Furrst Love

Heavy Petting

Oh Kate, Kate,
hefty weight of softest fur,
the pat on lap brings her leaping
up to crouch contented there
prickle paws, claws dig in
sumptuously glad
for stroking hand on silky back,
she lifts her head, squinty eyed,
for cheeky rubs, damp-nosed
happiness, vibrating purr
leaning all of her against my breast,
my Kate, my joyous cat.

Kate and her sister Mystery were abandoned feral foundlings, eyes barely opened. Nursed by hand, raised by beagles and women, what they know of life is human kindness and doggie tolerance, the world is their oyster, and our laps belong to them.

Sometimes, when the world seems dismal, my cat helps me to remember simple things are still priceless.

Hey! There's a World Out There!

I've had enough flowers to last me the rest of the month. It's Friday, time for a brief poem and a breath of fresh air: views of the countryside from a ride we took a while back. Above, the scene from the window space of an old garage we came across. Below, its workbench, looking nothing like mine at home. It's much cleaner than mine.

And the garage itself in situ:

Next, a weedy young vineyard marches up to a hill.

Now, a quick commercial break for a poem in exactly 55 words, including the title, so I take part in Mr. Knowitall's Friday Flash 55 festivities. I wrote it while taking a break on Tuesday from the slavery of all those flowers I've been drowning in the past two weeks (see posts below if you've missed the drama).

Cat, Lying on Hassock

Look, Mom, how I fit
between your legs, how
my front paws play
the piano of your toes
and the snake of my tail
flows slowly up your thigh.
Let me soothe your feet
with the rake of my teeth.
Let the work
go mind itself.
It only seems to call.

(This would be the cat in question, Kate, a lazy soul if ever I saw one:)

And finally, a parting shot of the western hills as we head home again.

So go visit Mr. Knowitall for more brief breaths of fresh air.

A Pleasure Flash

I woke this morning to one of the best rock songs ever: Grace Slick belting out Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” ... hearing that powerful woman howl: REMEMBER!!! WHAT THE DOORMOUSE SAID!!! FEED YOUR HEAD!!! FEED YOUR HEAD!!!

And I jumped up out of bed feeling like a million bucks, wanting to write a happy poem, loving my coffee, loving my life. So great to be alive when people are singing and my feet feel like dancing!

Go forth and be grateful! Feed your head!
(Here's "White Rabbit" on Youtube)


The Puss’s Tale

My dainty white socks and tidy white bib
jazz up my plain tabby soul, and I fly
from the floor to the sky, to the table and lap
pleasured with morsels and spine-thrilling hands.
I’m queen of a world so intriguing and fine
that even my eyes and my whiskers must dance.


Can you tell a story in exactly 55 words? That's the G-Man's Flash Friday challenge. Check out other tales here.

Animals think more than you do

I’ve walked the earth this week empty headed.

One day, when I looked at my dog Riley as he gazed thoughtfully out the window of my sunroom, I got the impression that he had more thoughts in his head than he could think at one time. So he was letting them float through his mind like highway signs:
Look at that cat across the street. If it comes over here I will bark at it. The sun feels good on my head. Where’s Dad? Dog biscuits. Yum. I wonder what it’s like to play a tuba. When I get out, I’m going to pee on that bush.

And there I was, nary a thought in my mind. I was just humming, that incessant, repetitive refrain:
Hm HM hm-hm hm-hm hmmm. Hm HM hm-hm hm HM hm-hm. HM hm HM hm hm hm hm.
This is otherwise known as: “I AM Jesus little lamb. EVER glad at heart I am. For MY Shepherd gentLY guides me. Knows MY needs and well PROvides me. LOVES me every day the same. eVEN calls ME by my name.” It’s one of the first hymns I learned, #648 in the old Lutheran Hymnal, by Henriette von Hayn, in the year of our Lord 1784.
A sweet little song, but imagine humming it over and over for FIVE DAYS.

While my dog ponders the universe, I’m a broken record with a 225-year-old kiddie tune.

It’s humbling.

I’m getting ready to leave tomorrow for a weekend writers conference. All week I’ve been a doer, not a thinker, taking care of household business, hanging out with my daughters (my eldest, Annika, is visiting again), looking at old photos, being with my kids while they process the death of their grandmother.

Even my cat thinks more than I do these days. Look at this face.

See the wonder? The curiosity? I believe she’s having an internal debate about existentialism versus determinism, and existentialism is winning. Can’t you just see Descartes in her eyes? I THINK, THEREFORE I AM.

Hmm.

I Am a Personal Slave

Theme Thursday

Katie, Mystery, and their yellow brother

Since I was a child, I've had a cat. I've had Lizzie, Miss Black, Stretch, Buck, Emily, NoDad, TwoTone, and Asher. Doesn't sound like many over a lifetime, now that I think about it.

But Buck, a wonderful female manx I rescued from the pound, lived with me for 13 years, Emily (a graceful white) for 18 years, and Asher (a delicate gray) for 12 years.

NoDad, whom we bottle-nursed after we found him abandoned in the backyard by his feral mother, was named for his unknown father tom. His half-sisters, TwoTone and Asher, came along a few years later, same backyard, same feral mother. TwoTone vanished in the night when she was about five, and NoDad lived to be about 10. Asher died last summer, and it broke my heart, as all of them broke my heart when they went.

Mystery

Last August, my aunt found four abandoned, unweaned kittens, and she bottle-fed them, groomed them, loved them, and gave me the two females. We found a good home for the two males. I named the girls Mystery (an explorer) and Katie (a mellow sweetheart).

The two kittens are nine months old now. They rule the house. They tell the three beagles what to do, and they use the dogs as sparring partners when the dogs happen to wander by.

Mystery harasses Riley

I would like the girls to be cuddlers, but they aren't. When they wish to be petted, they present themselves. When I lie down, they apparently get a telegraph and they arrive to lie at my feet. If I try to touch them, they will simply get up and walk off. They have rules, and I obey.

Mystery likes to sit on my husband's lap when he's watching television. She doesn't like my lap at all. But her sister Kate joins me at the computer every day to lie awkwardly on my lap while I work. I don't like it much, because she uses her claws to keep herself on my lap. But I obey.

So, now I am owned by two cats. They treat me fairly well. I am their personal slave. This is the usual way of cats, I hear, but all my other cats let me be the boss, so this behavior is a new experience. They are training me well, as they have trained the dogs and the husband.
Must go. I think the cats are calling me...

Katie giving me an ESP order

For more pet tails, oops, tales, visit the Theme Thursday crew.

******

If I Were a Cat

This is what I'd do:

Instead, this is what I do:

I pull this crap out of my grass. It's called burr clover. It's "fruit" (using the word loosely) is a round hard sticker ball half the size of your pinky nail. That sticker ball breaks into segments and spreads burr clover all over. It also sticks in your bare feet.

I looked one day at the grassy median between the sidewalk and the street in front of my house. Large patches of this weed from hell, all knotted up in the grass, had established themselves with great fervor.

Since Monday, and that's all this week in case anyone is keeping track, I've been breaking my back and my arms and my shoulders and my thighs, everything except my head, struggling to yank this ferocious alien monster out of my grass. My grass loves the soil aeration it is getting as I stab my pointy sharp weeding object into the lawn and heave it all about.

I tell you, I'm breathing hard after my latest bout. I hate burr clover so much, I pull it out of my neighbors' yards. Do I have an obsession? Yes. But I prefer to think of myself as determined, as a fighter on the side of right, as a force for good in the universe, which, as far as I can see, has no need whatsoever for burr clover.

Then I come in the house, aching in every joint, and there's my cats and dogs and hubby, all comfortably lazing around on the furniture. If I were a cat, I would sit in front of my hubby like this:

I would stare at him until I drove him up from the couch and out into lawn. I would drop the gloves and the pointy object at his feet, and I would trot away for a good nap.