Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer....
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects.....
Ceaseless and insistent.
The grasshopper's horn, and far off, high in the maples
The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence,
Under a moon waning and worn and broken,
TIRED WITH SUMMER...............
Let me remember you, voices of little insects,
Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,
Let me remember you,
Soon will the winter be on us....
Snow hushed and heartless...
Over my soul .........................
murmur your mute benediction
While I gaze,
oh fields that rest after harvest...
As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to,
Lest they forget them....
"Indian Summer" by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) (Collected Poems of Sara Teasdale. Introduction by Marya Zaturenska 1966)
"What greater gift than the love of a cat?" --Charles Dickens
Bunny was one of the sweetest cats. We got her as a foster kitten about six years ago. She would sprawl on Morgan's drawings and hold her wrist for ages. Chummy dough thing .
She had this unique feature: Did NOT meow. Had NO meow really. Would bobble her head up ad down, as if telling you "yes". Serene. A Chill cat.
The three of them. A clowder of cats.(Did you know that a group of cats is known as a "clowder"?) Poe. Poo. and of course Bunny Buns. They all had this thing.about Spencer. He would give them regal glances. Then look at them with one of his "Spencer" looks. Hilarious.
Bunny would never admit it, but she had a "thing" for Smokey, Spencer's brother. There was always a door between them. But I was sure it was love at first sight.
Then there's Bunny's Pillow. She dragged it around the house. Only time you would hear a couple of squaks out of her.Like a mother cat carrying her kitten.That pillow was hers,and hers alone. Once, by accident, it got thrown out in the garbage. I made another one. Smothered it in catnip. Bunny never knew the difference.( The things we do for our pets.....)
These past few weeks she stopped dragging around her pillow.......
We lost Bunny yesterday.
It took the vets about a month to find she had a perforated, ulcerated stomach. The lining was hardened. There were so many ulcers that the flesh was dying. Biopsies came back showing she was suffering from a chemical poisoning, from a foreign body.
Some foreign body she ingested. They couldn't tell what.
"A cat has absolute emotional honesty. Human beings , for some reason may hide their feelings. But a cat does not." -Ernest Hemingway
Years before we discovered she had a terrible chewing habit. So we Bunny proofed the house. She had a thing for plastic. We noticed it from the time we brought her home. We had to be vigilant.
Bags, bubble wrap,computer cords especially. All kept locked away from her.
No ribbons, bows, tinsel or anything like that around Christmas. No wrapping paper, cellophane, etc. No plants. No flowers. No tulips,no sweet peas, ( toxic for cats),
"If animals could speak, the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much..." -Mark Twain
But she found something. The Vets were amazing. All trying to save her life. I will be ever grateful to them.
Poe and Poo will miss their friend.Bunny's favourite thing to do was , actually, to go to the vet's for a field trip. She would toddle around the room, and charm the vets and techs alike.She could have been a Vet office cat.
We will miss her yowl when she carried her pillow up the stairs. Some imaginary kitten in her Bunny mind. We all adored her.
Adopt. Give a kitten, or a dog, a forever home!
"Cats choose us. We don't own them." -Kristen Cast
Photographs 2012-2018
I HAVE ALWAYS SAID I WOULD GO
by Glenn Ward Dresbach (1889-1968)
I have always said I would go sometime in the autumn
Away from the bare boughs and the fallen leaves...
Away from the lonely sounds and the faded colours...
And all the ancient sorrow, and change that grieves.
I have always said I would go, and now it's autumn
To an island where the wild hibiscus grows
And parakeets flock to the groves at twilight,
and fragrance drifts from bays where moonlight glows.
But there would be the vast sound of breakers
Come in to toss their pearls upon the sand.
"The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions...a kind look, a heartfelt compliment, and the countless infinitesimals of pleasurable and genial feeling..." Coleridge
All thru the night...a longing of great waters
Trying to make the vastness understand.
I have always said I would go sometime in the autumn
Away from the lonely sounds and change that grieves....
But here in my heart is the sound of a distant ocean
And here in my heart is the sound of these falling leaves.
"I have always said I would go" by G.Ward Dresbach from 1000 beautiful Things collection 1948
Photographs 2018
