Le sigh.

 my husband decided to favor me by giving me a new shiny google email account, since neither of us is totally  pleased with our current email provider.  This, you understand, is a man who dislikes google intensely (but uses it daily),  to someone who likes it and uses it daily but never wanted an extra email account. 

Now I have one.  Google tends to swoop up everything on your computer, like a giant vacuum,  and when I came back to the computer I found that Google had become my new email of choice for everything, including Blogger.  Mama ain't happy.   And from past experience I know that short of hitting this thing with a sharp stick and a flame thrower, this will be the email of choice listed at the top of the page.  

If you get the urge to email me, the old email works just fine.  We  just won't tell Google. 

Didn't realize how much stress I was under with Toby,  but apparently whether it's a sick cat or a sick person,  if you have the care of them, it drains  you.  I've had almost no energry for anything all winter and spring. Suddenly it's like someone pulled the bag off my head and I can function again.   

We seem to have segued right into March, here.  It's been no warmer than 50 deg.for a week,  amd I've actually had to run the kitchen stove all week to keep the house up to 65 or 70.  Right now it's raining, and the peonies are so pretty in the fog...

The cats among us

 Today was a hard day:  Toby has been getting thinner and weaker, day by day.  I turned the dining room into a place for him, box near the stove,  litter box,  everything.  For the first time in 11 years he let me  pat him,  even to the point of purring.  All winter he slept by the woodstove in his own cardboard box and fluffy blanket.  

Then he started getting weaker and thinner,  and yesterday was the first day I had been able to pick him up, in eleven years.  And today we went to the vet where they gently put him to sleep.  We buried him out in the garden.  

But when I came in and went looking for Charlie,  I found him viewing me with a huge amount of distrust and serious anger.  He'd have nothing to do with me.  I had taken away his only friend, his bonded buddy.  Right now he's hiding somewhere, he'll have nothing to do with any humans.  

Charlie is one of those cats who seems to have one paw in the human world.  It's eerie.  When I came  home some years back from a kidney operation,  that first night I spent on the recliner, because adhesions.  I looked down to see Charlie marching toward me, (he loves sleeping with his human in the recliner) and I thought, oh no...he generally does the cat ballet, washing all of him and part of me, doing that kick-kick-kick thing that they do, just to get comfy.  At least twice.  But this time he just sat, and inspected the human,  and gently climbed up onto a spot just above my knees,  and slept there for six solid hours.  He knew something was different.  He is bloody psychic.  

And I realized that this was his buddy, his bath buddy, the cat that loved to be groomed, and they would curl up with each other.  In his own way, he's grieving.  I grieve with him.

sometimes all it takes is a definite push

 We have had Toby 11 years,  Charlie about ten, give or take.  For most of those 11 years Toby has been the equivalent of a  RoadRunner cartoon, leaving a wake of fear behind him as he vaults out of any room you enter.  This past winter I realized he was not doing well,  and down to a skeleton with fur.  

I wanted to get him to the vet, but he wasn't having any of THAT nonsense, nossir.  So I did the next best thing;  if I couldn't get him to the vet, I could at least make him comfortable.  Big carton with fluffy pillow, right up by the woodstove.  He liked that.  litter box in the corner of the same room.  he approved.  A new kind of food, one of those two flavor crunch and chew things.  He liked that, too.  Over the winter he  progressed from terror to startled exits when I approached the stove.  Then he just Watched Me carefully as I levered wood into it.  Heat=Human with Wood.  Must rethink.   Then he started napping through the entire process, and now and then I could reach down and scratch his ears.   muffled purring.  

Aha, I thought.  

His only reaction now is still toward the sound of the poker.  He leaves.  I  understand now just why he was the way he was.  If I could find the person who hit that cat for any reason...  

And the past few weeks, when I come down in the morning, he actually trots into the kitchen, tail high,  purring.  He spent most of yesterday on the dining room table, on a chair cushion,  not a foot from where I was working.   I don't know how long he has left,  but he's eating, he seems comfortable, and he's getting the attention he never knew he needed.  

I guess that's all anyone can hope for.

Pastel

 

"hope is the thing with feathers", she said

but love is the thing with wings

that keeps it aloft

long after need, or want, or time

has faded the colors

to muted pastels

and the background

has receded into the fog

love is the destination

and hope, the heart

of the migrating  bird

 

The time will come
when you no longer race for the phone
one less  place is set for dinner
and the dog,
accumstomed to sleeping beside the bed
in an unbreakable habit
with paws firmly planted
just where those missing feet
would strike the floor in the morning
now sleeps on the far side of the blanket
keeping it warm
against that moment when the one who left
finally returns

Toby and Sam

 Almost to the day, 11 years ago,  I brought home two shelter cats, a bonded pair.  I was warned that they had been "brought  back"  which was a fair way of warning me that they might not be easy to manage.  I figured they were about 2 years old, maybe more. 

It was obvious within a week or two that they were utterly terrified of us, even though the other cats were okay.  In under a year Sammy had run away once, and then run away again permanently.  Toby stayed.  I never pushed at him, never tried to shove hin into 'loving' me.  He had cat friends here, and would eventually tolerate brushing, and now and then a slow blink from a safe distance.   

When we got Charlie some years later they bonded immediately, and I think that helped. He still had a friend.  This last fall I noticed Toby was beginning to look like a toast rack with fur,  but he refused to be handled enough even to get him into a carrier for the vet.  So I did the next best thing.  I brought down a litter box, and put it in the dining room, got him some new food,  and made up a big carton with squashy pillows in it, next to the stove.  After a few months he realized that the human wasn't going to throw him out, and he stopped running away the minute I entered the room.  Now he sleeps through Loading the Stove,  or even my walking past him.  I reach down  and talk to him and he allows me to pat his head.  Purring.  Two days running and he has come out to the kitchen in the morning with his tail high and purring,  allowing me to actually scratch between his ears and shoulder blades.  

I looked it up, and this  trainwreck of a cat is 13 years old.  I don't expect too much more time with him, I know he's probably on the way out,  but he's warm and fed and comfortable, and he's still got Charlie as  a buddy.  

Unless I find an elderly cat on the doorstep one day, these will be the last cats I have.  It's been a good run;  50 years,  22 cats,  no regrets.

sad coyote

 

This is utterly haunting. She stood there for the longest time, watching me, never moving.  

I wanted to give her treats and a bowl of water  =)

 It's funny, in  a way:  the older we get,  the more the changing of the seasons and the length of the days matters.  We both look forward with vast anticipation to the clocks changing from winter time to summer time,  and  comment on how much longer the days are getting, as if we had a hand in the entire process.   I also have one firm rule, here:  never ever mention the summer solstice and What It Means.   Bringing up the fact that 'now the days will be getting shorter" is not a good thing.    Maybe in September.  Otherwise it's like telling a four year old that Santa died and there will be no more gifts at Christmas.  

The mister has been down on the driveway all this month,  exercising his Bobcat (the tractor not the animal) and cutting up a huge oak that came down last winter.  Looking at the rings, I'd say it's close to 100 years old.  

This is a happy happy man.  =)  

 

prepositional phase

 

where you are right now
between away and to
 
is not where i am
among the  concerned leaves
down along the  hallways
beside and amidst the parted grass
 
there will never be an after
without the before that came before
no here no there
no way around about or through
without me, without you
 
the perhaps of you and I
has been overtaken by the now
 
why doesnt even enter into it
and that will have to wait for spring
 

 

Universal Gesture

 

she stands at the window

cradling a cup of coffee

in both hands 

something in a minor key

playing on the radio

makes her close her eyes

go quiet inside 

takes a sip of coffee

laced with music

outwaits the song again

"We circle in the night and are consumed by fire".

 

we circle in the night around the fire

are consumed by it

even as we take it in, worship it,

admit our need for warmth

for heat, for nourishment

as the fire feeds us

taking and giving in balance

until we come too close

and that which sustained

reaches out

caresses our hair and our skin

like any lover, pulls us in

and we fall, weeping, into the thing we love

becoming the thing we love

at last

Map

Map

Once you know the way--

where the road makes that sharp left turn

at the corner, and rises 

slowly to the crest of the hill

just where that stand of white pine

waits to shelter you 

from the sun, or the weather

once you reach that point

pause, look back, 

see  how far you've come

and know you're almost home

Mouse and Cat

 several years ago we had an influx (to put it gently) of mice in the kitchen.  every drawer, every open space, was visited, and I spent every morning cleaning out every drawer of their calling cards.  brrr. 

 I have two cats.  

charlie is big and fluffy and his idea of hunting is to catch a mouse and lick it to death.  He thinks they are all squeaky toys and when they no longer squeak he abandons them.  Toby is lithe and quick and loves nothing more than mouse in the morning.  I had noticed at the time that his summer quarters in the front bedroom were regularly dotted with mouse carcasses (carcassi?).   Sure enough during the early winter he began catching a mouse a night, and depositing the leftovers (to be polite) on my husband's side of the bed. Gooood  kitty.  We kept track, and by the end of the winter he had taken out 21 mice.  At least.  I found the mouse nest in the closet (don't ask) and closed up the huge holes in the same closet with cement-in-a-sock.  The mouse invasion stopped for several years. 

Charlie and Toby are now senior cats, and Toby is getting to look more like a toast rack with fur, so I moved his bedding into the dining room, near the stove, and his food, and his litter box.  he is now no longer terrified of me,  just a bit wary.  And the mice have returned.  I've taken to putting down serious mouse traps and have bagged at least ten so far.  Expensive, but effective.    This morning I came down stairs and into the dining room to my laptop, set up on the diningroom table.  When I looked down I saw, to my delight, a half mouse, directly where my foot would be when I sat down.

I am assuming that Toby is thanking me for the new place to sleep, and the new food, and this is his way of  giving back.  And I am honored.  =)

Out and About and various ruminations

 It rained.  Then it snowed. then it snowed more and I realized that summer was probably over and autumn had left us standing at the gate long ago.  The rising sun is now moving slowly back across the heavens in a widening arc,  one day, a few degrees at a time.

Every morning now I see Charlie on the porch on his favorite spot,  keeping a careful eye on the varying groups of turkeys that march by;  sometimes a half dozen, sometimes, like this morning,  well over three dozen,  in a long line, searching the snow for anything  edible.   After they leave he comes in.  They've never in three or four years,  used the part of the driveway that he marked off as His Property.  I suspect it's become a turkey Legend,  the way generations of deer once freaked out at the sight of a small white cat cheerfully galloping toward them.  It was years before they learned to ignore any cat they saw at any distance.  

You kind of wonder how the word is passed along, about the cats, and why they pose such a threat...

Christmas this year was just an extra day,  spent emptying a closet and hunting for an elusive (to be polite) smell which turned out to be from an upstairs drain.  No there will not be film at 11.  =)  The closet needed hoeing out anyway, so it's no wasted effort.  

Burnt a brush pile yesterday,  and two more will go today.  We have finally obtained permission to burn after sunset (which this year will be coming quite early, right after lunch...) and we just hope no one notices until it's too late to do anything about it.  As the saying goes,  'nobody can see you from the road" which gives us a huge amount of leeway  and no nosy neighbors...

Got what must have been the most terrifying email this morning, with our local telephone service threatening to cut off our service if we didn't respond to them.  Lotta questions, and I suddenly got a strange feeling about how much information they actually needed...when it came to "mother's maiden name" and SS number, and then our Visa card number I thought,  this isn't right.  Called the company and they said it's a scam,  you can ignore it.  eeeeeeeee.

I hope and trust everyone had a good if subdued Christmas.  it does look as if this could be the norm for quite some time.  

How I spent my summer (what vacation?)

 16 deg. at dawn

three inches of snow yesterday

In all the excitement yet another tree keeled over,  right across the road.   They just don't make trees like they usta.  One wet summer and a bit of snow, and they just go all to pieces.  This was from last summer,  with his beloved BobCat,  clearing a bigger tree out of the road...

 Cold this morning.  Why does this always come as a surprise?  

Tried to take Toby to the vet this week,  he wasn't eating or drinking and spent most of his time walking (not running) from stove to stove, getting as close as he could.   "Tried" is the key word there.  I have the scars to prove it.  

So, after traumatizing him I decided, hey, I have this appointment... I thought I'd give Charlie a chance at it.  It was two days before he'd stay in the same room with me.  Now the two of them are eating,  grooming each other,  and watching me very carefully.  Toby seems to have forgiven me, but Charlie is still giving me that side eye.    Charlie is claustrophobic.  He won't even sit in an open carton that has more than two sides.  I suspect he may have spent most of his young life confined, and being a sensitive blossom,  never got over it.  

Amazing how totally different every  cat is from every other. 

and in other news,  this woodpile was the stack left over when we filled the shed.  I've been pulling from this  for about a month,  and easily half is gone.  That means the shed is still full and will be less empty come spring...=)

It appears I'm not the only one who has noticed the disappearance of our New Hampshire birds.  Friend emailed me  to ask if I had seen any ruffed grouse lately, and I realized it  had been years.  most of our game birds are totally gone or diminished,  the nighthawks, vultures,  ravens,  even owls and swallows are scarce...

then I read that over three billion birds have disappeared from the country in general, and they are starting to come back, but very slowly.  That is truly scary. 

some things need no words

 https://1drv.ms/v/s!AhkY_Hqk1gwcjQ9F--UCUWMvZ7DN?e=qclq3X

ignore the 'sign up' thing at the top. that seems to take you elsewhere.  

Hope for the future

 In six weeks (more or less) 
 the days begin to lengthen again.
I cling to that.

Bobcat--0, Turkeys--2

 Looked out the window just before sunset and saw a bobcat in the field stalking two very large turkeys.  This must have been a young one,  since no grown bobcat in his right mind would try to attack turkeys  like that.  Either one of those birds would have winged him to death,  but he was determined, and when he lunged they both took off with a great rush of wings and feathers...

And me without the camera. Sigh.

I looked again, and here comes a very large, very annoyed-looking doe, stamping her hooves and snorting at him.  This time he realized, I suspect, that he was indeed outnumbered, and when she went after him,  barking and huffing, he took off into the woods.  I could hear the doe barking all the way, and it sounded like she chased him all the way to the road.

Five minutes later she was in the field again,  and this time with a much younger deer, obviously her mostly grown fawn. 

I suspect the bobcat is somewhere denned up,  trying to figure out what went wrong.  Next time, for sure. 

From time to time I begin to really believe that we are losing to the wildlife.  Works for me  =)

sumbuddy needs a new compass

 

And this morning, while I was outside admiring whatever was out there to admire, I heard one goosely honk, looked up to see three geese flying steadily north,  who then swerved around and flapped their way south as if they meant to do that. So much for inner compasses.