March 17, 2011
Dear Clusterflock
Little Runt was not a cuddly cat, but he would follow me anywhere. We were a bit of a freak show. I would put on rubber boots and walk through large puddles to demonstrate his odd loyalty. He would pick up his white-socked feet in a dainty way, then boldly jump through the water. I loved him more, even, than his mother Whitey, our first cat, who was named for her snow color.
Little Runt was pure tomcat. He started going on rambles, short in duration at first, then longer. Finally, he just didn’t come home. I couldn’t believe it. I was sure he would show up one day, especially because I kept seeing a “false cat” out of the corner of my eye. Some people believe in animal “guides” from the spirit world. So maybe Little Runt has been here all along. It’s fun to consider.
Were you ever the object of incredible pet devotion?
P.S. The photo just reminds me of Little Runt, the smallest kitten in a litter who grew into a large gray tabby. The photo shows my Chicago sister-in-law’s pet jungle cats.
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I remember a cat who was one of a whole feline household for whom I cared one summer in another Back of Beyond. Lance(lot) was an enormous yellow tom who was devoted to the teen-aged boy of the vacationing household. Would traipse along with the boy on the boy’s rambles over the family’s eleven-acre property. “A Boy and His Cat,” his mother (my friend) would say as she gazed out the window at them.
The summer I looked after the property and the cats . . . well, there was also this pool. And I looked after the pool along with everything else. But I really hate swimming in heavily chlorinated water, and I know that I put less chlorine into the pool than I was instructed to do. The Back of Beyond where the property and its pool sat was in a swampy region, so you can imagine the consequences of just a few days of stinting on the chlorine.
An initially invisible scum of algae.
And then came the frogs.
Who caught caught up in the pool skimmers.
And swirled in them, all bloated and looking like little homunculi.
And so I had to go round with the net and scoop up bloated frogs and fling them into the meadow (to the undoubted delight of the cats and other critters).
At first I felt queasy tending to this duty. But Lance walked along with me as I scooped up the pale, puffy little corpses, and I began to feel his fearlessness, and pretty soon I was not so scared.
Still, I did phone a male human to come over and deal with the frog that just sank to the very bottom of the very middle of the pool and was not sucked into one of the skimmers. The male human dove down and retrieved the frog, surfaced, and flung it out. Then he asked if there were any others. I think he was disappointed to learn that there were not.
I love that the frog diver was disappointed there weren’t more. And if I ever owned a pool, a wonderful idea, I would look into a salt water pool.
The frog diver was grinning when he came up for air. It was the best time he’d had all week, I think. He was all eager to dive for more dead frogs.
Ooh, when you speak of a salt-water pool, do you mean a tide pool or something like?
Lena and I also used to enjoy rambles together, although we each had enough of that introvert-extrovert thing going on that we would break away for a while for our own reasons, then connect up again. In fact, the last time I saw her we were out walking together, and she got all excited over something down in the ravine, where I didn’t want to go and, besides, it was none of my business. So I said, “See you later, girlcat,” and went on my way. My last memory is of her crouching on a rise and peering down intently, just her tail quivering in excitement.
Yes, inground pools. I don’t know enough about the salt water pools to speak about them really. I just have heard people talk about having them instead of traditional chlorine pools. They say it clears up their sinus issues, etc. The following might be what they are talking about, but again, I’m not sure. Here is something I found: “Utilizing ordinary salt, the electrolytic AquaPure cell generates free chlorine for your pool. As the salt in the water passes through the AquaPure cell, it converts to free chlorine and continuously kills bacteria and algae while maintaining the desired sanitization you need to keep your water pure and clean. When the chlorine is finished purifying the pool water, it converts back into salt and the whole cycle repeats.” So you aren’t actually putting chlorine in yourself.
Well, you don’t get your algae in your ocean, so it makes some sense.
Maybe you’d get krill instead. That would be good. I’ve paid good money for those fish oil capsules said to be derived from Arctic krill.
Anyway, I’d rather swim in salt water than in a chlorinated pool.
On the other hand, I think of the scene in Chinatown. Faye Dunaway’s Japanese gardener saying to Jack Nicholson, “Salt water. Velly bad for glass.”
But this takes us further afield from the topic of animal familiars.
Oh. But I do know something that might bring it all back home. Let me go look in the back room.
The Water Snake Story.
That is all.
Cocoa was a dog we adopted from a family I babysat for, they were moving or something. I think she was about two at the time. A pretty mix, they said she was a Shelti-poo but I have no idea what she is. Smarter than any other dog, she picked up hand signals quickly and if I was sitting and she could nose her way under my arm so we were sitting side by side with my arm around her, she would.
I went away to college eventually, and she grew to love my mom wholly. My grandmother has dementia and Alzheimer’s and would wander through the countryside if she managed to get out from under the watchful eye of my mother now and then, and Cocoa would often go with her. No one told me when it happened, I found out a few months later, but a few years ago a pack of pitbulls attacked my grandmother when she was out walking and Cocoa fought them off as best she could until someone saw what was happening and called an ambulance. Cocoa nearly died and my grandmother was physically injured and estimated to have been made about 10% worse by the attacks.
Cocoa isn’t the same after that, she is getting old though and the fact that I am getting to a stage in my life where I am going to lose my dog and my grandmother soon is too much.
I can’t think about any of that directly, I have to look at it from the side, just knowing it’s there.
Oh, Amae. Oh, Cocoa.
Have I told the story of fishing a dead baby ‘possum out of our friends’ pool skimmer?
This, in Michiana Shores, a couple of blocks off the southern tip of the lake itself, at the border of Indiana and Michigan. A resort area. The short story: I was floating on an air mattress, happened to look over at the opening of the skimmer. There was a dark wad bobbing inside it. I slid off the mattress, swam over, got out of the pool. Opened the lid to the skimmer and found a young drowned ‘possum bobbling in the flow inside.
I did the only thing I could think to do. I went inside found a garbage bag, inverted it over my hand and grabbed the corpse. Pulled the bag over it, tied it and set it in the garbage can for the next pick up. I was all like, “Eww, eww, eww,” until it was deposited. I don’t remember thinking the pool was contaminated. In fact, I got back in, mounted the mattress and continued floating until dinnertime.
Oh, and more related. Charlie follows me all over the house when I am at chores. He follows and follows until I finally sit down, then we “belly.” I think he adores me. As I do him.
Sometimes it’s all you can do when confronted by death, Rick.
Charlie is your familiar.
Amae, Coco sounds like a person. I called up photos of shelti-poos. The thought of that sweet dog in mortal combat with a pack of pits saving your gram is almost too much for me to contemplate.
Shelia, that watersnake story, you are a bird.
And Rick, I grew up swimming in blue holes. You don’t want to think about what’s been in those. Spoil your fun. I know you’ve been in them too!
I had a dog I was afraid of at first. He looked like a white German Shepherd. He would not approach me, would stretch out on the floor staring up at me with the saddest eyes, like my fear was hurting his feelings. He protected me through some scary times when I moved to D.C. He got old and sick and in his last days I was crying because I was upset. And for the first time ever, he turned away. I knew that was it. And it was. I’ve never had a pet since.
I can’t talk about this too much, but I had a dog, Emmitt, a beautiful graceful whippet, who would go on run-abouts when we were at the farm, then come up behind me and bump me in the leg with his nose, checking in, then off again.
Carole? Are those true jungle cats or hybrids?
That’s a signature I haven’t heard, Deron, the leg tap greeting. I love to look at whippets.
Shelia, the cats are indeed jungle cats. They are kept as pets, bred and sold for $$$$. I’ll post another photo that I think you will see and think, um, not a domestic cat.
They have those long legs. Like servals.
Deron, much like a couple of dogs I’ve known, not mine. (I’d spent some hours with them at the office.) When I’d see them where they lived, at a party or some such, they’d come up to me, bump into my leg. Kind of like in Avatar, “I see you.” I always touched their faces and looked them in the eyes. Then they’d be off to greet others they knew. Once in a while, as the party wound down, one or the other would come find me sitting with my cocktail, chatting away. They’d sit a while and listen, leaning into my leg.
The cat-move equivalent is known as “bonk.”
Charlie bonks.
I noticed the bonking. Charlie is a bonker.
Cece. I have swum in blue holes. And green rivers. And in the pond/lake at the farm near Telephone, TX. I noodled. (Floated straddling a pool noodle.)
The Red River (Northern border of Oklahoma and Texas) at the time was unswimmable (it was too wide and swollen, running fast). Before we went to CFS I, I had visions of swimming it, until I saw it. The reality was a vast expanse, even beyond the river on the other side.
And Cindy peed in a pot, y’all.
I should have linked, but I am reminiscing too fast to deal with the details.
Danny got our tickets today, we’ll see you end of April.
I know that Red River, Rick. I was born in Wichita Falls and moved to Alabama at age 5. I used to tell people that at night I could see a red river running past the house. We did not live on the river or water. But I was seeing giants back then, too.
I hope the river is swimmable, Rick.
“It was a very dark day and a red river was running past our house.”
“And a monter destroyed the Dangerous Man running beside the red river.”