Those venerable among us have long since passed away, so we’ll make do with newer friends on this Christmas day. We will light our candles and cook the spiral ham. Eat the sugar cookies filled with nuts and jam. We’ll enjoy the babble around the Christmas table and squeeze another helping of pie in if we’re able. The sounds and tastes of Christmas are fraught with memories— with bubble lights upon the tree and packages to squeeze, but the nice thing about memories is that we keep on making them, for supplementing memories does not mean we’re forsaking them!
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”
A cow is screaming across the arroyo. Fireworks explode in honor of whatever saint’s day is being celebrated this week, drowning out her loud shrieking bellows. It is twelve hours later that someone finds the cow, her horns caught in the wire fence. Too late to save her, they do the kind thing and a single shot rings out. When her owner leaves her for the buzzards, a stench settles over the neighborhood, and we pay a man to cover her in quicklime. It is months later that someone ventures up to find a perfect effigy of the cow—jaws open in her last cries of agony. In mistaking concrete for quicklime, the man we paid to do away with her has instead constructed her monument. Immortalized on that mountain where few others will ever see her, I often see her in my dreams.
For dVerse Poets, we were to write a story of 144 words or less that made use of the line about the screaming cow above. You can read the stories others wrote on the topic by hitting the dVerse link above. This one is exactly 144 words. True story, by the way.
If our thoughts grew out of us in a gigantic bubble, perhaps they might give warning to keep us out of trouble.
They might flow on ahead of us in a big balloon
to tell folks what we’re thinking, like in a cartoon.
Sometimes our thoughts scream out at us. At other times they whisper. Sometimes our minds are in a fog. At other times they’re crisper, but with prior warning of dangerous or sad thoughts, perhaps our friends would intervene to circumvent bad thoughts.
Folks in crowds we’re entering might split to left and right when we’re in a pissy mood and spoiling for a fight. Those we meet might warn us of what we’re about to think, or chuckle at our naughty thoughts and give a little wink.
What would the world be like if folks knew everything we thought? One friend would know we hate her hair, one know we think he’s hot. There would be no mysteries, not one Christmas surprise. No detecting secret thoughts by staring into eyes.
The whole world would be literal. No nuances or mysteries. Strangers would know our secrets, both our present and our histories. No reading of expressions, for the truth would all be there floating in thought bubbles, right above your hair!
“How green is blue?” the child asks,
“What is the taste of pink?” A prodigy koan-master with a novel way to think, such problems keep a child’s mind engaged in matters other than all the daily problems of a father or a mother.
No spider ever stumbles when spinning out her strands, for the feet she walks around on
are really only hands. No specter of a problem
ever plagues a goat. He simply feeds upon the world
and lives his life by rote.
And so it is with children.
They go from thing to thing with no worries of the outcomes
that their acts might bring. They leave to human adults
the worries of such things and simply live with pleasures
that every new day brings.
Be thankful for your bugaboos, though they invade your head while walking down a lonely street or lying in your bed. I know they make you nervous, especially at night. They ramify your countless fears. They niggle, scratch and bite. Fear is the voice of instinct. It says that something’s wrong. It sets action in motion when pain sounds the warning gong. Fear and pain must guide the way. Without them you are guileless. How would we know something was wrong if gall bladders were bileless? Nature’s warning signals, be they physical or mental agitate those normal states more pleasurably gentle. They are our bodyguards and they make us more secure, warning of us problems for which we need a cure. They tell of hidden dangers. Make us more aware. It’s true both pain and pleasure are part of nature’s care.
Throw clothes over your birthday suit, it’s fast becoming dawn. We need to be respectable, so put your jammies on. The milkman will be coming and it would be a plus if when we met him at the door, we had some clothes on us.
Mere speed will not suffice, dear. We also need some raiment.
No need to let the milkman in on our entertainment.
For milk upon our Fruit Loops, there are obstacles to hurdle if we want to eat before the milk begins to curdle. My walker in the hallway, your cane dropped on the floor, the stairway to maneuver, the deadbolt on the door. Folks as old as us should have passed this lusty phase.
Bed for us should merely be a place to laze.
So smooth your messy hair, dear, and try to look less daring. No need to let the milkman in on fun times we’ve been sharing. We should be sharing pastimes like t.v. and crossword puzzles. Who would suspect that we are still into passion’s nuzzles? So in spite of all the cheap jokes, no milkman will succeed me. When it comes to filling orders, my wife still seems to need me!
photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash. Used with permission.
Poor Timing
She kept her heart protected securely in a box bound up with heavy chains and secured by keys and locks so no one could purloin it. No one could even try. All potential lovers were forced to pass her by. Not for her two entities entwined into one. As other women sought their mates, she was content with none.
She never walked the nuptial aisle. No vows were ever said. Never spread her gown out upon the wedding bed. Never succumbed to childbirth. Never soothed the brow of a fevered toddler and never until now regretted what she’d missed in life by sealing tight the gate that at last she’s throwing open, but, alas, it is too late.
Prompt words for today are purloin, box and entty. These are all the prompt words posted now and actually, Ragtag’s prompt of purloin is from yesterday–posted too late for me to use it then. I’m going on a four day writing intensive with a friend to work on the book I’ve been putting off for so long, so I won’t be posting again until Monday, but Forgottenman has generously agreed to repost some of my old poems each day on my blog for me—possibly things from so long ago that we’ve all forgotten them, so hope you drop by and have a look. See you on Monday!!! xoxoo
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 