Posts Tagged ‘pets’

 For the sake of all humanity, do not say these things out loud:

“I really had a crush on you back in the day.”

 ”Do you still have your fat clothes, because I know someone who could use them.”

“Tomorrow I’m going to relax and take a day for myself.”

When you utter these words out loud, they hurtle into the cosmos for consideration.

The cosmos, being the bitch that it is, often lobs back this response on the appointed special day:

•  You will be awakened at dawn to the sound of a floor lamp stem cracking in half and then falling like a mighty oak in the woods. The sound of metal and glass striking wood and plaster will jar you from your much-needed rest, while everyone else in the house snores away undisturbed. Your wishes lay in shards at your feet. So it is with your favorite lamp. 
• You will haul a twisted, top-heavy lamp to the basement, to rest next to all the other broken junk that you think you will fix someday when the solution strikes you or an amazing handyman moves in next door. Next, you’ll haul the vacuum up the steps to pick up all the small pieces of glass embedded in the carpet. Muttering under your breath, you’ll put the room to rights and restore your morning. 
• After coffee, a shower and a few other preparatory measures, you will return to the scene  of the crime  to discover that the four-footed perpetrator of destruction has struck again. This time it’s the potted plant next to the lamp. Except now the pot no longer houses a plant. Or dirt. It’s an empty vessel on its side. The contents are a muddy mix scatted in a wide arc across the carpet. The plant itself, one that you’ve nurtured along for 14 years is in a twisted heap, its willowy branches and leaves splayed unnaturally, exposing pale, tender roots. The whole display is reminiscent of an underage socialite at an after-hours party.  Under the nearby chair, you will see two yellow, unblinking and unrepentent eyes peering out at you.
• In your haste to get on with your special day to yourself, which is seriously behind schedule and veering off course, you will grab the vacuum still handy from the previous spill, and begin to sweep over the muddy mix. Except the mix does not get sucked into the machinery, it adheres to the wheels and brush plates underneath, serving as more of a frosting knife than suction tool. So now you have transformed the arc of mud into a sunburst of mud. You consider mudding the walls to match and calling it a design concept.

Instead you burst into tears, shout a string of expletives and curse the day you gave up the dream of living alone in a mountain cabin.

Congratulations, your special day of aloneness and renewal include:  one broken lamp, one destroyed plant, one big black mucky circle on your office carpet and one indifferent kitten licking his left paw. Next move?

Trapping and killing the kitten?

Buying a wet/dry vac?

Jumping out the window, hopping into the car and driving to New Mexico?

For it is only through the spontaneous escape, the unplanned departure that you will ever, ever get your special day to yourself.

See the blur of movement? Notice the trail of destruction? Cute, isn't it?

Kitten-becoming-a-cat has found a way to calm himself. It lasts maybe five minutes. It’s a start.

Free flowers from the lawn

…I’m easily manipulated by small gestures like bouquets of clover tucked into bud vases.

… I am living in the longest days of the year. Yet somehow I find myself with very few hours to get things like blog posts written and dinner cooked. 

… I have a work project that needs some attention, a 3-year-old who needs more attention, and a kitten who needs maximum security prison.

He's not black in bright light; he's chocolate brown

… my flower beds are half-weeded and half-prepped and not planted for the season. I’m rethinking my garden strategy: I need to eliminate the need for annual flowers, rework beds to allow for 100 percent perennial plants. Out of the blue, a great friend (and talented gardener) shows up with a trunk full of  freshly split perennials and helps to rebuild and redesign an island garden that has gotten out of control.

Purple bud on something

… our vegetable garden is showing signs of many good meals ahead and fresh salads every night.

Right now I am focusing on these things and not all that other stuff.

Toulouse

A kitten is great when it curls up between your chin and your chest, purring and cuddling, claws retracted.

A kitten is not so great when you are prying it from the window screens, pulling it down from the drapes, coaxing it out from behind the stove, extracting it from a tangle of power cords.

A kitten is great when you look into his wide green eyes and consider the cat he will become, one who will have about an hour of energy and 23 hours of sleep. When this kitten stops trying to ride his older brother like a horse and learns a little respect, he will be a great companion. When this kitten learns how to control his claws, his countless urges to climb and leap and overturn, and how to use his litter box properly, well, then he will be a joy to behold.

Oh, who am I kidding? He still is.

Pass the peroxide and Band-Aids.

Our cat has mood ring eyes: Sometimes they are green, sometimes they are yellow.

We’ll never replace the one we lost in January, but we are happy to have a furniture- and curtain-shredding, leg climbing, food- and water-dish spilling, meowing little troublemaker in our midst again.

Today we gave this cat a funeral. We are that kind of family.

No, when he was alive he didn’t sleep on a canopy bed with Laura Ashley sheets and we didn’t spoon out his Fancy Feast into a crystal goblet. We treat our cats like cats, which means they sleep on our bed.
This guy was just  the best damn cat I’ve ever had. And at five years of age, I think he deserved some kind of send-off for cashing out so early.
His death wasn’t unexpected. Around Thanksgiving he became freakishly ill. After three days’ treatment at the animal hospital for liver failure from unknown bacterial causes, he came home to what surely was an extended visit. We knew he’d never recover fully to the prancing, lithe hunter he once was. Seemingly overnight, he withered to a gaunt, jaundiced animal driven by an unsatiable hunger.
But he was still our funny little valentine.

This cat  forced us to adopt him when we really went to the cat rescue  to bring home his brother, who really didn’t want to go with us. So, we brought home both. We are that kind of family. This matched set of cats, little salt and pepper shakers, were a source of great joy and frustration and copious amounts of cat hair on the furniture.

But this one, he was something different. He nudged his wet nose into our lives and we fell in love instantly. 

This cat, who as a kitten, pried off a cold-air return vent in our spare room, plunged into our ductwork and had to be fished out of a hole cut into a duct.

This cat, who dug a hole under the property-line fence and fell into the neighbor’s pool last summer, somehow managed to get out and crawl home covered in algae and black slime.

This cat, who twice chased chipmunks into the house, holding them hostage under the couch until we discovered his secret stash.

This cat, who was so smart and trainable he plucked a set  of wind chimes in the kitchen when he wanted a treat. If you threw a toy mouse or ball of foil, he’d fetch it like a dog.

I don’t know why this 5-year-old cat died swiftly of an unknown illness while grizzled alley cats get run over by trucks and just keep going.  I don’t even ask anymore. 

I just thanked him for five years of love and adventure.

Be happy wherever you are, my little  valentine.