A Tale of Two Kitties…

A rather camera-shy Petronius the Arbiter

The first cat is the steepest…

I was outside Darwen rather than Damascus: however, the conversion took place just as abruptly, with only a few seconds warning. One moment I was being asked…

– How would you feel about looking after Jay for a while?

[All of my friend’s cats – and horses – were named after birds: Blackbird – ‘Blackie’ for short – a rook-coloured bruiser wearing white gloves (probably concealing knuckle-dusters); and big bullying brother to Kestrel – a beautiful, mournful tabby, with the same gleaming toes; and currently Jay – who, not being a blood relative, was beaten up by both of them almost daily, and therefore frequently went missing for days, and always came home injured. Why Kestrel didn’t also fly away – without the “coming home” bit, of course… – I shall never know for certain. Timidity is one possibility; but likely also some warped form of sibling loyalty.]

Can I take your postcode, please…?

Exactly ten thousand days ago today, driving home on a gently warm afternoon in the middle of September 1996, I was on the receiving end of the first of three serious road traffic collisions (RTCs) that wrote-off the succession of vehicles I was driving and increasingly damaged my neck: leading, ten years later – despite hundreds of physiotherapy sessions, and many, various minor operations – to major, and extended, surgery: when my cervical spine was stabilized from the front with four surprisingly lengthy screws and a sizable titanium plate. (My neck was so badly deformed – like the poor cars before it – that a bespoke mechanical replacement for one of my cervical disks had to be forgone; and the two vertebrae surrounding it were instead fused together.) I have not seen my shoulders since.

Unless a man starts afresh about things…

Loweswater at dawn, frozen in time

My first walk of the new year: and to a location now – as it will be forever – so very near to the centre of my heart and melded so very closely with my mind. Yet, on Saturday, it was clothed so tightly in frost, and held so singularly still, that its icebound enchantment freshly conjured even more enthralling memories to be layered, interlaced, with those soothing ones already possessed. Not just visual – such as the moon-glinted mint-white of the fields below fells of dry-cured bacon; and audible – the rushing becks, the joyful birds; but also, of course, sensual – the ice tightening my face like Botox; the frozen, sogged soil crunching beneath my boots, spongily, surprisingly, bearing my weight… – along with the absolute astonishing absence of Aeolus or his team of Anemoi: their breaths apparently held abnormally tightly, or at least currently (although Eurus would soon awaken: his lazy easterly breeze drawing disappointing clouds to mask the valley from the sun – whose rise I had come to witness, of course… – as well as stinging my eyes on my return…). The place looked and felt new-made: its birth accompanied by nature’s gently twinkling fanfarades!

Farewell, my Little Man…

And so succeeded.
For Felix, with immense gratitude and love…
– we shall not look upon your like again.

Like Jesus, he came down to Earth
for just a few years, and just a few days:
his message unique – delivered in mirth –
that all you need is fluff. Oh! Let us praise

the wonder that was sent to us here:
a cat full of sympathy, caring, and fun;
a creature packed so full of love there was no fear:
just a healthy appetite for life and joy, for air and sun.

He shared his heart, though, far too intensely:
his lives thus counting down as each year passed.
He hid the hurt, of course, that burned immensely,
deep inside; the joy he brought unto the last

so very much more than anyone could ever bring again.
Like Jesus, he came down to us to take away our pain.

And pay no worship to the garish sun…

before the dawn
with thanks… to Barbara Aves (13 March 1936 to 21 December 2020)

the daws drive dark before the dawn;
gather for the final roost
     before the sun has chance to rise… –
no light today; just shadow… –
     mere shadow without end;
     sad margins robbed of symmetry.

     the daws I see
          from nowhere –
          out of nowhere –
               rise:
          solemn airs
               gnarled within the gloom;
          carefree graces
               wrenched without the light.

     so many vanquished stars;
     so many stolen nightfalls;
          from nowhere –
          out of nowhere –
     the clouds I see
          astray, mislaid;
          minor keys unturned.

the silences, eclipses,
the nothings and the nowheres,
the shadows we are made of,
the dark we are afraid of… –
     all shaped the same
     but never visible… –
     as
the daws drive dark before the final dawn.