warm spring thunderstorm
up here on my mountain side
so magnificent
walking uphill rain
soaking running dripping wet
shake head to clear eyes
lightning count to eight
thunder brings the rain harder
step step squish step step
I am not cold I
am not tired I am not lost
I am home embraced
it is possible
it is not a dream or lie
life as we live it
Acorns hit the roof
in syncopated rhythms
the clockworks ticking
Acorns hit the roof
dead fish sail to Valhalla
cow bellows bellows
Acorns hit the roof
the party never ends and
never ends again
Acorns hit the roof
acorns rip through leaves on trees
buckeyes aren't chestnuts
Acorns hit the roof
acorns hit the roof with glee
sharing glee we laugh
Acorns play at Zen
balanced but not symetric-
al wabi sabi
He left around seven years ago. That was the year I started mowing for a neighbor and maybe he followed me down there or maybe he wandered on his own, I don't know. What I remember is that periodically that year she told me to come get my cat. She may have begun calling me the previous year and telling me that, I don't know, or the winter before at least. Maybe that's even why I began mowing for her, I don't quite remember how that got started exactly.
I told her to quit feeding my cat and he would come home. I went to mow one day and she came out fussing that the cat that she called Midnight (he has a different name at our house) was still about. In fact he was standing on her porch in front of a big bowl of spaghetti she'd sat out for him. "He's not gonna come home if you feed him like that," I said.
Not that I minded so much. We have plenty of cats. And he'd just shown up, the way a lot of them do. Husband came home one day with him, having found him somewhere. He looked just like a cat we'd petted at a park in town recently and we named him the same thing we'd called that cat. (If I were Alecto, I would tell you about all the memories and feelings and (non-traumatic but still a bit bitter) flashbacks of that day in the park . . . but you know, the cat is more important.) I mean, he was a very good, even very exceptional cat, but who could blame him for going to the lasagna meals instead of more meager scraps.
All these years, I've known he was still down there. I knew that at some point they started keeping him inside most of the time, but he was still let out at least sometimes and I would see him, hunting. For some years he would visit us in the garden -- he could hear when we were there from her house -- but eventually he stopped visiting. And then, even if I saw him out, he would actively avoid me and just go home. I appreciated his caution. He had a good thing going and he didn't want to mess it up.
We've never been all that close with the neighbors. We know them all, but we don't break bread together. I think it is a good idea to keep most everything at arms length anyway, and all the more so with her.
Those neighbors recently moved away. I'll spare you the details there. We knew about the situation because well, that's how it is. People know stuff, especially bad stuff. They took their dog. They didn't take the cat. They didn't call to say they weren't taking the cat I suppose because then they would have had to explain why they were moving. They didn't even call to tell me to come get my damn cat the way she used to when she was feeding it, and now it would have no one to feed it. Her embarrassment was bigger than her concern for the cat, but you know, I guess I understand that too. Especially because I'd look after the cat anyway and maybe she knew that about me.
After they'd gone, I saw him around so I knew he was there. The first time I called to him, he ran back to his old home. He wasn't fat anymore but he wasn't skinny. The guy across the road with the dogs said he came over there and ate regularly. I knew eventually he'd get lonely.
And sure enough, the whole gang of us were in the garden one evening and MEOW! I mean, really loud and long MEOW! Loud, long, repeated MEOW. We meowed back and at first we were just wondering which of our cats it was who'd decided to come to the garden. The big grey tabby often hunts in front and meets us in the garden to get petted? Some of them just like to come to flop. But this continued and before long the youngest child went off to see who this was. He came back reporting that it looked like one of our other cats but wasn't fuzzy. All the rest of us said his name and all went off to claim him.
He was a bit stand-offish at first. Hesitant. Unsure. His rug had been pulled out from under him but he could feel the love. It was the other cats he was much less sure about. But he seems to have decided that he can put up with us. All of us.
Except for a few things. Like yesterday we killed some long overdue roosters. The other cats are used to this routine -- they lick the blood and run off with the heads and know the offal will be put off in the woods for them. On the way back to the house with the now empty offal bowl, husband ran into this new old cat and offered him the bowl to lick. He sniffed this rather stinky offering and looked at husband and almost clearly said, "You've got to be kidding. Where's the lasagna?"
A little later, he did learn to slurp from a stream of milk squirted directly from the cow to his head. That might make up for the lack of lasagna and plethora of cats he must put up with in his new old home.
the first cat's tale
barn work day turns to
April fool's snake in rafters
and laughter abounds
maybe just this one more? I was told today that I was a slacker for only being able to write five words anymore. Hey lady! It is five syllables, then seven, then five again. Come on, try it! It's fun
haulms off the corn field
world in handbasket in hell
three roosters lose heads
after fourteen stalls
a bowl of goat milk ice cream
eaten in hot bath
perhaps this will become the all haiku all the time station -- join me!
Look what I found! The software to re-size these so I could upload them! Here is what else is funny: I recently exchanged e-mail with someone I took a class from way back in college. One of the things I most remember him doing was absolutely rasping us for taking "snapshots" instead of "photographs". We were hiking across the Grand Canyon -- and according to him we were not to take snapshots. Well, baloney. I am not above taking the artsy craftsy photograph, that's for sure, and there are images that will stick in my head that I want to take, but snapshots, those are the staff of life, really.
And all places are sacred. Just sayin'.
So like I said, these are from October.
Every October there is a draft horse auction. It happens to be my social event of the year, and there is a man I see there every year who I grew up with: Billy, and he was the cutest thing back then. When I left home, he was a coal truck driver. When I ran into him again, he was a horse logger. When I ran into him this year, he said he'd quit logging since it had become just trading dollars back and forth (that is, it isn't something that you can make money at right now with the price of logs being what it is). So at least one of the other things he's doing is making harness. This one was his, for sale at the auction. I can't say that his taste is my taste, honestly. His dimples are still cute though.
I just liked this shot of three young horses sharing a stall, waiting for the auction.
This is a billy goat. Quite a magnificent billy goat. I also like this image. It was raining that day.
And finally, a tree full of turkey buzzards. They make the most amazing sound when thirty of them take off from the same area at about the same time. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. Poachers had left a deer carcass to rot was why they were there. A little six point buck. My dog always brings the bones home.
Ok, photos on the blog again!
“Meow, meow, meow, meow,” she said to her brothers. “You wouldn’t believe the adventures I’ve had today!”
“Meow, meeeep, meow,” her brothers said. “What what what what? We’ve been worried since we hadn’t seen you. Where have you been and what have you been doing? And why are you walking funny? Purrr.”
“I’m walking funny because that dang door hit me. I don’t know what happened exactly. I was following the small human around and I was almost through the door when everything went black. When I woke up, they were all looking at me, even the biggest ones, and saying disturbing things like ‘she’s not dead yet’. Oh, I hurt so bad. Something in my neck and shoulders got hurt and for awhile I couldn’t move my front legs at all and oh, it hurt so bad. But they put me in a soft place and held me and talked to me and sang to me and never left me alone so that if I woke up and was scared because it hurt, they were there with me and they were nice to me even when I bit them and I slept and slept mostly and when I woke up, it was morning and my front legs worked just a little bit and then I wasn’t quite so scared.
“The big ones said not to worry and that they’d just take me with them today. That’s when we got in that big blue thing out there and it was weird, moving without moving but they seemed to think it was alright and nothing to get excited about. Then we stopped again and they put me with the littlest one in the shade of an apple tree while they took buckets and went away and when they came back they had blueberries with them. They kept doing that until they had eight buckets of the things but I just sat there and the kids would bring me food to eat and milk to drink and there were even two kids I didn’t know who held me and petted me and everyone was paying attention to me and it was like I was their queen.
“Then they said we were going home but we didn’t. In fact, I’m not sure where they went. It was just a short way from the blueberries and the moving without moving stopped and they all told the old one what kind of sodas they wanted and he went in by himself but he came back without the sodas and told them he was treating them to dinner. They were all very excited about it. I don’t know what kind of place it was but it had a snake on the sign and at least twenty motorcycles sitting out front and lots of people dressed oddly in black leather and our people seemed very excited to be able to eat there and left me and the camera and the phone all sitting there in the unlocked car with all the windows down.
“They were gone a long time but the girls came out to check on me several times and even brought a wet towel to lay over me to make sure I wasn’t too hot but we were parked in the shade so I was fine. I was tired anyway from all the excitement so I just slept mostly.
“Oh, but when they came back, they brought me the most delicious thing to eat! It tasted like some of our cat food but not dry and not milky. It was smooth and crunchy at the same time and they called it catfish! Fish just for cats, if you can imagine that! So, I’m not sure what they ate but that’s what they brought to me. Then it was that sickening motion without moving thing again, and then we were home.
“I’m glad to be home, boys, but that was quite the adventure. Maybe if you get your head smushed in the door sometime you’ll get to go on an adventure too! Meow meow purrrrr.”
