A Small Salvation

I arrived home late one Tuesday afternoon and my husband told me something needed rescuing. “In the garage around the corner. I think a cat’s got its collar caught on something.” We pass the garage when we walk the dogs. “If you have time to find it tomorrow, just let it go.”

No need to ask why me. It’s in my job description. “It’s a kitten,” I said. “I heard it before I left yesterday morning.” I had been away overnight.

“Don’t come home with it,” he said. If he had been wearing boots, he would have been shivering in them. We live with five cats and three dogs, none of which we have because either of us in a moment of madness said, ‘Pet! What a good idea.’ “Take it straight to the pound. Just rescue it; don’t save it.”

Easy for him to say. I’m the rescuer, and I have to deal with the consequences. Finders, weepers; law of the ‘hood.

It was a kitten, solemn green eyes, upturned nose, fuzzy black fur. Hungry. A talker who thought I was scarily fascinating. We made introduction Wednesday morning, but the kitten was demanding and illusive, which might be why it was still alive alone.

By Wednesday night it had moved across the street into the Freeman’s irises. Gena Freeman waved at me as she left on errands on Thursday morning. When she returned, she asked me if I needed help. We really aren’t on a neighborly name basis, and I guess she wondered why I had chosen to spend the morning sitting in her flower bed. I admitted to what I was doing and asked if she wanted this kitten, even though when I had tried to give the last one to her husband he almost snarled when he turned me down, so I already knew the answer. I won’t tell you about their dog and the stray kittens, two litters born at their house, and they don’t have a cat. Gena did say the dog was at the vet, and I could go in her back yard if I needed to, which was friendly of her, but it might have been because I wouldn’t be visible behind the fence.

I don’t know how long I sat among the fall debris while the ants swarmed the nibbles almost as soon as I put them down. I wondered if I was going to entice this tiny kitten to its death by ant bite. My husband is fond of repeating, ‘No good deed will go unpunished.’ I guess that is why he sends me to do good. I wondered if people with day jobs would even bother. But I had declared myself retired, and could waste time any way I wanted.

And I suspected a waste of time it was because this was the fifth lost kitten of the season, a very testy season. I have long known folks who liked animals had their full comportment, whether that happened to be one or eight; the folks with twenty-three were purely crazy and best avoided. Come to think of it, that might apply to folks with eight….look at me hunkered down in my neighbor’s plants. I also knew folks who didn’t like animals shouldn’t have them. That our neighborhood’s cat population had recently exploded, and this was likely not the end of the abandoned kitty season. That the Humane Shelter did its best, but was often overrun and if I took the kitten there, the only thing I might be saving it from was starvation. I also knew my limitations, and if there were nothing else available, this kitten would have to go to the pound. Really. It would.

But there I was, and there it was, looking at me with those huge green eyes, and nibbling out of my hand, alert enough to jump if I shifted. It would run back behind the azalea stems while begging me to be its momma, then come out to wrestle an iris leaf, climbing almost to the top before it tumbled down in surprise, it was that tiny and light. Under its fuzzy black coat it gleamed brown in the sun.

Chocolat, I thought. I made the mistake of giving it a name because, in spite of all I knew and all the kittens who can’t be rescued, here it was, and here I was, and God would just have to take over. I swooped my hand down and came up with kitten. Now it was God’s turn.

“Cute,” said Stephanie at the vet’s. “Wish we could keep her.” She pushed the chewed-ear cat off the desk. It was their fourth office kitty. No telling how many barn cats they had. All former strays. Stephanie wormed the kitten, defleaed her, and clipped her nails, all for free. “She’s seven weeks old, and a she.” Stephanie would also furnish stomach medicine after the kitten got the new-home diarrhea. And she promised to help look for a place for it, right after the three kittens someone called about yesterday. A woman was coming in the door as I left. “I have this kitten in car…” I heard before the door shut. No telling how many office cats the vet would have tomorrow, but Chocolat wouldn't be one of them. I didn’t have the essential pushiness…it’s why I never got caught up in parties selling cosmetics and plasticware at home, which might have helped me bypass the rescue business all together.

Miss Fran denied ever telling me when I found the next kitten, she would have to buy a baby gate to keep her little Shitzsu out of the litter box.

Kathy told me she thought the Freemans were responsible, or the Walkers who owned the garage where it was originally heard. Kathy has one twenty-three year old cat, and an orange tabby, a cantankerous aging rescue himself. She feeds them outside, and her oldest cat has to have Fancy Feast, which means so do the possums, coons, the pound puppy on the east, and at least three of my bunch. She is aware of the Kitty Rules of the Wild, rules I am sure the Freemans and Walkers wouldn’t abide by even if they happened to know them. What Kathy really wants is the miniature sherbet poodle she often baby sits.

Diane loves chocolate and kittens, and Chocolat and I spent an afternoon in the country, waiting to see if a match could be made. But her fat cat wasn’t interested in a kitten, and her husband even less so. Diane has been ill, and Ray felt one more thing, even a tiny kitten, might be the one must-do too many. Diane said when her cat was no more, they would get two kittens to grow up together and keep each other company.

Saturday I drove a friend to the airport. Of course we talked about the kitten dilemma. “I could take it the pound,” I said. I had already had this discussion with my husband. “I know the director. She would make sure my kitty had a home, but some other kitty that would have been adopted might have to die. I wouldn’t really have saved anybody from anything.”

“Take it and leave and don’t look back,” my friend said. She didn’t like cats anyway. “Think the best will happen.”

I looked at her. Within four years of each other, both my parents died from lingering, devastating illnesses. I was their primary caregiver. Somehow I reckoned if I were going to believe in God, I wanted One Who helped me to look the hardness of this life in the face—there’s more to truth than pretty. “There are no good answers,” I said, quoting my husband. “I guess I would rather know that up front.”

While I was gone, Chocolat was confined to my bathroom. My husband was prudently keeping his molecules separate from the kitty’s molecute ones. That, and the dogs thought it was a new squeaky toy. He could afford to be prudent. He had me. What I had when I returned was a bathroom tracked with kitty litter and the new-home diarrhea. Did you know kittens are messier than cats? Ach. I didn’t mean to tell you that, not with the fertile season still upon us. They outgrow it really soon. They do.

Sunday. This kitten didn’t need to live in a bathroom. Every day was a day its brain was being hard-wired. It needed a person to bond with. Every day it was getting bigger, already no longer the air and feather creature who could climb an iris leaf.

I had turned this kitten over to God, a quick, brief venture into openness because I had been much too busy for an extended session of meditation and prayer. But if I didn’t make some effort on this kitty’s behalf, it was going to soon be at the pound, God’s plan or no.

I could have made my step-daughter adopt it. She’s got a big heart and only two cats, but that's a chancy path to follow. Our three dogs were originally hers. You have to think about those things.

Sunday. Jesus said when your ox was in the ditch, pull it out. The kitten was in the bathroom. I did the only thing I could think of. I put it in a box and started down the street. I met up with Miss Fran and her Shitzsu, Pooky, out for a walk.

“I guess if I were a nice person, I would take it,” she said.

“If you took it and didn’t want it, you would be too cranky to be a nice person,” I said.

Miss Fran made the rounds with me, standing in the road while I knocked on doors, feeling like a kid delivering a Halloween trick. People, interested and friendly and generous to a grown woman standing on their steps with a box of kitten, didn’t want kitty litter, didn’t want more cats, didn’t want cats, didn’t want this cat, wanted this cat but couldn’t have it, had toddlers, had killer dogs, weren’t idiots. “But if you find a Russian blue,” said the woman who feeds all the cats—outside—in her part of the neighborhood. “But if you find a puppy…,” said the man whose ancient Lab had recently died. They passed me from house to house, with a smile and a touch on the shoulder, to someone down the street or around the corner who might take a cat. Miss Fran and Pooky got tired and went home. I was almost out of houses, and the ox was still in the ditch. I was tired myself, and grim, but I had begun the course, and I would stay it. I wouldn’t push this cat on people who didn’t want it. I wouldn’t give it to the woman with the two-year-old. I would knock on the next door, and the next, and then go home, giving God enough time to show me what I needed to learn, even if it was to let go, even if it was the pound.

I decided I would check with Mary Jane, though she had bad arthritis, because she had just one cat, and her's was the last house before I was caught between my step-daughter and the pound. She came to the door, looked in the box. She called to Keith. They looked at each other. “Shop kitty,” they said. They grinned. They would come for the kitten after they went downtown and got a carrier. They would keep this kitten to live in their store and kill mice.

“It’s too little to be a shop kitty,” my husband said. He was holding Chocolat, petting her up before her lonely shop life began, now that she wouldn’t be around to permanently bond with him.

“She’ll be all alone,” Miss Fran said when I called her to tell her the news. “She’s too little to be alone.”

Fine help they were. Was this God’s answer? Making do?

Mary Jane knocked on the door. She’d come for Scarlett. She was still grinning. “Green eyes, black hair,” she said. And a pointed face. They didn’t just have any name for her; they had the perfect name. They had fixed up a little room for her until she got big enough to be out on her own. They were at the store seven days a week. They were going to the pound and get her a kitty for company.

“Scarlett will have a long, happy life,” Fran said.

Once I had a cat with an inoperable goiter which would eventually strangle her. I was dallying with visualization at the time, but wasn’t sure what to visualize. I ‘saw’ my kitty five years in the future, healthy. Her goiter vanished. The vet couldn’t explain it. I had started feeding the cats tuna just about then; maybe there were healing properties in tuna, maybe the iodine of the ocean. Or maybe it was something else, something less explainable. But my cat got well when the vet thought she was terminal. Six months later, just about the time the goiter would have killed her, she disappeared.

I don’t know if Scarlett will have a long and happy life. I don’t know if God, with a lot of trudging on my part, provided her with just the right people. What seems to be miracles to me often look like minute shifts in the world of form, if you want to be objective. Who can tell?

This I do know, thinking of Chocolat, and the people who helped us, the people who listened and advised, all the people who had enough, too much, who wanted more, who wanted different, all the sunny days and dark nights of people, living and trying and failing and reaching out to extend a hand--maybe we can’t always be rescued. But here I am and here you are, and if we are steady enough, sturdy enough, we may well discover we’ve always been saved.

Force Field

My little Yorkie, Bo, is fond of a squeaky toy. His greed tickles us. He reminds me of a three-year-old, so wild for a new plaything he requires presents if someone else is getting them. Lately he has learned toys come in bags, and we have had great fun, pushing the excitement to a crescendo with ‘find the toy.’ When all the goodies are distributed (we have three dogs, and they think there should be a prize for each), he goes back to the shopping bag, hoping for more. Since he discovered toys in bags, he greets me at the door whenever I go shopping. Lately, if there isn’t something for him, he noses the bags forlornly, or, if I place the haul on the counter, leaps and twirls, trying over and over to reach the counter top where he is sure we have hidden something good that is rightfully his.

“That’s so sad,” one of us is sure to say.

The last time it happened my husband asked me to stitch up some of the old toys I’ve stored in the spare bedroom, waiting for a day when I will repair them. Observing Bo’s delirium, I thought it was a reasonable request. So I spent thirty minutes, cramming stuffing back through rips, sewing up seams, and (only once, since I could hear Bo go crazy downstairs) testing the squeaker.

When I finished, I snuck outside, then came in the back door with a Wal-Mart bag full of long unseen squeaky toys. The two other dogs thought it was a good game. Not Bo. He can smell new.

Which is why, when I went to Wal-Mart the other day and thought of squeaky toys in the parking lot after I had finished my regular shopping, I went back in to check out the dog section. I had also forgotten baby Benedryl for our itchy dog, so it wasn’t entirely a spoiled dog return trip. No Benedryl, and only two acceptable squeaky toys. As I said, we have three dogs.

No problem, I would stop at Fred’s on the way home. Fred’s had no Benedryl, and no suitable squeaky toys. Next on the route—Eckard’s, which had Benedryl, but no squeaky toys. Which is why I found myself in Big Lot’s parking lot, thinking in the simplest terms about energy and attractor fields: Thoughts are energy. Types of energy vibrate at different levels, or fields. Energy vibrations attract similar energy in that field, which is why, when you feed an addiction, you crave more. And here I was standing on asphalt, having stretched a thirty minute shopping trip into two hours, trapped in Bo’s squeaky toy attractor field, which requires much more energy than you would ever suspect.

Money—that’s one aspect of the field. Without our money Bo would have never been introduced to squeaky toys (let’s not explore squeaky toy history or American and Chinese industrial empires, which are tied into squeaky toy consciousness). My husband is the one with the job. He has to expend energy in order to attract money. I do the shopping. When I am shopping, I am expending energy I could be using in other ways if I weren’t shopping. You get the picture.

One day I had a good idea, and ideas are energy. In fact, spiritual teachings say you are only an idea, no matter how much it seems you are made of solid matter, so pay attention. That day I thought the dogs needed toys. Sugar and Spunky, the white, pound terriers, agreed it was a good idea. But Bo immediately developed a squeaky toy gestalt on which the whole material world might be turning.

Bo’s squeaky toy energy has incorporated my husband’s and my energy in order to attract more squeaky toy energy, which has materialized into a basket full of colorful squeaky toys in various states of disrepair which often litter our floor, which requires more energy to pick them up, or, more likely, to tug and toss whenever Bo gets a notion, which is often. And I just stopped writing about squeaky toy energy to take many minutes to look up squeakers. I’ve been thinking I could make those squeaky toys, as well as repair them. So even though on Monday in Big Lot’s parking lot, I realized my brain had been captured and trapped by the attractor field of squeaky toy energy, I have not been able to raise my own vibrational level to escape velocity.

If some scientist wants to investigate, she may discover squeaky toys and Bo’s thought process may be central in the formation of gravity, time and space.

Parallel universes abound. If it weren’t squeaky toys, it might be….pansies. A friend recently took me shopping with her. She needed a few pansies for her yard. Six in fact.

“Do you want any?” she asked.

“No,” I said, wondering if we had time to stop by the discount store on our way home, so I could add to my emergency stash of squeaky toys. “I’d never plant them.”

But the colors…the violets and blues, the velvety reds and rusts and yellows and mauves. Chocolates. Pansies…a nice gift to take to friends.

Which is why, after buying enough pansies to supplement my friend’s traditional six and getting some to take to a couple of people we plan to visit, I now have six of my own, waiting. Six? Could that possibly be enough? I wonder if they have gotten any new ones at the nursery. So bright, so bon vivant here in the waning of the year.

Quick, Bo, wake up. Catch this!

Cornucopia

When the Boy came home fleeing before Hurricane Ivan, I rejoiced. The second night he was here, we ate waffles. He prefers Blackburn’s syrup; my husband and I like maple. We made the store run to obtain the right syrups—“because we are celebrating,” I told my husband.

An agreeable fellow, he asked, “What are we celebrating?”

“Waffles!” I said. We had not made waffles in a long time. Waffles and the Boy home again for a while and safe tonight from the storm, silly Man.

Waffles are a celebration. My uncle used to serve them on Sunday, or when he had guests. After a waffley breakfast at his house, I bought my own iron. Then I began the search for the perfect recipe. “My mother swears by cornstarch,” said my friend Cindy. Her mother, a true Methodist casserole lady, therefore one of the region’s great cooks, was out of touch when I needed a recipe of my own. I choose one from the internet because cornstarch was the key.

When my friend Barbara recently came to spend the night, it was time to celebrate again. I had sent the Blackburn’s home with the Boy, and we were low on maple. Time to make syrup. All I had was a cup of white sugar. I poured it into a pan and set it over a low flame.

“What are you doing?” Barbara said.

“Making syrup,” I said. “I want brown sugar, but don’t have any. I want it dark.”

“How do you know how to do that?”

“The Old Ones are telling me.” Between us Barbara and I had accumulated one hundred and ten years of living. Our friendship this lifetime stretches between us for a total of seventy-two years of loving and sharing. Together we are magic. Together we become a conduit for the secrets of Ancient Ones. Didn’t she know?

I stirred. We watched. A waffle steamed in the iron.

“It’s not changing colors,” she said.

The sugar was still white, but had begun to look like lumpy sand. “It’ll work,” I said. “Maybe.” It took waffles about five minutes to brown. We were making eight of them. We had time.

Now brown spots began to appear in the concoction on the stove. I stirred pretty constantly, but I don’t think it’s necessary. Barbara took over waffle duty. The brown spots spread, and liquid formed in the bottom of the pan. The brown spots darkened, melted to clear amber.

“Now water,” I said. I added a cup of water, a little at a time, because the sugar liquid sputtered and hardened, then melted again.

“It’s working,” Barbara said.

I hoped.

Something more was needed. I opened the refrigerator. Plum jelly. A friend had gifted me with nine jars, a luxurious blessing. Too fine to squander on sugar water, but I had an older jar in the cabinet, one I had made and forgotten about until recently. I fetched it along with an unopened jar of Elizabeth’s shimmering jelly for Barbara to take home. She held it to the light. It glowed.

The sugar and water simmered on the stove. I added two tablespoons of jelly. The jelly sank, two continents of spring settling below the surface. Then they, too, began to dissolve. Butter, a tablespoon, not too much, just round enough.

Breakfast was ready.

The waffles were crisp and light, the syrup sweet and plumily tart. Barbara and I added butter for good measure, but my husband ate his without. We also had soysage and facon, for a soy touch of the salty. The three of us munched in the morning light, sharing with the dogs who made their rounds, noses intent on tidbit rights.

“Janet told me the French, who are notoriously thinner and healthier than Americans, say if you really enjoy your food, it will be good for you,” I said. Janet is another friend, full of information. “Americans say if you like it, it’s bound to be bad for you.”

Who are you going to believe?

Good friends. Morning light. Honeyed time. Friends and family and dogs and waffles and ripe gifts of sunshine from luscious days already a dream away. Secrets from the Ancient Ones and from the ones who share your earth-bound journey. How can it not make glad your heart?


Barbara said she wouldn’t give the waffle secret away. I told her it was in the home-made family cookbook she had. “I still won’t tell,” she said. I don’t know if she just meant she wasn’t about to get into waffle-making, but if you have the time and friends, or just sunshine and sugar, is that not reason enough to celebrate? Is not any reason enough, or no reason at all?

Crisp Waffles
(check out www.taunton.com/finecooking/pages/c00164.asp for Pam Anderson’s recipe and plenty of waffle hints)

1/2 oz. (3/4 cup) bleached all-purpose flour
1 oz. (1/4 cup) cornstarch
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup milk
6 Tbs. vegetable oil
1 large egg, separated
1 Tbs. sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Heat oven to 200°F. Heat the waffle iron. Mix the flour, cornstarch, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Mix the buttermilk, milk, and vegetable oil together. Stir egg yolk into liquids.Beat the egg white almost to soft peaks. Sprinkle in the sugar and continue to beat until the peaks are firm and glossy. Beat in the vanilla.

Pour the buttermilk mixture into the dry ingredients and whisk until just mixed. Gently fold in egg whites. Do not overmix. Pour the batter onto the hot waffle iron and cook until the waffle is crisp. Keep waffles warm, unstacked, on a rack in the oven until all are cooked.


Barbara’s Crone Plum Syrup

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
2 tablespoons plum jelly (may substitute jelly of your choice, but you know as well as I do it won’t be plum syrup)
1 tablespoon butter

Heat sugar in heavy saucepan over a low flame until it melts and becomes dark amber. Stir occasionally. It helps to have a friend to talk to. If you get distracted and your sugar gets too dark, it might be bitter. If you get distracted long enough for something really disastrous to happen, I won’t accept responsibility. It’s best to mostly pay attention. When the sugar gets dark enough for your liking, remove to the heat and add 1 cup of water a bit at a time. Stand back! The stuff will sputter. It might be best if you add the water already hot. Return to heat and add jelly. Stir until dissolved. Add butter and stir until well mixed. Pour over waffles. This syrup is thin if it’s hot. If you prefer a thicker syrup, let it cool a bit.

Open your heart. Listen. Celebrate.

Hello

I was a child who never fit comfortably in her skin, or felt at home in her small corner of the world. I think of myself as a turtle during those long years, only my shell wasn’t really a home, it was a hard defense to keep the world away. I was always poking my head out to see if the weather was good, but most of the time I thought it was stormy, so I would draw back in. Diffuse anxiety, I called it, and there was no occasion festive enough to overcome its gloom. Like Joe Btfsplk, the well-meaning character in L’il Abner who was constantly followed by a rain cloud, I was a human jinx…and, though I didn't know how, I was jinxiing myself.

Early on I started reading any book which promised to help me find some way out of my perpetual gloom, to at least get on the train headed for Happily Ever After. Finally in the past few years I've discovered sunshine. At first the moments were rare, a few hours, then days of everything being all right. The days have lengthened, and though I still occasionally notice that cloud of anxiety, I find I am living in a different world. It’s not Happily Ever After, a mythical country always somewhere down the track. It’s an immediate place, as large as the Universe. I call it Now.

What made the difference? I am sure many factors have contributed, and I have tried to look at some, as well as those moments when suddenly I realize the air is lighter, the sky is brighter, and I’m at home at last. I am using this web spot to share those moments with you, and hope you have some to share with me. With love and peace, Camellia