Cats are more bendable, dogs more dependable. Cats are more stretchable, dogs much more fetchable. Dogs rip and tear and their kisses are wetter. Cats donate hair to your favorite sweater.
Dogs howl at the moon and bark at the neighbors. Curling and stretching the extent of the labors of cats whereas dogs display energy plus–– harassing the mailman or chasing a bus.
Both species have four feet, fur and a tail, fall into two classes: female and male, and when there is breakage, neither is to blame. But that’s the extent of the ways they’re the same.
Please click on first photo and arrows to enlarge photos and to read the story of my day.
Tried out my new pressure-cooker multi-pot.
Filled up my freezer with chicken curry, black bean soup, easy lasagna and rice. Ate the barbecue.
Three hours later, tasted the broth and it was horrible! Added more onions, celery, garlic, white wine and chicken bouillon powder, which sort of defeats the purpose of going to the bother of making real chicken stock from scratch, but. . .
Cut up my first papaya of the season from the tree I’ve been waiting to ripen for three months!
Let the cats in.
And Kukla immediately made herself comfortable on the chair where I was working .
When I shooed her off the chair, she decided to go out again,
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When I shooed Ollie off my chair, he wanted to go out and Kukla came back in.
Then minutes later, went out.
Which doesn’t seem to work any better than the cat food. Kukla was driven to condescending to her dry food.. Go figure. Dogs consider cat food a luxury. The reverse seems not to be true. But, at least the chicken stock is starting to smell really good!
Nearly 2 a.m. now and Forgottenman says it’s time to go to bed. I’ll use this as an excuse to free you from a longer recital of my day’s labors. What did you do during your first day of voluntary isolation??? Stay safe. See you tomorrow. (Uh, later today, I guess.)
How is it that cats know how to pose no matter how unlikely the props? In this case, it is a bag of concrete Pasiano brought to fasten Frida’s memorial down with. Always fun to see what pose they will be in when I drive into the garage. Here are some further poses from the past .
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”
No architect of reason can save them from their plight.
No proffered catnip ransom restore their former flight.
When lethal paws unsheath their daggers, hummingbird and finch—
Their wings, stilled from their flight, lie scattered on the bench.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 