The (possibly) last cat

The cat enters the room while I’m scratching out some thoughts in my journal. She has some comments to make about how breakfast appears to be slow in arriving, then sets to licking her coat over by the door.

The sole survivor of our cat posse that surged to seven in 2007, she has seen us slowly turn into a dog home (not that we weren’t already) as her elders moved on one by one. If she misses her kind, she is philosophical about it, keeping to herself and touring the house on a regular basis.

It will be 15 years in July since she darted across the on-ramp to U.S. 41, igniting my protective instinct and letting me take her home, where we assured ourselves that seven cats was too many and we would find her another home, but we didn’t try that hard. The vet estimated she was 4 weeks old.

We named her Blackberry, but I initially wanted to call her E.T., because she seemed to be crying “Home! Home! Home! Home! Home!” as she looked around for, I presume, the family she had left behind. But she has become part of our family in the meantime.

She does not snuggle or sleep on our shoulders or any of the affectionate things her species has been known to do. She does love up the dogs, however, and licks the dirt out of their eyes on a regular basis. I don’t think we’ll get her a companion or replace her when the inevitable comes, but you never know. Another kitten may cross our paths someday.

Quit your raging

I originally posted this on April 22, 2019. I see no reason to change a word of it.

The extent to which rage has become a common ingredient in politics (and spilling over into everyday life) is uncanny. It’s well documented how anger eats at your mind, your body, your very soul, and yet so much rhetoric is expended building rage.

Spend a few minutes reviewing the words of the average practicing politician of any stripe, and you will either find an angry man or woman, or you will hear words intended to make you angry.

Imagine if our chief export was peace.

Imagine if all the energy people channel into their rage was instead applied to love and mercy and trying to understand.

Imagine if, instead of expending fury, we fought just as hard to love our neighbors and smile on a brother.

In the end, the battle belongs to love. The ultimate triumph goes not to the one who shouted the loudest, whose hate was fiercest, whose arms were most powerful. No, victory belongs to the one who spoke most gently, whose love was most unshakable, and whose arms reached out in support.

Rage, a cousin of fear, is a disease that seeks to burn all in its path. Love will hold up the universe if need be.

Just wait until you meet her

I do not expect this scene to appear in any of the books I’m writing about Jeep Thompson, but the moment sprang from a daydream about Jeep’s formative years. I hope it will pique your interest for that hopefully-inevitable time when you finally meet her.

“Your daughter is reckless and disobedient,” the teacher said.

“Oh, yes?” Beverly Thompson said. “What makes you say that?”

“She is always trying to do things her own way. She won’t follow instructions.”

“Does she understand the concepts you’re teaching?”

“Only too well. As I say, she applies them wrong.”

“Are they wrong, or are they different from what you want?”

“It’s the same thing!” the teacher exclaimed.

“No,” Beverly said. “If she discovers her own way to apply the concepts, and her way is valid, then it’s only a different way, it’s not a wrong way.”

“Well! I can see why your daughter is incorrigible. No good will come of that one!”

“My daughter will save the worlds because she knows how to think. Not only will she put a square peg in a round hole, she will reshape the pegs and the holes and change the course of time and the universe.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about!”

“And that’s the sad part — you, her supposed teacher.”

“Well, I never —“

“Apparently that much is true. Come, Jeep, let’s go home.”