My Dogs Meow

      I have dogs that meow, really. Well they are actually cats but they act more like the dogs I've owned. Both of them are almost always under foot requesting attention of some kind. I’m accustomed to dogs being almost constantly underfoot requesting pets, pats and acknowledgement, but not cats. imagine having two short furry doting moms follow you around the house whenever you go after getting up to do something and all the while you're regaled with a steady stream of kitty conversation. They are the most talkative cats I have ever had. Both of them have a rather extensive vocabulary of questions, rebukes and demands for food and other requests, often in stereo.

      After several years of not having a dog or a cat I have a pair of litter-mate sister Tabbies. They were hard to tell apart when we first got them leading to numerous conversations that started with, “Which one just did that”? It took some time for us to be able to tell them apart at a glance.

                            Top - Water Cat Bottom - Grumpy Girl

        As kittens they lived in shelters and foster homes after being abandoned in an apartment. My wife’s importunity shattered my resistance to getting another cat. So of course we ended up with two! She convinced me we needed to rescue them from a return to that fate again. After hearing their story repeatedly I was putty in her hands. My wife worked with the couple that owned them and they needed to find the pair a new home because their new apartment didn’t allow pets, though they were hoping to keep them together if possible. I knew after hearing their story they would require some work and patience, though my reservations were met by assurances to the contrary. It hasn’t really been all the difficult other than being woken up by being walked on or to the sound of a toy being thrown around in the middle of the night.

The first couple of days we knew they would be skittish and just set out food and water and sat back and observed. They did the same to us. They each camped at opposite ends of the living room for a while before they decided to explore. Little by little they seemed to relax, though it took time before they stopped hopping away when we tried to pet them. And even now after 4 years they still dance away when if we move to fast whenever going in for the pets. Miss Grumpy Girl still does that, though it seems more like a game with her now and they have both figured out that getting pets is a good thing.

After we had them a few weeks I started to pick them up briefly. Of course they struggled to get way and I’d put them down immediately. I kept at it and left them to define the terms of that situation. Eventually they both got to a point where they now realize it’s a good thing and ask for it their own special way. They each demand their own one-on-one with each of us every day.

The shy one we dubbed Grumpy Cat, due to her perpetual scowl is surprisingly the one most likely to ask to cuddle. She also never really got rid of her kitten voice either. It's odd hearing such a soft voice coming from a cat her size. Water cat has a good sized handful of various intonations to let you know you need to pay attention here. 


They are different as night and day. Grumpy Girl seems to only prefer toys that are designed so we have play together. Water Cat will play with anything she finds and can amuse herself continuously it seems. Her tail can be a great source of amusement for her and us though her sister will watch while crouching and shoot her a disgusted look as if she's thinking, "nothing like furthering the dopey cat stereotype sis?" Water Cat will also race you to the bathroom and jump to the vanity expecting the faucet to be turned on a trickle for a drink. We finally had to put a stop to that when every time we headed in that direction she'd hustle to the vanity and scream for us to turn on the water. 

It has been great having them here and I expect them to be around for a good long while. They have added more laughter into a house that already had its fair share. They are the little door greeters when we each get home from work at night. They are masters at finding missing hair-ties, though I'm sure they are responsible for the missing part.. Time to go now my presence is being requested at the bathroom sink.

Funeral for a Friend

     My wife and I are fans of Rizzoli & Isles on TNT. One of the actors on the show recently committed suicide and the show wrote his death into the storyline by having him die in a car accident. The follow up show was about continuing on with life and the tribulations friends and family go through in the aftermath of such a sudden event. I thought the show did a good job within the time constraints it has in presenting a glimpse of how some of us react differently to the death of a friend or relative. The show  lead me to thinking about the way some funerals I attended affected me and how my attitude toward the entire idea changed.

     The first funeral I ever attended was my Dad’s four days after my 14^th birthday. Between the wake, the funeral and the people that came by our house I ran the gamut of weird handshakes over that first week. I don’t think I’ve been graced with as many dead fish handshakes combined in all the years since those few strange days. I really hated the whole experience, though we did have some lighter moments that week thanks to some of the folks that spent a lot of time there in the aftermath. Little did I know then how important those moments really were. I decided I would never go to another funeral until my own and was steadfast in that way of thinking until a close friend passed on almost 20 years later.

     I was asked to get up and say a few words at his memorial service and the request really surprised me. I spent time putting words down on paper figuring it would help me focus on the difficult task at hand. I still have the pages I wrote for that day and recently stopped to read them while digging through some old scribbles I've kept. I’ve kept them around for their significance because that experience changed me. It changed the way I looked at the strange rituals we humans have around death and presented me with a new attitude toward them going forward. I finally realized that day that funerals are not for the departed. What do they care what suit you put them in or how fancy the casket is because we can’t ask them anyway. The important part of the whole ritual I came to see is the bringing together in one place those people who had their lives touched by this man. I spent a good part of that day sharing stories about him with people I had never met previously that come to appreciate him as much as I did. It was truly a noetic experience realizing that this was what the ritual was about. Our common bound shared through one individual and the lives he touched by being who he was allowed all of use to come together to celebrate and remember our friend.  I'm sure others have come to a similar conclusion , so I guess I'm a little slow on the uptake apparently when it comes to some things. We can only understand what we can understand. 

     My views on many things have changed since then though I'm still not the first person in line when the time comes for a funeral. The one thing I do know now is a funeral really is an opportunity for those of us left to carry on a chance pool our spiritual resources so no one ever truly dies. So keep sharing stories of those who have moved on to keep their memory alive. I 'm going to.