Haiku #385

yellow cat
walking tenderly
over the briars

Haiku #380

hunger
a cat meets me
after my long day at work

Haiku #361

looking for a book--
cat near the end of its life
passes by the window

Haiku #354

the striped cat
not in his usual place
beside the door

Haiku #352

my cat
looks at me
night owl in the maple

Haiku #331

falling off 
as the cat walks away
a dead summer leaf

Haiku #326

stretches a long time
on its way to the food bowl:
yellow cat

Haiku #309

little butterfly
lights on a cat's tattered ear
summer afternoon

Goodbye, Lolita

Photo taken in late summer. She'd followed me out to the Airstream.

Lolita, a.k.a. Teater-t0ts, a.k.a. Six-Teaters, died today, apparently peacefully in her sleep. We found her atop a sleeping bag in the shop, still soft and still warm. She came to us as a kitten, a stray, so small she slept in my husband's shoe. She's buried in the field, where she loved to walk with us in the evenings.

What We Found

It was getting near sunset this evening when I told Allen I was going to walk the trails in our field. He'd just taken the mower down there and they were fresh-cut. He decided to come along and so did the dogs.

About a third of the way down, we heard Uno, one of our cats wailing, trying to find us. We stopped and called to him and he came bounding to us through the weeds. He's just a beautiful black and white cat. He was just a kitten when we first moved here. We used to walk the field then, too, with his mother, an all black cat, and other strays that we adopted.

I picked Uno up and carried him, which is what he wanted. He frequently follows us to the mailbox for the same purpose. He will keep cutting in front of us until we give him a ride back to the house. He brother, Dozer, was like this, too.

Allen used to pick Dozer up and put him inside the hood of his jacket and carry him that way. Dozer has been dead a long time. He was killed out on our highway. So was their brother, Spotty. Uno and Stinky (his sister) are the only two left of a once-thriving family of cats.

The field is so beautiful right now. The white of the Queen Anne's lace has given way to yellows and purples. Once in a while, during our walk in the field, I'd have to shift Uno from one arm to another, as he's a pretty heavy cat. His claws would dig into me because he thought I was going to put him down. He didn't want that.

We were on the last leg of the trail when I looked down and saw something white, a skull. It was recently cracked, probably by the mower wheel. "What is it?" I asked Allen. But as soon as he turned it over, I knew.

"It's a cat," he said.

Two of ours had disappeared this summer.

Uno jumped from my arms and smelled the skull. Then he sat there next to it, looking. We started walking again but he stayed there. I turned frequently to look back at him. Each time I looked, I saw him sitting completely still, just looking the skull.

One of the cats that disappeared this summer was his mother.

A Writing Place II

Two cats on the pathway leading to the new writing place.

21/50

Another big snowstorm is on its way, Mojo.

On Tuesday night, Allen and I went to Toledo to see The Lion King. The play didn't start until eight p.m., and by mid-afternoon, it was sleeting. The sleet completely covered our windows on one side of the house. We also had to vote in the primary, so we left the house a little after five.

I don't know when I have seen the road conditions so bad. It continued to sleet well into the evening.

We did make it to the play safely. What an amazing experience. I will always remember the man sitting in front of us. He was probably about sixty. He was enthralled as a child becomes enthralled, his hands up to his face, silently clapping.

The tickets were expensive for us, but they were worth every penny.

After the play, we went to the only place we could find open, a bar named Frickers. We ate big fat hamburgers and drank cold beer. I wept because the play was just so beautiful, just so beautiful.

We didn't leave the bar until after two a.m. By then it was snowing. The roads were completely covered. Hardly anyone was out and about. It was like the whole world was asleep or that almost everyone else in the world had vanished. There were no snow crews scraping the roads.

We arrived home and then got stuck in our own driveway.

4/50

Snowy Saturday Morning.

Top photo: My prized contorted hazelnut. I call it my twisty tree.

Bottom: Whatty-woe running towards the house.

I wanted some pictures of the yard before the snow melts today. The tree was one of the first things we planted when we bought our property in 1999. I know the bottom photo is a bad composition, but I like it. It shows the grass stubble poking out of the earth and the vitality of our black cat as she stretches herself to run.

The cat came with the property, too. She was half-wild and had just had a kitten which she was trying to protect and feed although she was skinny and vulnerable herself. She was called the "neighborhood cat" by the people we bought the house from because no one was responsible for her, although people sometimes set out food for her. Now she is part of our family. We called her "Whatty-woe" because we thought she'd already been through a lot of sadness. She's very tame and sweet now. But still has the wild within. The black cat in my novel was inspired by her.

What I Did Today

1. Slept very late.
2. Made coffee and scones.
3. Enjoyed petting my black cat.
4. Watched 3 episodes of The Sopranos.
5. Thought about Emily Dickinson.

My Yard, Three Views. View #2

My cats and crows altar.
My buzzard skull that Allen found and decorated for me.

I collect bones. One of my prizes is a buzzard skull which Allen found and decorated for me. I love the flesh-eating birds, particularly buzzards and crows. I have a little altar to cats and crows in my garden. Allen carved the stone and the crows are just cheap plastic decoys. I can't remember when I first was awakened to the beauty of these glorious birds. Each spring I eagerly look forward to the return of the buzzards. Here on our place Allen and I enjoy watching them circling the sky. The are so graceful in the air. Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes of the transformative powers of the death birds. I just know that when I hear crows my senses become sharper and I feel transported to a different reality. The raptor birds open my imagination.