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!

A BOX IN THE MAIL

Diane, Paul, Sidney Sue:
Christmas early 1940's

Two weeks ago my older brother Paul died in a nursing home on the rugged northern coast of California. His wife had moved to Big Bear City in southern California just a few weeks before Christmas and had sent me a box of notebooks filled with photographs of all his paintings and the beautiful gardens he had created in his yard.

His life passed before me, and my grief is deeper than sentiment, blood thicker than all the sins he buried in the garden he made for his wife, colors made bolder in a place where he could not hide his soul. "The place" dead-ended in a small wood and was surrounded by a tall cedar fence. Several small bungalows flanked a stone and cedar house with a square bay window in front. Flowers covered every space in the yard—yellow nasturtiums, red salvia, petunias, hollyhock—blossoms hovering over stones and settled among small pieces of driftwood. Birdbaths nestled in clumps of elephant ears and fern; begonias in
wooden tubs. It was a place of nooks and wooden bridges, and at the farthermost point of the yard, a forest of cedars and redwoods loomed.

The first time I visited him in this paradisiacal setting, he told me: "This is life here." That  life followed years of profligate behavior, and he had created a habitat that reflected only aesthetic intention. His paintings hung everywhere—landscapes of California or Louisiana, and a  
group of abstracts that looked like the beginning of creation, cosmic explosions in brilliant reds and blacks.

Ineffably, part of him will go down into the soil that nourished his plants; the rest will ride the wild, blue waves of the Pacific that he was always painting. And I have the photographs in the notebook and the covers of most of my poetry books for which he rendered beautiful paintings—valuable keepsakes that reflect a kind of artistic endurance.

Requiescat in pace, Paul.XXX

MORE OF KAREN BOURQUE'S ARTISTRY

On Wednesday, we not only brought home good memories of hanging out in Arnaudville, Louisiana, with Darrell and Karen Bourque, we acquired another glass art piece by Karen, whose work hangs in our Sewanee, Tennessee and New Iberia, Louisiana homes. The latest acquisition is a rendition of the Pickerel Weed, an aquatic plant with brilliant blue flowers, densely clustered on a long spike with heart-shaped leaves, that attracts bees and butterflies.

Karen was inspired to create the stained glass piece using blue dog-toothed amethyst after reading Why Water Plants Don't Drown by Victoria Sullivan and discovering the lovely illustration for the Pickerel Weed rendered by Susan Elliott, artist and co-editor of Pinyon Publishing.

In the text accompanying the glass work, Karen explains that no blue stone felt right for the flowers, so she chose the dog-toothed amethyst to represent them. She attributes qualities of spirituality and contentment to the amethyst and relates that it has calming, protective powers of healing, divine love, and inspiration and that it enhances psychic and creative abilities. We have hung this art that represents "the peace of the perfect peace which was present prior to birth" in the sunroom and can look out and see it each morning at breakfast time.

I always enjoy the texts that accompany Karen's work as they are small inspirational pieces she chooses to use in her interpretations of objects in nature and the personalities who commission the work, as well as to foster creativity in those who acquire the glass work. She is married to the poet Darrell Bourque, and they're well suited to each other because she matches his gift for writing poetry with her visual poems in glass.

Karen has done glass pieces for many homes throughout Acadiana, for the Louisiana Book Festival, for the Ernest Gaines Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and other art centers. Much of her work focuses on the natural world and spirituality—on those images that give meaning and harmony to human experience.

We now have five of Karen's glass pieces, three of which are at Sewanee. One of the more recent pieces is a rendition of a porch that was photographed and appeared on the cover of Porch Posts, a collection of essays and stories that I co-authored with Janet Faulk this year. I will be autographing this book at A&E Gallery in New Iberia Saturday, Dec. 13, 1 - 3 p.m., along with Vickie Sullivan who is debuting her sequel to the speculative novel Adoption entitled Rogue Genes.

Porch Posts' cover is Karen's interpretation of a painting done by the late Elmore Morgan, Jr. which shows the bare outlines of a porch open to the air that might have been a place to sit and watch the sunset and fireflies winking on a summer night.

Karen handles commissions for glass work created in her studio in Church Point, Louisiana, and if you're interested in her work, she can be reached at 337-684-3542 or 337-351-2219.

Photograph of the Pickerel Weed by Victoria I. Sullivan, author of Why Water Plants Don't Drown, Adoption, and Rogue Genes.