8:30 Christmas morning
Get out of bed
and squeeze the oranges for mimosas
that bubbleth over
Ball up the newspapers
Pile on the kindling
and a couple logs in the fireplace
Start a nice small blaze
Presents first
Mutts by McDonnell
Amphigorey Again
Lindsey’s Playboy
and a Kindle
new Tom Waits and Gyllian Welch
paint a lovely picture to get lost in
Then the cream cheese and lox
on toasted bagels from Blocks
that crunch just before melting
in your mouth
The laptop says Patty Cake is open
and the Sticky Buns you forgot
might still be had
with a walk down the quiet ravine
on a crisp sunny morning
On the way back
sample the molasses cookie
Return for french-pressed coffee
and warm frosted pastry
Remember all those
with whom we shared this morning
in the past
exchanging smiles and gentle touches
in the warmth of our home
and searched for a peaceful happy moment
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
I Wonder What Prince Valiant Has Been Up To Lately
As part of my personal financial austerity program, I regretfully canceled my weekend subscription to The Columbus Dispatch. I might be tempted to use the trendy excuse that I get my news and opinion digitally these days (is WCBE digital?) but that has been true for a long time. The fact is the newspaper never served to keep me abreast of current events or provide much in the way of in-depth coverage or intellectual enlightenment. I primarily used it to satisfy a more basic hunger for the plebeian entertainment found in the sports section and the funnies. Reading the softly lit online version of their Buckeye coverage feeds my appetite for spiritual intimacy with the team but I miss the comforting sensory experience of the traditional weekend morning spent settling in on the couch and maneuvering large sheets of crinkling newsprint that waft through the air like wings when the pages turn and end up falling like leaves collecting in piles on the floor and the furniture, scattering the den with headlines and photos echoing the exploits of my champions.
There was also a very practical secondary use that was part of my recycling efforts. One of my cats, Muffy, aka Muffah, is a surly old girl who does things her way and using a litter box is just not her style. She does show me the courtesy of consistently using the same general area of the floor enabling me to keep it covered in recyclable material. While Muffy’s lavatory literary selections usually consisted of the mundane black and white sections of the paper, I kept the colorful pages in my bathroom where I rationed consumption of the strips, like hoarded Halloween candy, to be savored throughout the week.
Not that the Dispatch offers a great selection of periodical humor. If Bloom County was still in there, I would never have canceled my subscription. Doonesbury has always been well-written, masterfully illustrated and precociously liberal for such a conservative rag. Foxtrot was my favorite new strip with powerful, simple lines, bold blocks of color and a topical narrative about a commonplace American family that was wickedly smart. 9 Chickweed Lane had a whimsical weirdness factor but I was more attracted to its very soft-core porn whose proximity to the Family Circus always amazed me. As for the rest, I enjoyed the art and humor in some while others just provided mindless reading material to pass time as I occupied the throne.
I’ve been reading the comics in the Dispatch for fifty years probably. Some great ones have come and gone like Li’l Abner and Calvin and Hobbes. Fortunately, editors were smart enough to reprint classic Peanuts. Some of the strips grudgingly keep going, impervious to the passage of time like Blondie, Beetle Bailey and, one I just started reading a few years ago, Prince Valiant. I’m not sure what kept me from spending time with Prince Valiant earlier. Maybe its realistic style seemed sloppy to me, maybe the subject matter seemed too uncomical. Once I started reading it, however, I got hooked on the momentum of its never-ending story, an epic that began 3,700 weekends ago, according to Wikipedia. In the early days, apparently, the Prince did some aging but the passage of time seems to have slowed to a crawl. Valiant is as much of a bad ass as ever and Queen Aleta stays youthfully beautiful without the help of plastic surgery. Over and over Prince Valiant bravely meets the most dire challenges and barely emerges victorious to fight another Sunday. There is no quitting, no changing, no defeat. As the colorful life of the funnies rolls on, now without me, I find myself wondering what Prince Valiant has been up to lately.
There was also a very practical secondary use that was part of my recycling efforts. One of my cats, Muffy, aka Muffah, is a surly old girl who does things her way and using a litter box is just not her style. She does show me the courtesy of consistently using the same general area of the floor enabling me to keep it covered in recyclable material. While Muffy’s lavatory literary selections usually consisted of the mundane black and white sections of the paper, I kept the colorful pages in my bathroom where I rationed consumption of the strips, like hoarded Halloween candy, to be savored throughout the week.
Not that the Dispatch offers a great selection of periodical humor. If Bloom County was still in there, I would never have canceled my subscription. Doonesbury has always been well-written, masterfully illustrated and precociously liberal for such a conservative rag. Foxtrot was my favorite new strip with powerful, simple lines, bold blocks of color and a topical narrative about a commonplace American family that was wickedly smart. 9 Chickweed Lane had a whimsical weirdness factor but I was more attracted to its very soft-core porn whose proximity to the Family Circus always amazed me. As for the rest, I enjoyed the art and humor in some while others just provided mindless reading material to pass time as I occupied the throne.
I’ve been reading the comics in the Dispatch for fifty years probably. Some great ones have come and gone like Li’l Abner and Calvin and Hobbes. Fortunately, editors were smart enough to reprint classic Peanuts. Some of the strips grudgingly keep going, impervious to the passage of time like Blondie, Beetle Bailey and, one I just started reading a few years ago, Prince Valiant. I’m not sure what kept me from spending time with Prince Valiant earlier. Maybe its realistic style seemed sloppy to me, maybe the subject matter seemed too uncomical. Once I started reading it, however, I got hooked on the momentum of its never-ending story, an epic that began 3,700 weekends ago, according to Wikipedia. In the early days, apparently, the Prince did some aging but the passage of time seems to have slowed to a crawl. Valiant is as much of a bad ass as ever and Queen Aleta stays youthfully beautiful without the help of plastic surgery. Over and over Prince Valiant bravely meets the most dire challenges and barely emerges victorious to fight another Sunday. There is no quitting, no changing, no defeat. As the colorful life of the funnies rolls on, now without me, I find myself wondering what Prince Valiant has been up to lately.
Friday, September 30, 2011
The Mystery of the Blue Suede Boots
After spending half of the lovely first Sunday of Fall inside my cave watching football, I felt obliged to go outside and take a walk in the balmy air that seemed not to want to let go of Summer. It turned into one of those walks you take by yourself sometimes to figure out where you’re going and what you want to do with your life. The daylight wore the clouds like a gray sweater it didn’t need after all. Kicking through the season’s incipient layer of leaves in the street, I noticed a few splashes of red, orange and yellow, the stigmata of the autumnal equinox. As I descended into the cooler atmosphere of the shady ravine, I imagined risking a new start and sidestepping the March of Time. But before I could break away from the path I was on, I needed to solve the mystery that had held me in such excruciating suspense for so long. I had to know why The Girlfriend never came home.
When I’m walking or bike riding down the ravine, I usually have to remind myself to keep my head up and enjoy the scenic view of this sylvan corridor instead of focusing on the the wildly irregular surface of the patched and potholed asphalt. However, no amount of innate concern for my personal safety could have prevented me from noticing the incongruous presence of two cornflower blue suede, high-heeled half-boots sitting in the glade between the road and the rocky bank of the creek, barely hidden by a lace veil of leaves. Their intensely colored skin and flamboyant design brazenly called out from the quiet woodland browns and greens. It was as if two pieces of sky had fallen to Earth.
I wondered what the story was behind this oddly conceived still-life. I assumed that a woman had purposely set them there because they were standing next to each other, carefully aligned side by side, the way they might be neatly stored on the floor of her closet. She hadn’t just tossed them away like the various forms of debris thoughtlessly strewn along this precious thoroughfare. It was unlikely that she had forgotten about them. On her way out, the rough terrain under her bare feet would have reminded her. She had probably placed them there temporarily with the intent of retrieving them upon the completion of an adventure in which boots could not play a part. That plan had apparently gone awry in a manner so serious and unforeseen as to cause her to reject her need for their comfort, endure the pain of an unfettered retreat and abandon a once-cherished item of her wardrobe.
All that remained for the inquisitive passerby was the silent image of a lonely pair of boots, empty of their human companion, unable to follow her, unable to move forward and no explanation to be found.
When I’m walking or bike riding down the ravine, I usually have to remind myself to keep my head up and enjoy the scenic view of this sylvan corridor instead of focusing on the the wildly irregular surface of the patched and potholed asphalt. However, no amount of innate concern for my personal safety could have prevented me from noticing the incongruous presence of two cornflower blue suede, high-heeled half-boots sitting in the glade between the road and the rocky bank of the creek, barely hidden by a lace veil of leaves. Their intensely colored skin and flamboyant design brazenly called out from the quiet woodland browns and greens. It was as if two pieces of sky had fallen to Earth.
I wondered what the story was behind this oddly conceived still-life. I assumed that a woman had purposely set them there because they were standing next to each other, carefully aligned side by side, the way they might be neatly stored on the floor of her closet. She hadn’t just tossed them away like the various forms of debris thoughtlessly strewn along this precious thoroughfare. It was unlikely that she had forgotten about them. On her way out, the rough terrain under her bare feet would have reminded her. She had probably placed them there temporarily with the intent of retrieving them upon the completion of an adventure in which boots could not play a part. That plan had apparently gone awry in a manner so serious and unforeseen as to cause her to reject her need for their comfort, endure the pain of an unfettered retreat and abandon a once-cherished item of her wardrobe.
All that remained for the inquisitive passerby was the silent image of a lonely pair of boots, empty of their human companion, unable to follow her, unable to move forward and no explanation to be found.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
The Visit
My son, Ruyd, would have been 36 years old today. I visited the pecan tree in Goodale Park that was planted with some of his ashes. Over the past nine years it has grown tall and broad creating another oasis for Comfesters seeking shade near the Main Stage. There’s a little bronze plaque installed at the base illustrated with the small relief of a squirrel holding an acorn. Ruyd always had a thing for squirrels. A couple splotches of guano had landed on the metal and I cleaned them off with spit on my fingertips. On previous trips, I would talk to the spirit I imagined inhabiting the tree. Today, I was silent, remembering a recent radio discussion of the poem “On The Nature Of Things” by Lucretius and his revolutionary idea, for a Roman, that death is the end of a person. There is no one there to talk to anymore. The living are left with only memories. So I just stood there and gazed at the thick trunk and the profusion of thin green leaves.
Suddenly, a squirrel descended from the branches above. His headfirst scramble froze right in front of me as he clung to the rough bark of the trunk, seeming to defy gravity, with his tail flicking in the air above his head that was cocked up to allow his big eyes to look straight into mine. He stayed in that precarious position for what seemed an extraordinary amount of time considering how close he was to me. He showed no fear of me. On the contrary, he seemed mesmerized by me. I stood still and silent, meeting his stare, returning whatever effort he was making to connect with me. And then, I smiled.
Suddenly, a squirrel descended from the branches above. His headfirst scramble froze right in front of me as he clung to the rough bark of the trunk, seeming to defy gravity, with his tail flicking in the air above his head that was cocked up to allow his big eyes to look straight into mine. He stayed in that precarious position for what seemed an extraordinary amount of time considering how close he was to me. He showed no fear of me. On the contrary, he seemed mesmerized by me. I stood still and silent, meeting his stare, returning whatever effort he was making to connect with me. And then, I smiled.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Risky Behavior
As the days of our lives turn into the years of our lives, the building blocks of the passage of time are made up of patterns, habits and repetition. When we look back, we see the highlights decorating our personal history with memories of special events and unique experiences. but like trophies, framed pictures and art objects, they merely adorn the mantel of the fireplace built with identical bricks and mundane mortar. My mornings are filled with rituals and routines. Most weekdays I wake up and exercise on my stationary bike or, weather permitting, take a real bike ride on the Olentangy Trail. If I take the trail south, I always look for the white heron standing in the wetlands. If I go north, on my return I will detour through the prairie wildflower preserve.
Each morning I have to be in Court, I must walk through a metal detector. During my wayward youth, I developed a survival instinct triggered by the presence of law enforcement that assesses my vulnerability to being arrested by doing a mental scan of my physical circumstances. There must have been hundreds of times as I approached the courthouse checkpoint that I questioned whether I might be carrying some contraband paraphernalia and imagining the consequences of it being discovered if I set off the alarm. This morning, I was going through my usual self-inventory as I walked up to the x-ray machine conveyer belt when my fingertips detected the slender wooden box housing the metal mock cigarette that I had picked up off the bedroom end table and pocketed with the intent of returning it to the den before I left the house. Depending on my short-term memory is always risky behavior and now the dangerous situation I had imagined so often was upon me.
I flashed back to the image I had seen just minutes earlier outside the courthouse of a handcuffed, barefooted man in a white tee shirt and what looked like black boxer shorts being escorted by a sheriff down the sidewalk towards the back entrance to the jail. I had wondered how he came to be transported in such a state of undress. Had the cops rousted him out of bed to execute a warrant for his arrest or had he rushed outside chasing after someone in a fit of passion during a domestic dispute?
Even though I had often considered the possibility of finding myself in this predicament, I had never formulated a plan to deal with it. Without looking directly at them, I knew there were usually four or five security officers staffing the station and that I was likely being observed. They see me walk through there almost daily so I was trying to maintain my normal flow of activity by placing my bag and the tray with my phone and keys on the belt while frantically calculating my options. I let my belongings pass through the x-ray and then made a momentary retreat around the corner to think. I realized I was now acting suspiciously and the “flight or fight” response hormones were coursing through my body. I had an unusually busy schedule that required me to be in three different courtrooms so I had been particularly focused on being punctual that morning. Weighing the gravity of my responsibility to clients, opposing counsel and the Court against the inconvenience and the perversely anomalous nature of just abandoning my entrance in midstream and returning to my office, I allowed myself to be swept away by the momentum of my familiar pattern of behavior, braving the dangerous rapids of the magnetometer.
Each morning I have to be in Court, I must walk through a metal detector. During my wayward youth, I developed a survival instinct triggered by the presence of law enforcement that assesses my vulnerability to being arrested by doing a mental scan of my physical circumstances. There must have been hundreds of times as I approached the courthouse checkpoint that I questioned whether I might be carrying some contraband paraphernalia and imagining the consequences of it being discovered if I set off the alarm. This morning, I was going through my usual self-inventory as I walked up to the x-ray machine conveyer belt when my fingertips detected the slender wooden box housing the metal mock cigarette that I had picked up off the bedroom end table and pocketed with the intent of returning it to the den before I left the house. Depending on my short-term memory is always risky behavior and now the dangerous situation I had imagined so often was upon me.
I flashed back to the image I had seen just minutes earlier outside the courthouse of a handcuffed, barefooted man in a white tee shirt and what looked like black boxer shorts being escorted by a sheriff down the sidewalk towards the back entrance to the jail. I had wondered how he came to be transported in such a state of undress. Had the cops rousted him out of bed to execute a warrant for his arrest or had he rushed outside chasing after someone in a fit of passion during a domestic dispute?
Even though I had often considered the possibility of finding myself in this predicament, I had never formulated a plan to deal with it. Without looking directly at them, I knew there were usually four or five security officers staffing the station and that I was likely being observed. They see me walk through there almost daily so I was trying to maintain my normal flow of activity by placing my bag and the tray with my phone and keys on the belt while frantically calculating my options. I let my belongings pass through the x-ray and then made a momentary retreat around the corner to think. I realized I was now acting suspiciously and the “flight or fight” response hormones were coursing through my body. I had an unusually busy schedule that required me to be in three different courtrooms so I had been particularly focused on being punctual that morning. Weighing the gravity of my responsibility to clients, opposing counsel and the Court against the inconvenience and the perversely anomalous nature of just abandoning my entrance in midstream and returning to my office, I allowed myself to be swept away by the momentum of my familiar pattern of behavior, braving the dangerous rapids of the magnetometer.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Still Smilin'
The summer usually feels like an endless death march through a hot arid desert devoid of any of the life-sustaining nourishment and hydration, the intellectual and emotional pap if you will, that is otherwise provided the remainder of the year by the vicarious thrills I experience living on the edge of disaster, celebrating victory and agonizing over defeat as I watch the slowly unfolding drama of my favorite teams’ seasons of football and basketball. A truly uncivilized time of the year when one is actually left with no other option than to venture outside into the brutal nuclear light, cutting one’s own electrical umbilical cord, abandoning the mind-clearing sterility of pristine cold conditioned air for the profane breezes corrupted by inapprehensible earthly ingredients, replacing the gorgeously colorful, focus-group-approved digital images with the stark green reality of wild trees and untamed grass and weeds and the shimmering waters whose cool refreshment beckons you like a Siren to immerse yourself and feel the visceral relief of a suicidal plunge into aquatic madness and dissolution.
It is only every four years that I’m able to find some some blessed relief in the comforting growth of anxiety and apprehension that comes with the early stages of a presidential campaign when some measure of sanity is restored to the womb of my darkened cave, illuminated only by the flickering images of talking heads as I hang on the results of the endless stream of each new poll. Thank God for my deliverance from the soul-killing, existential boredom of this off-year election by the divinely-timed confluence of the rise to power of the Tea Party and the expiration of the debt ceiling. Little could I imagine that the results of the 2010 election would rain down like manna from heaven to relieve the stifling heat dome of 2011. Just as Moses raised his arms and parted the waters of the Red Sea, the Republicans have, with the same biblical majesty, overreached and used their power to reveal the deep chasm that exists between progressives and conservatives and a clear path to the Promised Land between towering walls of massive economic destruction.
The current countdown to ecstasy has been a deliciously painful and torturously slow crawl on our hands and knees toward our dominatrix who will eventually determine our credit-worthiness as we beg for her to tighten our bonds. The ultimate denouement of our unknown, yet inevitable punishment still awaits us just a few tantalizing days away. But tonight, I was rewarded for my for my slavish attention to every unfolding minute of congressional pornographic pageantry as I let fly a righteously satisfying exclamation of glee upon learning that Speaker Boehner had suffered a humiliating spanking at the hands of his own party, like an insane snake thrusting its fangs into its own body. It is a moment like this, standing on the precipice, seeing, in the near distance, the voluntary and self-induced dismantling of our way of life with misery, deprivation and increased suffering in the future of so many, where chaos and reverberating recriminations will fill the air, as our nation and world decline into a nightmare scenario where the fragile framework of our interconnected stability begins a slow-motion crash into dystopia, as we turn our heaven into hell, for this moment, I realize how glorious it is to still be able to smile.
It is only every four years that I’m able to find some some blessed relief in the comforting growth of anxiety and apprehension that comes with the early stages of a presidential campaign when some measure of sanity is restored to the womb of my darkened cave, illuminated only by the flickering images of talking heads as I hang on the results of the endless stream of each new poll. Thank God for my deliverance from the soul-killing, existential boredom of this off-year election by the divinely-timed confluence of the rise to power of the Tea Party and the expiration of the debt ceiling. Little could I imagine that the results of the 2010 election would rain down like manna from heaven to relieve the stifling heat dome of 2011. Just as Moses raised his arms and parted the waters of the Red Sea, the Republicans have, with the same biblical majesty, overreached and used their power to reveal the deep chasm that exists between progressives and conservatives and a clear path to the Promised Land between towering walls of massive economic destruction.
The current countdown to ecstasy has been a deliciously painful and torturously slow crawl on our hands and knees toward our dominatrix who will eventually determine our credit-worthiness as we beg for her to tighten our bonds. The ultimate denouement of our unknown, yet inevitable punishment still awaits us just a few tantalizing days away. But tonight, I was rewarded for my for my slavish attention to every unfolding minute of congressional pornographic pageantry as I let fly a righteously satisfying exclamation of glee upon learning that Speaker Boehner had suffered a humiliating spanking at the hands of his own party, like an insane snake thrusting its fangs into its own body. It is a moment like this, standing on the precipice, seeing, in the near distance, the voluntary and self-induced dismantling of our way of life with misery, deprivation and increased suffering in the future of so many, where chaos and reverberating recriminations will fill the air, as our nation and world decline into a nightmare scenario where the fragile framework of our interconnected stability begins a slow-motion crash into dystopia, as we turn our heaven into hell, for this moment, I realize how glorious it is to still be able to smile.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
The Cat That Didn't Come Home
I allow my cats to do as they please. If they want to come in, I let them in, if they want to go out, I let them out. I whistle and call for them when its time to eat and before I lock up at night. They don’t always respond to my invitations. They tend to hang around within earshot but they also venture out into our quiet little neighborhood. I noticed that my old Norwegian skowcat, Weiner, hadn’t been around for a couple days so I got on my bike and looked around in the direction I had often seen him heading, toward the next street parallel to mine. I knew there were some neighbors over there who had a reputation for feeding strays and that is where I found him, lying in the sun on their little concrete porch beside a paper plate filled with dry cat food.
I was quite relieved I’d found him. I called him and he came to me, yowling in recognition. I carried him home, which he didn’t appreciate, fed him and let him back out whereupon he immediately ran away. I wasn’t sure he would return to the neighbors and regretted not putting a collar on him with an ID tag. Years ago, someone found and returned one with my info by hanging it on my front door handle. It hung there for years, a ghostly reminder of the long gone cat who had eschewed it. The next day I walked back over to the neighbors and there he was, perched on the porch. I brought him home again and put the collar on him leaving him none too pleased. He bolted as soon as I let him out of my grasp.
At this point, I started to get the message. He had relocated and if I wanted to see him, I would have to visit him there. Nothing had changed or happened at home that I knew of to make him want to stay away. The neighbors told me that he and my other cats had been visiting and dining at their place for years. For some reason, his usual habit of returning home was now forgotten or rejected.
I began to make the short walk around the block to spend time with him on a daily basis thinking that I needed to regain his trust. It soon became evident that he was willing to continue to accept my affection but only within the framework of a long distance relationship. A routine developed in which I walk up the yard to the the front porch, he utters a little cry and gets up to greet me. I either sit on the porch with him or in the grass if he has been seeking shade by the side of the house. I scratch him and pet him as he winds his way around allowing me to get at different angles and areas that need attention and insistently nuzzles my hand if he’s not getting enough. Then after five or ten minutes, I get up and walk away. When I turn around, I usually see him contentedly preening himself, apparently unmoved by my departure, much less inspired to follow me home.
Its been a couple weeks now and my regular efforts at professing my unwavering commitment to him haven’t yielded so much as one return visit. I’m sure he remembers the way home, he obviously had been traveling it back and forth for years. I guess he’s just not impressed with my refusal to give up on him in the face of rejection or he mistakes my understanding approach for acceptance of his decision to make a change. I realize that cats make changes in their routines and the places they like to hang out but this one seems pretty extreme.
It has led me to contemplate the possibility that maybe he’s no longer my cat, that if I quit visiting him, he might be just fine with that. He’s been my cat for about 15 years. When we were living in Grandview, the Girlfriend brought him home from a family down the street that was moving and couldn’t keep him. I’ve taken good care of him and spent many hours loving him and sharing the couch and bed. When all of my cats would stake out their positions atop my supine body, he always occupied the furrow between my shins. In the last few years, I’ve watched two of my cats expire and suffered the disappearance of another one. Those losses were painful but seemed to be in the natural course of things. It is harder to accept that a pet I have loved so long and who seemed to return my affection could make a decision to leave and stay away without any apparent explanation. I still plan on visiting and can't imagine just giving up. When the door hasn’t been shut, hope keeps Love walking around the block.
I was quite relieved I’d found him. I called him and he came to me, yowling in recognition. I carried him home, which he didn’t appreciate, fed him and let him back out whereupon he immediately ran away. I wasn’t sure he would return to the neighbors and regretted not putting a collar on him with an ID tag. Years ago, someone found and returned one with my info by hanging it on my front door handle. It hung there for years, a ghostly reminder of the long gone cat who had eschewed it. The next day I walked back over to the neighbors and there he was, perched on the porch. I brought him home again and put the collar on him leaving him none too pleased. He bolted as soon as I let him out of my grasp.
At this point, I started to get the message. He had relocated and if I wanted to see him, I would have to visit him there. Nothing had changed or happened at home that I knew of to make him want to stay away. The neighbors told me that he and my other cats had been visiting and dining at their place for years. For some reason, his usual habit of returning home was now forgotten or rejected.
I began to make the short walk around the block to spend time with him on a daily basis thinking that I needed to regain his trust. It soon became evident that he was willing to continue to accept my affection but only within the framework of a long distance relationship. A routine developed in which I walk up the yard to the the front porch, he utters a little cry and gets up to greet me. I either sit on the porch with him or in the grass if he has been seeking shade by the side of the house. I scratch him and pet him as he winds his way around allowing me to get at different angles and areas that need attention and insistently nuzzles my hand if he’s not getting enough. Then after five or ten minutes, I get up and walk away. When I turn around, I usually see him contentedly preening himself, apparently unmoved by my departure, much less inspired to follow me home.
Its been a couple weeks now and my regular efforts at professing my unwavering commitment to him haven’t yielded so much as one return visit. I’m sure he remembers the way home, he obviously had been traveling it back and forth for years. I guess he’s just not impressed with my refusal to give up on him in the face of rejection or he mistakes my understanding approach for acceptance of his decision to make a change. I realize that cats make changes in their routines and the places they like to hang out but this one seems pretty extreme.
It has led me to contemplate the possibility that maybe he’s no longer my cat, that if I quit visiting him, he might be just fine with that. He’s been my cat for about 15 years. When we were living in Grandview, the Girlfriend brought him home from a family down the street that was moving and couldn’t keep him. I’ve taken good care of him and spent many hours loving him and sharing the couch and bed. When all of my cats would stake out their positions atop my supine body, he always occupied the furrow between my shins. In the last few years, I’ve watched two of my cats expire and suffered the disappearance of another one. Those losses were painful but seemed to be in the natural course of things. It is harder to accept that a pet I have loved so long and who seemed to return my affection could make a decision to leave and stay away without any apparent explanation. I still plan on visiting and can't imagine just giving up. When the door hasn’t been shut, hope keeps Love walking around the block.
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