Sugar Substitute

Several years ago, my daughter, Molly, and I lost our beloved dog, Sugar, to a wild dash from the side door that lead to a hit-and-run death.  In trying to get over the loss of Sugar, Molly adopted a very nice cat she named Brody, the name an homage to the actor Adrien Brody because of the cat’s rather long nose.  At some point, we cutely called Brody our Sugar substitute.

Fast forward to now.  Somehow, I woke up last Saturday morning with a brand new cat, whom I finally named Roxie because of, well I don’t really know why other than she likes to play cat hockey with errant rocks she finds on my window sill in the middle of the night.

My life was really simple.  Living alone, things stayed where I put them even if I couldn’t remember where that was.  I had the freedom, if not the money, to travel and stay a while.  Vacuuming could wait another six months or so.

And it wasn't that I was lonely.  I have children and grandchildren who love me and even like me most of the time, and friends who put up with me, and interests and pursuits and favorite TV shows.  All the things that make life worth living.

So why a new cat now?  Why the cost and the aggravation and the responsibility, not to mention cat hair everywhere and that catbox smell?  The only reason I can think of is that I’d recently lost my brother, Sandy, not to a quick death under the tires of a Toyota but to a long battle with cancer, a war the cancer won.

So, was it possible that Roxie could become a Sandy substitute?  At first glance, it was iffy.

Whereas Sandy was trim and well groomed, Roxie is fluffy and a bit disheveled. 

Sandy never ever walked over my computer keys while I was trying to type. 

Sandy was quiet and careful not to offend, whereas Roxie raucously meows her opinions about everything (mostly in the middle of the night).   

Roxie bites me; Sandy never did.  The worse thing Sandy ever did to me was to infiltrate my diary when I was fourteen to write in it that he needed a bra more than I did.  

 Sandy was independent, while I have to do EVERYTHING for Roxie.  I have to feed her and give her water and clean out her damned sandbox and lug up her 100 pound bag of litter while she tries to trip me.

But I guess somehow, in spite of all the trouble and probably for all the wrong reasons, I can feel this cat beginning to patch up that big hole in my heart.  She looks as happy as a cat can look when I come home, and she purrs when she feels like it, and I'm fairly certain her escapades will give me something new to write about.  And though there will never be a substitute for my only sibling, someone who knew me from when I was a tiny orange-haired baby and truly loved me in spite of myself, this new cat of mine makes me laugh and gives me someone to talk to in the morning and helps me forget that I am now a brotherless child.

I think Sandy would understand.

Mama's Last Cat

I look at the cat standing sentry atop my refrigerator. It isn’t a real cat; it’s a wooden cat, painted a jaunty black and white stripe with its tail impossibly long.

It isn’t even my cat. It had been my mother’s, a present I’d purchased for her at an import store to feed her feline fix and to remind her of traveling the world and how much she loved a good street market.

My beautiful, brilliant mother, laid out in a mechanical, antiseptic bed, underpants and teeth taken from her during her last sad days on this earth. Alternating between rage and sweet confusion, all she had left of the material world was this cat peering over her untouched dinners and a rendition of Van Gogh’s sunflowers hanging askew on the opposite wall next to a sign promising Sunday chapel services.

“I want to go home. Please take me home,” she begged, although home was thousands of miles away, an impossible gift from a daughter who would have if she could have, a grown up little girl who would have given anything to be able to.

My daddy always said the only good cat was a dead cat, but he put up with at least one at all times I can remember because of his love for my mama. But Daddy left us years ago.

On her last day, during my last visit, Mama looked up from her confusion and laughed as I saw her fingers trail an invisible arc in the air. “I just saw a cat jump up on that table and then run out the door,” she said, her eyes offering a passable semblance of merry.

I kissed her goodnight, told her I loved her and left, never to see my mother again.

I know in my heart it was my daddy who sent that particular dead cat to come get my mama to take her home.

The sunflowers greet me each day as I rise and shine. The striped cat watches over me as I break my morning bread.

The Stages of Cat Acclimation

Note:
The stages below were developed as part of an extensive scientific study performed on one cat. Should the author decide to submit the study for juried review to a research-based veterinary journal, the investigation will be termed a Cat Case Study (hereafter known as CCS).

The system is helpful in that it would allow one to know where to locate a feline (based on how long said feline has been in one's care) if one ever loses a cat or decides to become a Cat Nanny.

Stage 1 – Under the bed
Stage 2 – In the room
Stage 3 – On a lap
Stage 4 –Under the covers

My friends, James and Whitney, were going to Fripp Island over the Labor Day weekend and they agreed that their cat, Ellie, wasn’t exactly a sand n’ surf kind of girl. Since I’m a cat widow who also happens to be bi-coastal, and I’ve been lamenting the lack of feline companionship, James and Whitney were kind enough to think of me when they were considering their vacation cat care options. Actually, it was after a glass of wine or two at a social gathering that I offered to take Ellie in if they would bring her to me. They agreed, high-fiving each other all over the place.

A few weeks later, when I hadn’t heard from them, I sent each an email gently letting them off the hook, figuring they’d found someone who lived closer to come to their home to feed Ellie and shovel out her sandbox. Within seconds, the following responses came in:

From James: We actually have not found another method, so we just need to coordinate with you on the details. I'm sure that Ellie would enjoy some devoted attention from a true feline lover!

From Whitney: Oh No! You're keeping her. We aren't looking for an easier way.

On the Friday before they were to leave, James arrived with Ellie, who looked embarrassed and more than a modicum of disgusted in her not-so-tres-chic cat carrier, along with hard food, soft food, her sandbox, and additional cat accoutrements including hairball goo, ear mite medicine, and a cat back-scratcher. She immediately shot from the carrier as soon as it was opened, and, employing cat radar, somehow found my room and scooted under my bed.

Now, you probably already know I’m not all that good a housekeeper, but, because I was going to have company, especially gay man company, I had dusted off some of the piles in preparation for James’ drive-by drop-off of Miss Ellie. The one place I apparently forgot to dust was under my bed, which is exactly where James went looking for Ellie before I could tell him to STOP! I can still see him there, on his hands and knees, peering through the useless dust ruffle at the dust bunnies, nay, the dust hippopotami, looking for his little lost Ellie.

Next comes the part of the study which enabled me to discern the stages. After James finally left and for about the next twenty-four hours, Ellie emerged from under my bed only to eat and use the sandbox, looking like she'd been sent straight to hell in a tacky cat carrier.

By the next day, Ellie had gifted me with her occasional presence, joining me in the living room but still copping a pretty bad attitude, as if she’d put a deposit down on a much better cruise package than what she'd found awaiting her at my motley (not to mention dusty) port.

As of the third day, Ellie was liking me a little as she would climb into my lap just as I decided to get up to make a sandwich or go to the bathroom. She was also beginning to do those cute little cat gyrations where she would roll over on her back and look like she was going to turn herself inside out. And, then there was that serpentine dance between my legs thing as I tried to walk, as if she might be able trip me up badly enough for an ounce or two of sirloin to fly out of my hands and into her bowl.

By the fourth day of what I thought was supposed to be a three day weekend, Ellie and I were best friends. In fact, by that point, we were sleeping together. She liked the middle of the bed and under the covers best, causing me to try to achieve respite in a modified V position.

And so, there you have it: The Stages of Cat Acclimation, a scientific hierarchy I can use to segue into a whole new career once I give up on second graders. Should James and Whitney ever return for Ellie, which is looking somewhat doubtful, I'm excited to report that I can parlay what I've learned through my extensive research to become a full-time Cat Nanny, or better yet, I can offer workshops on Cat Nannying in order to share this important information with others.

I can change the world one cat at a time.

Absolute Joy - My Top Twenty List

As I'm getting older and realizing my days here are numbered, I do try to seize the day, to be in the moment. Usually it doesn’t work, but occasionally it does. Being here in Portland with my grandchildren, holding them, and actually being able to feel their chubby feet and their very busy little vibes, make me want to stop time in order to frame the feeling, to be acutely present in the absolute joy I'm experiencing.

All of this thinking and feeling leads me to the notion of documenting, in some way, memories of great happiness I've felt throughout my life. I worked diligently to narrow them down; most are generic, a few specific. The majority are from recent years, but not all. And please know that I realize how self serving this is, how all about me it is, and why on earth would anyone else want to read it? If you decide to pass this one by, I won't blame you. However, I do wonder if my list will encourage you to contemplate your list.

Here is my Absolute Joy Top 20 List at this particular moment in no particular order:

1. Certain songs and singers - Fly Like a Bird by Boz Skaggs, Wayfaring Stranger by Johnny Cash, almost anything by Van Morrison or Lucinda Williams or Tracy Chapman ( I just added this one) or Neil Young (I've got to turn off KPIG)
   
2. Holding my babies and grandbabies for the first time
3. Sunrises and sunsets - I know this one is sappy and probably a cliche, but it's true
   
4. My birthday dinner at Tierra with Molly, when we talked about her dreams for her future and I drank too much wine and she drove me home
5. A Gospel Christmas each year at Atlanta Symphony Hall
6. Sitting at a tiny Italian restaurant in Athens, Georgia, eating lunch, while my dissertation was being printed
7. Watching my grandkids dance
8. Barack Obama winning the presidency
9. Finding my copy of Arizona Highways with the article I'd written in my mailbox
10. When Allison preached my mother’s funeral at the edge of Oak Creek
11. Many Christmas mornings, especially one at Tybee some time around 1995
    
12. The beach in winter
13. When someone likes my writing
14. Being with my kids
15. When I create something new and I'm happy with it
16. The first time I saw Michael Jackson moonwalk
17. The beginning of Lonesome Dove and the end of A Prayer for Owen Meany
18. Most cats
19. Christmas lights, especially the colored ones, especially when they are in bars
    
20. My solo weekend trip to Paris
    

I thought hard about this list and it feels right. People who know me well will say, "There's Marcia going on again about such and such," but that's a good thing because, if I blab about it to the point of embarrassing myself, then I probably love it, and what I love defines me.

In addition, with the exception of being with my family, almost everything on my list happened when I was by myself, and I don't know if that means I'm ultimately happiest with just me, or, if it could be that, without the distraction of others, I'm better able to stop and appreciate the wonderfulness of a particular moment.

So, I guess supreme happiness for me would be to meet up with a cat at a beach-side bar at sunset on Christmas with Van Morrison on the jukebox. I could show the cat pictures of my grandkids dancing and, perhaps, something I've written. I just hope he'd like it.

Doggie Daycare

I'd been planning to post a piece about how hard it is to be a parent these days, but after talking to my friend, Allie, I decided to switch my focus in order to make this point: Raising children in the new millennium is nothing compared to parenting pets.
Allie had stopped by my classroom to tell me she'd spent the previous afternoon filling out the paperwork to try to get her dog, Hank, into Doggie Daycare. She'd first made me promise not to laugh before she imparted that little gem; a promise I immediately broke with paroxysms of gleeful incredulity. What? Dogs now need daycare? Paperwork? Are we talking about the rolled-up paperwork you pop them with when they piddle on the patio? Try? This is possibly the most worrisome part. You now have to TRY to get your dog into something called Doggie Daycare? You mean there are qualifications other than humping the vacuum cleaner and licking their parts?
What makes this so difficult for me to understand is that, when I was growing up, we had a dog until it got run over. Then, we got another dog. Cats were something that slunk around the backyard dragging a sad expired squirrel until one of us kids let them into the house (the cat, not the carcass), only to have them be sent back out when a grown-up got home. My daddy said the only good cat was a dead cat.
Although I do remember that most dogs had rabies tags, which meant someone was taking them somewhere at some point to get some kind of shot, they didn't typically go to the vet unless they had barely survived being run over. In that case, they were begrudgingly thrown into the back of the car for a trip to get sewn up or to have something cut off. There were quite a few three-legged dogs on my street because of the above.
My childhood dog's name was Stubby. (I'm now perplexed about and a little embarrassed to admit this). Although Stubby held pretensions toward being a Cocker Spaniel, he wasn't even close. I can distinctly remember Stubby following me from block to block as we kids roamed the neighborhood in a manner children can no longer pull off. Whenever Stubby, who wasn't particularly bright or well trained, tried to cross a busy street, I would holler, "Stubby, watch out!", which he seldom did. That probably explains why we ended up calling him Stubby.
Back to now. I understand that young couples are getting fancy dogs in order to practice for when they have babies - kind of like a starter child. I'm here to tell you that can backfire. My daughter, Melissa, and her husband were given an English Bulldog for a wedding present by some well-meaning friends and her football fanatic father. Luther von Rufus (aka Sweet Lu) arrived in a crate from Russia (I thought he was supposed to be English) about 48 hours before Melissa took the pregnancy test indicating that her honeymoon was, indeed, a busy and fruitful one. Now, Melissa, Trevor, Miles, Georgia, AND Sweet Lu live in a two-bedroom house in Portland, Oregon. Poor Lu has gone from blithely snoring in a queen-sized bed to dozing with one bulbous eye open anywhere on the floor he can safely hide from Miles.
I began to realize things were changing a few years ago when my youngest, Molly, and I decided to adopt a kitten from the pound. Instead of going in, holding our noses, and pointing, as we'd done with former cats, we were told to pick one, in the comfort of our own home, from an online selection of cute and not so cute felines. After we clicked on the mugshot of the soon-to-be lucky recipient of our benevolence, we were asked to fill out a questionnaire. We should have known we were in trouble at that point. There were lots of items, some of which seemed to be trick questions. For example, we were asked if any of our prior pets had met with unfortunate accidents or, perhaps, an untimely demise. We said "no" as I felt that the statute of limitations had run out on Stubby. Then we were asked if our new cat would be an inside or an outside pet. We answered "outside", mentioning that "all God's creatures need sunlight and fresh air," something we thought would be appreciated, applauded, and approved by do-gooders smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt.
We were wrong. After we were turned down in our attempt to adopt a cat that would probably be put to sleep within the next few days, we learned that pets left to their own devices in the great outdoors invariably just fool around and procreate until they or their offspring find themselves right back at the pound, a life-cycle circumstance steadfastly frowned upon by the SPCA.
Now that I live in Atlanta, I find it to be a great place to experience the absurdity of modern pet ownership. Walking in Piedmont Park is a treat as earnest dog owners pick up poop with biodegradable sani-bags and talk to their pets as if they were errant toddlers. I remember one beautiful Sunday afternoon when I observed a young couple pushing a pram (yes, one of those old-fashioned baby carriages) with a full-grown Mastiff sitting inside. The look on the human faces was a combination of "yes, our baby is beautiful" and "no, you don't have one of these." The look on the dog's face was "yes, I'm embarrassed" and "no, I don't know these people".
So, it seems the days for footloose and fancy free pet parenting are over and the same could be said for the animals themselves. I agree that pets need to be neutered and protected against those diseases that can shorten a life or make it less vibrant, but I question just how important it is for a dog who never leaves its home, daycare, or pram to be inoculated against rattlesnake poisoning.
And what about the freedom my childhood pets had during their short lives in the days before leash laws and health insurance for animals? Would that Mastiff in the pram trade his long careful life for a day of being Stubby? Does the cat in the condo window yearn for a juicy squirrel? Does the German Shepherd dream of Rin Tin Tin-like daring-do, and does the Collie ever hear the call of Timmy thrashing in the well? If Lassie were alive today, the only heroic feat she would have the opportunity to perform would be to retrieve her groomer's spritzer bottle if it fell on the floor of her high-priced salon.
Oh wow. For some reason, ending this thing is making me cry. I guess, in writing about people and their pets (then and now), I've remembered the animals I've loved throughout my life. So, here's to Pat Dog, Stubby, Cleo, Keeter (my ex's name for a myriad of cats), Henry the Benry, Sugar, Sheba, and Chloe.
Okay, I give up. Tell me how to apply for Doggie Daycare and more about that rattlesnake vaccine. I can feel a new pet coming on.