My blog, which started out to be about overcoming grief, quickly grew into a blog about celebrating life. I post daily: poems, photographs, essays or stories. I've lived in countries all around the globe but have finally come to rest in Mexico, where I've lived since 2001. My books may be found on Amazon in Kindle and print format, my art in local Ajijic galleries. Hope to see you at my blog.
She was disciplined and stern, rigid, staunch and taciturn. Her back seemed starched, her mouth a line. Her clothing smelled like turpentine. Each morning she dished out our gruel, then perch herself upon a stool expecting that we’d finish it. A spoonful left? She’d have a fit!
She’d stamp her foot in consternation and deliver an oration of how hard her life had been. Abandoned at the age of ten, working in a factory not pampered like the likes of me! And so I’d spoon the gruel up, or sneak it to my hungry pup,
leave the kitchen and escape to hall or street or fire escape. Every yule time was the same when my Aunt Winona came to visit us. “She’ll soon be gone,” my mother told us. “Just play along.” And so we did, all grateful for the day that she walked out the door!
i took this photo in natural light of a rose in the bed of roses planted beneath the Guadalupe statue in San Juan Cosala. It was the light that created this beautiful coloration.
Every year, the decorations at the Nueva Posada are done by the same man and they are always fabulous. He is pictured beside the lit tree in the entrance to the hotel.
(Click on mug shots to enlarge for better identification.)
She said: Wow!!!!
Side view of felon
For theft of birdseed, theft of catfood and molestation of Annie.
He said: Bow
For breaking house rules on noise pollution levels and frequency.
Side view of felon
Oh man. Brian pooped in the sala and peed in the spare bedroom, in spite of the fact that I took him out twice last night and once this morning. Then Annie cried all morning in spite of the fact I’d given her food, water and head scratches—perhaps because Brian was in my bed with me? Put Brian out, put a cushy bed for him out on the side of the house and opened gate for Morrie to join him in the side and front yard so they could play without Diego’s interference. Morrie immediately went for the cat food in this usual cat’s domain and then for Annie, whom I had forgotten was in the front garden. Chased her behind the big planter, where she was cowering when I came out to put Morrie back in the back yard and to rescue Annie. There are not enough zones in this house! I don’t know that I have a solution to the problem. Brian is crying outside but I won’t have an animal who pees and poops inside! Help.
1/2 hour later. Good news. Brian has stopped crying.
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.
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?
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.
“Heading out this morning, into the sun
Riding on the diamond waves, little darlin’ one
Warm wind caress her, her lover it seems
Oh Annie, dreamboat Annie, little ship of dreams
Oh Annie, dreamboat Annie, little ship of dreams
Going down the city sidewalk, alone in the crowd
No one knows the lonely one whose head’s in the clouds
Sad faces painted over with those magazine smiles
Heading out to somewhere, won’t be back for a while”
Mixed Media Retablo “Macho” by Judy Dykstra-Brown
