I already summarized Day 2 on the evening it occurred. Our newest National Park outdid itself to interest the casual tourists; we’re excited about visiting many more times to those parts of the park we couldn’t get to. Most of the park (and indeed the state of West Virginia) appeal to the outdoorsy person but I’m an indoorsy person. I’ve been such all my life. As a teenager I might reluctantly put down the book I’d been reading most of the day when the neighborhood guys came around recruiting for a pickup game of football. As a college student I spent many hours biking (freshman) and canoeing (senior), but generally, if you just put a book in my hands, a glass of something handy, and I’d be fine. Indeed, one of the best parts about teaching junior high occurred when I’d arrive home around 4 p.m., pour a beer, light up a cigar, and settle into a chair outdoors, book in hand. West Virginia and New River Gorge N. P. offer a lot to the outdoorsy person. For me, it’s attractions are historical sites, nature, minor hiking, and the general scenery of a mountainous area.
As we left the park and stopped to check our directions, I learned a little about about baseball. I’m a moderately obsessed fan, but baseball grew up with our country unlike other sports here and has deep roots in much of Americana. Who knew that in the middle of semi-nowhere the Cincinnati Reds played an exhibition game?
Historical marker in Glen Jean, WV. July 2023.
Day 2 ended in Cincinnati, adding some serendipity to seeing the marker above. (And 50-cents for admission?! “They must think we’re rich!”) Arriving in Cincy, the calendar thwarted our dinner plan: the Jamaican restaurant Island Frydays didn’t open on Mondays. Instead we walked a couple blocks to a combo Indian and Ethiopian restaurant, two cuisines I never would imagine under the same roof. I felt some trepidation at the Ethiopian offerings (as did my wife); we stayed with the curries and attempted to educate the waitress about beers.
Day 3 offered the discovered joys only a road trip can bring. I noticed that US highway 127 paralleled I-75 but 20-some miles to the west of it. Traveling interstates seems to be not much different than surface highways, except for the continual slowing down and stopping demanded by the latter. In actuality they exist worlds apart. By their nature, interstates isolate you from what you travel past. The insulating nature of “limited access” soon numbs the driver from venturing off the concrete until his gas tank or stomach or kidneys demand it. Foliage, buildings, signs, people are all pushed back from the margins of the traveled road. Sights become the background bit players to the star: the interstate itself.
By contrast, traveling on any other highway surprisingly delights. Though it seems to travel the same route through the same countryside, it does so with panache, familiarity that borders on intimacy with its surroundings, and a deference to the towns which lie along its path. Unlike the interstate, the humble highway goes out of its way to connect town after town rather than pass them by and forcing them to grow strip malls and ‘satellite business districts’ along its path to fill the coffers of the local businesses. We had a lovely day to travel. Temperatures were in the mid-80s, the blue skies sported a few scattered clouds, and we were in no hurry to get to our destination (Lansing). It’s rare to find one highway which connects your departure with your destination; we made the most of it, stopping at will but mostly just admiring the fields, the architecture of the houses, the peculiarities each town develops over time, the crops which differed from North Carolina (or Pennsylvania or Washington), and those little things appealing only to us such as how the soundtrack from my digital audio player seemed to curate the sights taken in by our eyes.
We left greater Cincy through the Mt Healthy incorporated limits, provoking a few chuckles. North of Dayton (which we avoided on US-127) we skirted the shore of Grand Lake and encountered Celina, the seat of Mercer County, population about 11,000. Traveling a minor detour in town, I suddenly espied sacred architecture. Instinctively, I turned left. One block off our route stood this church:
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, Celina, OH. July 2023.
After minor research I’m still uncertain why this is a cathedral as it seems not to be a diocesan center of worship. No matter–its beauty stands on its own. How or why such a marvelous church came to exist in such a small community will have to wait for another day.
Interior, Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Celina, OH. July 2023.
We were not alone in our admiration. Another visiting couple (retired also, I surmised) came out of the cathedral and urged us to go inside. I’m not sure we would have done so otherwise. Tuesday? When no one seemed to be around? We were overwhelmed. I said a brief prayer, and thanked the local clergy for leaving the building open so that I could use its bathroom.
Our day continued in the same manner, but became more mundane as we entered Michigan. The weather had turned to overcast, and we worriedly looked northward to blue-black clouds as we skirted Jackson. All the ills of interstates visited us when US-127 became limited access also. (A sad feature which returned to plague us on Day 4.) Driving into Lansing brought mostly aggravation with it. Our hotel there boasted its newness, and we soon discovered we were only a block from Jackson Field, the home of the Lansing Lugnuts, a High-A team (that’s single A ball). Not only that, but on the backside of the amazingly well-developed ballpark for a Single-A club sits Lansing Brewing Company! We had some of the best chicken tenders I’ve had (though I pretty much avoid them because…they’re chicken tenders), and their beer astounded with its high quality. (We bought a case and a half to go!)
This is NOT a typical Single-A ballpark. Lansing’s Lugnuts play to state politicians (state capitol) and the varied professors and students of Michigan State. Not shown: a new apartment complex looking in from the outfield! July 2023.
Having returned from a trip to Ohio and Michigan a week ago, I’ve decided to re-take it vicariously here. I jumped the gun a couple times while on vacation, though. We’ll see how this goes.
I always plan a shorter drive the first day. This accommodates my inevitable inability to leave on time, thus protecting marital bliss. We had Mr. Lincoln loaded by 10 and left shortly thereafter. Skirting most of Durham, NC, we left I-40 not many miles further to the west for reasons which are still known only to Google’s Navigator. A nice, direct route would have been to strike north On US-29 from I-840 as it rounded Greensboro. Instead we zig-zagged through the Burlington area visiting small places for the first time: Gibsonville, and some too small to appear on the map right now. A couple lashing thunderstorms later we found US-29, left it at Reidsville, and leaving Eden (oh, the symbolism!) crossed into Virginia. Once there we used US-58 to cross the Appalachian/Blue Ridge mountains. If you’ve never driven this route, it’s recommended. Take it soon: we saw major roadwork on either side of us as we twisted our way over the summit, and it seems certain They are straightening the road to make it safer and less interesting. The road travels through hilly land used for horses and small agriculture. As it travels westward things start to get more interesting. The road twists and turns like a mountain stream seeking to escape to the lowlands. Eventually one reaches Lovers Leap a bit east of Meadows of Dan. The view is mixed:
Lovers Leap on US-58, VA. July 2023.Lovers Leap on US-58, VA. July 2023
Unfortunately the road intersects I-77 not too much longer after that. We needed to turn north to Beckley, WV, and our interests turned to rating drivers on a scale of stupidity. Oh, and wondering why West Virginia still accepts cash at its toll plazas in all lanes but one. How quickly one forgets the traffic jams that develop when every driver needs to dig out money to proceed along the road!
On June 22, 1925, my father was born in Lansing, MI. Back then I presume he and his mother stayed in the hospital for at least a week. Remember that, it will come up later. His father, the Rev. Howard Pilcher, had taken what I think was his first job after seminary, supporting youth ministry at a Baptist church there in the Michigan capitol.
In 1989 my father retired in May, shortly before he turned 64. Certain waves move through the business world, and computers had transformed his workplace in the 1980s. He had not bothered to join The Movement, his life at work was getting to be a grind, and frankly, he had struggled with the interior conflict of being a minister’s kid full of ethics and morality while he worked in business. That he worked for a nominal non-profit (a Catholic nun-supported hospital) didn’t seem to make enough of a difference. When he figured that 64 didn’t make that much difference from 65, he bailed.
And only four months later, he found his way to the street he had ‘known’ as a newly born infant. He had my mother take this photo:
Howard Pilcher, Jr., in front of his first home. September 1989, Lansing, MI.
In 2013 my father died in December. My mother died in 2019. It was then I inherited all of their photos. Despite common sense saying in a whispered scream, “No! Just throw them away!” I instead sorted through every one of them last fall, noting the ones which documented salient events and/or salient people in our family lives or of my parents’. I ran across the above photo at that time, and smiled when I saw the address written on the back of the photo. Since we were talking about a trip to Michigan, I thought, “why not recreate the photo?” And thus in July 2023…..
In front of my father’s first house. July 2023.
I take a weird satisfaction in knowing it sometimes was weeks before a baby went home with its mother in 1925, and therefore, I stood in front of this house almost exactly 98 years after my father was carried into it. It’s funny how much stock is placed in this house since my father was moved at the age of 3 and never saw it again (to the best of my knowledge) until he was 64. I don’t know the address of his home in Edina, MN, where he lived from 3 to 14, nor do I know exactly where he lived in Havre, MT, during high school–I have a pretty good guess since they were always living in a parsonage provided by the local Baptist church.
As a side note, the resident of the house acted very graciously for all of the photos which were taken. (My wife didn’t understand the framing I wanted when she took the first set.) I went to the door to explain why someone would be doing such a weird thing. I couldn’t tell if he merely relaxed to know it wasn’t anything nefarious, or whether he just didn’t care.
This morning we visited New River Gorge National Park & Preserve. We had only a few hours, though, and this park lends itself to a segmented number of visits: there are four distinct areas, none connecting to the other. We chose the Thurmond area where an abandoned town thrived through the early 1900’s then slowly withered away as steam-powered trains no longer needed West Virginia coal.
Here’s what once was a thriving bank:
The bank looks out to a pair of still-in-use railroad tracks–we had to wait for a freight before crossing to this main street of the town–and then to the New River, barely glimpsed through the trees.
On the way back we stopped at a vehicle turnout beside Dunloup Falls to lunch on the leftover steak from dinner last night, stuffed into some soft rolls (also from dinner):
We then pointed our vehicle along the canopied road, joined the USA’s interstate system and motored to Cincinnati.
I’ve been pondering (to quote one of my new favorite bloggers) that I stand on the threshold of 70 and I’ve only 10-15 years of travel left in me. This starkly scares me. I usually figure two or three significant times of travel per year. Twenty to forty-five seems like a goodly amount, but it’s that lower end that makes me wonder: if I’ve only 20 trips left, and I want to go to Europe more than once, to Hawaii, to places in the USA, to just experience certain periods of unfettered wandering…how much is left in me?
It’s funny. You think for much of your life, “hey, there’s plenty of time for that,” because you’re 35 or 45 and decades stretch out before you. Then you get up toward retirement, and frankly you’re just thinking about that retirement. There are a lot of channels to negotiate to retire: income when you’re not working, riding herd on the expenses, and the projects you always thought you’d do but you just didn’t have the time or the money to do them. You negotiate that when suddenly a little global pandemic kinda s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-s that whole process out. When the world comes to, everyone removes their masks (assuming they were wearing them in the first place), and you realize, “crap, I’m almost 70. How much time is there?”
This clarifies things but in a brutal way. When someone comes at you with a knife, your options suddenly are VERY focused. When life comes at you with a knife…… Didn’t the Fates snip a man’s life thread and end it?
Four Sundays have passed since last I posted, and more than a month since anything of significance graced (?) this blog. Let’s catch up and be witty about it (I hope). In mostly reverse order….
Red oak with tree trimmers. Raleigh, NC. June 2023.
In the photo above a local tree-trimming service prepares to limb the dead branches out of this fine red oak in our front yard. Most of the branches overhang the street or sidewalk and thus pose a safety risk for anything/anyone who happens to be beneath them. I could try to describe where they are in that photo, but only one is distinct. It’s in the upper, left-center of the photo, a dark silhouette against the light green pines behind it. No, not that one. The one snaking down away from it. In all, the two-man crew lopped four main branches and about a half dozen minor ones. The thick end of the branches measured six to eight inches, and I got a nice box of firewood out of it all. This company has given up cutting trees down (losing 30% of their revenue stream in the process), focusing instead on maintaining the health of the ones we still have on this planet. Further, they offer to return your yard to a natural meadow state (for a pretty hefty fee), something we are seriously contemplating. They use organic, natural substances for maintaining shrubs and trees. They help support the native plants and help eradicate or tame the non-natives. I’m pretty stoked about it–if we go the full makeover route, I may give them free advertising by mentioning their name!
Backyard bird feeding station #2. Raleigh, NC. June 2023.
“Month of Sundays” continues: I’m embarrassed to put up such a mundane photo, but I’ve yet to take any good ones. Last Sunday we sat to enjoy this new bird feeding station erected the day before. The squirrel/raccoon baffle works, at least for squirrels anyway, and by including mealworms in the feeder on the right I’ve managed to entice the bluebirds to feed once again. (Haven’t seen them since I quit offering mealworms about nine months ago–long and boring story.) I’m excited to use a Nikon app to link my camera to my phone and take photos of the birds without being anywhere near either them or the camera. It should be good. (It may not work at all, but permit me my optimism.) Installing this pole system proved serendipitous: the same day I planned to install the new pole system, I found the nice, squirrel-proof feeder which normally sits on the pole in the background nearly torn off, likely by something big, like a raccoon, perhaps a possum. Three of four nut-and-bolt fasteners were gone, and it hung sideways by the final remaining one.
Makin’ tortilla chips. May 2023.
Not exactly another Sunday back: the penultimate day of May I spent preparing what I call Deconstructed Nachos. It starts with taking all those fading tortillas which we never can keep up with and turning them into chips. We had several avocados at peak ripeness; they became guacamole. Some heirloom beans (Buckeyes, I think) from Rancho Gordo received the Mexican-flavored cooking I favor, using a recipe from a book I’ve carted around for 45 years. Using the same cookbook, I turned them into a bean dip. Then we just dip the chips instead of piling the ‘stuff’ on top of the chips. Sometimes I’ll make a picadillo, but we skipped it this time, and indeed skipped the melted cheese on top. Goodbye May! You were delicious!
In the past two months there has been baking….
Poppy rolls from the book From Scratch by Michael Ruhlman, baked in a cast iron skillet. They held lots of shredded pork and coleslaw and were dressed with Lexington BBQ sauce. May 2023.Hearth bread from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. May 2023.
There was altogether wa-a-a-ay too much of this…
A fine grain-and-hop concoction in one of the new Teku glasses purchased from Victory Brewing Company in Downingtown, PA. I’m thinking it’s a Belgian-inspired brew from Haw River Farmhouse Ales. May 2023.
…and too little walking and exercising. If there had been more, perhaps I would have encountered more of these while walking….
Deer crossing where the City of Raleigh has built a drainage pipe under the road just north of our house by a couple hundred yards. This allows an unnamed creek to flow to Haresnipe Creek. May 2023.
I’ve now marked the first ten days of my 70th year on this planet. I’d like to think it’s time to get serious, but why start now? Seriously, I need less serious and more lighthearted enjoyment. Apologies for a rambling travelogue through my past two months. We’ll get back to Serious Stuff again. You’ll see.
Many an evening an inspiration strikes, and I dutifully grab a pad and write it down. About 90% of the time I read it the next morning and say to myself, “WTF?” This morning this is what I read:
Social Wallpaper
–you divert the attention from ME
sincerely recorded by brain-addled me
All I remember is saying this to my wife in the context of me pontificating (as I am wont to do), and exclaiming to her, “Wow! I’ve got to write that down!”
I notice I haven’t posted since April 10th, Easter Monday. Seems like more than 12 days. I’d like to come up with an excuse, even if it’s a poor one, but I don’t have anything leaping to mind. I could cite cracked ribs, but that didn’t seem to matter between March 13th and April 10th!
I have a piece to publish tomorrow. Meanwhile….
Sunlight on a wall of St. Mary’s Chapel, Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, Raleigh, NC. April 2023.
People telling you about their pet cats and dogs can bore one more efficiently than even those who haul out photos of their grandchildren, worn from months of friction in back pocket wallets. Singular tales do exist, however. John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley leaps to mind, and of course Jack London made his name with a tale about a dog, though certainly not his pet dog. More recently I choked up when I read Gwen Cooper’s Homer’s Odyssey very accurately subtitled A Fearless Feline Tale, Or How I Learned About Love and Life with a Blind Wonder Cat.
With this in mind, I viewed a recent comment on this blog with trepidation. It can be summed up as “more cat photos!” and my initial reaction somewhat remains: this space isn’t for memes, political screaming, or cute cat photos. But there was one singular cat…and so the author succumbs…
This is a story about Wolf the Cat, as different from most cats as her name: companion, roommate, best friend, zen master, and a being who made the most of a physical challenge for most of her life.
At the beginning of 1978, having pried a degree from the dons at the University of Washington and snagged a newspaper reporter/editor/photographer job in the foothills of the North Cascades, I began to live in responsible society. Two months in, I adopted a gorgeous white cat with blue eyes. Natasha’s pelt could have been marketed in a high fashion boutique. She demonstrated an independent nature, spending large amounts of time outside. (Times were different then; most cats went outdoors.)
Natasha at rest. Sometime in 1978, probably April-June. Monroe, WA.
Natasha, or Tasha as I came to call her, only sets our stage for the true star, her daughter Wolf. After a few months of frequent sorties to who-knows-where, Tasha began to show the swelling belly of pregnancy. Six months after she arrived to live with me, she littered. She obviously had consorted with a similar solidly-colored cat, but black. Three of the five kittens were white like their mother, with one black smudge on the tops of their heads in varying amounts: one had just a few hairs, one had a small fingertip’s worth, and one had more of an adult’s thumbprint. The most purely white one was delivered three months later to a friend in Walla Walla, who called her Powder…because, well, The 70s. Of the final two, one was all black, striking, and mischievous. I called him Shiva the Destroyer based on his habits, and gave him to my brother about a half year later. Shiva promptly revealed he was a she, littered on the middle of my brother’s matrimonial bed, and Shiva soon found herself and her litter at the local animal shelter.
And then there was this nondescript gray tabby, a commoner among the gorgeous and highly born. Because this kitten had a fuzzy overcoat of lighter gray and looked a little jowly, it reminded me of a wolf, so I called her Wolfrydda, a completely made-up attempt at Norski-ness. It was Wolf on the vet records and in my mouth–so what indeed was her name? Wolf showed a precociousness that captivated me. She always wanted to be with me, climbing up the side of my couch to get to me even though she could barely walk.
Wolf and her siblings deeply annoyed Tasha, whose maternal instincts were minimal. When Tasha had weaned her progeny, they didn’t leave–so Tasha did. I saw Natasha every four or five days until I found her weeks later, dead on the side of our country road.
Wolf and Shiva, Fall of 1978. Monroe, WA.
Wolf proved every bit as companionable as she first indicated. By the time she died almost 20 years later, we had been through a lot together. She had advised me, entertained me, put up with me, and shown me through her quiet approach to life how I probably should have lived myself. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Wolf calmly accepted life as it came at her, much like the zen masters I read about later. If a chest of drawers had one left open, she slept there. Or the waterbed was good, and being covered up seemed even better:
Always aware, always calm. Wolf the Zen Master. January 1980, Monroe, WA.
At one year she gave birth to a litter of four anemic kittens who all died. Wolf spent the week crying in the bathroom where I had put the kittens in a box directly under the ceiling heat lamp. By February 1980 she had littered again, four again, a black one, two gray tabbies, and an odd beige one with caramel-colored tabby markings. The two tabbies stayed, but one, Noko Marie, died. I suspected the vet who had spayed her. (Hold that thought; we’ll return to it momentarily.) The other tabby grew into a big lug and into his name: Frank N. Stein.
About six months later Wolf disappeared for three days. I spent mornings, lunchtimes, and after work hours standing on my apartment’s little patio, whistling the special Wolf whistle, and scouring the large rocks a few feet beyond the edge of that patio which prevented erosion on the steep slope lying below. On the third day I saw her, hopping oddly from rock to rock as she laboriously climbed the hill with what turned out to be a broken right rear leg. She had gone across the road at the bottom of the hill, perhaps to get to the creek on the other side. Her luck ran better than her mother’s, and with a cast on her leg a few hours later, I headed back to work. That night I couldn’t find her until I looked on the top of the refrigerator. Somehow, with a newly applied cast on one of her jumping legs, Wolf had climbed onto the seat of a kitchen chair, then to its back, balanced herself there and leapt to the counter (three to four feet). Once on the counter she had dragged herself past the sink to where the refrigerator rose and again had leapt with only the one leg to get to the top of the fridge.
Two weeks later I took her to the vet to check on the leg. He unwrapped the cast, examined her, and rewrapped the garish pink stretch tape over the casting material. In a couple of more weeks I noticed the tip of the cast was wet. Back to the vet we went. The vet discovered a gangrenous leg and admitted he had likely wrapped the cast too loosely in a mistaken effort to give her a little more comfort. The cast had turned and cut off the blood supply to the leg. The leg would have to be amputated or Wolf would need to be put down. It didn’t seem to be much of a decision. Wolf was barely over two years old, and had demonstrated over the past four to five weeks she could get around quite well dragging her right leg behind her. I figured it would be easier for her at that point not to have the leg versus the cast. The vet said he felt badly about it and wouldn’t charge for the amputation! Back then I was naïve; I would not be as nice today. Since he wasn’t getting any money for the operation, he said he was going to do it after hours and did I want to watch and/or assist? I said “sure” and found myself that evening holding up a furless leg that looked remarkably like a chicken leg/thigh you buy at the grocer’s while the vet used a large pair of side-cutters to snap through the bone.
Wolf educated me over the next year with what was possible. We moved across the state only two months later, and Wolf discovered a new favorite spot in a tree beside the driveway. This tree grew as one trunk to approximately five feet and then shot many branches straight up from there. It thus formed a natural nest. One night I came home from work and found her there, staring at me eye to eye, five to six feet up. I figured at that point she could ramble around outdoors without too much fear. She had taken to sticking close to home after the accident, and she always spent the night indoors. Smart cat. I wish I had listened to her more.
In mid-1981, six months after our move, I met a woman allergic to cats. She gave herself shots which seemed to work a bit, but extended time around my two cats (Frank was still in the picture), and she would start suffering. Wolf neither hated nor liked her–tolerated would be more accurate. Within two months this woman helped me decide to quit being a reporter/editor, go back to college, earn a teaching degree, and join her in the teaching ranks. I found a cheap apartment in Spokane, WA, but it didn’t allow pets. Pressed for time, I convinced my parents (who also lived in Spokane, just ten minutes from the apartment) to take in Wolf for a year. They had never had cats in their adult lives, and they had a dog, something Wolf hadn’t encountered before. Despite this, they agreed, and a few weeks later–after living in my car for a day while I attended classes–Wolf went to her new, temporary home. To get away from the dog she learned within the first hour to jump with that one rear leg to a small basement window four or five feet above the tallest furniture. The dog was lazy, and after his initial curiosity, he let her be. (Frank is another tale for another time, when I feel like confessing a poor decision.)
Enduring my parents and their dog. Sometime between Sept 1981 and August 1982. Spokane, WA.
After ten months I earned a degree in English Education, August 1982, grabbed Wolf, and moved in with my woman friend now living in a small lake cabin with a small dog. We married in 1983, moved to a small city in the mountains of Washington, and over eight years we welcomed four more cats into our house. In 1990 we moved to a new, bigger house, dropping Dolly with a friend. Three days after the move, Cooper disappeared. Suddenly we weren’t a 5-cat family, but only a 3-cat one. My wife laid down a new rule: cats in the basement at night. The rule lasted until she moved out ten months later, taking the dog and Petunia with her.
Four years and counting. Livin’ the lake life. Late 1982. Diamond Lake, WA
Wolf, Calvin, and I spent a year rattling around the 4000 square foot house. I met a different woman which gave me the pretext I needed to upend my life. The cats and I moved to a Philadelphia suburb.
Nearing 14 years: supervising the mover (me). June 1992. Colville, WA.
Wolf spent her time, per usual, under the seat of the Ryder rental truck I had procured for the move. Calvin ate tranquilizers and sat in a cat carrier the whole time we were in the truck. Occasionally Wolf would perform recon, hopping across the dash and then spending just enough time on top of Calvin’s carrier to annoy him, before she retreated to her under-seat abode. In Philly I intended “to become a freelance writer”. Such was not to be. I did, however, let my fling die away and in 1994 met a lovely woman who to this day keeps sticking around for no good reason I can fathom. Wolf liked her. Calvin spent most of his time outdoors and didn’t care.
Shortly after our marriage in 1995, we lost Calvin in the middle of an overnight December snowstorm when he insisted he needed to go outside exploring. (Another sin on my cat balance sheet.) My focus on the missing Calvin prevented me from noticing Wolf’s increasing lethargy. A Friday trip to the vet didn’t net much of a diagnosis; on Monday morning she couldn’t hold her head up while sitting on my wife’s lap. A second trip to the vet (and a diagnosis from a more competent vet) revealed a bad failure of her kidneys. They were flushed with large infusions of saline water twice that week, and Wolf The Miracle Cat bounced back as good as ever.
Eventually I convinced my new wife to move back to Spokane. Wolf joined us on a pillow on the middle console. We moved into a rented house complete with swimming pool. By this time, nearing her 19th birthday, she spent most of her time at the new house on top of a stack of deconstructed cardboard boxes from our move. The sun shone there most of the day.
In May 1998 we moved her one last time to a house we bought there. Wolf had been complaining of something for a week or so before the move. She worsened just a week or two after the move, and we learned her kidneys were failing again. A few tries at jump-starting them with fluids failed, and we decided to stop the pain in mid-June, just a couple months short of her 20th birthday.
Along the way I appreciated this cat more and more. She benefited by being my first real feline companion–Natasha had disappeared far too quickly and been too standoffish to claim that role. She liked rock and roll: playing one of my favorite albums, The Who Live At Leeds, at full volume not only didn’t disturb her, it caused her to climb up in my lap and enjoy the tunes! She enjoyed sleeping right on top of me (or my bed partner), which made me thankful for her light weight. She had a two-toned purr, with a high-pitched note above the customary low, growly one. When purringly happy she would drool, just one drop which would sit at the tip of her muzzle. She exhibited calm, patience, and live-in-the-moment wisdom. (I once watched her sit at the corner of the house waiting for a couple sparrows to work their way down the side of house toward her. She knew this was the only way a three-legged cat could hunt them. She missed anyway.) After losing her leg at the age of two, we moved five times from 1981-1990. I moved her five more times from 1992 until her death almost exactly six years later. She took it in stride, so much so that I’ve been shocked since then to have a cat stress out over moving. Throughout it all I never felt I was in charge; I felt I had a roommate who just happened to keep moving with me.
If I had listened to this cat, I would not have married when I did in 1983. I would have become far less upset about life’s tribulations. I would have accepted the bad with the good, and learned to not grasp either. To this date, almost 25 years since Wolf died, no other cat has quite captured her spot in my heart. I doubt that one will. I’m nearing 69. The years run together now. First time events, like meeting such a cat, become less and less prevalent. No matter how much I try, I can’t quite connect with my cats like I did this one. Maybe the right one just hasn’t appeared. Maybe they just don’t come but once in a life.
This profile seems abysmally truncated to me, long as it must have seemed to the reader. I covered a decade in one paragraph! (1982-1992) I had thought, “hey, from time to time I’ll tell tales of the others, but I’m not sure how I could. Everything would seem downhill after Wolf.
Should Opening Day be a national holiday? Of course! When I pulled a salary working in the corporate world, I burned one personal day every year to sit on my couch and enjoy game after game. When we lived in the Pacific Time Zone, this became even better: games started at 10 a.m. and carried throughout the day until bedtime. Go Phillies!
all the voices in my head 