when you were Richerd
The one I’m holding (Concordville, PA, 1947?) is Sylvester. One of several. The animals were really my mother’s, but I got some time with them. Don’t remember much.
My first ‘adult’ cat, me not the cat, was Richerd. Rosemary and I got him in Berea one summer; he went with us to Philadelphia, to Missoula, and with me to Seattle, to Poulsbo, to Colville, to Mendham, to Manhattan, to Stewartsville. Dilly and I buried him beside the spring ponds. The cat in the woods is, probably, Richerd; we had 16 acres on Scotts Mountain and he liked to follow along on walks. He lived 15, maybe 16 years. He was The Cat.
Fonder came from the kitten cage in Stewartsville when I was taking Mercy, my second Airedale, for a checkup. Daphne was in China, or India, or somewhere (she traveled) and I was brooding on what absence was supposed to do to the heart. Fonder was at the kennel — with Metta, the third Airedale — when I was in Scotland and the house burned. I packed them both into Prayer Wheels and wound up in New Mexico. He survived two weeks ‘lost’ on the Sufi land, came back with one injured leg which Dr Alred amputated. He died in 2008.
Twana was/is allergic to cats. She mail ordered a hypoallergenic Siberian kitten which we picked up in Texas on the way back from Lawrence, Kansas, which is a whole nother story. His name was Pause. He wanted to be an indoor/outdoor cat, and after a few years of resisting I agreed, and he vanished. Sadie Mae, a Norwegian Forest cat, disappeared a year later when we were traveling and Frank Carey was supposed to be taking care of her.
For some time I figured I didn’t deserve a cat. Twana moved and got new dogs, and Paco, Jetta and I stayed catless until one spring day I almost stepped on a cat and two of her kittens in the driveway. I think she was moving them from the Morgan shed under which they were born, but she stayed there with the four until I brought Morgen in, took two to the pound, and gave up trying to catch her and the last kitten. Morgen is now a year and two thirds old, bigger than the dog, desirous of spending time outdoors.
There were others, contemporaneous with these. George. Po. Claudia. But The Cat in my lifetime, has long black fur and stalwart catlike demeanor.
Often I think, and sometimes say to them, “When you were Richerd…” because … well, impermanence you know, and everybody’s your mother, and all that. Unique, and yet…. Or maybe it's that the closer I come to death the dimmer the separations, at least those caused by mortality.
… the perfection of love, harmony, and beauty, the Only Being.
