Our Lady
11/21/2003 06:44 p.m.
Now that Penny Lane, our cat (our daughter calls "her" cat, but really she's the family's, he he)has more free roam of the house in the daytime with she and I beginning to share more time and space together, (she was mostly in my daughter’s suite of rooms at the back of the house, while the dog was up, since her moved back with Valerie in August, the cat having a brief but scary track record of some vicious moments with the much smaller, deaf and slower-to-move, rarer to win, little dog) I’m experiencing some interesting moments of my own.

She wasn’t wearing her collar and bell the other night, and I was lying on the bed reading Genesis, about the creatures God was putting on earth, and thought I was alone in the room. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move, and then swoosh, Penny Lane jumped up to the bed and I almost fell out in surprise. My nerves weren’t the greatest yet since losing Angel, and it really threw me.

Must find that bell, so I don’t go crazy. But we had a great cuddle after that. She lived away for two years and I got out of practice of what she'd do, and we had to re-acquaint. Every time we visited Montreal, she avoided me and my husband remembering, we think, that the last times we were with her we took her in the car for very long rides sometimes. Val said she was associating us with that, and so stayed under the bed in Val's room there, and sort of stayed estranged on those occasions.


When I was reading on the couch today, she jumped up and stretched across my upper body, taking ownership, and planting me firmly out of the ability to get up and do any work (hey, that's ok) she purred away and brought her face right up to my neck and face. No problem, except I didn’t know I’d requested a massage. She kneads me like a loaf, and if it weren’t that she sometimes forgets about her claws (no we didn’t have them removed) it feels kind of neat.

It’s so cute though, how she presses with one paw (ginger and white) and the other (grey and white) in turn, and it does feel kind of nice, rhythmical. And it’s free. I've talked to her a lot since losing Angel, about things humans might not be ready to hear, or understand.
She seems to. There were lots of times in earlier nights when she and Angel bundled together, and enjoyed one another. And their adventures.

Hearing her motor running in contentment is great too, so positive in the emptier house, as is her fluffy, beautifully-coloured calico coat with fantastic markings. I like the deep shock of black in one check, near her chest, and the ginger on one side, and the grey tabby parts, with all the white contrast.

She’s going on diet food, (she's become a small lynx lately)but now that she’s getting a lot more space than she had in the Montreal apartment, and the whole house to prowl, and her old stairway to command, I think she’ll get more fit. She’s still Our Lady of the Stairway(a poem I’ll post sometime soon) .

There is nothing to me that can compete with the type of love reciprocated between human and beastie. You can just count on their eternal devotion, listening, company, and the esteem they give we flawed humans whether we deserve it or not. They kind of make us Gods to them, when we're really knowing we're so ordinary. It becomes hard to believe we don’t hear their words, there is so much sharing anyway.

When I was standing out the backyard alone yesterday enjoying the sunshine, I turned to the corner window, behind me, (of Val’s bedroom) and there she was, sitting like an ornament (the cat I mean, not my daughter)gazing out with huge green eyes (a lovely green I can’t place right now but sort of pale emerald) at the sun and the yard. She’d love to be outside, but would go snaky and get lost, as she’s no longer an outdoor cat and wouldn’t cope. Nor would we if we lost her now. She has sneaked out the other day when I got the mail, but I retrieved her immediately. Perhaps we’ll start taking her out on a rope like we used to, and even tie her to Angel’s dog house, make some use of it, but we’d be right there. There are too many cats running loose in the neighborhood, and I’ve seen too many catfights. My nerves right now aren’t up to it.

Anyway, I think a bundle of warm animal life jumping up on me, forgetting her claws a bit, and digging in, even by surprise, as if a ghost, is a treat right now. Is that masochistic? No, it's the joy of feeling life around you! And that’s precious.

Am I crazy?


I am currently Bemused
I am listening to oldies tunes