SAINTS

about a month ago i had an email from a friend working in a shelter. there was a 16 yr old cat that was at risk. she was willing to take him home if she had to but had wanted to adopt our suzie who was living in the bathroom and she only had room for one more. we decided that suzie would stay here as she had a potential home interested and she was settled here anyway, and my friend would try the old guy at her place.

well, suzie did get her home, and the old guy went home with my friend, so all should have been well. except he is a bit of a bully cat and causing havoc in her home. going back to the shelter is not an option as he was already determined to be unadoptable. so by a slightly circular route, tigger has finally made it here. and the first thing he is losing is his name. every second cat abandoned is named tigger. it must have something to do with people who read winnie the pooh stories and then go looking for a cat.

so tonight my task is finding a suitable name for our new 16 year old cat, one that just maybe will give him something more lasting than a popular dumping name.

the chinese believe that whatever you are doiing on new years day, is what you will be doing for the rest of the year. heaven help me please.

sam and endora are still under the bed, but they come out now to say hello and to scream to be fed. sam sleeps with me in the dark, right up near my head and he pointedly ignores maudie if she got up there before him.

rainbow who came in almost a year ago, with a history of some really nasty biting, pretty much has never bitten anyone here. she does her own thing and lounges around and made herself right at home, but she does like her space and i try not to infringe if i can. today however, when a headache sent me to bed for an hour while the tylenol did it’s thing, was a different matter all together. rainbow had gotten there before me so i had no choice but to shove her over so i could have an inch or two. out came her claws and she gently stuck me in a kneeding frenzy, thunk came her head shoved up against my lips to get a kiss, and as i fell asleep, i felt her snuggle in deeper and closer, welded into my chest like this was where she was meant to be. you are a good cat rainbow.

mango continues developing some kind of weird, twisted inter-species relationship with norton. the love fest that goes on between those two is something to see. that cat is constantly soaking wet now from nortons drooling and slobbering him from head to toe.

dixie chick and i are currently in the midst of a battle of wills. she does not want to come in from the cat porch until i go to bed. i do not want to leave her out there in the cold plus i get freaking cold with the door open while waiting for her to get up her courage and come back in. last night i chased her in which really made her mad. save me from feral cats who have lived with me for 3 and a half of her total of four years of life. i have been mean to her three times, once when i moved her from the shelter to my home (i threw a blanket over her in the cage and put her in the carrier), once when i trapped her in the bedroom in a live trap to move her to saints first site, and the last time when i wasn’t leaving her behind alone in another empty bedroom for the 4 or 5 days it would take her to go into the trap for this last move to our permanent home.i had my friend from the spca, catch pole her and shove her in a carrier to bring her with the rest of her friends and that took all of 15 seconds, maybe not so nice but pretty damned quick and effective. i will admit that dixie has always hated my guts, in desperation, i once did an animal communication thing with her. i asked the communicator to ask her why she was so scared of me, and dixie said she wasn’t scared of me, she just didn’t like me and i was not to try talking to her again. it sounded just like the dixie i know so maybe it really was, but i think it is grossly unfair to hate me so much because except for those three necessary times, i have always been very nice and respectful of her needs. it is not like she was having a great deal of fun as a feral and half starved kitten. i think she should get over it, and soon, she could at least cooperate and come in when i am in the room, i have never shown the slightest inclination to eat her and she is putting the hydro bill thru the roof.

I am not  a huggy, kissy, happy new year party girl. never was, never will be. That whole joyful celebration of a brand new year with a huge party of not that well known people just never did anything for me except make me feel somehow uncomfortable and somehow untrue.

But, today for the very first time, as i sit here alone, I feel the significance of a whole new year before us and a whole old year behind us and I feel good. When I look back on 2006 I see a long, sometimes frustrating, sometimes exciting road of challenge. I see the days of darkness and the days of blinding light. I see the grey days inbetween that sometimes were not that noteworthy except that there were many of them and we made it thru them the best that we could. Most days in life really are not all that dramatic, just the same old, same old things we have to do each and every day.

But in retrospect, when I look at our 2006 memory and adopted pages and I remember the smell and the feel of each and every one of them, and I look at the ones here right now, and 2006 added up into a pretty good year.

I see before me another year of some devastating losses, not even ever hopeful me can believe that Jack, or Bill, or Moses or Michael or Cedric, or our brand new lovely, Handsome Dexter will make it thru another whole year. And with the cats, you just never know when they will surprise you and tough it out or quit the game. Spritely, so beautiful and gleaming yet so very fragile in just one critical way may make it, but maybe not.

And who will come in this new yet unlived year, to touch our hearts and make us laugh and bring us tears of sorrow? What human friends will we meet to help us care for them, and to share their strength, and who become such an integral part of our family? What human or animal  will walk thru our gates and find that bridge of hope and belonging? Will we continue to move forward and meet our goals? And will the dreams we dream at night become real so that we can grow and dream some more?

I think until today, I missed the whole point of New Years. It is a celebration of the journey past and the journey yet to be.

Happy New Years everyone, it really is a very good day. Sometimes I am kind of slow and figuring out what the rest of the world already knows!