Goodbye to a Beloved Pet

Cassie was the last pet Tom and I shared. She was there with us when Tom was dying, sleeping by his side, licking his head those last hours of his life. The first photo is of Tom and Cassie in later summer 2014, at the animal shelter in Covington, Louisiana, where Cassie chose Tom. I so miss this cat. (That I miss Tom goes without saying. Every day... since November 2, 2019.)

 

</ a>

So Many Unshed Tears

Cassie in our back yard and the walking trail I created , 4 April 2019

In December of 2017, Tom was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, a diagnosis that came as such a shock for an 8X marathon runner and, we thought, such a healthy person. Since that diagnosis, our lives have greatly changed. It's as if the future suddenly collapsed, a cliff's edge that moves forward just a bit every day that Tom continues to live. If we focus on our changed situation, we suddenly are standing at the abyss, overcome with grief over a future that seems to have hauled ass and jumped.

We are now 16 months into that diagnosis. Chemotherapy worked for about a year, and now Tom is in a clinical trial with, as yet, an uncertain outcome. The hardest part for me is seeing my 60-year old husband go from a man who could run marathons to a man who is often in severe pain, unable to do the activities that brought him so much satisfaction. Second to that is coping with the damage to our hopes and dreams for a shared retirement. Of course, we continue to hope--that this treatment will work, that we will have a lot more time together--but we are also realistic. And in the recognition that we might not have that time dwells so many unshed tears, so many unvoiced cries of despair and sorrow.

 I have no words of wisdom for dealing with such sorrow. Sometimes we share our grief, but mainly we just handle each day as it comes. 

Tom continues to work, at his place of employment when we're home and remotely when we have to be away for cancer treatment. I stay busy with housework or the art car project I started before Tom's diagnosis. When we're home, I work in the yard--as I did today, weeding-- or do housework or some of the chores that we once shared. We just carry on the best we can.

Friends who read this post can contact me for more information on Tom's health. Tom is private and doesn't want me to provide many details online. 

Meanwhile, I hope to come back here to write about the progress of my art car, about what we're experiencing outside the big "C" that looms over everything now in our lives.

Persey in the back yard, 4 April 2019

My herb beds: We had a very cold winter, but most of the perennials are sprouting.

At Casa Malpollos: Chickens, of course

When I was a child, my father bought several unusual chickens, among them Turkens (Naked Necks) and Frizzles. There were others, but these are the ones I remember the most because they were so unusual,  so unlike the white Leghorns that my dad's mother, Margaret Cole Dugat, raised for meat and for eggs. Daddy wanted us to experience these unusual chicken breeds, and I credit, to some extent, a tendency to delight in the exotic and different to that early childhood experience of watching these chickens peck around the yard on our 8 acres of family land in Old River, Texas. Our home place had been carved out of woodland that was passed down through several generations and was situated on a hill across an oyster shell-covered road from my dad's parents' home and his birthplace. I and my siblings ran around barefoot all summer long, and as sharp as oyster shells can be, they did not penetrate the tough soles of our hardened feet.

These days, though I walk around bare-footed or sock-footed in my house all day when I am home, I can't walk barefoot onto the gravel-covered backyard that we now own without wincing and pussy-footing just as my cats do. The cats are smarter; they walk on the gravel for the minimal amount of time it takes to get to a smoother surface, such as the railroad ties that border the gravel surface or the larger rocks in the faux stream bed that winds through the back yard. 

As soon as Tom and I had a big enough place on which to raise chickens, I ordered a full run of chicks, choosing a mix of Silver-laced Wyandottes and Ameraucanas. This was the  late 1980s and early 1990s when we rented a small house on a large ranch in Bryan, Texas. The chickens, when grown, roosted in a small wooden henhouse that Tom built on posts. They ran free on the ranch during the day. Because I had ordered a straight run of twenty-one chicks, we had no way of knowing the ratio of hens to roosters until the chickens got old enough to begin demonstrating male or female behavior. There were eleven roosters in that run, and they gave the hens hell until we put all but one rooster in the freezer.

When we moved from Bryan, Texas, to Cloquet, Minnesota, we gave the remaining chickens to the young couple who rented the house after we did. We didn't have chickens again--Ameraucanas--until after we moved to Georgia in 1996. Of that batch of chickens, I chose to keep the prettiest rooster, who also turned out to be the meanest. Our daughter hated that rooster. It met an untimely death when it attacked Tom one day as he was carrying a large flat of tomato seedlings to the garden to be planted. 

the mean rooster in our backyard in Georgia

These days, however, Tom is a quasi-vegetarian (avoids meat except fish and crawfish and eats dairy products such as milk, eggs, and cheese) and I am a flexitarian in that I occasionally eat meat, so we are most interested in having laying hens. We had inherited some chickens from the previous owners of this house: one met death by hawk, two died of illnesses, and the roosters ended up being stewed with dumplings. Nine hens now roost in the henhouse: three from the previous flock and six Silver-Laced Wyandottes that we purchased as days-old chicks from a local feed store. The three old hens are a white Leghorn, a black hen that may be an Australorpe, and a red hen that could be a Rhode Island Red. They are almost past their laying years, with the red hen and the white Leghorn still laying eggs but the black hen not.

After a little bantam hen of the original flock was killed by a hawk one evening last fall, we hadn't let the hens out to free forage for almost a year. To make sure they don't become supper for some predator, we have to remain outside to watch them if we let them out of their covered chicken run. However, I like for chickens to have some freedom of the yard, and I was just waiting for the Wyandottes to get older and for me to find the time to sit in the yard to watch while they roamed. I found that time one day last week.

I placed a patio chair under a large juniper tree in the backyard and opened the chicken yard gate. No sooner had I returned to the chair to sit than a small hawk flew into the tree, landing on a branch right over my head. "Oh, no you don't," I screamed and startled the hawk. It flew away, and I moved my chair next to the chicken yard to keep a closer watch on the hens as they ventured out. 

A closer encounter between hens and possible predator occurred later when our cat Persephone (Persey) approached me, mewing for her evening meal. But neither of our cats seems interested in the chickens for food. Cassie is so cautious around them as to seem fearful at times. Persey's first encounter with the young hens outside the hen yard was almost anti-climactic, with the hens showing more interest in her than she in them. 

One of the Wyandottes checks out Persey

Persey seems to be avoiding a direct encounter with the hen.

More hens wander over to investigate.

Some kind of confab seems to be going on.

Eye contact is made and perhaps some secret deal struck between them all.

The meeting is over. Persey is outnumbered and outweighed.

Cassie watches more cautiously from a place in hiding.

I don't really view my chickens as pets, but I am fond of them. I feed them seeds that I have gathered from the stalks of cowpen daisies that bloomed wildly in the back yard in late summer, vegetable matter left over from chopping veggies for dinner, and greens that are going to seed in my kitchen garden. The hens hear my shoes grating on the gravel as I walk to the pen, and they come running, suspecting that I am bringing them something tastier than the gray laying pellets that fill their feeders. I have seen too many chickens slaughtered, have plucked feathers still warm from the hot water into which the limp, dead bodies have been plunged, to be any more than an enemy at truce. 

But even enemies can develop a cautious affection in the right circumstances. I watch these birds that are distantly related to dinosaurs and realize we are all evolving.

Morning after A Rain

Side yard with Secret Garden room--so green after the rain

According to the U.S. climate data website, the area where we live now gets an annual average of 11.82 inches of precipitation, with the highest monthly averages in July (2.44 inches) and August (3.03 inches), the "monsoon" months. What a difference between here and where we were two years ago, where the annual average of precipitation is 63.58 inches, with the highest monthly averages in January (5.75 inches) and July (6.65 inches). This past week, Louisiana received much more rain at once than usual: thirteen rivers broke flood records and thousands of homes were flooded in areas that had never flooded in human memory. One town received at least 31 inches of rain in 48 hours. That amount of precipitation here would probably cause mudslides on mountains.

Here in northern Arizona yesterday, rain began falling before noon and fell off and on most of the afternoon. I had just enough time to mow the side yard (leaving patches of wildflowers) and then to gather corn between rain showers. Then I spent a couple of hours shucking corn, cutting corn off the cob, and cooking the corn for dinner. 

Cutting corn off the cob--Tom planted an heirloom corn, Golden Bantam. I think we'll try a different one next year.

fresh corn cooking on the stove--I added milk, butter, a couple of serrano peppers from the garden, salt and pepper

Every morning the cats, especially Cassie, pester me to go outside, and this morning after the rain was no exception. The grass was still wet when we ventured out, and everything was clean and bright.

Side yard, with apple trees, Secret Garden room, greenhouse, and patches of wildflowers

apple ripening

morning glories and scarlet runner beans along the garden fence

cowpen daisies along the fence that separates our garden from our neighbors' garden

Peace

In her book, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (which I read 20 years ago), Kathleen Norris quotes a saying of desert monks: "If a man settles in a certain place and does not bring forth the fruit of that place, the place itself casts him out."

I don't know what would be the "fruit" of the volcanic fields at the foot of the White Mountains on the Colorado Plateau, but in cultivating wild flowers and providing space for local pollinators, I guess I'm bringing forth the fruit of this place. And I'm adding fruit of my own in the gardens we grow--with what little rain a valley in a rain shadow can provide.

Lagniappe:

tomatoes fresh from our garden--more canning this weekend

Persey walks in the bright, wet grass

I took this photo of Cassie two days ago. The cats and I prowl our yard together.

Death in the Garden

When I headed out this morning at 7 AM to dig up 2 1/2 rows of red potatoes, I expected an uneventful gardening experience. Tom had canned tomatoes on Saturday, and my contribution to our gardening enterprise was to do some of the manual labor, which I actually prefer, anyway, to canning. The cats accompanied me outside, Persey sleeping most of the morning in the Secret Garden room that I created out of a 10'X10' dog pen, and Cassie wandering around the yard and garden on the lookout for mischief.

The garden this morning, after I had dug up a few potato plants

After turning over half of a row of potatoes, I looked back at the work I had done so far and saw something small wriggling on the upturned soil. I bent for a closer look. With my spade, I had dug up a nest of what I first took to be mice but that later I suspected were moles. The creatures were very tiny, without hair, and obviously in distress. What to do? We live far from any conservation group that might want to take in tiny moles still nursing, and since I had violently--though unintentionally--disturbed the nest, the little things wouldn't live.

What I inadvertently dug up when I was spading up potatoes

So I put the creatures back in the soil where they had been, knowing that they would die there. Of course, Cassie, who had been incommunicado when I had called for her a few minutes earlier, showed up, and, when my back was turned, dug up one of the tiny critters.

Cassie with her tiny catch

I took the little mammal baby from her, knowing that Mama Mole would reject these little creatures because they had been handled and disturbed. I returned it to the garden, and closed the garden gate so that Cassie could not return. However, later that morning she snuck up onto the greenhouse roof and down into the garden, making off with another mole--which I "rescued," after a manner of speaking because nothing was going to save these creatures from death.

Cassie makes off with a baby mole a second time

Later I did look up on the Internet how to take care of baby moles, but, really, it was way too late. These little guys didn't even have their fur yet. And I'm not the nurturing type. I have a rather jaundiced view of nature red in tooth and claw--even though there is much in nature that is lovely and mysterious. And as I type this I am reminded of something that the Polish poet and writer Czeslaw Milosz observed about nature in his published journal A Year of the Hunter. I took the book down from the shelf behind my desk and flipped through it, for I knew that I had underlined several passages.

I opened the book immediately to this: "I am not a passionate admirer of Nature," Milosz admits on March 30, 1988, "because Nature is a pain, but I still feel the presence--inborn, inherent--of a tree, an animal, a flower...." And in an earlier entry in September 1987, he describes nature programs on PBS as "obscene" because the scientific approach to these programs includes humans as part of the cycle of nature as any other creature and, because of that, people "must accept the world as it is," without moral force. He is "horrified by the images of mutual indifferent devouring" and wonders how the message of that indifference translates into human society (and how children, for whom these programs are created, interpret that message). He asks: "Is hunting and devouring each other the very essence of Nature?" And answers: "It is, and that is why I dislike Nature."

I don't dislike Nature, but I recognize its indifference. A parent of these little creatures made a nest in garden soil in an Arizona garden. Today, I dug potatoes in that garden and destroyed the nest. I guess I'm a force of Nature, just like my cat Cassie,  though not totally indifferent to the suffering.

I continued with my work.

At the end of the row where the tiny creatures met their fate.

The completed work, stones marking near the center of the photo the dirt tomb of the moles.

The potatoes I dug, drying and curing in the pantry

I suspect that one reason Czeslaw Milosz hated Nature is that it reminded him of the fragility of his own body, that he also, despite his intellect, morality, and fine-tuned emotions, was subject to that same indifferent force, for he also muses in an earlier entry: "The dividing line between life and death is so fine. The unbelievable fragility of our organism, which suggests a vision: a fog of sorts condenses into human form, lasts for a moment, and is instantly dispelled." 

So, here....a poppy memorial for the fragile lives that I destroyed today.

Note: The other lives I destroyed today were the potato plants--"devouring," the "very essence of Nature."

Today's Leftovers: Cats, Flowers, and other Stuff

Cassie on the garden gate one evening earlier this week

Just a few minutes ago, I finished a half glass of wine left over from yesterday--Beringer White Zinfandel. We had carried a chilled bottle of the sweet fruity wine to a local event last night and returned home with about half a bottle, most of which I finished off before bedtime except for this little bit of half a glass. I had poured a second glass--very full--started to drink it, and realized, really, I had had too much wine for the evening. I used a funnel to pour the rest back into the bottle. So this half glass I just finished off was really, really the leftovers of yesterday. Tom and I also finished off the neufchatel cheese mixture I had used to make some appetizers for the same event. I slathered the cheese mixture (neufchatel, chopped fresh dill, heavy cream, horseradish) on some crackers and topped it with chopped-up cucumbers. Tom omitted chopping the cucumbers for his neufchatel-cucumber cracker topping.

That's what today has been for me, a left-over kind of day. I wandered around the yard, pulling and chopping weeds; taking the cats out for their daily backyard exercise and entertainment; washing, drying, and folding some clothes; reading the daily headlines online; putzing around on the Internet. Tom was far more ambitious: he canned tomatoes from our garden. Maybe I should be shamed by his energetic activities, but I'm not. Tom likes to can. Maybe tomorrow I will post left-overs from today, which will include photos of Tom's canning. Right now he's in the garage putting a new hoe handle on a hoe that I broke while hoeing weeds a few days ago. 

So today's post is a post of leftovers, photos of the cats I took yesterday and the day before, of flowers I didn't include in my last post. Just a putzing day.....

First leftovers, photos of the cats doing what cats do....

Cassie in an apple tree in our apple orchard (of three apple trees)

Cassie on the greenhouse door, our garden, and rain clouds in the background

Cassie and Persey--Their step up to the roof of the greenhouse is from the empty rabbit hutch

Persey is 14 years old, but since she's lost weight, she's gotten a lot friskier.

Second leftovers are photos of wildflowers that I took in our yard as I am trying to identify them. The Golden crownbeard below--other common names, cowpen daisy, cow pasture-daisy, girasolillo, butter-daisy, hierba de la bruja--came up in our garden last year, and I liked the flowers so well that I scattered seed along one side of the garden as well as in the backyard. My Arizona plant identification book claims that "Native Americans and early settlers used [the] plant to treat skin diseases and boils" and that "Hopi Indians use water of [the] steeped plant for treating spider bites." I like their blowzy look.

Golden Crownbeard, or cowpen daisy (Verbesina encelioides)

Another wild plant that I have decided to cultivate in our yard is the rayless gumweed. The plant isn't really pretty, and it's flowers aren't showy, but I like the odd look of its gummy flowers. Also, Zoe Merriman Kirkpatrick, author of Wildflowers of the Western Plains: A Guide (1992), writes that she learned that Native American Pueblo women use the plant "as a dye source for the wool in their blankets," achieving "lovely hues of yellow, gold, and olive-green." Plants are coming up voluntarily all over our yard. 

Rayless gumweed (Grindelia aphanactis)

And finally, the remains of a day earlier this week...clouds near sunset...

Gardening In the Company of Cats

This morning, after ingesting as much headline news as I could stand, I headed out to our Arizona garden to collect vegetables. Gardening in Arizona is very different from gardening in Louisiana or Georgia, the two last states in which we lived. Because the area receives only 10-12 inches of annual precipitation, I was worried about being able to have a productive garden. But the small greenhouse my husband built on the studs of an old chicken house, the drip hoses we've threaded throughout the garden, and the chicken manure from the old hen yard as well as the new hen yard have all worked together to help us create a fantastic garden here at 7200 ft. above sea level.

My two cats usually accompany me outside. I allow them out of the house into our fenced-in backyard only when I can keep an eye on them. Cassie (Cassandra), the three-year-old, follows me into the garden while Persey (Persephone), the fourteen-year-old, heads to the outdoor room I created out of a 10'X10' dog pen, where she hops onto a garden bench or table for a snooze.

Persey snoozing in my Secret Garden outdoor room

Since losing weight, old Persey has become more frisky, and she often climbs a tree or two before settling down on the garden bench.

We didn't know Persey still had it in her.

Sometimes a stump will do.

Both cats like to clamber onto the greenhouse roof though Cassie is the most adventurous and does this more often than Persey.

Cassie on the door of the greenhouse

And onto the roof

Today Cassie thoroughly checked out every inch of the garden. 

Cassie stops a moment by our yellow squash plant....

...and checks out our neighbor's garden and yard beyond the fence, where the dog Gypsy lives....

...and looks for intruders among the tomatoes.

Cassie has completely perambulated the garden.

She has finished her gardening chores, as I have mine. 

After a chat with my neighbor across the fence, I and the cats headed inside as thunder clapped in the distance. We're in the monsoon season in northeastern Arizona, and we have been getting a lot of rain lately after a dry June and early July. Once in the house, I piddled around, just barely registering that Cassie was very occupied in the sun room, where I heard what I thought was the buzzing of a hummingbird through an open window. But later, as I walked by the door to the room, I noticed that Cassie had climbed up on the short wall that separates the landing to the laundry room from the sun room. I looked toward the skylight where Cassie's attention was riveted: a hummingbird had flown into the house through the open patio door and was frantically trying to get through the clear plastic of the skylight. I had to remove Cassie, close all the entrances to the room, and poke a broom--straw-side up--toward the frightened hummingbird. With slow movements, I finally got the bird to perch on the broom, and I carefully moved broom and bird to the door and outside. After a little hesitation, the hummingbird flew away. 

This was the second bird rescue I had attempted today, and the most successful. Earlier, a sparrow had flown into the hen yard, which is surrounded on all sides by chicken wire, walls and ceiling, and it couldn't find its way out. The cats prowled around the edges, scaring the bird more, as I opened the door to the hen-yard, trying to shoo out the bird but not the chickens. Cassie got into the chicken yard and close enough to the bird to catch it; I had to haul her ass out of there. The poor little bird's head was bleeding from its frantic flight from chicken-wire wall to chicken-wire wall to chicken-wire ceiling; it landed on my shoulder for a moment and crapped in its fear, but I couldn't get outside the chicken yard fast enough to set it free. The poor bird was exhausted. Over and over, it would fly to a chicken-wire wall, cling there with its beak wide open, and hang upside down, twirling its head around in order to keep an eye on all the dangers that surrounded it. I finally had to take the cats in the house, close up the chicken yard, and hope the bird could find its way out without my help. When I returned later, it was gone. 

silhouette of a hummingbird on a wall of my Secret Garden