For Cee’s FOTD
Shortly after I dealt with Annie’s disappearance, I heard a boy’s voice from inside my house. It was Oscar, Yolanda’s son, with Brian, his sister Yoli’s chihuahua, resplendent in a red sweater with hood with big three-dimensional eyeballs on top. Pablo, Yolanda’s husband, has kidney failure and is going to have to undergo periodic dialysis in his home. For this reason there can be no animals in the house and they have two dogs. Up until now they’ve just put them in the spare fenced yard next door, but it is of course heartbreaking so guess who Brian’s next designated master is? (Yoli, Yolanda’s daughter named him after a hero of hers–a character in a movie about cars. We cannot figure out who this character is.) UPDATE: The dr. decided the emotional harm to Pablo in losing Brian outweighed the harm of having a dog in the house (Even the dr. was crying when he saw how upset Pablo was) so with the new air cleaning machine I gave Pablo for Xmas and their promises that Brian would be confined to Yoli’s room, the dr. gave his permission for them to bring Brian home. Everyone so happy. Brian the happiest. I have a video of his reaction when he saw the family again.. I’ll show it as soon as I get the sound off. Won’t tell you why.
So far he gets along fine with Kukla, the female outside cat and Morrie, the Scottie, but he’s scared of Diego who is not mean but overenthusiastic and I heard a loud few yips when Ollie, the male outside cat, came home. So, for now he goes in the front garden with the cats when I’m gone or when he needs air and I’ll leave the door to the backyard open a bit so he can slip through the bars if he wants to go play with Morrie, but so he can escape from Diego if he needs to.
As for Annie? She absolutely ignores him. Pretends she’s asleep. Keep them permanently confused. That’s the secret of my success with animals. Only problem is that Brian insists on lying on my lap while I’m at the computer which is not very comfortable. Where he will sleep? Well, that is to be seen.
These are a few photos of the first ten hours of life with Brian.
This is so touching.
Annie as a kitten and almost 19 years later. Seems impossible. The second two photos are of the day the kittens arrived and I found Kukla on the wall in a standoff with Annie, whose meal they were eating! Fiesty little thing. (Photos will enlarge if you click on them.)
Dream’abort’ Annie
Two A.M. and four A.M., six A.M. and eight.
My nineteen-year-old cat is such a reprobate.
She awakens me with yowling to be fed again
or simply for a rubbing over ears and under chin.
My night’s full of awakenings, my days are somewhat muddled.
I try to block the sound of her. I’m bleary and befuddled.
I’m sleep-deprived, exhausted, and yet she is so old,
how can I consign her to the night air and the cold?
I awake at 5 a.m. with no bleats for attention—
that every-other-hour irritating cause of tension.
And yet what mixed emotions this five-hour rest has brought.
Finally, a full-night’s sleep, but Annie I have not!
I knock upon the closet doors, follow every lead.
I mix up her favorite cat foods, but she does not heed
all these invitations—the water and the calls—
the peering under beds, searching the bathrooms and the halls.
I look behind each open door, behind the stereo—
so many hidden spaces where a cat can go.
The old cat’s turned up missing? It’s an oxymoron that
nonetheless is true when applied to my gray cat.
You may find it silly, putting up with such a cat
once so wild and kittenish, so active and so fat.
An outside cat who never deigned to come inside,
Annie chose walls and bushes as places to abide.
Every year she grew more wild and more free,
making an appearance on demand for only me.
Twice a day for meals, she would jump up on the wall
In between, she vanished—not visible at all.
Two years ago, four kittens abandoned at my door
meant that she just left for good, and I saw her no more.
One month later, she returned, hip shattered, skin and bone.
with stomach and liver problems, she was Annie’s ruined clone.
When the vet said nothing could be done, she came to live inside.
I thought, to make her comfortable there until she died,
but two years later, she rules the house and she won’t abide
any other lesser cat to be found inside.
She eats small portions all day long and though she’s lean and spare,
it seems she’s come into her own in my cozy lair.
The problem is, I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since then.
For all the constant roarings that disturb the old cat’s den.
If it isn’t food she wants, it seems it is a rub,
or for me to clean her litterbox that’s found inside my tub
that I haven’t used for the two years she’s been here.
I use the guest room shower in lieu of one that’s near.
Sure that she’s died in some dark corner that I cannot see,
I move aside the furniture. I peer on bended knee
beneath the beds. I search each room with a fine-toothed-comb,
but no evidence of her is left within my home.
I’ve thought so often how much easier that it would be
if she would slip away one night and leave her master free.
What a lovely gift it would be for her to give me,
for often I have thought that probably she would outlive me!
The house seems oddly empty. By her water dish, her meal
left uneaten these long hours has started to congeal.
Her gray hairs left upon the rug where she liked to sleep.
Although I’ve loved her absence, it’s true that now I weep.
When the other cats give voice and I decide to heed them,
I get an extra surprise as I go outside to feed them.
When I open up the door, Annie scoots right in,
dashing from the overgrown foliage where she’s been.
Thus ends her great adventure and ends my great travail.
As I sit here writing, I can hear her latest wail.
I guess we’re back to where we were. Annie’s on my lap,
and as long as she is quiet, guess I’ll take a little nap.
Prompts today are mix, follow, knock, silly and solicitude.
(Click on photos to enlarge)
Isidro Xilonsochitl led this project to encourage students to decorate the telephone poles in San Juan Cosala. I took a little drive today to try to find some to share with you. Incidently, he is also a wonderful artist, the illustrator for my books and the painter of murals and eleven other works of art in my house. I’m a fan!
Photos will enlarge if you click on them.
Wooden Heart
We often wash our minds clean here on memory lane,
so what was a dark portrait is illumined once again.
Daily random memories wash up on the shore
while sadder associations stand waiting by the door.
I do not choose remembering the dark spots in our past.
It is the brighter moments that I prefer to last.
The heart I formed from copper, the heart you carved of wood.
All the broken contracts healed by all the good.
Love stories come in fits and starts and so it was with ours—
we must choose our final endings by our selective powers
to decide what we will sift from memory’s fine sand,
and though the bitter moments haven’t been fully banned,
I daily choose the moments that I will remember—
that March day when our love was young, not your final September.
When I met Bob, he was teaching art in Canyon Country, California. One day he brought me this pouch necklace he had made of leather in class. Inside was a wooden heart with his initial on one side and my initial on the other. Yes. I had to marry the man. Later, with his encouragement, I became a metalsmith and formed this heart out of copper for him. The pouch now also contains a lock of his hair, a lock of mine, a miniature bar of chocolate–his favorite food on earth–and a tiny dinosaur carved by one of his small sons in the studio where he worked with his dad. When I admired it, he gave it to me, just as Bob gave to me the family he brought with him when we married.
Prompts today are memory lane, daily, dark, portrait and wash.
This beauty was one of dozens flanking the effigy of the Virgin Mary near the plaza in San Juan Cosala. The church is filled with hundreds.
“When you wore a tulip, a rosy red tulip–and I wore a big yellow rose.” (We just got the colors mixed up a bit.) For Cee’s Flower of the day. See her contribution HERE to complete the ditty.
Sometimes there is just as much beauty in imperfection.
The old making space for the new.
Second Thoughts
We’ve brought your breakfast tray for we know that you’ve been restive,
but now we’d like to urge you to try to feel more festive.
Will you remain forever, questioning and forlorn
because you could not go downstairs on your wedding morn?
You cannot stay much longer in this sealed-off room.
The wedding guests are gathering. It’s time to jump the broom.
Jumping the broom is a time-honored wedding tradition in which the bride and groom jump over a broom during the ceremony. The act symbolizes a new beginning and a sweeping away of the past, and can also signify the joining of two families or offer a respectful nod to family ancestors.
Think of all the things you wouldn’t be able to do if you didn’t have knees!
(Click on photos to enlarge.)
even Polar bears have kneezes.
but still they know what they are for.
to ask girls, “Will you marry me?”
And aren’t we glad that knees are bendable?
Matin for Patella
please thank the Lord for making knees!
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 