My Father in Me

After those first two dreams, you never returned again, Dad. So now, more than 50 years after your death, I am instead looking for you within myself. I find you every time I retell an often-told tale adding embellishments as you did, or in my obsession with other people’s babies and that yearning to hold every one I see. I remember your holding the babies of tourists in Mack’s Cafe or Ferns “so their folks could finish their meals.” You loved the tiny ones most. As you explained it, “I like them mewling and puking in my arms!”

I recall all the abandoned baby animals you brought into our lives: a mole, a magpie, numerous baby rabbits, once a puppy held up in a cattle sales ring and tossed up to you in the third row, tiny yellow kittens and the best of all–Zippy, the tiny raccoon found in its nest after hunters killed its mother.

So it is you I see in me as I remember the wild cat from the redwoods shyly watching, then lured by food, who moved into my jewelry studio and gave birth, leaving us with three tiny blue Burmese kittens. And I count on my fingers eleven different puppies and six kittens  adopted in the past 25 years since moving to Mexico–found in the street, by the lake, dumped in a cardboard box beside my garage.  Is it you, father, delivering these tiny lost ones to me, knowing the you in me that has as much need of them as they have of me?

It was my father
guiding the wild cat to me,
three kittens within.

Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.

South Dakota 1954. Zippy, our pet raccoon

Boulder Creek, CA 1987, our little kittens from the redwood forest

Mexico, 2002.Annie, my second kitten adopted in Mexico, in her favorite place. She was adopted a year or so after after Talulah, whom I had found in a basket of scarves in a shop in Tonala that she had streaked into a minute before I walked in. The owner, whose daughter was allergic, begged me to adopted her and guess what?

Mexico, 2002, Lulu teaching Annie how to climb the screen door.

After finding homes for five puppies found on the beach after the death of their mother, I found Frida trotting toward us on the busy highway. At first I thought she was a big rat. Cars were speeding by. Of course, she came home with me.

First there was Frida, then Diego.

For the fifteen or more years Frida lived with me, this is where she was most of the time, checking out the neighborhood and occasionally barking at someone who didn’t belong there.

Then Morrie, abandoned by a houseguest, joined the menagerie..

Morrie got the closet door open and attacked 36 rolls of toilet paper!!!

One day I came out to find this tiny kitten standing up to Annie to steal her meal. I opened the garage door to find two more climbing the bougainville vine and another in a box.

Since I’d fed a number of stray cats over the years, it may be that the mother cat brought these kittens to my house hoping I’d feed them as I’d fed her a few times, but the presence of this box makes me think someone dropped them off.

Ollie, runt of the litter of 4.

And so, four more kittens to join my adult cat Annie.

When Frida died, I had a sculpture of her installed on the roof dome.

And Frida’s ashes went into this effigy which we concreted in place on her favorite place on the dome, to watch for as long as I have any say in the matter.

These things are never really planned, but shortly after Frida’s death, I found Zoë on a beach north of La Manzanilla.This was the first time I ever held Zoe.

And strangely enought, Ollie, once runt of the litter and now the largest and only male cat, became Zoë’s Mom.

At home, the older dogs and Zoe are not exactly siblings yet.

Then sadly, Diego passed away and the day after, I was introduced to Coco, rescued from the streets of Guadalajara, and you might not be surprised to discover she joined our family. I was egged on to adopt her by my visiting nephew and his friend.

And the terrible duo was begun!!!

As new real puppies joined the family, I installed a gate to keep less experienced little feet off the dome, but inevitably, guests or Pasiano would leave the gate on the stairs up to the casita whose terrace adjoined the dome.

Neighbors snapped this photo, then called to advise me that Frida had visitors.

Our count is now at three dogs and two cats. One or other of the cats often lords it over the dogs from a safe place. The End.

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