Chosen

We have a new cat, inasmuch as anyone has a cat.  More accurately, the cat has us.  I know that is a real yawner to you Experienced Cat People, but we were Cat Virgins, until recently. The first cat, Kat, was a scrap of a cat when he appeared on our back deck: starving, matted, all but three dangling teeth broken off under the gums, diagnosis courtesy of the Expensive Feline Dental Surgeon Specialist, called in to crack the case.

So toothless Kat, by all accounts part Maine Coon, now has a playmate: a smaller, younger now spayed and vaccinated sister.  We didn’t know cats came smaller, since Kat was a starter cat for us, dog people, and once he started eating, soft food of course, that bag of skin turned out to be quite substantial. 

At first, there was little to learn.  He was too sick to teach us.  But as he began to feel better, orientation began.  We learned where to pet him (back of the neck), where not to (belly - claws too available when irritated.)  We learned that he would come to our laps when he wanted and that we needed to have a towel available to quickly drape over our legs if we had on thin pants (claws again - kneading this time.) 

Obviously, Kat can’t hunt birds, which has been perfect, as we have multiple bird feeders.  Relaxation is over, however, as the feeders turned into smorgasbords for new cat, black and white, slinking out from under one of our outbuildings. In a few horrifying seconds, new cat can jump six feet from a standing position, snatch a bird from the feeder and have feathers flying.  We saw this, horrified, several times.  We decided to try to substitute Friskies for songbirds, and gradually it began to work.  I’ve never been quite so grateful for opposable thumbs.  Being able to open a can is my contribution to the continued future of the Audubon Society. 

Feeding her led to naming her.  She bounced around for awhile as Feral Fredericka.  But then inevitably, she became Oreo.  As she began to wait for us, we discovered she is a circler. When you open the back door and begin to go out with breakfast, you have to watch every step.  There is something eminently attractive about one’s ankles (not sure. . .). So as you walk, a small, quite bendable cat weaves in and out, making each step a badge of courage.  Without coffee, maneuvering from kitchen door to gazebo (Oreo’s subdivision) can be quite the beginning to one’s day, fraught with peril. 

Once you get there, Oreo continues to want to get petted, so stroke it is, down the back, then down the back, then the belly, and down the back.  Once she realizes the food dish is on the ground, well, affection be damned, and you are dismissed,  free to return to the house and resume your search for caffeinated beverage.

We also have two dogs, two Labradors, who have a giant, multi-sheltered kennel.  These two are repeatedly excited out of their skins to have you show up: Food!  Food! Food!  Walk! Walk! Walk! You! You! You! If one only had dogs, which was us until cats started showing up, one might consider oneself far more important than one really is.  I am beginning to think that the cats have been put on Earth as a spiritual lesson of sorts, to show us our real place in this universe.

Perhaps the evolutionary leap of opposable thumbs was purely to be able to open cat food cans.  Perhaps our upright bipedal posture is purely to give cats a moving figure eight within which to circle.  Perhaps clothing is meant for nothing more than to be the proud bearer of cat fur, even if you are on the way to work, to the gym, or to lunch with a friend; it doesn’t matter, go out there with pride.  You have been chosen, (you!) by the cat.

June

It's that time of year, when breath takes in cool morning air, when my body stretches toward the sun, opening like a day lily, unfolding from the night. The Earth seems to love June, at least this year.  The rains have come when needed; the errant blast of May's summer heat has faded from memory.  The tomato vines are winding their up their poles, I harvested the rest of the garlic yesterday, planted last October.

Think of that.  One can put a tiny garlic clove into the ground in October, the same clove you might smash with your knife on the cutting board in the kitchen.  You might immediately notice that distinct aroma or it might be when it is sizzling in olive oil in the pan, or maybe if you are watching the  news, you might not notice at all.  You might notice what a difference it makes in your pasta sauce, or if you are watching the news as you eat dinner, maybe not.  (Experience speaks.)

But if you put that clove into the ground, you would not be able to ignore the magnificent forked plant that waits for you nine months later.  And when you pull on its tall green stalk, with the bottom leaves now browned (the sign that it is time), you will pull out of the ground a full head of those cloves, that clove and all its sisters.

I haven't always gardened.  I was not wise enough to understand my mother's need to put her hands in the soil.  She grew up in the country.  Everyone had a kitchen garden.  Her mother grew herbs to help the new mothers in the neighborhood heal from having their babies.  That was her mother's job.  My father grew up on a big dairy farm.  There was a kitchen garden behind the big barn.  Having a garden was both ordinary, and a sign that you were from the country, and that maybe you couldn't afford to buy your vegetables or your milk in the store, like more successful people did.  If you sat at a desk, a gleaming, shiny, orderly desk, there was no soil to clean out from under your fingernails.

I have sat behind those desks.  I have had business cards, with my name and "contact information" on them.  Those cards have had the names of several institutions on them.  I was a piece of those institutions, and each time was enriched by the prospect.  There was respect that came with that card, and "opportunity for growth", and each time I think I contributed.  I hope so anyway.  Those institutions were each well-meaning, organized to help humans and others along, and I think I did my small part.  I made mistakes, of course, and can give you a list if you contact me around 3 in the morning, as that is when the list is loudest.

But now, after almost seven decades on this planet, one of my proudest moments is when I put my trowel in the ground and bring up dark rich soil, wiggly with worms.  When we began to create gardens at Briarpatch more than twenty years ago, the soil was dirt.  The soil was hard red clay with rocks.  It has been with gradual effort, gradual feeding and loving, reading and experimenting that this dirt has become soil.  Vegetable scraps, tea leaves, coffee grounds into buckets in the kitchen and then out to the compost pile; trips to the farms of friends to pick up the manure from their carefully fed animals.  Gradually gradually, all that became that which would feed the dirt, change its composition, allow it to invite the earthworms, and the microscopic creatures that help engineer life.

It doesn't happen overnight.  Well it does actually.  It happens at night, and during the day.  It is night after night and day after day, all silently, all without notice.  Gradually, gradually, the dirt becomes soil; becomes that which can nourish new life.  Like us, I suppose.  Gradually gradually, we realize that business cards can compost too, if need be, like our own bodies, all of it, all of us, cycling through as we will.