If you have been around for awhile, you know about my dog Frida, who passed away in October, 27 months ago. At that time, I published this poem in her memory:https://judydykstrabrown.com/2016/10/11/look-up-poem-for-a-good-good-girl/ which was about, among other things, her love of standing on the dome of my house and supervising the world about her. For two years, I fantasized about finding a dog similar to her and cementing it to the dome with her ashes inside so she could spend eternity in her favorite spot. Finally, I located what I thought was the right dog, and this is the story that followed:
Please click on photos to enlarge and read the captions.
Diego came up to inspect the situation.
Later, I returned to the gallery and brought home a larger dog in Frida’s more classic position–sitting or standing erect surveying the neighborhood.
Gerardo and his brother lugged her up to the roof, and
this one was perfect.
We assembled the concrete, the water and trowels,
And they built a concrete base for the sculpture.
The next job was to get Frida’s ashes into the small hole at the bottom of the sculpture.
I brought a funnel, but it didn’t work.
Finally, they cut a corner off the plastic bag that held her remains and poured it into the hole.
Once she was situated on the base,
Frida II is installed.
Of course, the neighbors soon gathered to witness just what was going on. Brad and Dave were first to notice.
Then Thomas.
Then the construction guys from the house being constructed up the hill behind Thomas and Brad and Dave’s houses.
Then went down to look up. She was going to be perfect.
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.
Once Gerardo and his brother had left, I went over to Brad and Dave’s to see how she looked from their house. They definitely have the best view.. from every door and window on the east side of their house.
Keep a watch for us, girl .
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.
Ironically, the day Gerardo and his brother were due to come permanently install Frida’s memorial, my cat of 18 years, Annie, finally grew so ill that I called the vet to come to the house to put her to sleep, and luckily Gerardo and brother didn’t make it, but came instead today. Somehow this reaching of the goal to memorialize Frida helped somewhat to dilute the sadness over Annie’s departure. Plans are in the works for her memorial. R.I.P. beloved friends.
The grey cat cries and cries for food, but in spite of her bitchin’, it seems there’s naught to satisfy her in her master’s kitchen. She would not eat the Whiskas tuna that she loved last week. Fresh hamburger? She only deigned to have a peek.
Pork tenderloin she shuns as well as beef and cream and cheese. A bit of gravy is another treat that does not please. Fresh bass I bought and poached for her merely got the nose. No mouth was closed upon it. It was not a taste she chose.
Chicken in soup with veggies? She chanced to have a taste, then raised her nose and flicked her tail and made away in haste. There’s canned tuna on the counter with the other four new cat foods that I bought today at the cat food store.
I’ll try them out tomorrow, but I do not have much hope. Chances are her majesty will only sniff and mope. What is it with these felines that gives them attitude? I’ve never seen the double of this old girl’s cattitude.
She awakens me at scandalous times, demanding of her feed, then looks at me askance when I attempt to fill her need. I fear it’s true she’s skin and bones––my fault it is supposed, but I assure you that her fast is strictly self-imposed!!!
Not fiction! I made a special trip into town today in spite of my wracking cough, donned a face mask and braved Walmart. I bought fresh fish, which I abhor, for the first time in my life, along with all of the foods mentioned above and so far, she chanced one tiny bite. But, just checked and she drank all of the fresh cream I poured out for her. Her highness is satiated for the time being!
I’m linking this to dVerse Poets’ Open Link Night. See other poems HERE.
(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.
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”
The old cat yowls a caustic moan—a banshee’s rough lament. It rips my slumber wide apart. My gentle dream is rent. A night comprised of eight-hours sleep would now seem heaven-sent. My friends urge euthanasia, but I’m of another bent.
I toast the bread and spread the jam. I let my coffee vent, then take a sip and watch the cat sip oil but not dent the surface of the tiny can of shrimp and cod I’ve bent to plop into my grandma’s dish that was never meant to house a meal for animals—that family heirloom leant power by its years of use—everywhere it went.
No human family member can know the full extent of what this antiquated vessel means in its descent.
It is a loving blessing. A secret grand event— a little ceremony to honor her ascent to wherever old cats go when it’s time to absent
themselves from an easy life that’s turned into torment.
Why can I not cut loose the cord? I am a dissident regarding being left once more. Those other loves that went more silent into that good night, finally content, somehow have not prepared me for this coming event. I cannot be the agent hastening her demise. The cat and I return to bed to close our stubborn eyes.
“The duende, then, is a power, not a work. It is a struggle, not a thought. I have heard an old maestro of the guitar say, ‘The duende is not in the throat; the duende climbs up inside you, from the soles of the feet.’ Meaning this: it is not a question of ability, but of true, living style, of blood, of the most ancient culture, of spontaneous creation … everything that has black sounds in it, has duende.”
Rude Awakening: Morning Ritual
The duende of the old cat’s wail jars me from a dream.
Her volume grows with every piercing, throaty, grating scream.
And though it seems her hunger cannot wait for light,
when I spoon out her victuals, she does not take a bite.
I rub her ears and skull and chin now that I’m awake
as the first muted rays of light soak into the lake.
The dogs detect my movement and paw their haven’s door,
scraping their metal dishes across the tile floor.
Outside the far-off kitchen, the young cats voice their wail,
calling me too early to my day’s travail.
Reluctantly I slog out to fulfill their rude request,
as the old cat circles and sinks to her warm nest.
Since her breakfast, still untouched, sits crusting in her bowl,
it seems that desayuno never was her goal.
She’s merely been the chanticleer who has done her best
to arouse the world before returning to her rest.
Although for the past two years my 18-year-old cat Annie has refused to stir outside the house, she has recently become very enamored of lying below the low light positioned to light up the two stairs that lead up from my bedroom to the hall. I guess it is the next best thing to sunlight! Obviously, the stack of books I had laid there to remind me to take them up to the living room bookcase served as no hindrance to her comfort. (Click on photos to enlarge.)
My seventeen year old cat, Annie, has for the past two years been awakening me at various early-morning hours to be fed. It makes no difference if I feed her at midnight or 2 am or whenever I choose to turn in for the night. At 4 or 5 or 6, her piercing yowls shock me awake and there is nothing to be done other than to get up to flop an entire can of Fancy Feast into her feeding bowl. She’s taken over my bathroom with her food and water dishes, her litter tray and her bed, so for two years I’ve showered in the guest shower. This old girl rules my world. Today’s five o’clock awakening gave rise to this poem.
Broken Dreams
I doused my dream to greet the day, but to my great annoyance. reality, alas, cannot compete with its flamboyance. The dream was psychedelic and meandering in its plot. It had all the excitement that my waking life has not.
Before the day resumes its hold, since night is not yet done, I’ll return to my pillow and awaken to the sun. The old cat’s fed, the dogs still sleep and so, with luck, shall I. Perhaps I’ll find that dream again. At least, I’m going to try.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 