OT: Adopt-a-Cat Month 2010
Reverting briefly to Catsignal’s original province, June is American Humane’s Adopt-A-Cat Month. Yes, this almost couldn’t be posted any later, but any time is a good time to adopt a cat.
The best writers have loved cats. Monica Wood in The Pocket Muse: Ideas and Inspirations for Writing gives us this list of literary cat lovers: T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, Christina Rossetti, John Keats, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Christopher Smart, Marianne Moore, Ernest Hemingway, Oscar Wilde, Doris Lessing, Rita Mae Brown, Carolyn Chute, and Nuala O’Faolain. So if you want to write seriously you should consider adopting a cat.
Wanting to be a good writer isn’t enough, of course. You must determine if a cat is right for you. Go through the checklist and make sure you’re on board.
Bringing a pet into your home must not be a frivolous matter; this is a life you would be trifling with. You must adopt a pet with the firm conviction that it is a lifetime commitment. Determine you will be the best pet lover ever for the whole length of the pet’s life, or don’t do it.
“How we behave toward cats here below determines our status in heaven.”
— Robert A. Heinlein
Protect Your Pets from 4th of July Dangers
Leaning once again on the cat side of catsignal, another big holiday is coming right up. While fireworks and big gatherings can be fun for humans, it’s another story entirely for our companion animals.
As they so often do, the good folks at the Humane Society of the United States have placed the common sense of the subject in terms so plain and firm that all I need to do is link to it and you can read there how to keep your pets safe and happy this Independence Day weekend. Go for it.
Remembering Archie
We are storytelling creatures, we humans. Our sentience notices our mortality and mixes with our fear and so we tell ourselves lots of stories about death.
We tell ourselves that the unjust are eternally punished in either darkness or flame. This is especially popular if the unjust are beyond our reach in this life.
Even more important: to stave off our personal dread of the trip each of us must take alone to Hamlet’s undiscovered country, or to console ourselves that the parting we now make with a loved one is not final, we tell stories about a Valhalla or a Heaven, where we and those we love will yet live and enjoy peace and plenty.
When a beloved pet dies, we may tell ourselves a story about how our furry family member has crossed Rainbow Bridge.
As a storyteller, I could probably come up with something good along these lines. But my stories would be no less wish fulfillment than these others. I am increasingly convinced that the only stories to be told at such a time, the only true stories, are those the mourners hold in still-living memory.
Today, I mourn, and I think this is no time for other stories or for the flights of fancy I create.
The more-than-year-long run of one new piece of fiction a week ends here. Grim, tearful reality now rules as we grieve for a wonderful little dog we knew for almost two years. Perhaps there will be more to say about this later; perhaps the stories I hold of him will work their way into other stories that will then be more true because of the sharing. And perhaps we’ll get back on track next week. For now…
how empty the yard
without him -
our well-loved Archie
The 4th and your pets
Leaning toward the cat side of Catsignal today, I want to remind everyone to take special care of their pets on this holiday.
The ASPCA has a list of things to keep in mind to protect your companion animals as you celebrate. Make it a happy Independence Day for you and your four-footed friends.
And maybe, just maybe, give a little thought to what the Declaration of Independence says about tyranny and the reasons why we formed our own country.
NEKWE
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