Tidbits VI

by Donna Schoenkopf

Rosie the Runaway

As you probably already know, Rosie the Cat has left home. This time it may be forever. She much prefers Orval the Neighbor’s house to mine. Mine with the Killer Dogs.

She’s been there since before Che the Cat lost his leg, which is at least two months now, but who’s counting?

Orval has a 4300 square foot house. He bought it twenty years ago from the bank. It was repossessed from the owner who had rented it out to some guys who used it as a marijuana grow house. Orval said it was a mess when he got it.

Orval and Shirley are great. I love them. They have kind hearts. They have handmade birdhouses all over their forty acres. Orval feeds the raccoons every night out his front door. Strews dog food on his patio. There are about fifteen or twenty of the little guys, according to Shirley.

Rosie the Cat

Orval the Neighbor

Orval keeps his eye out for Rosie. He gives me updates when we cross paths on the county road. He said he saw her yesterday, lying in the sun, watching him feed his heifers.

This seems to be the most relaxed she has been since she ran away from home. Am I unselfish enough to let her go? She really likes it at Orval’s house, or else I’m sure she’d come home. Or maybe she just can’t get through those dogs who are always on patrol, guarding me and the territory against all small, furry animals.

But I do feed her almost every day. Not in snowstorms or in heavy rains, but all other days.

Some days, if Orval’s steep and rutted (by the last blizzard) driveway isn’t too muddy, I drive up, hearing the undercarriage of my car scrape lightly against the tallest mounds of dried clay.

Sometimes I park my car below his drive, on the county road, and walk up, picking my way through the mud and puddles and squishy grass, holding the bowl of cat food in one hand.

Sometimes I walk all the way from my house to Orval’s, carrying the bowl. I put Diego the Dog in the bathroom, for safety’s sake.

When I get to Orval’s work yard I start my serenade to Rosie. I call her using all her favorite words ... Rosie? Wanna eat? Are you hungry? What a good girl. Rosalina? Where are you?

I sing and sing. And never a reply. I leave the bowl, full of canned and dry food, filled almost to the brim, under the right rear tire of Orval’s defunct pickup. I have finally established a permanent place.

I have never had a reply until two days ago. I began my singing and in the distance I heard a meow. And it got closer. And it was continuous. She was meowing with all her heart. Calling to me, letting me know she was there.

I was filled with joyous love.

I kept talking/singing to her and carefully, slowly, she emerged from the scrabble of the winter undergrowth of scrubby oaks and dried weeds. She blended perfectly with her surroundings. My little camouflage cat.

She is so small and sweet and dear.

I put the bowl of food down and went and stood about fifteen feet away. She stealthily came up to the bowl, eyeing me for any quick movements, and began devouring the food, pausing only now and then to take a quick look at me.

I talked to her. Over and over. I didn’t move. She will probably never trust me again to come near after the last time I captured her. (She had come to eat out of the bowl and I grabbed her and held on for dear life while she clawed my arms and hands and even got a swipe in on my face. She lasted a couple of months back at my house until she just couldn’t take those dogs anymore.)

So I am beginning to let her be. My heart fills with longing as I think about her alone, with the raccoons, lying in the sun watching Orval feed his heifers.

But she is happy. I think. In any event, there is nothing else I can do.

I wonder how long I’ll go to Orval’s to feed her.

Angela Davis the Dog is Gone

Angela Davis has gone back to her “real” house. She has gone there to have her puppies. The word is that she’s had seven of the little darlings. Awwwww.

Listening Machines

All of you who have dogs or cats know that the sound that gets absolute attention from dogs and cats is the sound of their food preparation.

In my dog’s and cat’s cases, it is the sound of the peel-off top of the cat food can. Che the Cat is in his three-legged tiptoe pose and Diego the Dog is smiling and wagging his tail.

Diego doesn’t get official canned cat food, but he sometimes weasels the can out of the trash to lick it clean. Don’t worry. The edges aren’t sharp.

Pretty Outside

Even though I’ve been thoroughly beat up by the last freeze/blizzard with having eight days of an icy cold and dark house, I can appreciate the beauty of the TWO snowfalls we’ve had this past week.

And, folks, it IS global warming. Climate change is a consequence of global warming. Look it up, for crying out loud. The whole “argument” is really getting my goat. Because there IS NO ARGUMENT worth its salt. Let’s get with it, people!

Threadbare Towels

I happen to love threadbare towels. They are WAAAAAY more absorbent than those thick, expensive kind. It so happens that Dear Carole also loves them. And one day, years ago, we laughed about our proclivity for them.

Then, when I was packing up for my gigantic (in every way) move from California to Oklahoma, she gave me a present. (She gives presents ALL the time. She knows the power of presents.) It was her favorite threadbare towel. I laughed and cried when I got it. It was a pretty towel in its day. It’s pale blue and lavender, some bits of pale green, and a little white here and there, all flowery and sweet.

This past month Jimmy was arguing with me about communism and how bad it is and how Croatia (a formerly Stalinist Communist country that he had visited a few months ago) was nice and all, but they had NOTHING, not even a decent towel. The towels were all threadbare.

So (forgive me Carole, it was for a greater good) I rolled up the threadbare towel, tied it with a pale lavender straw bow, attached a handmade card telling dear Jim about Carole’s and my connection to threadbare towels and left it on his doorstep.

He wrote me a very sweet thank-you note.

Killing the Cat

Two days ago I saw Diego shaking, throwing, running around what appeared to be Che the Cat out in the woods to the east of me. I ran out the door, yelling, heart pounding in my chest.

Diego happily wagged his tail and danced around me as I ran up to the motionless white and orange heap on the ground.

It was a pile of stuffing from the long-defunct lawn furniture of Neighbor Dave. The red mud had stained the stuffing the exact color of my cat, leaving striations of white.

Whew.

Outside

It was muddy and drippy outside a couple of days ago. Like a primordial forest. As I walked down my driveway the branches overhead dripped and rained down on me.

I stopped to fix my solar outdoor light. I picked up egg-sized rocks and filled my pockets with them, so beautiful—all colors and patterns—for my indoor plant that Che keeps wanting to use for his lavatory.

Politics

Just wanted to rebut the cynicism of the day about Congress not getting anything done and don’t we all just hate those stupid politicians.

Chaka Fattah (D-PA) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) made a great point on the Chris Matthews show, Hardball. They pointed out that this Congress has passed more influential and substantive legislation than any other Congress in the past MANY administrations. More than Lyndon Johnson, for crying out loud.

ENOUGH cynicism. Get the facts. Don’t tune out. Keep hope alive.

Dead Puppy

Yesterday I saw Diego the Dog lovingly licking a piece of floppy black rubber in my front “yard.” Then he shook it. Played around with it. (I wasn’t fooled. I had just had that scare with the stuffing from the lawn furniture.)

But THEN he ran down the hill with it in his mouth, went behind a tree, and dug a hole, laid it in the hole, and pushed dirt and leaves over it.

I knew.

I knew it was an animal.

I ran down the hill and uncovered it and discovered ... Angela Davis’ newborn puppy. A little black male puppy. Cold. Dead.

I shooed Diego away and carried it to the house, sick inside. I put it in a plastic bag, got in the car, drove out my driveway, got out, found a place under an oak tree, pried a large, red sandstone rock out of the ground which left a hole the same size as the puppy, put the puppy in it, and covered it with the rock.

I went to Angela’s “real” house and told them what happened. She had had her puppies the night before. She was in a shed with her puppies. The door of the shed was open.

The Man of the House commented it was just one less puppy to try to give away. He said he would keep the door closed. I told him I would give them away if he wanted. And I would pay half of the spaying fee.

He accepted my spay offer, declined my housing offer.

Well, that’s it from Chigger Lake, where dogs kill things, cats run away, and snow falls.