Evening

I pull into the driveway several hours before my normal time, right on the borderline between late afternoon and evening. I feel a twinge of disappointment when I see I am the first one home. I had been looking forward to his astonishment that I was home so early, to telling him that I had gone to see the baby geese, been greeted by the neighbor's dog, had found a lilac bush--the dark variety that I find so stunning.

I climb out of the car. The air is still and warm with only a touch of evening's cool. I put on my jacket, more for the convenience of not carrying it. I am hesitant to go into the house. I dread being assaulted by all the undone housework. The air outside is gentle and alive with birdsong. I detect the delicate scent of lilac. I give in to the enticement, avoiding the front door and venturing around back.

The lilac bushes are heavy with blossom and scent. They beckon, and I answer. Soon I hear the happy humming of a bumble bee. I spot him quickly, buried in purple. I imagine what it might feel like for that bee, walking on the velvety softness of the petals. I test the flowers' fullness and weight in my hand and decide it might be nice to be a bee, if only for a little while.

The cats, thrilled by the novelty of me being in their outside world, have all surrounded me, shadowing me in my perusal of the yard. I walk to the edge of the property where the berry bushes will soon grow so thick it will be impossible to pass. However, Spring is still so new that I am able to cross the barrier with little trouble. I see a large pine tree with new growth on its branches, displaying a lighter shade of green. It is so inviting that I cannot resist the urge to make my way over and feel the new needles in my hand. They are so soft and pliable and I am enchanted.

The ground crackles beneath my feet as I shift weight. Several years--decades--of Autumn leaves carpet the ground, making it soft and spongy. With every step I unearth a dead branch, usually popping up several feet away as I make my way. My faithful feline companion is following, many times startled by the branches suddenly jumping up near him. I find the old remnants of the long abandoned barbed wire fence. The trees have taken it over, swallowing up the rusted barbs. I continue following the property edge down the hill. I approach the clearing where the trees all reach their branches out east towards the morning sun. They are all misshapen here--lopsided, leaning downhill. I think this spot might have had the ability to frighten me in my younger years. Now it amuses me.

I step out into the clearing--a mini meadow. This is the spot of our watermelon growing experiment: the experiment that yielded one single golf ball sized melon, perfectly ripened just in time for the end of the short, northeastern growing season. The leggy raspberry bushes here in this clearing are already a tangle. I stand and admire the birch trees at the bottom of the hill where the property meets the road. Their round leaves are still small and tender, catching the early evening light and breeze. I glance back up the hill towards the mini grove, spread out and straddling the line between our land and the neighbor's. A thundering in the grass, a black blur, and suddenly a feline shape is clinging to one of the tree trunks like a bear cub, frisky and playful. I laugh, delighted at the display of kittenish charm.

I turn to make my way back to the house. I am a little apprehensive at the steepness of the return path, but am energized by the adventure. I soon find a dead branch sticking straight out of the soft earth, as if it were placed there for me. I pull it out easily. It is straight and still strong, shoulder height. The bark crumbles beneath my fingers, but the wood itself is unyielding. I test it, feeling a little silly. It is a good walking stick. I ascend the hill, accompanied by my band of feline adventurers.

I arrive home. The bumble bee is gone. The birds are calling to each other a hasty good night. I sit on the front stoop in the growing darkness, listening to the evening, as I await his arrival home . . . .

Peace
C

Junkyard Investigations

Vince's is a special place.

Oh, sure. Vince's is a junkyard. A place where the carcass is picked clean before the skeleton is discarded. A junkyard is definitely a man's world. Grease monkeys of every shape, size, language and caliber find sustenance amongst the discarded heaps, finding nuggets of inestimable or questionable value. The odors of motor oil, asphalt, cigarette smoke and dirt lift off the hot pavement and assail the visitor. Large metal bodies, propped up off the ground, lay splayed open like some macabre autopsy, in many cases their innards scattered on the ground. It is almost too horrifying to behold.

There are two junkyard that R frequents is his quest for the cheap and useful. There is Gary's, situated on the side of a hill. There are different tiers that the lots are perched upon, and it always seems that the one lot we need to get to is the one that is the furthest away, hence the longest, most difficult walk to get back. I usually vie for waiting in the car with my book, hoping R doesn't need me to "go fer." For years we went to Gary's, R dragging me along like an insolent teenager. Then he discovered Vince's.

I find Vince's much more pleasant--if pleasantness is what you look for in a junkyard. I have found it much more bearable. It is a lot less hilly and is surrounded by trees, so every so often you hear the call of a songbird.

Another thing they have at Vince's is wheelbarrows. Like grabbing a shopping cart upon entering a grocery store, except these don't have the safety child seat. Of course, I soon discovered a certain disadvantage to having these wheelbarrows. After a while, they can slow you down. So, like the husband who finds himself holding the purse and sitting outside the fitting room while his wife shops the store, I would find myself at the end of a row guarding wheelbarrow and bucket'o'tools while R would walk the lot, trying to decide on which car to bust his knuckles. So I would wait.

Have you ever been in the situation where you were alone, waiting for someone? Perhaps it is a strange place, and strange people that you don’t know surround you. Perhaps the person next to you looks a little funny, maybe smells funny, maybe dresses funny. Then you do an odd thing. You look at him and comment on the weather. Before you know it, you are having an enjoyable conversation. You are so glad that you looked past the funnyness of the person and made their acquaintance.

It so happened that one day, while guarding the said bucket, that I peered into the car next to me. I don't even remember what I found. Probably something insignificant like a receipt or a candy wrapper. All of a sudden it hit me. This car belonged to someone. Someone drove this car, drove to work in this car, ran their errands in this car, ate in this car, slept in this car? Like the stranger that smiled in response to the comment on the weather, I suddenly wanted to strike up a converstaion. I began to wonder what kind of person owned this car. Can I find out just by looking at what they left behind? It has become a kind of game for me now. Whenever we linger at a car, I peek in to assess the type of person who last drove it. It is really fascinating the type of things people leave behind: toys, receipts, change purses, t-shirts, shoes--most unusual was a single golf club.

We were at Vince's two weeks ago and got a door off of a Firebird. The exterior of the car was in remarkably good shape for a mid-80s vintage car, which told me that the owner took care of it. The interior was pretty bare, except for the home paint job on all the interior hard surfaces (excepting the glass, of course). It was done up to look like granite or stone. That just screamed to me late teens, early twenties young man. Maybe sees himself as creative, artsy. The follow through, however, is a little lacking.

The other car that I looked at was much more interesting. It was a late 90s Dodge Intrepid. In the car there were several discarded scratch-off lottery tickets, empty cigarette packs and animal prints. I found the cigarette packs of great interest--they were foreign. And there were what might have been dog prints all over the inside passenger side door. The prints I think could have been a red herring. Like I said, they could have belonged to a dog, but they might have belonged to a raccoon (they were much longer than a dogs). The cigarettes and lottery tickets made me think that this car was last driven by a recent immigrant, someone who is loyal to the home country, but still looking to make it big here in the States.

I usually don't take anything from the cars--I rarely touch or disturb anything when building the driver's profile. But I broke that rule this last weekend, when we made the trip back there. I hit the mother lode. In a late model Chrysler Lebaron rust bucket (with seriously bald tires), I found a High School assignment book. The car must have been put out of commission the first few weeks of school, since there were only a couple entries. I couldn't resist it, though. I left Vince's with that book nestled in the bucket. I guess it is my own nugget of inestimable or questionable value.

An Introduction . . . and a Good-Bye

Continuing on with introductions . . .

Bobby came to us in 2002. A co-worker of mine had just moved, had three cats--a momma and two youngsters, couldn't keep cats in her new apartment, could I please please take at least one? They were living in her car. Another co-worker agreed to take two, so I finally agreed to take Bobby.
He has been a joy to us. He has the kind of personality that is sometimes so serious it is comical. By far our most emotional cat, his "furrowed brow" has often warned us what kind of mood we can expect from him. His furrowed brow and his tail . . . He has got a magnificent tail. Strong and thick and bold. It would knock things over. I don't know how many times we would find all sorts of things in the bathroom sink, things that got swept there by a Bobby tail. You could actually lift his back end with that tail, and not get a complaint from him. But that tail often was the bane of his existence. Like I said, Bobby could be very emotional. When he got upset, his tail would start swishing, which annoyed him, which would set his tail off more fervently, which annoyed him even more. It was a cycle that would escalate until he was tearing through the house, trying to escape his tail. And often it would involve him turning, grabbing and biting the offence. The first time I saw that happen, I thought he had gone rabid! Poor Bobby!

Bobby died in my arms last night.
He's been sick since Christmas. Severe Renal Failure. It's a mystery how he got so sick. We have been giving him infusions at home several times a week. We were hoping to get him to Spring, so he could get a last taste of warm weather. I am glad we have had a couple warm days lately, so Bobby could go outside for a little while. R got home last evening to find Bobby collapsed on the floor. He held him until I got home. It was obvious to us that his body had already begun shutting down. At about 9:10 last night, he left us.
I can't say anything more about him than I miss him.

Crazy Cat Lady, Chapter Two

Continuing on with the introductions . . .

For about four years we had just the three cats in our house. We had settled into a routine and were pretty happy with how things were going.

In July of 2000, I traveled to NH for a week of visiting with friends. R stayed home to work on some projects. Early in the week, while working outside he heard a strange noise in the woods. He couldn't imagine what kind of creature was making the noise--maybe a bird in distress. He had to go investigate. What he found was a tiny black smudge of a kitten. Reaching out to catch it, the smudge turned around and bit him on the thumb. R hung on, knowing that if he let go he wouldn't get a second chance. He brought the howling dervish into the house to the bathroom. The smudge scooted under the toilet tank and remained there for three days, intermittantly sleeping and howling. By the time that I returned home from NH, Felix had warmed up and calmed down, so when I met him he was playful and engaging. We always say that R caught Felix by the teeth!

Felix's story: The second Christmas that we had Felix, he still was a scamp, getting into all sorts of mischief. I had an old coffee cup that I had brought home from work to wash. It was in a shopping bag on the floor in the corner of the kitchen. I was preparing breakfast. Felix was nosing around. He found the bag and began to investigate. I didn't become alarmed until I saw him stick his head through the bag's handle. At that moment, it seemed like the calm before the storm. I saw disaster happening but was helpless to stop it. I knew that if I rushed at him to remove the bag from his neck, it would spook him. I tried to move slowly towards him, but alas, didn't get there in time. Felix pulled back once and the bag followed him. There was a pause . . . then PANIC! Felix was off, tearing though the house, bag and coffee cup in hot pursuit! It was a neck in neck race for about three laps around the house and then we heard a great shattering noise. All grew quiet as the dust settled. We cautiously searched the reckage. Upstair in the bedroom, we found the tattered remains of the shopping bag, now containing the many pieces of my old coffee cup. No signs of Felix anywhere. After about 15 minutes of searching, we finally found him cowering in the basement. Two hours later he finally emerged, shaken but unharmed.

To be continued . . .

Crazy Cat Lady, Chapter One

First of all, when I started this blog, I was told not to let this all fizzle down to a puddle of mud. I have not been so good at keeping up with it. So I will begin anew with a few introductions.

I indicated in a previous entry that my husband and I have cats. At the risk of sounding, shall I say, eccentric, I will introduce our feline family.

Our oldest is DeeDee. She has been living at this house longer than I have.

Before we were married, I was not a cat person. R was. At the time, Dusty was his feline housemate--a couple of bachelors sharing a pad. R had resigned himself to the idea that after Dusty, he would not have another cat, due to the then disdain that I had for cats. I felt bad about this, so when Dusty died unexpectedly the Spring before we married, I knew I had to get R a cat. A few weeks later, right around his birthday, unbeknownst to me, his mom had brought home a sprout of a kittie as a companion to her own cat--a tough, cranky old bird named Mitzy. Well, that social experiment was a howling failure, quite literally, and R had to intervene. He brought the upstart home, purely as a temporary solution, intending to send her back to her old home. When I got wind of it, I had to convince R that it was already my intention to get him a cat for his birthday. Since he had already bonded with this dainty girl, she may as well stay. That was 13 years ago. The upstart now is DeeDee, queen of the household.

DeeDee's story: Shortly after we were married, one night I was having a vivid dream. I dreamt that R had a nail file and was rubbing my forehead with it. I finally awoke to the realization that DeeDee was licking my forehead. R woke to me yelling out "It's the cat!"

Later on in the year, after we had married, we wanted to get another kitten. R had stopped at our vet's office to ask their advice on another matter, and mentioned that we were hoping to adopt. Well, they pounced on this. They had some kittens available . . . black kittens, siblings, the last of their litter, very cute. R agreed to look at them but wouldn't make a final decision without me. The following day, I stopped by with my mom-in-law to take a look at them. Well, I stood there holding one brother, mom holding the other. The enchantment was complete. They were, to my eye, identical black long-haired kittens. As far as I was concerned, they were a set. Would you buy one shoe, or one glove? And the idea of separating them and leaving one brother behind was impossible. So we have both of them.
Then came the question of what to name them. They were a set, so their names had to be a set. We tried out Amos & Andy, Bert & Ernie, and Gilbert & Sullivan. At the time we were enjoying nightly reruns of the sitcom Home Improvement, so finally Tim & Al it was.

Timmie's Story: The first year after we were married, R was traveling a lot for work. He was usually gone for weeks on end. Being a new bride and in a new home environment, I was suffering a severe case of homesickness and missing my husband. One evening, I was feeling particularly sorry for myself. I was cradling Timmie and crying my lonely heart out. Timmie (our sensitive dreamer) was watching the tears with fascination so much that I ended up laughing despite myself. I felt a whole lot better after that. For some reason, I've always treasured that moment.




Allie's Story: Allie has always been the adventurer of the two. When we first started to let them outside, I would worry for hours while he was gone. One day I heard a commotion down the hill below the house. I could hear turkies in the woods, and I figured that they were having an arguement over something inconsequential, as turkies do. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, I glanced down the hill to see Allie trotting like a prize stallion toward the house. The largest turkey feather clamped in his jaws, like he had plucked it from the bird himself. He was so proud of that thing! Like the Great White Hunter!


To be continued . . .