sacred place in an age where nothing but money and power are elements engendering respect or dignity.

And today, gathering fallen branches and stray muck that had accumulated during the winter snows, I stopped awhile to pray again for Charlie, for Esther, for Shelby, and to remind Dickens that I am still here for him, and will follow his inspiration and his example forever, all the way to my own entry into the grave.

There they lie, beneath the mother fir that shelters them, and they have no need of me and my maundering sentiments, my would-be help, my anger or my pathetic words. Last summer this spot was overgrown with native catnip, which seemed to grow in more plenty and with such vigor I had to cut it back. As with any mint plant, it doubled, and quadrupled, with each cutting. And all our cats loved its produce.

Charlie, Esther, I am thankful to have known you. You rank amongst my human acquaintances and loves, just as all the other animals I have known, and owed something to for my own personal growth. What would my life be without you, after all? How can I possibly repay you for the great gifts you bequeathed me, while I dithered and babbled and wondered what I ought to do next?

They are my gods, my spirit guides. I would be no one without them.

Shield them with your branches, therefor, O Mother Fir. In the sweep and grace of your shady boughs and bright needles I will forever mark the faces of all those you carry in your womb throughout your journey beyond time, beyond death, and I will hope for nothing more than a reunion with you and your charges at the end of things, where all of us will walk gladly into the swirling, bright void beyond the pain and sadness that is life.

Brothers of the Paw

2010-03-06T12:31:00.001-08:00

We like to think all the residents of this particular house get along fairly well—but that just wouldn't be entirely true. Mouse and Pippin square off from time to time, and Malcolm and Cider also have problems with their fellow felines depending on their mood. I guess it all goes to show you can't always take all the alley out of a cat, even if he's been out of the alley for years. These two, however, Pee Wee and Seuss, seem to get along just fine.

They're learning from a cross-cultural exchange, as well: Seuss is learning slowly to kiss or nuzzle without sliming little Pee Wee (when PW was smaller, it was sometimes hard to tell where the slime ended and PW began, after Seuss had given him a little love) and Pee Wee is learning to use softy paws as all kittens normally learn to do from their mothers. Or their scratched-up foster parents.

You can see, though, that these two share a mighty fine, serene camaraderie, and I'm hoping the feeling spreads through the whole kitty population here. It certainly beats howling, yowling and various alarums in the night when there's a major skirmish going on. Who knew that a dog would be such an apt peacemaker amongst a bunch of fractious and high-strung cats? Maybe Seuss and Pee Wee should get some kind of four-legged peace prize.

the quotidian

2010-02-26T20:15:00.000-08:00

Sorry, whoopsie! Thought I was getting some thing more than I usually do from sitting at this screen, and then realized I was sitting on PeeWee's 3ml syringe, with which I just dosed same with Albon. His butt is less red now than mine, by the way, a sure sign of kittie health. I don't know what it says about me though. I'll let you know as soon as I'm off the augmentin and Mouse's giant bite is healed up.

Thursday morning, February 24, 2010.

3:44 am …so I wake, not in perpetual high school, not struggling to prove myself in some incredible marathon-like endurance and survival and book-reading course, or even in graduate school, anymore, but sweating nonetheless. Also not 27, 37, or even 47 years old, or even close.

3:45 …I'm a mysteriously aged older man, sweating, hopped up (I guess) on augmentin and some other drugs the doctors said I could take to stop itching and get to sleep. Outside, it's been snowing. You can always tell when the window looks dusty, the snow looks as though it's radioactive, and you start shivering and itching when you (quite painfully) get out of bed. I'm beginning to believe the radioactivity and the itching are all linked, too.

3:46 …I determine that I really am out of bed, and this is all real. The radioactivity...we'll take it up later. Outside the door, several very tiny siren-like voices are drawing my attention…would that I had plugged my ears with beeswax, and tied myself to the mast, as Odysseus so wisely did. Instead, hearing them…

4:00 AM …now i have a pair of jeans on, I think, and some kind of hoodie. Since it seems mostly women read this (and I'm glad, that I don't have to explain again why Alabama's defeat of Texas was inevitable, with or without Colt McCoy) I don't even go into what an old dude like me might have to get swinging (as in Wayne's World, that is, schwinging) in order to step into a pair of jeans. You are all used to the cruel anatomical comedy of being human already, give me a chance, please, I'm new to it. I am tired of scratching, at least in the areas that are itching now, and I realize it's time to … If I go out there, I realize, it's all over, in a way.

4:11… It's all over. Even though the augmentin has caused me to visit the sanctuary I sometimes refer to as the upstairs bathroom twice already, and apply the needed unguents, I realize that, worn thin as I am, I must soldier on for these poor, helpless babes, who keep crying, and crying, and scratching at the door frame (which needs to be replaced, by the way)…

4:45…when askt what it is exactly that I do with all these cats, last week, by a not very sympathetic doc who was gazing with something like remorse upon my badly swollen hand, which Mouse had just nearly bitten in half, again, I said, quite sprightly, "I scoop up poop, and I feed the little bastards, what the fuck would YOU do?!" Well, guess what I'm doing just now. With that very same swollen hand.

5 AM… Several of these little bastards have decided to fight, to get into each others' bowls, balk suddenly and hark up hairballs on the clean floor, and…well, if you have cats of your own, just imagine what all comes next. My stomach's a little tricky just now.

5:15 …we segregate our cats. Several are older, and on special diets, and have proven unable or unwilling to defend their own food bowls during their mealtime. So Malcolm's placed at the head end of the spare bedroom, while James is at the foot, by the closet. Likewise, Sylvester is over at my end of the bed in the big bedroom, and Mouse is at the door. Gordon is by himself, in the office, while Audrey, Ben, Pippin, Cider, and Lila fill up the kitchen, and Jolie daintily (Teresa will laugh at this) minces at her meal atop the hutch in the dining room. The four little girls (from the half-feral family we rescued from a farm when the humans were carried away to nursing homes) populate the bathroom, and Wolfie and Thistle are there as well, secreted up on the counter, and in the bath itself, behind the shower door. I realize I am dizzy, somehow, not quite with it, and by no means cool, as I once was.

5:20… I'm now downstairs, having gathered the kittens at some point before I fell out last night, and there they all are: in the downstairs bath, which has become a kitten sanctuary. Since PeeWee has been sick, he goes into the shower, behind the closed door, to eat his special hypoallergenic mix, while all the White Tips (see earlier posts, circa July, 2009) and Holly eat out on the open floor, still on their special Hill's kitten diet. Then there is Claire, the Mommy par excellence, who came in from the cold of the UI campus two years ago and gave up four beautiful fat babies in order to stay with us. It doesn't matter how tired or sick or weird I am, I always will feel as though I ought to get down on my knees and worship this cat, this mother, this provider, because I (we, T & I) saw her in action for several days before we started trapping her kittens and then finally her. Claire, Jolie, and Malcolm have a way with an errant chipmunk that makes you proud to keep cats. But Claire could take the very fattest of all smart-ass chipmunks and break him down into little pieces just so her four babies could have a home-cooked meal. I'm shaded towards predators in my range of preferences by nature. And, you know, I guess I can't make excuses for it anymore.

6:30… Showered, shaved, trying to watch the end of a film I started last night, PeeWee and little Ivy have crawled, very quietly, up onto my lap. I feel quite apologetic when I have to get up to do something else, but then there is the cleaning, the vacuuming, the humidifier…how many gallons is in a decaliter, anyway? Or am I thinking it all backwards?

Let's zoom through the magic of editorial privilege to 36 hours later. Things seem better, somehow. I am zooming the 20 miles or so to the Catfish Place, it being a lenten Friday, and I am traveling at a very quick pace, having just had a long talk over the fence with my friend, Tracy, who is also my neighbor (blessed, I am, truly) and I swear to God I can smell the catfish frying from here. And if you live anywhere within a county from Iowa City, and don't know about the Catfish Place, I just have to tell ya, Terry is there right now, and ready to take your order. And why would you ever want to eat anywhere else?

6:35 PM … I am surrounded by a few local people, and quite a few new people, and I am so happy to keep dipping my shrimp and eavesdropping on their conversations, some of which are in Spanish. I'm also glad I can put dos a dos together, and a little mas, together, just listening, but I do not know enough yet to insult anyone properly. So the great thing about being amongst Spanish speaking people is that I listen more than I talk, and actually, keep my big mouth shut most of the time. This seems like the natural order of things to me, also, as if I just got off track somewhere by the time I was twelve or so. We are all one grande familia felicitas, here, with enough fried catfish, shrimp, green beans in ham, beer, Diet Coke, and, you know, that ice-milk whippy thing we all used to eat, well, it's all here. And so are we.

6:40 PM… I start thinking about the kitties. Terry has a hell of a time, wheeling out a huge keg of Bud Lite, which I am amazed anybody would think of drinking anyway, and there's too much head on it, and it's clear that Manuel, her host, who seated me, knows very little regarding the workings of carbonated missiles such as this. Well, having tended bar just often enough to know what's going on, I can tell her that all that head that keeps foaming out of the tap will settle down..."You should see the way the truckers handle those things out the back of the truck!" And, of course, once again, I'm from Iowa City, and have been stalled behind a Bud truck downtown more than once as its driver trundled out the rolling stock. I started thinking, "gee, maybe if I could just get hold of the glass with a head on it, I woulda done all right..." but no, it's not for me. Or for the several folks who've lined up with me as I pay my bill, wishing I could get out of their way, since they haven't even eaten yet.

7:10 PM… I think of the kitties, of the girl who once said she loved me, far away now in time, the kitties, wondering why I just fed them and left, so mysteriously…is there something you can say to a cat when you are leaving? Was there something I could have said, in that long ago time, to that girl, as she turned away and left, if I only had known...and it really was for ever? Or perhaps I had said too much. Tracey and I talked about our parents dying. I wanted to tell her it never gets any better, but I know how she's feeling. Some friend I am. I can't help saying certain things, for instance, I still miss my daddy. I don't care who knows it anymore. Perhaps, if you are not missing your ownfather, there is something missing inside you.

7:30 PM… My little truck could possibly qualify as some kind of stealth weapon, if it wasn't so cheap. I mean, for a defense contractor to build it,and a few pot-bellied greasy Senators to vote for it, it woud have to be as big as a garbage scow and have a diesel engine that you could smell clear to Seattle. Well, it's small, it's listed by Motor Trend as the "truck Methusaleh drove" and it happens to have an old-fashioned 3-Liter pushrod engine (no OHC system stealing away torque, just raw whatever it is) and the damn thing, even though it looks like a tiny little middle aged man's truck, will turn on a dime with its wishbone suspension, and will pull through and out of ice and tear up the blacktop, due to its non-slip differential, and its ABS, which braking system, btw, actually works, on this vehicle, which happens to be a Ford. None of yer cheap experimental, mongrelized, crazy crap fer me! Dude! The only company that didn't take money from the government! No wonder my daddy was such a rabid Ford addict.

7:45 PM …but all this has nothing to do with travelling along on a county road at ninety miles an hour, the officer in my head keeps saying. I slow down some. I'm still worried about my kitties.

8:05 PM… rolling into the garage. Get out of the car. Realize it's time to take my pills again. I open the door. There they are, arrayed as they always are on the stairs, almost as if they'd been waiting for me to come home. What, after all this, can I really say?

Kitty Mommy's Nicknames

2010-02-23T08:14:00.000-08:00

Teresa writes, "Can I add mine?"

Sylvester - woolie bear
Lyla - Lyla Lue, my dove, my dumpling, Queen Lyla
Malcolm - punk, brat
Cider - Cider boy, my morning sunshine
Gordon - Mr. Gordon, Mr. G, G
Wolfie - the Wolfman, Wolferama
Mouse - mow wow
Seuss - Seusser, pupper, Seusser pup
Sugarfoot - Sugarplum
Spike - Spiker
Holly - Holly Ann
Peewee - Peewers

Tom - the bestest Kitty Daddy ever!"

Kitty Name-Calling

2010-02-23T05:03:00.000-08:00

Kitty names For Kitty Daddy

1. Maniac with the poop bag (or, the Mad Pooper Scooper)
2. Mao (sometimes "Mao-wow!")
3. The Great White Devil
4. The Guy Even The Dog Is Scared Of
5. The Guy We Pretend We're Scared Of (or for short, "Old Scary Guy")

6. Most Beneficent Source of Plenty (around meal times, as in, how could we be scared of this guy?)
7. Closer Of Doors To Rooms I Want Into
8. Sleepy Daddy
9. The Madman With The Vacuum
10. Supplier of Chewy and Tasty Things

Nicknames for Cats (and One Dog)

1. Stella Bella
2. Buddy, Big Furry Butt, Old Green Eyes (Sylvester)
3. Mommy (Sheba)
4. Long Little Kitty, The Black Prince, Whiner (Malcolm)

5. The Old Bitch, (Lila, when she's scaring Seuss with the Evil Eye) or, more commonly, The Mommy Kitty

6. The Poor Little Boy, The Good Boy (Cider)
7. Bignose, Alligator Head (Seuss)
8. Milord, Lord Byron, the King (Gordon)
9. Wimpy (Spike)
10. Leonard, Leonardo (Lenny)

11. Little Baby Girl, Daddy's Little Girl (Jolie, Mollie, Holly, Ivy, Thistle, Claire)

12. Mao-Mao (Mouse)
13. Princess Thistledown (Thistle, for her beautiful silver coat)
14. Little Pickle, Little Baby Girl (Jolie)

Afternoon Interior Landscape

2010-02-22T07:37:00.000-08:00

Kitty Daddy Gets Well

2010-02-22T07:20:00.000-08:00

Kitty Daddy's output has been something meager of late, having some illness of his own to contend with, feeling more than a little put out with the clerk of the weather, who keeps sending us more snow, and very few signs of spring, so far.

The cats here at the house on the corner have been getting on with their lives in the manner for which they are best known, complaining very little except at dinner time, not fighting much, and playing their games of kitty tag and baseball throughout the day, when they aren't holed up in a warm corner getting their beauty sleep. I have to admit that I drop off as well, many afternoons, tiring of the internet, the numerous books I am trying to read (or read again), the insipid fare on television, and even, to some extent, my guitars. I can't say I ever tire of the cats or faithful canine Seuss, but it's as if all of us have gotten into a decidedly humdrum gear, with little hope that the weather will change any time soon, with no chipmunks and few squirrels or rabbits out in the yard, and even most of the birds seeming very sleepy and somewhat chagrined in the midst of all this snow, and cold, and cloudy skies.

One of our bright young promises, Pee Wee, has been taken ill, and despite our best efforts and the diligence of our good vet, Dr. Ahearn, he has been dangerously close to succumbing to what has now been diagnosed as bacterial enteritis. His poor little rear end is very sore, his food seems to run right through him, and he spends a lot of time crouched in the compact and listless posture of a very sick little boy. I have seen this several times too many, and we humans may stand about and argue with each other and despair of him getting any better no matter what we do, but still the disease process seems to be too strong and insidious a foe for us, and the little kitten is found one awful morning stretched out lifeless on the floor.

I can't allow myself to despair, however, and we will just have to continue with Pee Wee's treatment (Flagyl) and hope that soon it catches up with the wicked phage that has invaded his system with such disastrous results. You might pray for him, and for us, if you happen to think it will do us some good. I for one believe praying is always preferable to any other alternative when we have exhausted the uses of medicine, and tender loving care.

I mentioned an illness which struck Kitty Daddy: at the outset of an otherwise very nice Valentine's Day, I was tagged in the middle finger knuckle of my right hand by an angry Mouse. Before the day was out it was incredibly inflamed, infected with who knows what, and I was an inpatient at the VA hospital for nearly a week on IV ampicillin, and several other antibiotics. I must say that several inveterate animal lovers came forward amongst the staff at the hospital, and offered their commiseration and lauded me for my determination in keeping a wonderful cat alive who happens to bite every once in awhile. Mouse has always had this tendency, and as a matter of fact was being prepared for euthanasia when I decided to take him in. Mouse is a very good cat, but he's also a very serious cat, and I was, on the morning in question, getting in his way as he was aiming for little Pippin, a small male Mouse likes to terrorize. I think sometimes if Pippin would stand his ground and stop all that squealing, and running to hide, maybe Mouse would back off, but I do know for certain I am not going to get my hands or any other part of my body in between Mouse and any other cat he has decided to harass. Kitty Mommy seems to be pretty good at steering him into a spare bedroom to cool down, and I'm sure this is by far the safest method of dealing with him. Not that there is any right method of dealing with a cat like Mouse; you simply must take him as you find him, and hope for the best.

So I sit here on my morning dose of Augmentin, hoping I don't suffer anymore from the abominable itching that has plagued me all winter. I can see that at some point the years and years of poor health practices and nonchalant attitude towards all those things we are supposed to do to maintain good health are catching up with me, but poor little Pee Wee has never had much of a chance to even live his life yet, let alone grow up. That's why I tend, mentally, to defer whatever pain or suffering I experience today and ask my personal higher power to throw some slack the little guy's way. And as I said before, if you can find room in your prayer life for him and for all of us, here, it will certainly be appreciated.

To An Anonymous Caller

2010-02-02T11:59:00.000-08:00

Kitty Daddy just received a couple of comments for moderation that were so execrable and disturbing I had to reject them, something I've never done before. Besides the fact the person, "womenalsofart", retained his or her anonymity, and left me no way to reply, the comments included not only some kind of obsessive mania with the very most scatological references to the bodily functions, but also an insinuation that I was a "homo" for having expressed myself thus:

When I think of Gordon, I think of another elder statesman with a fine career behind him, who, being human, and locked into a system that only feeds and inflames his already oversized ego, does not know his proper place and has fallen, through his overweening ambitions, in my estimation, as far as Lucifer’s fall from heaven. Brett Favre, now of the (Yikes!) Minnesota Vikings, may have gone on with the only professional football team that could be said to have a noble past, the Green Bay Packers, as their second quarterback, or as their quarterback coach, or simply as some kind of benevolent presence and guide to younger players, much as Sandy Koufax did with the Dodgers when his pitching days were over. But Sandy Koufax was a man of deep spiritual convictions, and a kind of loyalty that is perhaps an anachronism in this day of free agentry and product endorsement. And Gordon, being a cat, perhaps simply knew when to quit, and hang onto his intrinsic integrity. If he’d been in Mr. Favre’s place, he would have accepted the role of elder statesman, and retired to write his Hall of Fame acceptance speech, signed onto a lecture tour, perhaps founded a summer clinic for young and upcoming QB’s.

But once again, I must admit, the comparison is unfair, more to Gordon than to Brett. Gordon is a cat, a true noble, and any cat knows that being a Green Bay Packer, for whose famous coach the Super Bowl trophy is named, holder of more league titles by far than any other team, who refuse most endorsements unless they are local or of such of native superiority that they truly deserve merit and the association of their names—I think of their John Deere endorsement—being a Packer, I say, and losing, or retiring, is far better than being anyone else and winning the Super Bowl. For in the former path, nobility lies.

Enough of football, an American obsession such a one as Lord Gordon would, perhaps, despise as a pastime of ruffians, were he ever to contemplate it.

I looked this up because at first I couldn't even remember having ever referred to Mr. Favre, but I did, some months ago, as excerpted above. But I must say that nowhere did I use the expletive "F" word in reference to Mr. Favre, as "womenalsofart" contends that I did, nor am I abashed at any supposed homosexuality in my work, after all, it's a guy writing about his passionate love for kitties and praying mantises, for goodness' sake! So, "womenalsofart", I would take your concerns and delusions to a psychiatric specialist, one who deals with "adult child" disorders and oppositional defiant disorder, or to a good 12-step meeting, and stop fooling around with someone who knows what he's doing, does his best at it, and wonders how a woman that makes pejorative reference to homosexuality in this day and age is any different from any beer-breathing homophobic neanderthal male.

I'll tell you exactly what Mouse or James would do in this situation, since they are cats and know exactly what they're about, just as I do: they would turn their tail end towards you, maybe even purring a bit, lift their proud bushy tails, and give you the hosing down you evidently need so badly. Then go sit in the litter box for awhile, with that intolerably smug kitty look of theirs, and think it all over.

Yours truly,

Kitty Daddy and all the four-legged boys and girls at the big white house on the corner.

By the way, this is yet another detrimental effect on the internet of very challenged people with little to do and huge grievances against reality; most folks who blog and really care about what they're writing avoid being anonymous, up to a point, and are ready to stand behind what they write. But the anonymous flamer is essentially an autocrat, he or she wants very much to have her say, but is afraid to show his or her face, and offer the writer he or she has decided to pick on the opportunity of mano-a-mano. And most people that waste their time flaming and otherwise bringing the level of the debate down to a level unworthy of pre-schoolers know they simply don't have the intellect to accurately form their own ideas, let alone express them. Writing is hard, and it demands discipline. When you look at what you write as a personal testament for the ages, as I do, you must collect yourself, challenge yourself, criticize yourself. But against the anonymous abusive ad hominem, or any other non sequitor, we who write and have signed our names to what we offer, as is the only honorable thing to do, can only stand back, cringe, and laugh. For surely the primate that chatters thusly about things it knows not is exposed for what he or she truly is: an ape in the form of a human.

That's actually why I rejected the comments of "womenalsofart", since I could see they were evidently bound to embarrass whoever wrote them. Well, considering the source, maybe not.

Season Of The Itch

2010-01-04T08:33:00.001-08:00

A bright, beautiful day outside, where I rarely go for more than a minute or two: something to do with the sub-zero (F) temperatures of the last week…and my skin is itching. It’s no big secret I’m allergic to cat dander, which is actually the saliva from their frequent groomings. Apparently there’s an ingredient in cat saliva just as toxic to some people, like me, as a mosquito bite. Of course cats also have salivary flora which would kill just about anything, thus, if a cat can’t carve you to pieces or run you to death all it needs to do is get one little nip at a finger or toe and you’ll be dying of something worse than gangrene in another couple of days. We have a number of kittens, who grow used to climbing all up and down Kitty Daddy even as they do the scratching posts and the furniture…and, sadly, yes, I’m just another piece of furniture around here, sitting at my big oaken writing table, reading about krill oil and the wonders it may or may not do for that (big vamp here) itchy skin of mine. There’s something about the idea of ingesting anything fishy that appeals to me, just so long as I don’t have to rub it on my skin. I can imagine what would happen if the beloved Kitty Daddy began to smell like smoked salmon, anymore than he is wont to do already.

I keep thinking, well, if heart disease and various biking and sports injuries down through the years weren’t enough to prompt a booze-up, this skin thing certainly could get you…er, jumping at shadows. But, thanks to the internet, I find that stupefaction due to alcohol consumption leads to drying and is trés detrimental to the skin, along with so many other things you could, or would, do, if you were in danger of jumping out of your skin. So a few hours of pain-free leglessness would come at a high price: renewed itching dry skin, along with a severe hangover. Lovely.

One sort of grim consolation is that poor kitty Mommy also itches, unfortunately: but misery loves company, and since she and apparently many others are suffering, I have the benefit of knowing I'm not, by far, the only one in agony. What I find from a search as simple as “winter itch”, causes me to believe there must be a zillion or two people around this wintry, cold, blasted sphere who are itching just as I am, cats or no cats. And everybody with a nostrum is out to sell you something, from krill oil to some very suspect and exotic medicated goos—goos obtained at least in part from plants that are probably very like certain plants you are allergic to at home. If you're already itching from any number of unknown or untraceable causes, why take a chance by adding something else from the Orient or South America to the list of variables?

There are consequences to scratching the itch, you know; you can’t really scratch as you’d like to in public, so you start seeking out seclusion, somewhere you can pull a few layers off, stand around shivering and dancing from the cold, dry air that seeps inside in this kind of weather, and really go after that itch. And somehow, scratching is one of the few things that seems to do some good, although if you’re like me, the scratching can raise welts, and nasty little hives that pop up and henceforth tempt you to scratch some more just like Old Scratch hisself. And so round and round we go, on a veritable merry-go-round of itching, scratching, and itching and scratching the torn-up spots even more.

Some folks who have written in to chat rooms talk about bathing or frequently showering, and yes, to be sure, for a few minutes after soaping up in nice warm water your skin simply glows with renewed health. Then, no matter how much aquaphilic or vaseline or krill oil you smear on yourself, the natural drying process caused by the cool, dry air now inside any heated house will cause that beautiful pink layer of rosy healthy new skin to form a dry cuticle, and, well, dry out and itch. So I control myself this time of year, cooling down my shower, making sure I oil myself up a little on the problem areas, and making doubly sure that I re-oil myself, just as if I were going to the beach (would that I were!) before the drying has much of a chance to take its evil effect. And to tell you the truth, when I devote the time to doing things this way, I obtain a modicum of relief. And my skin still itches; to me, that's what skin does: itch. It's just that it's not itching any worse.

Times I go outside in this season show me a rather haunting fact about the way we all live our lives. You walk past a yard and notice a huge cloud of steam pouring from a vent. You may not even notice something so commonplace anymore, but think about it. Here you are heating your house in sub-zero weather, soaking and rinsing your clothes in expensive detergents, and now you're blasting a huge amount of heat and moisture right out into the cold. Surely by now someone should have invented a system for recycling the heat and the moisture from the dryer vent. But no, I suppose the power company and the people that make humidifiers rejoice every time they see such a cloud of fabric-softener perfumed air and steam. So, part of the reason anyone itches must be due to the fact that we do everything we can to dry out and heat up the air in our homes, and then blasting it all outside. And did I mention that my skin is itching?

At this point I have no idea how much the dust mites and various airborne allergens are affecting me. The cats are the obvious problem here. It might be somewhat better if I could get the all into a big tub of some kind and soak all those cat-dandery agents out of their fur for at least a few hours at a time. Then, I suppose, I’d have a tribe of cats who look as though they’ve all been run through some kind of kitty’sized car wash, all fluffed up, somewhat grumpy and uncomfortable, and—you guessed it—itching and scratching like crazy.

I used to wash certain of our cats regularly, back when one or two might have a little kitty acne, or if one was a particularly smelly and hit-or-miss self-cleanser around its backside. And the first thing these scrubbed and towelled, pampered kitties did wash sit right down in a sunny spot and give themselves a thorough washing, spreading that noxious cat-spit all over their bodies once again. As it is, I don’t have the simple resources required for the massed washing of cats, neither the utility sink, the staging area (you have to be able to trap and confine them, once they hear the running water and realize something’s up) and I don’t know if I would be able to live with the little scratches from their claws that I’d be sure to acquire very quickly while trying to immerse them in water, or wrap a towel around them to dry them. You know, for me, a cat scratch always seems to have just enough cat dander on it to raise a nice, big, itchy welt. And what happens next? It itches.

I wonder dear reader, if your skin has started itching a little, since you read all this. If not, perhaps I need to hear from you. For God’s sake, you’re not itching? Tell me, please, what is your secret?

A kind of annular valediction

2009-12-29T03:24:00.000-08:00

It has occurred to someone around here that we have completed one whole year of this blog, cranking out a new post, on average, about every 3 or four days. Now, for many of my devoted readers, I realize there were gaps in the summer time when I was hard at work out in the yard and the flowerbeds, when there wasn't a post for a good ten days or even a fortnight.

And it is you, my beloved faithful readers, that I want to address first, chiefly because of this steadfast spirit in which you read everything that came your way from me. In your comments and praises (and criticisms, too) the life of Kitty Daddy as depicted in these pages found renewed life, and the will to carry on, because for a literary character, the breath and life of those who continue reading these exploits is his bread and strong drink. He certainly wouldn't last long in the cold cruel world of books and stories if it weren't for your care and concern. So, I thank you, from the very bottom of my (somewhat cold and calculating) author's heart, just as my character, Kitty Daddy, and all the people and kitties depicted here, thank you from their very warm, lovable, and fuzzy-furry hearts. The kitties are saying, in chorus, just now, having had their breakfast, that knowing you care about what happens to them is what keeps them going, purring, climbing, and generally raising hell in the way of all good kitties.

For Kitty Daddy himself, he's preoccupied with his latest little girl love, Ivy, who we thought would be stone blind at an early age, perhaps due to our ignorance and neglect. She pulled through it all admirably, and though her vision is a little clouded, she is able to make leaps, play catch, and run circles round the older kitties, and has become very acrobatic as well, having learned to land upside down from the base of the platform attached to the scratching post, much as Talia and Thistle do. The way she joins in the rough and tumble, she surely has more than enough of a view as to what's going on to get by. Since we're all (the humans) half blind in one eye and can't see too well out the other, she seems to fit in fine, and may even double as a seeing eye cat for us at some later date.

Little Pee Wee Jr. joins me now, as fascinated by the advancing cursor on my screen as he is by flies, leaves, and Seuss' tail. Still all kitten and all boy, he is also the most loving and personable of cats already, a devoted snuggler and napper in out-of-the-way places. He also has a very stinky rear-end right now, occasioning the use of B.O.S.S. on the hoodie I’d been wearing, and a brief change of attire, after which he runs off, to terrorize an unknown reveller beneath the comfortable chair from which I view my films.

It appears to be about 5 degrees Fahrenheit out on the back stoop, clear and cold. The recent frostings of snow have saved what promised to be a very drippy and dreary Christmas, and my crunchings through the snow with Seuss the second morning of Christmas were filled with adventure, having seen deer, rabbit, and several unnamed or unknown critters out frolicking under the waxing moon which hung, briefly, on the horizon before morning twilight. Which will give you an idea of just how early we were out on that morning: one or two taxis were encountered as well, returning celebrants from very late parties. As Seuss and I found, to our satisfaction, the real revels and parties are usually out in the open, even in very cold weather, and nature is usually a much finer and more generous host when it comes to the spectacular than any human could be.

As I have said before, there can’t be any finer dog than Seuss, nor are there many cats who are the equal of our own, but we are blessed with neighbors who have some of the finest and best-behaved animals we have ever known. One neighbor, just down the street, also houses a female named Jenna, who, along with her brother Tommy, was a beautiful and rather dominating girl (well, captivating, at least) from the very start of her career. Our neighbors just to the east have been visited by cruel misfortune, having lost two dogs and a fine big ginger puss named Red, who had the most lordly and commanding presence of any cat I’ve ever met: his appearance in the back yard would set Malcolm and Mouse sparring with each other as they watched him from the window, in frustration, I suppose, at not being able to get out with him and scare the sparrows that nest in the spruce. On our annual cookie run, we sent a well-stocked container to these kindly folks, along with our best wishes, just as we sent them to the neighbors across the street, who also have a houseful of beautiful shelter cats, and to Brian, who lives with his Eskimo dog and his Keyshond Reggie, and who post themselves as sentinels at the fence corner of our yards, greeting all who pass with a play-bow, a chase along the fence, and a chorus of bugling barks. These neighbors I mentioned also have kept our walks clear during my infirmities, and this in itself has lightened the workload here considerably. Since we’re on the corner, here, we seem to get an extra helping of all that’s been plowed, much as if we were eating Sunday dinner, back at great-Grandma’s farm. And, just as then, we can’t say no, and are not even given the opportunity of demurral; and so the snow banks pile up, mounting higher and higher until blessed spring, which is a devilishly long way off at this point.

So with all these wonderful animals, neighbors, snow, blue moons and red sunsets, big spruce and fir trees, cardinals in the bushes, deer and pheasant lurking in the nearby corn, a fine house and a delightful prospect all the way around, there is no end of things for Kitty Daddy and Mommy to be grateful for, to give thanks for, and to sing the praises of. So, dearest readers, though I may not know who you are, I want again to thank you, and also to point the way towards the future of these pages; for surely there is more than enough material here for a kind of pet-owners and cat-and-dog lover’s almanac. Which, of course, means we would have to start posting on a daily basis, rather than just when something newsworthy seems to come up: as if the ordinary quotidian comings-and-goings around here weren’t enough to write about, after all that I’ve said: And perhaps this will be happening in the year 2010, now only a few scant hours and a full day away. For all of you, we wish the very best, for a settled and serene home, the health of your kinder, the happiness of your dogs and your cats, and an all-round prosperity in the year to come, regardless what the prophets of doom on the news wires fulminate to darken our minds.

Keep love elemental in your heart, get plenty of sleep, and work as hard as you can the rest of the time, and things generally come round, just as this year 2009 now draws to its close, and just as the old world and the firmament grinds on, with a plethora of surprises, comical, tragical and untoward, all somehow fitting seamlessly into a life well-lived. Be ever grateful we are the kind of people who see that somehow, life uses love for its fuel, and that animals around the house, even the lowly pigs and chickens out in the barn, make the human life that much more liveable, more spiritual, and a good deal warmer and friendlier at bottom. God bless you all. Here’s to the new year; hail and amen.

P.S. Pee Wee, who sat patiently and read through the entire last half of this post, agrees, and, speaking in behalf of all the kitties at the white house on the corner, sends his love, his cuddles, and his hope that , if you have the chance today, you give your kitty or dog an extra cuddle or two: that’s all they require beyond food and shelter, and they will lighten your darkest day as long as they are able.

Yuletide Kitties

2009-12-21T16:53:00.000-08:00

The yuletide season is a good time of the year to remember that some of the biggest surprises (like little polydactyl Talia, above) come in small packages...

…that even the biggest, tuffest katzer can be filled with Christmas wonder and delight…

…like Mou-Mou, pictured in the two above…

…that even a kitty daddy will find the time to unwrap a present or two and reflect on just how blessed his life is, because of the loving little angels that surround him…

And Christmas is a good time to spread that joy around, to snuggle with a small new friend, as Jolie is doing here…

…to dream up a little tiny Christmas village all your own, where only good things happen for all those who live there…

And sometimes it's enough to just sit and take it all in from some favorite vantage point, near the tree, or under it, as Lila and Malcolm are, here…

…while Jolie may simply seek a place to get away from it all, when things get a little hectic…

Cider certainly seems to be reflecting, above, on all the wonderful things that can happen to suddenly transform your life, and make it whole, and filled with love…

…while Thistle and her little friend find more than enough to occupy themselves in all the bright glitter…

…for a very young one, like the little tabby kitten named Clarice, above, it can all be so overwhelming one is suddenly all in, and needs a nap, right in the midst of all the excitement…

Talia, again, in a quiet moment, and below, a tiny Wolfie slips a little sleep time into his busy schedule (after all, he had a lot of growing to do…)

Just a few scenes of Christmas past, and the hope that you all have a happy and blessed holiday, wherever you may be.

Into Every Life, A Little Strife…

2009-12-21T15:16:00.000-08:00

Into Every Life, A Little Strife…

Today I let Seuss out to run several hundred laps around the yard, sniff at vole tunnels in the snow, ignore the attention-getting tactics of the doggies next door (why so stuck up, there, Seuss?) and maybe, just maybe, take a leak or be a little anal expressive for Daddy. He’s on a long training leash, just as I am, since we’ve no fence as yet, and that will tell you just how lazy Kitty Daddy is, especially when it comes to strolling through the frozen tundra. Teresa is home in a couple of hours, and she usually seems glad to walk him, and to get the exercise her job cannot afford her.

Blessedly, as with so many things he does, Seuss relieved himself, did not scuffle with other dogs, ate no voles (none I could see, anyway) and seemed to want to return to the warmth inside asap. And there in the middle of the east garden that runs from the stoop to the far wall of the garage was a tidy, frozen bundle, which Seuss had left behind last night before we all went to bed. It was simple to scoop it up with my old entrenching tool, and shovel over some of the bright yellow stains he’d left around the burning bush as well.

I realize that some dog-owners leave this task until spring, and their yards, which I have seen in the past, can look like turd minefields by mid-January, if it has been a snowy winter. Even with repeated snowfalls, the cumulated dung seems to rise up to the latest surface, like a George Romero zombie, and haunt you all over again.

One house we used to walk frequently past out in Altoona—a real example of a town that is everything Iowa City is not, in the most negative and maddening of ways—held a beautiful and angelic golden retriever who would meet me at the fence every day. While we proclaimed our love for each other, I would note the horrid condition of delapidation then rampant in the snowy yard, all accomplished by natural process of the dog, and the most unnatural lazy meanness of the owner. I learned later that this is often a sign of marital strife, and the dog is a pawn in a much larger field of battle. One spouse has, already, some overwhelming resentment against the other, and determines not to pick up any of that damn dog’s poop, after all, it’s your goddam dog; while the spouse who is the object of so much animus, being the one who brought the unlucky hound into the relationship, neglects the animal in question and its environment, in a sense, out of sorrow and spite. The dog becomes the issue, and a reason for the impending separation or divorce, rather than the nasty, twisted feelings that have developed between the two humans. So neglecting a dog because you’re mad at your spouse, and fixing to light out, is just another way you can hide from the real issues at hand, and refuse to do anything to make a bad situation better.

So you can usually tell if all is well in the home by the condition of its pets and their environment, and this has been, numerous times, one reason why a crack house or disturbed person’s house gets busted and the pets end up in the shelter. Dealers’ pets, mostly pit bull or Rotweiler types, and meek, scared cats, are used to the most inhumane behaviors imaginable, being forced to fight, starving three or four days at a time, wading through shit to get to some bare spot in the yard or litter where they can go again, and living without water a day or two, tied up next to an empty bowl. This is another aspect of a cop’s experience that causes me to pity the folks in the profession; the perpetrators can often be dealt with, and so, also, the victims, but nothing any officer can do will remove to sadness and despair of a lonely, neglected animal, or abused child, in such a stuation. The funny thing is, Iowa City, being a college town, has its share of kids and animals who grow up in a kind of emotional squalor and disregard whose caregivers are simply too busy and hypnotized by their careers and the promise of success to care for their innocent charges. If you see a waif-like girl hanging about the ped mall, nine times out of ten, her parents are professors or grad students who simply have no time to worry about her being out on the street. Humans who grown up this way show up in morgues and 12-step programs, sooner or later, and the animals who grow up with them show up at the shelter.

I suppose it is a kind of offhand tribute to the lack of any real strife at our house and in our neighborhood, that the animals and kids all seem pretty well attended to and cared for. But at this time of year, I always notice the discordant aspect of humanity and society more, since, along with Charles Dickens, I must say that it is poverty and ignorance that are the horsemen of the apocalypse. And I should do anything I can to deliver its victims whenever possible from their misery. If it means picking up a little frozen poop in our yard, or fostering a foundling kitten, I'm willing to do that, just for the good of something much larger than my petty self.

So, happy holidays, dear readers, and be careful out there on the open road if you're travelling over the next several nights. It can get very slippery, cold, and drunk out there this time of year.

Photos, from top: Mouse in box; Abby, ICACAC foster, later adopted; Emma, another foster adopted along with Abby; Unnamed tom trapped in the ruins of St. Patrick's rectory after the tornado, and sent to Rozie's farm.

Our Buddy

2009-12-18T13:58:00.001-08:00

The holiday season, however we observe it, is a time when the greatest forces in nature are at work in very visible ways. I suppose part of the glory of this season is the fact that we headstrong humans have to give over, in some sense: we surrender our supposed power to something much bigger, higher, deeper. Although the watchdogs of all the Abrahamic creeds would balk, the swinging of the earth around the sun and the pageant of the changing seasons is the biggest causal regularity I know of, commanding our attention because it is sufficient in itself, without the birth of a savior, or the kindling of any race memories, to inform it. And back when humans had their minds right, apparently, they simply paid homage to this force, itself. Although there were, naturally, characters with human faces to take their parts in the passion play, it was the passage of the sun towards the far south, and the encroaching of night, the shortening of days, that they observed, venerated, feared. The burning of a Yule log, besides the obvious warmth and light it added to the cold and dark, would help that absent-minded old sun to remember its task, and start hanging around a little longer every day after the solstice. And apparently it worked.

Everyone fears this evening of the day, this lessening of our precious time, even though at other times we fret like anxious children with nothing to do but twiddle our thumbs, waiting for the next big event—a new Harry Potter movie, the circus coming to town—to arrive and help us work out our bondage to the demon taskmaster Time.

So now, all this palaver, is it towards any purpose? Sylvester, with his great sea-green eyes, would say, likely No. And there was never a cat more fitted as a companion for the cold, dreary days of the winter, when one is more conscious of both the drudgery of time, and the paradoxical swiftness of the passage of our lives.

He’s a cat I realize I have revealed in short sketch and anecdote, en passant, but have feared to sculpt in any real depth, in the round, because Sylvester has a depth and a weight to him, he has a specific gravity all his own, and like another star, operates on his own frequency around here, almost completely independent of either the demands of the pride or the machinations of silly old Kitty Daddy.

For one thing, I’ve been reluctant to introduce him to my readers because I feel rather stupid about his name, in the first place. James is the tuxedo cat, and should rightly be called a Sylvester. Our Sylvester is a standard grey tabby, of extraordinary wooliness, who I have suspected for some time to be of the freezer-cat breed—a cat bred for policing vermin in meat lockers of a century ago, described by Desmond Morris in Cat Watching. I have no idea how he was named Sylvester, or why, or if he had a small Tweety Bird for a companion in his life’s first station.

I first met Sylvester as he greeted me in the old site of the Iowa City Animal Care and Adoption Center, at around this same type of year. Teresa and I were volunteering towards the end of a day, cleaning out litter boxes and refilling water dishes, and dispensing a little more love to the crew in the cat room, who were soon to be returned to their cages and locked in for the night. Sylvester, however, had the whole front of the Center to himself, and had a little circuit similar to the path that a TV watcher has to the fridge during the commercials. He would walk around the havens and the large counter, in and out of the Director’s office, up on a bench and past my legs, and then jump up onto a wheeled cart that stood by the door to the dog gallery and the back of the shelter. Every time he hit the cart, he helped himself to a little of the dry dog food in little sample packages that were stacked there and used as treats sometimes for unruly or anxious dogs. A dog walker or patron could give his or her dog a little treat in passing, or collect a couple packages to try out at home.

Later, as we were signing out at the counter, in the growing darkness, Sylvester would jump up on the counter, lower his head like a defensive lineman, and plow into me over and over again, trying to get my attention as I stood and talked to Teresa and the workers behind the counter. It was impossible to disregard him for any length of time, I noticed, once he set his cap for you. Grey tabby though he was, there was something remarkable and quite distinct about this big boy. Obviously, he was a favorite amongst the A.C. officers and the workers, otherwise, he never would have been put out front. Contrast this with the fate of one old ginger shorthair, who simply laid around the place for a year or so, sometimes taking a nip at someone’s unwary hand, and mostly sleeping. Well, after a long stay out front, he sleeps the sleep of the blessed, euthanized, probably unadoptable, unlovable, and now only a memory. The realities of the foundling cat business are stark and cruel. Like pop stars, cats need to be cute and perky and to constantly produce warm and fuzzies for their audience to survive.

Meanwhile, Sylvester, being cute and perky and something more substantial as well, slowly and steadily rose in my consciousness as the winter solstice season wore on, just as the sun creeps slowly into the new year and a distant, faint promise of spring. We also perceived a need for a nice male cat, someone who might be a little snuggly and comforting. Lila and Jolie, our first two cats, had proved to be singularly unsnuggly. You couldn’t drag Lila into bed with you with a team of horses, or get her to stay on your lap for more than a minute, and then only because she wanted to attack some drawstring or button on your shirt. And she had a problem with nipping which never showed itself while she was performing her little song-and-dance audition for us back in the cat room.

Jolie, meanwhile, had suddenly gotten deathly ill, and it looked as though she might not make it. “Great,” I remember thinking. “So this is what you get with shelter cats.” And if Jolie got any sicker, we were facing the monumental decision whether to put her down, as the vet, confounded in his attempt to minister to her, had offered to do. Already she hid from us, and constantly groomed herself, going almost bald. Her hollow eyes, with their inflamed haws, peered out at us from high perches or low, but never would she let us near her without a struggle or a chase. Every morsel she ate went straight through her, wthout a stop on the way, and when she defecated, she shivered and cried, a lonely, despairing wail of pain. I was a wreck, and had to revise my ideas about being an iron man able to take almost anything with equanimity.

But down at the shelter were some fun cats, and those got adopted with great regularity. “Now, why didn’t we think of George (or Dusty or Izabella),” we would ask each other, as the lucky cat in question left in the arms of its new owner. We certainly had picked a couple duds. Or so it seemed.

But it was a dog adoption that settled my mind on the Sylvester question. I was out front one afternoon when a tennaged girl and her mom were processing out with their new Lab mix, a really bouncy and hyperkinetic pup. There was something like a face-off at the door, when the leashed dog ran straight into Sylvester. The pooch play-bowed, barked, and waited a moment, as Sylvester puffed himself out, seemingly three times his size now, his eyes blazing their Gulf green in the light from the windows. His tail looked like a feather duster, as big around as a baseball bat. And he stood his ground.

Well, Kitty Daddy is somewhat dismissive when it comes to the canine breed himself, having had a few negative experiences from his childhood on regarding the toothy, barking, eager little darlings. One might say there was never much love lost betwixt any particular dog and me, even if it came on the scene with a twelve-pack in its jaws. So when I saw the splendid Sylvester face off the obstreperous pup and send him cowering between the legs of his new owner, I was definitely impressed, and as a matter of fact couldn’t get Sly’s noble image out of my mind.

All which resulted in his being carried to our humble abode, a week later, as someone to snuggle with, to love, to “balance out the girls”. Kitty Daddy has, over the years, changed his first mistaken impression about the gender differences in cats, to the point where he is very hesitant on the question of males, especially those who were not neutered at an early age. Unneutered toms are simply not very sociable, and you can’t change it or blame them, it is simply their testosterone that makes them that way, and if they are let run wild, they’ll make your house unliveable in short order. You would be better off living with a tribe of baboons.

But a cat like Sylvester, or “Buddy”, as we usually call him, is more than easy to live with: he soon becomes indispensable, like Jeeves. An A.C. officer who had seen him as a kitten, in the house of his first humans, who happened to be a dealer, told me she was used to seeing him picking his way through a litter box which certainly hadn’t been cleaned for weeks. He had been adopted as a part of a program that helps poor people out with the food bill for the animal, as long as they are willing to stand a monthly inspection of the animal’s living conditions. And it was for this reason, along with the human’s incarceration on a drug charge, that had led to Sylvester’s return to the Center.

So if anyone had a right to act up because of his early environment, Buddy does. However, like so many humans and animals that rise from difficult and squalid backgrounds, he, more than any other cat or dog I have ever known, rewards us again and again for bringing him home with the most cheerful and considerate attitude, with the demonstration of real pleasure in the reception of the slightest attention, and with an enduring sense of play and real concern for us, and our moods, wants, and needs. I think of him always as he creeps up on my chest while I am reading, or when I am ill. Then, in a silent moment, I feel myself relax even as he relaxes his own weight against me, so very carefully, and stoops his great head for a rub, and clenches and relaxes his strong toes and claws against my shirt. His great pale green eyes, tinged with a ghost of blue around the pupils, regard me with a feeling of calm achieved by looking up through the branches of a tall tree as the wind stirs the leaves, or gazing at the imperturbable firmament of stars at night.

Most tellingly, it is when I am away that I think of him most, at any quiet moment, and I miss him, and wonder what I could ever do around this old world without him, now he is with us. For when I am at home with him, I tend to distract myself with a thousand other sorrows or pleasures, and my feelings rise and subside as a tide on the beach, with as much attendant ephemerae and just as regularly. And I forget, in the moment, that I am really calm, and loving, and wise, just like Sylvester, and as he has told me so many times. I must always, we must always strive to recollect those bellwethers of our inmost psyche, those around us that love us and understand us most deeply, and who are here for such a short while. For none of us could long survive without their reassuring looks and touches.

And that’s what it is, most deeply, about Sylvester, our Buddy. Though he seems almost embarrassed when we make much of him, as we are so often wont to do, and would rather hide beneath the coffee table or a chair than have our loving attention focused so fully upon him, he is, after all, always there when we need him. And he is a being for whose presence I am ever grateful, even at some times when I have forgotten myself: in that way he is like a better image of myself, a being I could become, if I only try a little harder, and remember all the love that is Sylvester, and that is between him and me, and that, most blessedly, made us all in our first and most important selves.

So, this being the time of solstice, the temporal landmark to which my earthly self, with all its trouble and challenge, cleaves, I resolve once again to remember and to cherish my beloved Buddy, the wonderful relationship (kinship is a better word) I have with him and with my darling Teresa and with all our friends, both two- and four-legged, and I pray that your life, dear reader, brims with this same remembrance and grace: the presence of your loved ones, the memory of those who are not near at hand, and the space and quiet time in your life to be still and know that such love is what makes life worth living.

Why You Shouldn't Make Cats Angry

2009-12-17T04:53:00.000-08:00

Morning Bathroom Cats

2009-12-17T04:31:00.000-08:00

Here is a short rather moronic film which consists of one long pan (learned from Franklin Miller, my film mentor) and discovery shot, you know, like in the beginning of Rear Window, except it's the bathroom counter, toilet and tub. We're ready to bare it all for you in the interest of, well, showing off our cats, I guess. Starring James, Sheba, and Sugar—they're a little like Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher, aren't they?— Malcolm, and, in a guest appearance, Hollie. That's where Wolfie eats, in the shower stall, free from distraction.

Only Sylvester Knows

2009-12-12T13:41:00.000-08:00

My last good pair of spectacles,
An old sock looking for its mate,
A gnawed rib bone
Under the chair, where dustmice meet
To form an island of shed fur—oddments
The whereabouts of which only Sylvester knows.

A certain humming in the wind,
The rubbing of branches, maple and fir,
Keening from a sparrow’s nest
High in the northwest eaves…
His hackles rise, his great ringed tail alarmed—
Some urgent threat only Sylvester hears.

And sometimes in the depth of night
He stares for half an hour or more
At something shadowy, right there,
Midway up the stairs, just down the hall:
Some night visitor, angel or ghost
Unknown to you, that only Sly can see.

Kitty Daddy Sleeps In

2009-12-09T13:36:00.001-08:00

Slept in, this morning, and I pity anyone who had not the sense to do likewise. Watching the sparse cars and trucks struggling past through the white gale, I have pondered, as old men are wont to do, the futility and vanity that compels so much of human endeavour.

I’m never strictly an observer, and if observing is all I’ve done so far regarding a situation, I won’t spout off or shoot from the hip anymore as I used to. So Kitty Daddy was out today, several times, as a matter of fact, in it, in the mix, to water the dog, and scrape some cumulated snow from the stoop. There we were, stumbling, tumbling about, man and dog, not knowing which way was up, whether we were standing in Iowa or blown clear to China, or was it day or night anymore, who knew? and the blessed Seuss made his little piddle on what must have been one of the rose bushes, and we bumbled and slid back —at least, we aimed for a space that seemed as close to being what I remember of the garage door—Seuss dragging me for a foot or so across the polished cement floor, as if I were skating or sledding on my snowpacked boots. And then I had to leave him, for the reason I was putting on the brakes was that I needed to retrieve his beloved clown, which he had taken out for the start of our excursion. I was sure that in no more than a half hour or so it would be lost to us.

Any vestige, now, the wind is saying, any trace is gone, all gone. The vivid vitamin-yellow pee stain Seuss left, the place where I spat tobacco, the wasps and bees that were my friends for the summer, and the Japanese beetles who were my enemies, all are gone now. Somewhere under that bank of frosted and snow-crusted spirea, the hostas and an archangel sleep, and over there beneath the spreading boughs of the great mother Douglas fir, where the catnip grew in plenty, Charlie and Esther sleep the sleep of the blessed. All in vain, all in vain, the werewinds call, and the cats sit, with ears peaked, listening. Around and around we swirl, sing the winds, with the shades of all the past, and all things which are not, we swirl and sing. Can there be any that outlast us? No, no, never…

In the early afternoon, finding Thistle by the door, I tucked her under my arm, as only Kitty Daddy can do, and took her outside. Outside the open door, a roaring flow of wind, oddly like the noise and snow from a blank videotape, circling about, a swirling of galaxies of snowflakes, dead leaves, wisps of feathers and fur, and the wind was talking, whispering, singing to my little girl. Thistle is ordinarily a very brave little beast, but she ducked and ran for cover, wanting the warmth and quiet of safe inside. Mouse, also, when I brought him with me, cried, seemed very disconcerted at the disappearance of all his favorite bushes and trees, and wanted to go back into the warm womb of the house.

Try to recall, poor mortal, how short all these lives have been, how easily all marks and traces of the path you have led are effaced. You, too, and all you suppose shall one day be as blank and empty as this whirling space of chaotic snow and wind. That’s what the wind told me, or rather, what the gentle goddess of the wind imparted to me through it.

So, the cats pace restlessly, or sleep, or wander aimlessly about the house, and the dog curls himself into a tight little ball from which only one eye and an ear protrude, and somewhere up in the ceiling a tiny spider clutches itself more tightly, in its little ball of silk, and I write this, only reiterating what the wind and snow have sung to me, this day. Whatever we are now, let us be as brave as we can, while our beings last, for I fear we soon will all be erased, just as easily as this morning’s footprints through the snow.

Solstice Gift

2009-12-07T08:23:00.000-08:00

It's a had life, not a hard one, out here in the hinterlands of wintry Iowa. And having had a life, rather than having been had, at the season of the solstice I always cast my greedy eyes about for my gifts, for isn't this the gift-receiving and giving time of year? I don’t really need anything,I already have everything in plenty that I ever wanted, but I suppose it’s just a childish old habit of mine to think of getting several more things I already have in order to add them all to what I don’t need anymore.

I don't have to look far, in looking for gifts. Going into the little downstairs bath to relieve the coffee strain, I have just turned off the old Crate amp and unplugged the Telecaster, having tired of picking an oddly written song. I treasure that old guitar, not because of its earthly value but because I stand in the presence of such greatness whenever I play it, it’s about honor, and the whole background of the blues and the river where I grew up. I am more of the me I always wanted to be when I play it, and that’s a real gift.

But of all earthly gifts, especially any I’m likely to run into rattling around this house, what pleases me most is the sight of a little foundling cat, stretching out fat and lazy, in a nice warm bed, opening its sparkling eyes and saying hello as I enter the room. And here was Holly, in the little loft I built for the kittens we foster, all by herself, seemingly forgotten and sequestered in the morning rush. She didn’t look much the worse for wear, having the place to herself, and the gladness with which she greeted me—this, this was the gift I had been looking around for.

Holly was a lone kitten from a litter that was separated early on, or died, and she came to us along with the famous White-Tips, who are predominately black, and very sweet, cuddly, loving little kittens. Holly was somewhat aloof from them, even in her demeanour, being a bright calico torbie and white, with a startling ghostly white face and pale golden eyes, a rather lean athletic, rangy build. But she also had this very endearing tendency to groom me, and when she could be coaxed to curl up for a minute on your lap, she usually got really busy washing and nibbling your fingers, and with her nails she would shred you a little, which is, I have come to know, the feline version of a Dutch rub. You have to be tough to hang with these critters.

Since Holly is so active, she is usually off somehwere burning off energy, playing roughhouse with Mollie or Lenny, or examining some oddment in one of the many kitty-mysterious corners of the house. So she’s the perfect cat to have around if you want to read, sew, cook, play guitar, or watch television, meaning she mostly takes care of her own entertainment, and decides once in a while that some loving could be fun as well. But on a morning like this one, having just slumbered through snow, worked well with my old axe, thought and listened carefully as I came into the day, it was very special to run across this beautiful little girl as I moved through the house. And even better to find that she would spare a moment or two for the old man, before running off.

So somewhere a tiny cat is displaced and needs a home, and someone to care for it. You feed it and groom it and scoop its poop for months at a time and what happens? It emerges from a shadowy corner on a dark and snowy day, a day which never quite emerges from twilight, and she purrs and curls up in your arms and stretches, kneading into the layers of sweater and jersey and shirt, warming you a little, softening you a bit, and now everything seems as glorious as the holiday season is supposed to be, not in the way of gargantuan pageantry, and loud festivating, but in the quiet, snug, warmly wrapped little cottage corner of your heart. Right there, in that tidy little nook, where perhaps a flickering candle braves the icy draft and the smell of nutmeg is in the air, this little cat that no one wanted curls up with you, stretches out its neck and looks up with its pretty face, and says, thank you, and bless you, and the world is round, and whole, and you are ready, gifted, enabled to take on the task of the coming years, filled with this love that can’t be broken.

Early in the morning blues

2009-12-04T02:27:00.000-08:00

Just before four in the morning, unable to sleep, (itchy-crawly as a junkie from the rapid turn to frigid, dry air) here I am in my underground lair, listening to the oldest stuff I possess. Muleskinner Blues, Cypress Grove Blues, it’s hard to say, if cultural standards had been different, what would have come out of a meeting between Bill Monroe and Skip James. I grew up about ninety miles away from all the action on the South Side of Chicago, and hardly heard any blues at all until I heard it recycled through Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin.

Since I’m up, of course, quite a number of kitties are awake and keeping a careful watch over me. Just a moment ago, Wolfie and Sugar were sitting on the credenza and the shelf above my desk, respectively, and seemed as taken with Skip’s incredible fingerpicking and melody line as I am. They disappeared, inexplicably, as cats will do, and now when I look up there is Khan, watching over me with the tender sweet gaze of a beloved son. I suppose he thinks he is my son, after all.

If I neglect to look down at the floor, I may almost miss the fact it’s carpeted with cats as well. The worst part is, for the purposes of this blog, none of pictures come out very well at all, since the lighting is so low and the electronics of this point-and-shoot idiot-proofed Canon are so slow. Cats are only blobs, with a pair of blobs shining out from their smaller furry blob-end, and I notice most of the clutter in the room magically disappears, along with the rest of the details.

So, the kitties are doing the equivalent of the steers banging their muzzles on their feeding troughs, and the feeder pigs rattling their stanchions out in the cold darkness of the barn yard. And old farmer Kitty Daddy will be pulling on his overalls and his boots and several layers, pretty soon, to get to it out there….even though it’s just to water the dog. Life goes on apace, and I’m glad I have that old farm in Jackson County back in my personal genetics as well as my childhood memories, although I never lived on it for more than a week at a time.

It’s important to have livestock in your life, if you can keep the date they go to the sale barn as far away and indefinite as possible. We’ve managed to skip past that part for several years now, and things have worked out just fine. I hope your day is filled with life and living as mine is bound to be. Bless you, dear readers, and don’t forget to drop me a line now and then.

The Lost Language of Cats, Part II: Stella, La Bella

2009-12-02T09:27:00.000-08:00

The busier I get around this house the more all these kitties seem to blur together at times, and I realize, then, that I'm moving way too fast, as I'm apt to do, and getting a little ahead of my program. Things don't have to be this way, obviously, as you can see from many of the scrapbook pictures, I seem to have a well-developed habit of slowing down to a complete stop, and curling up with a cat or three or four, and taking a little refresher nap. Over the years I have gotten used to the tickling of whiskers, the floating wisps of fur, and the sound of multiple purring, so dreamy, and so cozy, hummmmmm…sorry, almost drifted off there.

But when I'm charging about in one of my more manic moods, I can pass the central banister and oddly inimical chandelier (what I normally call the stair corner) with its little balcony over lookingthe foyer...I mean, get real, whoever was the architect here must've envisioned people performing scenes from Shakespeare or something…as I was saying, I pass the stair corner, and usually note whichever cat is lounging or flirting along on the top rail of the banister. They usually have a little message of some sort for me; I'm hungry, the water bowl is dry, there is a big bug in the window, Daddy certainly looks scary and out of sorts right now…this last is accompanied by the rear end of a cat, tail held high, retreating past the giant rubber plant and out of petting distance.

The usual cats up there are Malcolm, Jolie, Audrey, Ben, James, and sometimes Gordon or Wolfie, but the one who is there always for a very specific purpose—to love and idolize me—is Stella, a tres petite dilute tortie with a black button nose and the most vivid dark amber eyes. And because Stella and I have history, I usually stop for her, and we smooch a little, and then invariably she climbs on board, usually pacing the breadth of my shoulders, behind my head, once or twice, and then setting into a crouch, from which she cranes her head around to rub cheeks with me and to nuzzle my ears, to bite my nose sometimes, and to generally show everyone that she has charge of the Kitty Daddy, no contest.

Once again, the language of cats comes to my aid. Stella is a little runty girl, the runtiest of a very petite family of girls, whom we call the four little girls, who were all rescued along with another sister, Shelby, who died, and two brothers, who were adopted, I believe. Sheba is her mommy, and the other two girls, Sugar and Talia, really lord it over this poor little cinderella, harassing her, chasing her under the toilet tank and under the beds and chairs, pouncing on her while she sleeps, most generally making her fey little soul miserable. When she clings to me a cries and chirps her little greetings, and seems to fuss over me, I know now that she is really desperate for any kind of positive attention, warmth, and understanding. She doesn’t get much of it anywhere else, because cats can be singularly cruel to undercats like her.

Stella is snubbed by most of the big males, ignored by top females like Lila and Thistle, and hounded and humiliated by her own kin. So on that one day when she leapt up really dug her claws into my back as I was beginning to feed the Upstairs Bathroom Group, and Kitty Daddy roared somewhat his displeasure, she was scared absolutely witless and cowered behind the toilet from that moment on any time I was near. Here was her one champion, enraged and antagonistic now towards her. She must have wanted to die.

Then one day, as fate would have it, for, as you know, the Goddess generally seems to smile most kindly upon the shortcomings of Kitty Daddy, a streak went squealing and moaning past the office door as I was writing within. There seemed to be a general scare-cat panic and whirling windstorm moving about the house, all up and down it, now in the spare bedroom, now tumbling and streaking down the hallway and through the living room, storming around beneath the dining room table, and then just as suddenly down the stairs and under the bed down there, or in the hall, knocking at the storeroom door…and in this dervish’s wake, cats stood frozen, amazed, wide-eyed, their tails frizzed out like Christmas trees, but no one seemed capable of indicating the source of this manifestation.

Finally I found her, moaning in despair beneath the bed. Stella had gotten herself wrapped in a very tight knot with a plastic grocerybag attached through the handles to her hindquarters, an arrangement that allowed her to run like an antelope and yet not be able to shake it off. Well, Kitty Daddy was glad to be there to assist. I removed the bag, coaxed her out from under the bed, and she was been my own true love ever since. Now I’m her hero, I suppose, and all previous contretemps between us are forgotten.

So you can see now that knowing the lost language of cats doesn’t involve speaking at all, or, perhaps, even listening very much. The language of cats is communicated through their very being, or being-ness as Baba Ram Dass would say. And to speak it you must be able to communicate your own being to them. But first, and always, understand them first. Having no set of voluble signals with which too play all the witty word games we use to dress up our lies and evasions, a cat gives you its truth, as it were, in one syllable, one utterance. If you can be that way too, and come from who you are and be somehow consonant with your own being in what you do, and what you do has to do with a cat, then you know the lingo. If you don’t get this (and I imagine I’m not doing a very good job explaining it all) you will forever be an outsider, an infidel, in the world of cats.

I suppose having grasped this truth about cats is one of the great gifts of my life. I always wondered, and still do wonder, what they could possibly see in me, and why they are so drawn to me. I suppose I am simply myself around cats, and they respond in kind. Whatever is going on, it’s a great feeling to have Stella loving you on your shoulder. It’s a gift.

The Lost Language of Cats

2009-11-29T21:03:00.000-08:00

Like most cat lovers, I have a special way of speaking to cats, that is probably hard to bear if one happens to be human. Besides not making any real human sense, it would seem, at first, that I am simply confabulating and severely brain damaged, or on some kind of drug. Whether I am any of those things is beside the point. When I am being Kitty Daddy, and tending to my cats, I am living in their reality, and struggling to see things the way they see them, and mostly struggling to keep up.

So of course I sound sometimes like a confused two-year-old or a half-wit just poured out of Double Bubble down at the Deadwood. The cats see things quite differently from me, each is a very individual, having had singular experiences that informed them regarding life. Since cats learn very quickly and make as few mistakes as possible, these experiences are often the cause of their individual quirks and idiosyncracies, so if you want to get along with a particular cat, it helps if you know his or her back-story.

People that claim cat behavior to be mysterious are simply ignorant of the fact that they are operating on a completely logical program based on very hard-wired behavioral tendencies, instincts, if you will. If anything, they have a little more imagination than their human friends, and in that department are about as aggessively opportunistic as dogs. But being smaller, and being wired to kill or protect oneself with a very lethal set of claws and fangs, and being used to living in an environment that is brutal to put it mildly, cats simply remember more vividly negative experiences, and remain wary of similar circumstances for a very long time.

Pippin is one cat who will perhaps never be much of a lap cat, or the kind of cat Sylvester or Lila is. He'll never rub up against your legs, and wait for you at the door, even though he may sit for hours on a small step stool, waiting for you to come upstairs, and wander into the kitchen after you enter it, just to be close to you. Pippin had the bejesus scared out of him by a decidedly ignorant and outclassed employee at the animal shelter right after his arrival. At some point after he was abandoned, he began showing up at a neighborhood back step, and a man there started feeding him. Not wanting to have the full care of the cat, and unable to capture him, the man called the animal shelter, and Pippin was caught by an animal control officer. So, after spending the last six months or so of his eight-month long life being mostly abandoned and ignored, he made some tentative progress towards a friendly person who fed him, and then was trapped and taken to the shelter, where, judging from his behavior, he was classified "feral". Why "feral"?

Apparently, in getting him out of the trap he was brought in, Pippin escaped. The great Iowa River flood had forced the shelter to be moved to a large pole barn at the Fairgrounds, and Pippin climbed up into the trusswork and would not come down, choosing, instead, to leap from truss to truss and down onto the concrete floor, a drop of eight or ten feet, and earning himself the name "Spider" for Spiderman. Whether or not he was running and jumping for his life, which he was, was beside the point to the shelter employees. Such an animal is a problem, an object, something like a military command objective: to be disposed of as quickly as possible. There is a term, C.Y.A., which fits here. If you screw up, cover your ass.

It didn't help that the employee was fat and flustered and hot in her new surroundings, and relatively inexperienced in working with animals. Things can be done quite differently. It all depends on where your heart lies. For example, I once caught a cat in a storm sewer, apparently after animal control people had already been there and left, finding nothing. But I waited until the little urchin poked his head out the end of the pipe with my own head down in the junction box so I could see, and then grabbed him, and did not let go until I had walked him home, about two miles, and did not let go even though he bit through my thumb as I tried to unlock the front door of my house. This cat, as a matter of fact, was a beautiful black and white boy who had been abandoned or had wandered away from his person. In another five minutes, after I taped up my thumb, he was purring like a buzz saw inside a carrier and crunching into a bowl of kitten food. All our cats were around the carrier, greeting him like an old friend. And he was adopted to a young, loving couple and saved from further kitty indignities. And my old thumb has withstood worse abuse.

If you are going to grab a cat, you have to know how to hang on, before you do anything else. And, here again, talking a special language to cats is probably helpful too. Once a cat realizes that you’re merely holding it, in the process of transporting it to some new place, it may begin to think there is some benefit in the situation. At this point it just might relax a little, to test you, and if you loosen your grip, a little, as well, you will be catless in a flash. Because whether you’re doing something for the cat’s benefit or not, the cat would probably rather get there under its own power if it can.

So, this “Spider”, after being trapped by the one human he trusted to feed him, prodded with poles, and caught up, finally, in a net, was determined by the evil machinery of bureaucracy to be “feral” and “his card was pulled.” No one considered that he might come down if he got hungry, or needed a drink, or had to use the facilities. I suppose then Captain Binghamton would be back in his office and realize what a mess McHale had made of everything. This is the way the brave employees at the shelter ensure zero friction in their own personal wheel-greasing process. There is a problem, in this country with what the Brits call careerism. It’s not a good thing. Once you’ve landed somewhere in a job and pissed all around the house to make sure everyone knows it’s yours, and made it through your magical probationary period and turned golden, you can sit on that little spot for the rest of your natural born days and nobody can blast you out with dynamite.

You don’t have to be efficient, that’s for folks who are getting paid what they’re worth. You don’t have to care about the job you do, that’s for suckers. And you certainly don’t have to take any crap off some old smart ass who sits around in a house full of cats and criticizes all day. But sometimes it looks as though the animal shelter would be better off run by the volunteers that come in because they love animals, rather than the imputed “careerists” wearing the uniforms. The animals could get some actual feeling they’re being cared for, rather than face the fact that they are all inmates in a chickenshit version of death row, up the river, where we incarcerate all our human mistakes. But then you have to start thinking about the general slaughter that is going on all over the world, from the beginning of time until now, close to the end, and it looks as though whatever we people have put our hands to, if it‘s alive, it won’t be for long.

But for “Spider”, there was a new day dawning. Kitty Mommy got him out of there, and he sat in our bathroom window for several weeks, while Kitty Daddy took him down, slowly, and held him, and stroked his lovely fur, and told him everything was going to be all right. Speaking in the lost language of cats, which Miles had divulged to him many years ago. And nowadays, Pippin can be heard sometimes squealing in the night, when the big, bad, molester cats are out doing their evil deeds. When that happens, we bring him in with us, and he sleeps between our feet at the end of the bed. There is a feeling of redemption, at times like that, in the peace of a cat’s soft purring.

Right now he’s napping away under the maple chair in the dining room, in his little corner, and he has as happy a life as he wants to have. As happy as he wants, as any cat could want. And that is why we are all here, anyway, isn’t it?

Kitty Daddy will continue with more stories regarding the lost language of cats, especially as it is spoken by those cats who have seen their entire first eight lives flashing before them, waiting on death row after being “rescued” by the shelter, or had a kitty accident of some kind. These tales are told in the spirit of the holiday season, the great solstice, and in remembrance of Dickens, a great story-teller, and his namesake, a small tuxedo kitten who led a very short but very meaningful life with Kitty Daddy. Bless all those kitties who are with you, Dickens, we’ll be seeing you soon.

Two-Storey Cathouse

2009-11-26T12:15:00.000-08:00

A small stupid film regarding Pippin atop a dining room chair, Claire curled up beneath it, and Talia the polydactyl sitting on the apothecary cabinet overlooking the deck. Another indication of why this house is so quiet most of the time. Kitties know what to do with a day like Thanksgiving Day, perhaps better than anyone else.
To all our dear readers, we wish you a happy thanksgiving, and a calm and peaceful beginning to the coming holiday season.

Thanksgiving Day

2009-11-26T10:26:00.000-08:00

Teresa and I never argue much about the eating of birds. She went fully vegan several years ago, and this decision, for her, was a very simple extension of her ideas regarding animal rights, and the value that we should place upon all life. So she has gone Hindu or Buddhist, I suppose, in a way that baffles me. Perhaps she was always that much more spiritual and spiritually oriented than me in the first place, whilst I, for all my posturing and blather, am somewhat crassly materialistic. But I side with my brother and sister hawks, owls, cats, and dogs in that there are very many predatory traits that I admire, and a few that I natively possess. I look at these things as somewhat genetically predetermined, but of course a predisposition is not the same as a trait, and when it comes to eating meat, just as with any other substance, It's all very simple. You either do it or you don't, and I tend to do it.

I manage to spike a roast pullet every so often; from my upbringing, since I was raised in a town full of hunters and fishermen along the River, it was quite common to go out very early on mornings near Thanksgiving Day and blast away at pheasants in cornfields scattered throughout the prairie uplands above the bluffs, geese and ducks in the marshy sloughs of the Upper Mississippi flyway. You can develop a fine set of forearms sculling into a set of sandbars and canebrakes a mile or so offshore from the Illinois side, out in the middle of the Pool, in the grey morning light.

You sit waiting, alert, but still sleepy, warmed perhaps from a dash of husqubaugh passed from a friend's flask, and then drift through decoys and autumnal detritus lying almost flat on your back, your bootsoles nudging those of your friend's forwards the bow, warm in quilted longjohns and canvas overhauls, with a very alert retriever between you. Wrapped like a baby in an old tarp or sleeping bag, you cradle a twelve gauge loaded with steel shot, and you wait. The friend uses his little call, which squabbles and splutters like a couple of mallards paddling through the weeds.

Inevitably, the ducks fly in and almost land: instead, they startle, just as their webbed toes skim the surface, the universe explodes and where everything was soft and rounded, now even the water itself is jagged, harsh, sharp, and you swing up and around with the two barrels leading by the width of two fingers and bang, bang, with a soft whiffling sound the bird drops from the sky, dead before it hits the water. The dog won't wait for you to scull on over, he has seen the drop, and wants a mouthful of feathers, hoping to speed things up a bit. As he jumps in, you are laughing, the shooting is always good on Thanksgiving. As if it was meant to be.

Later, in the cabin, feeling warm and a little fuzzy, you look out over the waste of grey water and fingers of twisted stumps and think of the plumage, the red of the canvasback's poor head, a russet, really, a sunset color, the aquamarine of the wood duck's coverts, that flashed almost invisibly, like a hummingbird's, it flew so fast, and the gentle, careful, seemingly reverent way you and even the dog handled them before they went in the bag. Something so beautiful, it's hard to explain what complicated set of chemical equations link from that wild beauty in flight to meat in your belly, and how it all comes back around then, to this moment, as the weary sun sets behind a rim of wintry clouds, above the bluffs at Bellevue, and you, a young fellow amongst a cohort of other young men who grew up fairly well-off along the greatest river system in the world, in the most astounding country, in this muddy, bleached, scuffed ground you call home.

It is then you give thanks, in some spiritual sense, through what might seem a senseless sacrifice of some very beautiful birds. But it is in the sacrifice that things all begin to make sense, somehow, and that same sense has driven this savage civilization for eons, as men have gone out to hunt and to kill for the winter for thousands of generations.

A lifelong friend who still lives along the River, a great hunter and outdoorsman, Mark, no longer engages in bloodsports of any kind. Another old friend we both grew up with still hunts, it's a passion of his. There is no bird killing here, in this house, today; and that's why there is no real argument about it. Those who are suffering from having eaten too much, and feel a little sleepy and sluggish for a day or two, will be gladdened somewhat to learn that we are sleepy here too, turkey or no turkey. This is the soporific effect of cats, on a grey, dark, late autumn day. See the films and you'll know what I mean.

Now, excuse me, please, I feel a nap coming on.

Nightly Business Report

2009-11-23T20:44:00.000-08:00

It's quite late, again, but not so late that I can't sit down and conjure up a few words, notes, really, regarding our incredible brood and the various flavors and accents they all individually add to our lives—lives that would be rather humdrum and dreary if it weren't for their love, and their presence here with us.

I just left Kitty Mommy in the bedroom, which is mostly off-limits to cats. But tonight she had invited Sylvester, who's there with us nearly every night, and Wolfie, who gets to stay awhile in the late evening and snuggle, which he has been used to doing since he was a wee baby. Now, in reality, Sylvester generally invites himself in, and he doesn't really need permission, or require much watching, when he gets there: he's a consummate snuggler, and will be perfectly fine in a human bed all night long, until the morning. There are those among the cats who can't be trusted for even five minutes, who have rather odd quirks regarding their inability to hold themselves in when they get in a situation where there's no litter box.

But I know Wolf and Sylvester will be in nearly the same positions later, when I get through with my day, and it will be up to me if they stay or go at that point. There are simply some cats who can be trusted, and some who can't be.

Thistle was scrying at the kitchen sink, where a large casserole was soaking, still, even though it was really already clean. Since the dish was clear, and reflected the light above nicely, and was half-full of water, Thistle was prepared to sit, as she does from time to time, staring into its depths for hours. I made things a little more interesting by dumping half-rotted ice from my glass into the water, and although she felt it necessary to turn her back momentarily, and wait for the ripples to die down, she was soon back at her perch, seeing God knows what, waiting for something to appear or disappear, some thing no mere human could have seen there anyway.

And as I sat down here, Khan jumped up to remind me that I am really his human, and no one else's, and he took over my lap, reached up with a soft paw to push my nose, which used to go beep whenever he did so, and softly knead my shirt as he looked up at me with those great, clairvoyant blue eyes of his, with a kind of love and intensity that would be comical if I didn't know it was 100% true. I mean that we are bonded for life, and every moment we spend together is precious. The thing is that Khan seems even more aware of this than I do, most of the time. But he was a very sick child, who perhaps escaped death by the hairs of his chinny-chin-chin, and such a childhood changes anyone's perspective on things, even that of a cat.

Seuss is sleeping now, not far from me, and Mouse is around somewhere, waiting for me to appear at a door, or on a chair, so that he can assemble his guard, and watch over me, something he does for hours and hours, whether I pay any attention to him or not. As a matter of fact, the one way I can try Mouse's patience is to pay attention to him while he sits on guard, because he evidently doesn't want to be noticed at these times, doesn't want to be petted, or made over, at all. He just wants to sit somewhere close by, like the angel that he is, with his wings folded, eyes wide open.

Jolie was around here for a minute or two, and I now hear her growl from a corner, meaning one of the big boys with whom she has no patience is prowling too close by. I suppose I will have to get up soon and pretend to rescue her, while whichever big boy it is that has incurred her wrath will have to pretend to run for cover, and Jolie will have to pretend to be so cuddly-grateful, because of my saving her from Black Bart again.

Love is a funny thing, amongst all these burgeoning selves and their attendant personalities. My friend Nikki mentioned the other day what a wonderful family we have, and it's true. And if you are willing to run a hundred laps around and within a house like this every day, and stay on your toes every minute, and be all things to all kitties, people, and one dog, and get up and repeat the whole process tomorrow, then you could very easily fit in with a wonderful family like this in your own home.

But I was born to do this, and the family chose me, rather than the other way around. If I had ever been given a choice, back in those lonely dreary days where all I had was my disability and a lot of time on my hands, along with an overwrought imagination and several Joneses going at once, I know I would have made the wrong choice, or, rather, prayed or asked for the wrong thing. But I was never given the chance to screw all this up as badly as I surely could have done.

So I have just that much more to be grateful for, on this day, as this day draws to a close. Someone is shredding a scratching post in the background, instead of a chair. Always, always be grateful for these small favors. It doesn't take many of them to fill up a charmed life.

New Moon Night

2009-11-20T19:58:00.000-08:00

The four-days old new moon was finely visible, a thin crescent in the dusk, tonight, after days of rain and obscure signs in the heavens. I was glad to be out with Seuss, and to take a call from my beloved, T. This is the 325th moon of a certain cycle central to my existence which began in the waxing, last moon of the year 1984. This moon is also the thirteenth, and last moon of the year 2009.

I told Seuss, "Every day of our past was a rehearsal for this day, no wonder we can live it to such perfection," and he did not answer, but seemed to listen, intently, and think about all this. Dogs have such a way with them, as they are different from the cats I have been accustomed to. Cats normally take what you say as though, "It's high time you tumbled to the conclusion I reached so many years ago. However could you be so slow and stupid, and still be such a friend? Prrrrrrr…" But I've begun to think they're born that way, and can't help it.

Yes, every day was a rehearsal, and this the performance, and the future a play as yet unwritten...well, I haven't been reading much Shakespeare lately as I ought, but I know when the Goddess herself is smiling down on me, from her perch in the horns of the moon. Pee Wee climbs up on my knee, grappling himself up with his claws, and now wants to shred and consume my nose and my chin, while Holly waits patiently on the desk before me, knowing that she is the biggest of the kittens, a girl, and therefore, supposed to act more sedately, and with more discretion. I can hear Spike and Lenny worrying away at a crinkly ball in a corner, and the film I was supposed to be watching has lapsed into electronic sleep. Such are the works of men; surely their day is not long under the sun.

This all means only one thing to a kitty daddy: the kitties are hungry, and want their beds. Late in the evening, though it may not seem so very late to you, when a kitten starts shredding the furniture, or your knee, or your fingertips, it's probably high time they had a bowl of something kitten-crunchable in a very quiet place. Ours have a whole room, the kitten crib, for themselves, where no one else can go, except the kitty daddy, who only goes there to replenish the bowls and swamp the place out once in a while. So I put the babies to bed, and they were very glad to have something more nourishing than me to bite on.

After all this, and considering perhaps I should write a thesis composed entirely of bits of mystery and wisdom acquired while under the influence of Seuss, the cats, or the moon goddess, I managed to scribble down these notes for you, dear reader, and stumble off to bed.

May angels attend thy rest.

Bright, Sunshiny Day

2009-11-20T11:13:00.000-08:00

Can't figure that Daddy guy, not since I came here. We're out walking by this big yellow truck, all kinds of doodads hanging off it, and he starts making this sucking noise, "Schluuuuurp!" he says, "The leaf sucker's gonna getcha, Seuss!" And then another "Schluuuuuurp" just for good measure. The guy is like having a radio on all the time, playing some weird student station, or maybe inmates from an asylum. I just tuck my tail and ears, put my head down and soldier on.

In a split second I'm running. Running past the houses next door, with all the puppies and the beauty queen Izzy, that are always so glad to see me, like I was the prodigal son, every time I run into the back yard. I can hear them, inside, a barking, yelping chorus, as they sense me streaking past with crazy daddy.

I turn and bite the air. I do a kind of flip like that every once in a while and my nose is where my tail was, it was handy when I was a puppy, as long as my tail never got away from me. Or my nose. I was usually safe. Unfortunately now, my loving Mommy's hand or arm might be in the space of the air where I turn and jump and nip, and I guess my teeth and jaws are pretty sharp, and strong.

So, where we were racing, we are all of a sudden slowed down and plodding, past a whole long street of houses, some lit up with bright lights already, and even in the day time, because humans evidently can't see that great at night. Or smell or hear or do much of anything at the level someone like me does. They make movies about guys like James Bond and Iron man, where they're adding all these "super" qualities and abilities, but they never seem to realize, "Why not just get a dog to do it?" you should see what I did to that crazy candy coated clown guy...I bet he isn't juggling too many balls any more.

Well, I'm not Bolt, or Bourne, or Bond, but I'm a pretty good dog. I don't know why everybody makes over me the way they do, I'm just glad to be anywhere, still sucking wind, most of my shadows behind me and not catching up. Running into the light.

The daddy dude talks a lot. Not to himself, really, although it looks like no one else is there. I've looked at this thing pretty carefully, and, being a dog, I can tell that there really is somebody there, most of the time, that he's talking to, but you just can't detect whoever it is by any trace they leave. They do leave a trace, but it's like the sparks from a sparkler, or asking where a candle flame goes when you blow it out.

Actually he talks to me a lot. "Leave that, Seuss," he says, when I find a particularly choice morsel, walking along. You can't believe the things people drop. Animals too. I could follow a particular hawk that lives near here for a day and make a pretty good-sized dinner from what she drops—she's an over-producer of dead field mice and voles. Yum, they are a tasty treat.

But the poop situation is actually pretty grim along streets in this town nowadays. People bag it pretty regularly. They don't enjoy stepping in it, I guess. They don't realize the benefits from walking in manure, like the old farmers did where I came from. A pair of boots you use out in the barnyard will last twice as long as a pair you wear out on the dusty road. Poop is good for you. It keeps things moving...

We keep moving. I do my duty, and you would think I'd laid a golden egg. He bags it, finds a city garbage can down by a little pond with ducks in it, and before you know it, we're headed home again. He's singing my praises.

"You're a good dog, Seuss," he says. "You're like the best of Sylvester added into all the best parts of you, being a dog," and it takes him a minute to get that last part out, because I think he realized he was adding up too many parts to make the sum. But I know what he means, after all, I am a dog. We are always more than the sum of our parts. We're like a cat and a human and a bear all combined, I suppose, with a little angelic something, like the sparkly winged tracer Daddy dude talks to all the time. We are not altogether of this world, none of us.

How amazing that we all get along so well in it.

Walking with Seuss

2009-11-19T15:51:00.000-08:00

I was just out walking in the dark with Seuss. It was garbage day so this morning when we went out there were many many very interesting bags of stuff that nodog in his right mind would ever want to throw away. So many smells that at times we crept, like, little, millipedes along the pavement just so we could get every single aroma straightened out—its provenance, what it was mixed with, how it was cooked, who broke it, wow, why did they burn that? eeeeew no wonder, oh hot damn, it's it's it's!!!

At times a big burly breeze would come along and blow like autumn, late autumn, clouds slightly breaking up and the ground fresh and crispy from the rains, and we flew, I could say, run Seuss, fly, and we were really flying until he turned around to nip at his leash, and my arm, something I'm yet to break him of. Well, he gets excited....

But I'm supposed to be monitoring his alimentation, and its outcomes. Oh, he writes his name on a power pole once in a while, sticks the big spongy part of his nose on a mailbox post that even I can see was recently pissed upon, and this morning he delivered a bargeload of doggiebloop down at the Tall Grass Prairie project by Grant Wood School, but tonight he is sort clicking along on his toenails, very sedate, the envy of all.

The kitties stay home and wonder why they can't get out and manage things —you know, mate, the way they know they're capable of doin' it—a proper job, a righteous world it would be then, with all us cats running it. They sit and look out the windows. Do the kitty sigh. (***) Time to curl up in the arm of the couch for a little nap.

So I got my licks in today, stood and talked with a former Job Services employment counselor for veterans—cum—fellow professional, comrade-in-arms, at this point, and it was really good to see him. He helped me out so much, you see, back in a time when I never felt as though I was doing well, or right, and had no place on earth upon which I could comfortably stand. The mornings upon which I would awaken in a sweat, suffering from an evil dream, extricate myself from the twisted sheets, sit up, and try to think. What is it that I had to do? To say? Did I have clothes to put on? Did my face look at all right, or did it betray all too much of what went on last night? Why was there always this cast in my eyes, something that seemed amiss, some little twist…

Seuss wants to reach the sound of the tiny pooch behind the fence. Boof,boof, boof, she struggles to express some differential calculus, it all has to do with the earth's motion and the sound of the wind, but no one understands. Locked in, down in a basement or a bricked-in back yard, hearing the street noises and the birds perhaps and the wind and the echoing hollow boof of her own bark. Well, at least it doesn't bother anybody.

We get home. Seuss now expects Daddy to always have the big chunk of lamb and salmon, in a piece, not the little bits some people break them into. Okay, Seuss. It was a beautiful day.

Les “White Tips” en passant

2009-11-13T07:57:00.000-08:00

Our recent tribe of kittens, the White Tips, Mollie, Ivy, Spike and Lenny, came to us along with a singleton, whom we named Holly. She’s an almost-grown, wonderfully lithe, beautiful autumn-colored dilute torby (quite a mouthful, but she’s really hard to describe) and white, with the most interesting toe-pads I’ve seen yet: about evenly divided between pink and black, with no in-between or mixed-color toes at all. Just pink, or black, like Good & Plenty. I haven’t determined whether she’s licorice-flavored as well, perhaps one of the White Tips can tell you.

We worried about her as she grew from her weakened infancy, having had a bad case of Calici, which had certainly stunted her and made her a little on the sickly side, someone to be watched. But she has that indomitable spirit, which sets certain kittens apart, as it did Khan, and Jolie, who also went through tremendous long sickly periods, suffering from unknown viruses and deficiencies, and simply toughened and hardened until that same spirit seemed to shine through in their every movement and attitude.

There’s more than passive observation here, in the raising of such kittens, that causes me to admire them so and feel for them. Kitty Daddy was a sickly youth as well. Coming through it all simply makes you tougher, perhaps never any further from Death’s grip than any other person, but certainly tough enough to turn and spit in his eye and resist his overtures. Holly, tough as she is, and the kind of kitten that loves to attack your drawstrings, shoelaces, and buttons, but is quick to withdraw when you disapprove, and looks somewhat abashed at her own forwardness. What she loves most is sitting on the back of your chair, curled up for a bath, and grooming your fingers as you reach for her.

Holly shares this trait with her White Tip friend, Mollie, who in her own way is a vivacious and very loving little girl. Now, Mollie is jet black and as thin as a rail, with tiny paws and long legs. Her eyes are a deep amber and cut in the slanting almond shape that we associate with the Oriental in humans. In a cat like Mollie the almond shape gives her a pixieish appearance, that suits her somewhat crazy and fun-loving nature. Mollie is a snuggler, and jumper, and is able to run rings around Spike, who is so much more a very simple, loving, good-hearted, jumbo Pleasuremobile. With his huge plume of a white-tipped tail, long shag of black fur, and the oddly hawklike cut of his big golden eyes, he is all charm, and I think we should have named him Dino, after that ultimate charmer and avatar of the good life, Dean Martin. He’s just that easy-going, happy, and handsome.

But if there were a cat that could run for President, it would be Lenny who got my vote. People seem to overlook or ignore black cats for any number of reasons, all which usually reveal nothing more than that, as usual, people are sadly misinformed and superstitious when it comes to cats and their behaviors. Every single silly or stupid thing you may think or hear about a black cat is contradicted by the naked fact of Lenny’s existence (not to mention Miles, Malcolm, Spike, and any number of wonderful and charming black cats I have known). Lenny himself is probably the most lovingly affectionate and playful kitten we have ever raised, coming through all the little kitten colds, the forced sequestering in the kitten crib, the lonely hours there waiting with his brother and sisters, just waiting for Daddy or Mommy to show up and brighten his day… well, actually, he brightens our days whenever he’s around. And besides all that, his sharp personality (he’s the kind of cat whose mind you can watch working) seems to always put him where you need him most—except when he’s trying to zoom out the door, and even then he only wants to tag along with you. He doesn’t want to miss any of the fun.

Lenny is also super-plushy, in that he looks like a short or medium length coat. But what a coat! Petting him is pure silken pleasure, and he likes it too. But for absolute snuggliness, his little sister, Ivy, is the ultimate lap cat. I wrote of her eye problems earlier in her life, and we were quite worried that she would end up stone blind. However, she seems to have grown out of it all, and has a little cataract-like fog in her right eye, but she seems to be perfectly aware of everything in her visual field, and is altogether too active, playful, and alert to be having vision problems of any kind. She has been palling around with me since I got up this morning as only Khan, Sylvester, or Mouse usually do, though she is even more snuggly than any of those big boys, preferring to sit in my lap even now, as I tap-tap-tap at the keyboard. Sometimes she gets more interested in doing a little tap herself, and I have to erase her various attempts at editing my manuscripts. Not that I don’t appreciate her editorial expertise, some of the best changes wrought in my writing over the last few years have been engineered by cats manifesting a quick critical commentary as I tried to rush a piece to its completion. Well, I never thought of using a dash there instead of an ellipsis, but now that I see what you’ve done, perhaps I’ll try it. Thanks, Ivy…

It should be obvious these kittens in their extended stay here might just have earned their way to a free life-long ticket at the white house on the corner. And we certainly wouldn’t mind keeping them. They seem to be the kind of excellently-traited and totally personable kittens-becoming-cats that most people shell out good money for, and I should remind you, if you’re interested, that they can be adopted through JCHS for a song. Naturally all the vaccinations, spay/neuter, deworming, and all that technical stuff has been taken care of, and they are ready to be chipped, tagged, and set up as the absolute but benevolent rulers of your household.

Of course Kitty Daddy will be sad to see them go, and wonder why he never gets a postcard as they continue their long and hopefully happy life journeys, but the very best of life often is accompanied by a parting. Kitty Daddy is quite proud of his product, and if no one adopts, then he hasn’t had a chance to show what a fine daddy he is when it comes to raising bonny and remarkable kittens. I can be reached for further info at wksndays@earthlink.net, so if you are interested, dear reader, drop me a line.

I'll get over these beauties in time.

BTW, I made short films of all these kittens this morning, but my idiotic blogspot software seems incapable of processing it right now. Keep an eye out for them, I have a feeling if I try to post them at around 3 a.m.this morning, they will be uploaded.

Kitty Daddy Melts Down,

2009-11-08T08:39:00.000-08:00

Or, Whatever it is, it will always be better by 8 a.m.

I’m lucky, even though I live a somewhat reclusive lifestyle (the better to think up literary tidbits on a quotidian basis) to have a couple people I can talk to. This morning, especially, I am very grateful to those who can listen, and respond with something useful and understanding.

You see, I knew I was headed for unavoidable trouble last night. Sometime before sunset, I walked Seuss after feeding and deworming the entire population, having seen a very healthy roundworm peeking out at me from Ivy earlier in the day. This has an almost immediate effect on the volume of litter to be cleaned, and, since I had also dewormed Seuss, in light of his constant snacking on choice little scraps out of that same litter, I expected him to at least fill up a bag for me as a result of our walk. You could say Kitty Daddy was a little anal about it all, last night.

Now this wasn’t all. I had felt a general lassitude creeping over me, no matter what I did, from the middle of the afternoon on. I was barely able to stay awake after six, and was in bed before ten, extraordinarily early for me. It could have something to do with the fact I skipped my heart meds on Friday morning in the rush of seeing Teresa off to her conference. By noon or so I was sweating, and wondering why I was feeling so cold turkey, and having so many bad rushes doing ordinary things like bending over to tie my shoes. By three o’clock or so I was in an outright atrial fibrillation, and my heart just kept pounding and wouldn’t slow down. Firmly fixt in my memory was the act of taking my pills that morning, until I realized I was remembering it from the day before, not today. Such is the confusion that reigns in KD’s brain.

Well, yesterday afternoon, Seuss stopped to snoop in every bush and tuft of late autumn grass he came across. He sniffed out every squirrel’s trail and rabbit hole, and stopped to pick up a half-rotten apple, and wouldn’t drop it til it thundered. His big nose was working overtime, and he saw and heard and smelled an indeterminate number of things totally obscure to me. But he never noticed that he had to squat and take care of business.

And something about it all, the pile-up of activity of the last few days, the bright, sunny, somehow heartlessly cruel weather, a houseful of wormy and possibly flea-bitten cats, all of it was pressing down on the still-solid shoulders of Kitty Daddy, who had no big, $40,000 truck to ride in, no tickets to the Hawks game, no Harley motorcycle to make him feel more the man than the next guy, no boat in which to tear up and down the river, just a bunch of guitars, his memories, and a lot of mouths to feed. Here he was with this demanding dog, who seemed to Marmaduke him every moment he sat curled on a pillow at home, who seemed to want to race around and travel to distant neighborhoods when I did take him out; who, no matter what I did, was never quite satisfied or happy except in the precise moment when one or other of his myriad desires was quenched. And now he wouldn’t poop, and he would want out twice as badly later on, when (I could feel it creeping up on me) I would be so tired I wouldn’t be able to lift my head.

Well, sure enough, this morning was rough, the air in the house was like gelatin to wade through, I couldn’t breathe without sneezing or hacking, and everyone wanted service at once. Full service, mind you, and they had pulled up at the self-serve pump a half-block away from the station. Kitty Daddy was dragging, slogging through. And everyone got fed, and the litter boxes, which appeared to hold about twice as much as they normally do, all got cleaned out of the first results of the Strongid. Then, just by chance, I opened the door to the master bedroom to throw my jeans on to the bed, since they kept falling down off my ass and tripping me as I labored. I’ll be wearing suspenders next. As I stood there in my boxers, bag and scoop in hand, good old Malcolm zoomed inside, and though I yelled and cursed, I closed the door on him, and continued on my rounds.

Not five minutes and two litter boxes later, I returned to chase him out of there. This bedroom is one of my few cat-free sanctums, a place where I can retire and breathe without sniffles and shed fur working its way up my nose. And there, on the new quilt, (Malcolm streaked from the room as if his tail were attached to a lit firecracker) was a very wet, mushy, familiar blob, just like the ones I’d been scooping up from the boxes for the last fifteen minutes.

So, down to the laundry room, after stopping off at the bathroom to rinse the crap into the toilet. A few minutes later, mid-wash, I pulled at the quilt as the agitator chugged against me, trying to find the stained corner to see if the B.O.S.S. had done its job. I didn’t know, dear readers, that this was a dangerous thing to do, having never really done it with something as big and heavy as this quit. And in another thirty seconds or so, as I pulled and tugged, I realized I was not making any progress around the perimeter of the quilt to the next corner. As a matter of fact, the quilt was now firmly knotted and wrapped, like a backlash in a fishing reel, to the agitator, and the whole basket of the machine was tilting and grinding as I pulled at the stuck quilt. And for once, Odysseus-like Kitty Daddy, the man who was never at a loss, the resourceful guardian and avatar of the Goddess and a zillion lost kitties, was stuck, for once. A very pretty pickle.

That was when I made my call to Minneapolis. And thank goodness my someone number one answered. My message was simple: HELP! We talked, for a few minutes. Teresa has a very soothing voice, which she uses on a fair number of other stressed-out and discomfited folks. The next thing I knew, I was off the phone, having decided to take care of my own morning necessities, before I ventured any further into the unknown and barbaric day.

Seuss and I walked, and the morn was truly beautiful. He led, and I followed, until we reached an acre or so of tall grass prairie by Grant Wood school, where he circled and circled, as if to find a place to curl up. Then he squatted and all I had to do was clean it up, and walk home, taking the short cut. When I got back to our yard, my neighbor was out in his back yard, already, raking up the big oak leaves from the young, burgeoning tree that spreads its graceful form from our shared back corner. After I took Seuss inside, we talked over the fence for a half hour or so, and I was loathe for the conversation to end, knowing he would have to return to his task, and I to mine. But it was a pleasant interlude, two old dudes on a bright clear morning, laughing about our old days, and marvelling at the great grace and goodness of the present.

So, you see, no matter what things start looking like at six in the morning, they will very nearly always be better by eight. To quote Skip James,

The old folks said,
But I never did know…

…that, in this case, putting one foot in front of the other is the usual solution to almost any problem. At least for today, anyway.

Weekend Update

2009-11-07T06:56:00.000-08:00

I promised to get Kitty Daddy to write a post every day for the next few days, since Kitty Mommy will be mostly out and about, pergrinating in the service of her intrepid organization. And there’s certainly a lot to write about, in nature, in one’s own waking and dream intimations, with all the characters I live with, both inside my own head and around the white house on the corner, which is, after all, essentially a big boarding house for numerous small four-footed friends.

Right now, Seuss is parked obligingly against my left leg, snuggling up as warmly and graciously as any cat. Mollie, the young black kitten with the amazing little white flag on the end of her tail, and Pee Wee, Jr., the sole survivor from his (probably now) deceased mommy and namesake’s litter, are cruising around the big oaken farm table I use as a desk, sniffing inquiringly at guitar cases, the iMac keyboard, the a/v stack, and most generally trying to get into some kind of trouble, as cats usually are.

For those of you in West Branch who are following Pee Wee’s progress, I can tell you he is still a lad with incredibly great expectations, and I have a feeling his story will be a long and exciting one, with many friends, loves, and adventures, due to his bold and winning nature and killer good looks. Spike, Mollie’s big (almost as big as Khan now) brother pierces my thigh with what seem to be about a dozen sharp claws, and says hello, don’t forget to put me in the story, and tries to bat at Pee Wee, who naturally puts his game face on, bats at Spike, and turns on Daddy and biffs him as well, just to make sure. Then just as suddenly they’re off, and I’ll hear them scuffling with their own tails and shadow-boxing off in a far corner of the house.

But the other day PW’s fortunes seemed to turn, and KD realized perhaps he had been spending too much time with the much older white-tip litter to which Mollie, Spike, Lenny (all black, no white tip) and Ivy belong. I found him asleep on the toilet seat cover in the kittens converted bathroom, off his feed, and when I picked him up and carried him to the hall, he made as if to jump from my hands at about the height of my knees, as I bent over to let him loose on the carpet. He ended up leaping, or just dropping, in a ball before I got him all the way down, though, and fell very clumsily from a height of about a foot and a half, something which ordinarily wouldn’t faze even a youngster so small in the least. But he fell without any tension in his limbs, chin first, recovered somewhat, and limped off as though something was sprained or broken, much to Kitty Daddy’s consternation.

After a long day of isolation in his old digs, the office, I saw that he must have fallen or fought too hard while in the midst of the older, bigger kittens, and that his right paw or leg or shoulder were very sore and yielded to the slightest pressure. Whether he had ascended to the loft in the kittens’ room, andthen fallen, or simply been clamped down on too hard by one of the tough White-Tips, I couldn’t ascertain, but I decided to leave him to himself a day or more and let him heal. Needless to say I had broken one of my own rules, something which I always took pains to advise any prospective neophyte adoptor of kittens: a kitten in the first four months or so of its life must have a place all its very own, even if it’s just a small cardboard box with a little kitten-sized door in it, a palace of retreat and rest into and out which only he or she can go, and this sanctuarymust be held sacred, even to his care-givers, who should only disturb it once a day or so to replenish food and water and clean the litter.

Kittens are a remarkable package of hard-wired instincts matched by an incredibly open intellect and a bright learning capacity, but we must always take great care to never stand in the way of the kitten’s burgeoning growth and developing awareness. There is a decidedly grim reason for their need for seclusion and retreat up to a certain age, and when there’s no biological mother present to see to such things, we must take on the task. Males in free neighborhood cat society, who are allowed to roam, regularly eat kittens and destroy nesting places, since this will trigger the female to go back into heat. Otherwise, the female’s exclusion from estruus ordinarily lasts throughout the entire period of her litter’s development to adulthood, as she continues to nurse them, hunt for them, and hide them.

In the woeful circumstances which we foster parents usually find ourselves, that of having the responsibility of raising these infants without a manual, the best we can do is allow the kitten’s own instincts to guide its progress to adulthood, helping where we can, and never, ever, standing in the way of its biological imperatives. For the kitten, the imperative in this case is, hide. Security seems to be vital to its ongoing growth.

So I had an exhausted and somewhat careworn Pee Wee on my hands for a day or two, and it was entirely Kitty Daddy’s fault, too, having taken Pee Wee’s lead, going along with his seeming wish to herd with the White-Tips. Perhaps his will to be one with the big kitties simply outgrew his instinctive ability to cope, and he found himself thrust, like a twelve-year-old prodigy, into high school too early.

Otherwise, everything seems very calm and rather sleepy here right now, although Ivy is expressing herself pipingly regarding her desire to take over my lap and then jump up and dance on the keyboard. Seuss and I had quite good walks yesterday and today, in the beautiful and sad Indian Summer, and saw several interesting pups as well, though none of them were quite up to our standards as far as training and—dare I say it—breeding and behavior were concerned. It’s hard to find a dog of Seuss’ make; I doubt that I ever will.

The K-9 Adjustment, Part II

2009-11-03T05:48:00.000-08:00

Just this morning I woke to hear the washer going downstairs, something a little unusual at such an early hour, and usually meaning there's been an accident of some sort around the house, normally of the kitty barf kind. But yes, accident perhaps, but not to be blamed upon the kitties. Today Seuss decided to supplement his rations with a carton of soy milk which Kitty Mommy left laying on the downstairs snuggle-bed, and in ripping into it he soaked all three sleeping bags (chosen for that bed because of the unusual durability and snuggliness of their materials). Hence, the early morning washing. Well, this also gives you a glimpse into how we keep the house from looking like typical hoarders are living here—we wash and clean constantly.

But I meant to write this sequel to my last post to say that to all intents and purposes, we have made our K-9 adjustment, after all, and that our Seuss is a lad of such winning ways that he is little trouble...for a dog. I realize that a dog requires a little more attention and care than a cat, and that part of my problem is that I'm just lazy enough to see all kinds of advantages in an animal that poops in a litter box and sleeps about 16 hours a day. Cats wake up, really wake up, twice a day, I notice, but that's because we feed them twice a day. So, like stopped clocks, they're right just that often. As for their wierd nocturnal games (which I hear, more than observe) I take it they're unremittingly pagan, and just won't ever fit into anything like normal society. If they started off their relationship with humans as something like independent contractors, here to see about your rodents, ma'am or sir, then it makes sense that they're up at all hours, when the wee beasties would be scrambling about in your grain stores. Our mighty friend the dog is happy at these times to curl up by the fire, satisfied with a little warmth, a scrap or two, and the notion that he's part of our team.

I do admit, there is something very reassuring in having a friend by your side through a long night, preoccupied with a chew toy or a bone, but who is ready to leap up at a moment's notice, awaiting your command. Our nightly walk along the neighbor's fence, which gets a ritual sprinkling by Seuss, the better to delineate his boundary, and leave a reminder for his beloved Izzy, the yellow lab that lives there, takes on a ceremonial quality, I think, for both of us. After all, we're two of a kind: old soldiers who could never sleep a wink without first checking our perimeters, making sure all is well on the home front.

There is also something so natural about getting Seuss to jump up into the back of the truck when we go for a ride—although he may be somewhat spoiled to sitting in the cab when there's only one of us along—that I find myself thinking about old friends back home along the river, hunting and fishing, camping and hiking, always with a dog or two along. In a way, dogs are so much a part of human society by now—and they always were, at least in my own personal way-back-when— that one could be said to be partly dead to life without them, even in the most obvious ways: there's a deer you never would have seen if the dog hadn't crouched into his set, there's the pheasants he flushed, or the quail that broke cover only because he nosed them out...there are a number of feelings and ideas that come to you only because you're with this dog, helping you to think your thoughts and frame them in this too-chaotic reality.

You see the sun already skirting the treeline, off to the west, and say, as if to yourself, "Better head for home, boy, it's getting late," and the dog hunches his shoulders against his lead and quickens his pace along with yours. You cower down inside your coat against the stiff northwesterly, and the dog notices, and shivers in sympathy.

A dog—this dog, this Seuss—is someone you can live with, in a very active and exciting way. If it costs you a carton of soy milk once in a while, or wears the tread off your boots a little faster, well, the dog was there with you, that whole time, bearing it along with you. If life sometimes seems to be a sorry trudge through the mud, well, the dog is happy to trudge right along with you, and be miserable with you, and nuzzle your hand when you emit your lonely howl of pain at life's dreary stream of injustice.

And where would a cat be, through all this? Why, curled up somewhere in a cozy corner, wondering what the devil was waiting dinner so long today. Don't worry, katzen, me and the boy, we're headed home.