SOME CAT-A-LOGICAL FOOLISHNESS

Yesterday, a slow drizzle of rain fell as I sat at my desk looking out at the pine straw heaped around the base of an old oak in the backyard. A neighbor's black cat crossed the yard and began rummaging in the straw as if he was searching for food. And, then, with that sixth sense cats seem to have, he sensed me watching him and stared back at me. Now, not only am I allergic to animal dander (cats being the worst offenders), I also have just enough Scot blood in me (or it could be the Cajun stream) to entertain a few superstitions, and I get anxious when I remember the one about black cats crossing in your line of vision and causing bad luck. I was hoping to escape the misfortunes that blighted this past year.

The cat and I regarded each other for a few moments, then he went back to his foraging, but I continued to stare at him, trying to will him away from my yard. It was a stand-off, and he won. He looked at me once, began sniffing the corners of the yard, and returned to the pine straw to settle in, even though rain drizzled constantly.

So I did the thing I do when all else fails, I began writing a "snippet" (aka a bit of calculated whimsy) about his invasion. I'll include it at the end of this blog. Meanwhile, I tried to divert my thoughts by thinking positively about this species of animal that has often caused me to develop paroxysms of sneezing, to suffer from swollen, watering eyes, and to lose my breath. Immediately, the face that appeared in my thoughts was that of Beatrix Potter, the Victorian woman who studied the behavior of animals and created enchanting paintings of them in a series of books about rabbits, mice, cats, hedgehogs, and other creatures she often saw in the Lake District of England.  As an adult, I still enjoy the story about an old cat named Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit, an anxious parent who frequently lost her kittens, and when she found them they were committing some mischief. However, in this Tale of Samuel Whiskers, "Moppet and Mittens grew up to be very good rat catchers."

My daughter Stephanie has seven cats indoors and feeds as many that hang around outside. At first, the neighbors complained about the band of bedraggled felines roaming their yards, but when they discovered that the mice and rats nesting in their attics and snakes crawling in their yards had begun to disappear, no more was said about the invading cats. Many friends tease me about my daughter making a home for the cat population when I have allergies to them. They say that she probably opened her residence to them to keep out an interfering mother, but in my defense, I relate that cats have been her soul mates since she was three years old, long before I developed most of the allergies from which I now suffer.

Here's the snippet I wrote following the staring stand-off with the black villain that settled in the pine straw in my backyard:

LINES COMPOSED UPON AN ALLERGY TO CATS

Don't come peering in my window,

black cat, back arched, nose twitching

like the dark augurer you are.

If there are mice around

they're out there scavenging.

Plenty abounds in green cans,

unconsumed holiday harvest.

Go away, harbinger of bad luck,

last year's misfortune quota

soared enough for me.

Send another envoy in your stead,

perhaps an orange, striped ball of dander

with bug eyes like Garfield the comic cat,

at least he has a sense of humor,

a quality most of your kin don't possess.

Don't come peering in my window

or scratch on the clouded glass.

I know winter is out there,

but witches live somewhere else

closer to Halloween.

And why are you prowling

in the rain anyway?

Aren't you reputed to be

a lover of comfort?

I know cats don't have insomnia,

seldom exercise,

are model do-nothings;

as Anonymous said:

"Life is hard, then you nap."

So go curl up

on someone else's window ledge...

and take your time doing nothing.

P.S. Scat!

DOGGONE

Kenyon

Allergies are awful...no two ways about it, allergies are awful. Through some genetic pipeline, I inherited most of my Grandmother Nell's allergies, and they don't improve with age. One of the worst allergies from which I suffer is an allergy to animal dander, a condition that makes me not only resentful but downright angry because it means I can't own a dog. Dogs were a vital part of my growing up and included a flatulent, half-breed cocker spaniel named Tee Nap that accompanied my family on a foolhardy trip out West when I was eleven years old. At that time, my allergy to animal dander wasn't in full bloom, and Tee Nap lay at my feet on the long road trip to Diddy Wah Diddy, unaffected by the complaints of three children stuffed into the back seat of a small, 1941 Ford coupe.

To make a long story short, the allergy to animal dander kicked in in earnest when I reached the age of 50, along with an allergy to my favorite food—shellfish. The allergy to animal dander began with a fit of sneezing over a cat that belonged to my youngest daughter and progressed rapidly to include dogs.

My family always owned female dogs, and I laughed aloud as I read an essay by E.B. White entitled "Dog Training" that describes his father's reaction to owning a "bitch" dog. White says that one day a mutt followed him home from school, and he persuaded his parents to let him keep it. It stayed with him only one night because the next morning his father took him aside and told him in a low voice that the dog was female and that it would have to go. When E.B. White asked why, his father, embarrassed, explained that the dog would be a nuisance and would attract all the male dogs in the neighborhood all the time. White wrote that this seemed like an idyllic arrangement to him, but he could tell that the new dog was doomed to live somewhere else...and was evicted. Nonetheless, in adulthood, when E.B. White bought his farm in New England, he also acquired two dachshunds and a wire-haired fox terrier, and with sheep to take care of, was "obliged to do my shepherding with [their] grotesque and sometimes underhanded assistance..."

Of course, during my childhood we just put up with broods of puppies when our female dogs beget, but nowadays, female parents are spayed. In the 40's, dogs didn't expect much in the way of medical care nor did they expect anything unusual in their diet—they subsisted on that food unknown to a dog today—"scraps," including chicken bones and leftover Rice Crispies swimming in milk, and their longevity was no less than it is today. In fact, they may have lived longer. I might add that they survived in doghouses of the same architecture that housed Snoopy in the "Peanuts" comic strip and were constantly breaking leash laws.

Back in the 90's, I was asked to ghost write a piece for the artist, George Rodrigue, about his dog Tiffany, and we met for an interview at Landry's Restaurant near Breaux Bridge, Louisiana where George had a small studio. The piece was never published, but I still have a record of the interview and the piece I wrote that was unused because Harper and Row wanted a fantasy told by Tiffany.  The two-hour interview included a lot of questions about "man and the psychic dog" that I had gleaned from a book entitled Dog by Patricia Green. Green says that a legend tells us how after the Creation, a gulf opened up between man and the animals that God had given names. Among the animals was this dog looking at the ever-widening breach and when separation was almost complete, the dog leapt across the gulf, taking its place beside man. I asked George if he thought that's what Tiffany did and he affirmed this idea.

In Dog, Ms. Green says that a psychic dog may be a devourer or creator, a wounder or healer, a contaminator or purifier and may represent the redemptive elements in man's life. It was interesting to me that Rodrigue painted the blue dog as a redemptive element. Tiffany always had to be in the foreground of his paintings.

I have friends who speak of dogs as being there for them when they experience despair or sadness and that act as an archetype in their lives. The dogs represent hope and healing, protecting their owners from danger.

I could go on at length about dogs, but the narration won't do any good as far as allergies are concerned. I'm seriously considering getting allergy shots so that I can find a dog like the one on this blog—a female black lab retriever. I already have a name for her. My black lab will be called "Kenyon" after the poet I most admire but who, unhappily, is deceased: Jane Kenyon.

I hope she won't mind being a ghost dog until I get my round of allergy shots... "Here, Kenyon..."