How can this poor creature expect to survive if the owners of the house only put out kibble? And canned food? But, won't refill the canned food bowl when she has consumed all of the gravy and is left only with chunks of meat? Starvation is imminent.
Rainy Weekend
Asparagus fern in a Jim Bob Salazar pot
Words cannot describe how good it feels to sit on my front porch on this rainy Saturday. Clarice the cat and I have been listening to the mourning dove and other birds. I did a little bit of yardwork before it began to rain. New plants, new planters, new opportunities. I can't wait for the hibiscus to bloom.
Pottery by Jim Bob Salazar
Don't tell Barry that Clarice was out here with me.
She enjoyed exploring new areas.
Wisteria
Wisteria on the back corner of the house
I came home the other day and found this on the corner of the house. It has long since removed part of the outside panelling of the house, but we can't bring ourselves to destroy it. Actually, Barry destroyed it fairly regularly for a couple of decades until he saw it bloom. Then, he let it go unrestrained and we discovered that it had wound itself inside the corner board. Of course, by then the damage was done, and the cats had done their own set of damage anyway by using it as a sharpening pole. Either way, it's wonderful to come home to this sight, and the intoxicatingly sweet air that is under it.
My plan is to have a pergola of sorts that the wisteria can climb along. That offer much needed shade, and the thought of these blooms dangling overhead all across the patio is a goal worth having.
In the meantime, I took some pictures. It's odd that the blooms came before the leaves. Maybe we'll get more blooms later. That would make for a Very Happy Summer.
Pawper's Grave
Last night we were coming home from dinner when we saw a casualty in the road. A cat had been hit, and his lifeless body lie in the road still. He hadn't been there when we went to dinner, so it had to have been recent.
Barry said that we needed to move him because the animal control wouldn't be able to be there until Monday. (This was Friday evening.) I know that this was just an excuse, though I don't know why one was needed. Barry takes care of his animal friends, even the ones he doesn't know. There is no way he would leave a dead cat lying in the road, and not much chance he'd let Animal Control take it away. There is a place in the back where kitties are buried. Even my dearly departed beta fish – Ella Minnow P. was laid to rest there. One of my goals this year is to clean that space up and make it a proper graveyard, even if it isn't consecrated.
The moon overhead was almost full, and it gave plenty of light to walk by as together we crossed the property. The entire field was on display, as if with a spooky filter. I could see the trees, the grass and bramble, as well as some of the color. The trees at the end of the property were silhouetted and the shadows everywhere were pronounced, but the soft ground was visible. It felt as if we were walking in a partial solar eclipse, rather than walking at night.
Barry continued past the cemetery. I caught up to him and asked him where he was going. He was actually heading toward the pile of wood that is along the back of the property, and I couldn't imagine that he would leave the body exposed on the wood pile. When I asked, though, he said he was going to bury the cat. I pointed out that we had passed the cemetery space; he answered (almost incredulously), "That's family!" Well, excuse me! Apparently, we have a pawper's grave on the property where unidentified kitties – and kitties whose families have no means – are laid to rest. I had no idea.
We arrived at the back of the property, next to the woodpile. Barry looked around, determined where the previous victim had been buried, and put his spade in the ground. The earth was soft, due to the rain we've been blessed with these past few weeks. It was easy to dig here, and together we worked in the penumbra of the moonlit field. I love the smell of earth when you first begin to dig. The damp soil and organic matter greeted my nose with nostalgia and hope. But, I didn't talk about it; we just kept working. Wider, deeper we dug until Barry decided to go fetch our deceased feline, leaving me to continue finishing things.
I hung a flashlight on a limb overhead so that I could see the detail of the hole we were working on. The shadows inside the grave were too dark for me to be able to distinguish how deep we had gone, or how straight the sides were. The flashlight swayed above me, and the spot of light moved across the cold ground as I continued to make the sides of our hole straight, and work to get it a little deeper before Barry got back with our fallen kitty.
Eventually, I decided to see if Barry needed help. I walked alone with my shovel across the soft ground, the expanse of the field in front of me giving way to the back of the buildings and the driveway between them. I met Barry at the side of the house. I had brought my shovel in case it could be of assistance, but he was holding the cat (rather unceremoniously) by the back feet, with a paper towel so that his hand didn't touch the body. Together we walked back to field and the to pawper's grave.
Into the hole went our unnamed cat victim, along with the paper towel that had been used to hold him. He was a big cat, longer than the hole we dug. Still, he fit. As we worked together to fill in the hole, I began to sing the Ave Maria. I wanted to bring back some of the decorum befitting burial. Barry grabbed two cinder blocks that happened to be lying nearby. (Why are there things like this always at hand?) He put them on top of the grave we had just filled to keep anything from digging the buried cat up. I finished my song and together we walked back to the house.
This morning I went to check on the graves. I have a lovely iron cross that would be beautiful in the family (pet) cemetery. It's huge and heavy, and finding a suitable place for it has been a challenge anyway, even though I love it. The whole area needs some work. Another project. Our new pawper's grave was less mysterious in the light of day. Just two cinder blocks on top of freshly dug earth. It is March, and soon grass and plants will be growing to cover the space. We won't even be able to find him when that happens. Life goes on, one way or another, but it's nice to punctuate our time here with small acts of gentleness. I'm happy here with our cats.
Pum-Kin in a Tree
Pretty Pum-Kin
There once was a beautiful cat named Pum-Kin. He was mostly orange with white spots on his little face, like backwards sports player eye black. His orange fur was fluffy – so very fluffy – and had white spots accentuating his body in just the right places. He pranced around on white tufts of furry feet and a glance from his lovely visage would cause an average human's heart to melt into butter.
He lived in the back yard of two kindly men who made sure that there was food in a dish for him. While he appreciated the food, he wasn't quite sure that he trusted people enough to actually snuggle with them. Sometimes he'd let one of them scratch his head, because this is the price you have to pay to keep a food supply. But, for the most part he kept himself at arm's length.
One time one of the kindly men put his food on a nice table about two feet from where it usually sat on the back porch. This was very confusing for a pretty cat named Pum-Kin, who wasn't the most intelligent thing ever to walk on four feet. But, he was very pretty. Another time he had to share his food with a skunk named Trevor, because even though he wasn't the brightest star in the galaxy, Pum-Kin knew better than to go to battle with a omnivorous black-and-white New World mammal of the weasel family.
One day, in the middle of Central Texas' excuse for a winter – meaning that the temperatures had recently gotten as far down as 35° before returning to the 50's – Pum-Kin decided to climb a tree. He wasn't quite sure why; there is just a need inside every cat to be on top of something they see. You may have noticed this tendency in your own cats, especially if you've left a piece of paper laying about. It's just something that cats have to do, a mysterious call of nature. So, one afternoon, after having seen this strange short tree for years, he finally decided that food wasn't going to be served any time soon so he may as well have a climb. This didn't go so well for poor little Pum-Kin. He got stuck and tangled and didn't quite know what to do with himself. Fortunately, one of the kindly men wandered by. Unfortunately, the kindly man had a camera.
Poor Pum-Kin
Perhaps now you understand why pretty little Pum-Kin is reluctant to trust humans, even kindly ones with food.