Funeral

So yesterday I attended a funeral.

It was the funeral of a distant relative. An old lady who took to telling me the whereabouts of other relatives I had never laid my eyes on whenever I met her.

A bus took the mourning crowd to an odd looking funeral home in the outskirts.  Sort of Egyptian with a contemporary twist. The type of building one can guess only could find funding whilst the economic boom.
After finding out where our dead was, pay our respects to the people who really cared for her and have a last look at the empty frame of a person who we all had known and appreciated to some extent; we headed for the burial place.

It was a nice and  peaceful setting by the beach. By now there were some thirty folk under the fading wintery light. Only four or five were really close to the deceased. The rest of us were there more to accompany the living than anything else.
A quick service took place. She was buried. Flowers were laid. During all those procedures people kept the serene composure of those knowing that a vital cycle had come to an end naturally.

If you don't share your life with a parrot or a turtle, chances are that you are going to outlive your pets. Not only that, you are going to know a decrepit version of your beloved companion, as you knew their energetic selves. One day the signs of age start to show, and the next one you are facing a future with your furry family being at a perpetual low ebb till the inevitable happens.

 It is both a natural and saddening experience. By now I can only imagine the melancholy that will come to me in a few years time, once that Mr. and Mrs. cat are not longer around.

Stalker

The ever-present sound of rain muffles passersby steps and their hurried apologies when they bump into each other, shielded and blinded as they are by their umbrellas.

 Walls are morphing into shiny amphibians with moist skin. Dampness advances unchallenged and reaches my core. I shudder.

I feel a cold breath on my neck. Staying still is not an option.

I move in the dark. I hear a noise. I look at a moving shadow out of the corner of my eye.

I DO have a stalker.

I tiptoe, swiftly and silently, as I try to find a lit space.

I turn on the light and look at my feet. Mrs. Cat jumps and freezes, not knowing exactly what to expect, if  a scolding or a cuddle. I produce both.

I allow her to stalk me to the bathroom, to the kitchen, to the room where the dehumidifier is, to the kitchen again, to the room where Mr. Cat usually sleeps, to the other room where Mr. Cat sleeps as a second option, to the sitting room (where I finally find Mr. Cat) and to my bedroom.

Last time I saw Mr. Cat he was quite engaged following a raindrop falling on a window and he was not half as interested as Mrs. Cat is in me.

Leo the Lion

A bullet cuts through the air and ends up inside Terry's cranium.

Leo can't care less.He is living a moment of joyous rapture. Freedom!
He walks indicesively out the wire fence and wanders the gravel path for a minute before engaging in the first senseless race since he was a cub. He is suddenly stopped by the appealing metallic smell of blood.

Oh, yes, Terry's blood.
Terry's name sounds terribly like breakfast all at once. Terry had always been, maybe still was, a nice man to him.

Could he or couldn't he...

Temptation is strong.

He remembers Terry bringing tons of chicken carcasses. Yet he is also the one who prevents him from roaming the woods. But  he rescued him from the romanian circus. And sometimes he even brings rabbits...alive ones!

He looks at Terry, chooses staying hungry, and keeps walking towards the wilderness of the woods.

Leo is still wondering about him when a bullet finishes the promise of freedom.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2050778/Lions-bears-loose-Ohio-Armed-police-wrap-hunt-51-animals.html

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Leo was the Metro Goldwin Mayer Lion, by the way. Lions are felines, aren't they?

At least I´m fairly sure that if my cats venture out they are not going to be shot dead.

Turkey breast

Pink bag with a pink zipper containing pink slices? Owner trying to open it with her teeth, then with a knife, then combining teeth, hands and knife? (Let's face it, opening packages was never one of owner's virtues)

Doubt flutters in the mind. Eyes go O-o, then o-O, then o-O and finally, a sudden realization O-O.

TURKEY BREAST !

The beauty of high in sodium processed food strikes and a primal reaction takes place.  Mr. and Mrs. Cat are no longer the calm and agreeable beings that exist in owner's head. They transmute into zombie-like creatures. Now even owner can catch a glimpse of what the most abhorrent member of mankind - the cat-hater - can see.

If one could translate into speech what they meow  it would surely sound like so : ' brains' , 'brains' , 'brains'...ehem, I mean : 'mine', 'mine', 'mine', 'mine', 'mine' a million times over.

Determination and lack of a self-preservation instinct (good qualities in any wannabe zombie) are all aparent when they climb over owner, try to steal the precious slices in her very face, groan and moan asking for their birthday present and are not distrated by anything else.

How much I pity Mr. and Mrs. Cat knowing that it is someone else who swallows most of their favourite lean protein!

Mr. and Mrs. Cat

I could tell you a great deal about Mr. and Mrs. Cat.

After all, I know them better than anyone else. Which is not a miracle considering that they live a quiet and confined life at my home. Our home, to be fair.

If it was not that they are known by former owner and the occasional visits that destroy our solitary domesticity; one might think that they are some sort of imaginary friends.

They are not. They are very real flesh, fur and feeling. And they are also known  to every child in our street. That for sure must count for something as far as evidence of their existance goes.

At least Mr. Cat-in-the-window is, as that blank stare that reflets their infantile ones and follows them as they go past our plot in the world.

 Not so sure about Mrs. Cat and her perpetual shyness. She may not be the brightest cat, but she knows that other human beings apart from former owner and me are forces to be reckoned with. However, she sometimes abandons her ever-present intuition and gathers up courage to display herself behind the safety of crystal glass.

Mr. Cat

Mr. cat sits by the window thinking about the life he could have lived.

Former owner visited today.She smelled of asphalt and flowers and dirt and of all the things that were forbidden to him as a home kept cat and that he very much longed.

 She smooched him. Over and over. That by itself was nice.Although nothing out of the ordinary.

Naturally, he is left puzzled when the handyman fails to acknowledge his natural superiority and uber-cutesy. As a result of such deviant behaviour, he feels forced to leave his comfortable indolence to perform all sort of tricks as if he were a regular tamed animal. Once the handyman talks to him with a high-pitched voice and pats him, his faith in the world is restored and he can leave the room with his dignity intact.

Making himself visible and pattable comes out of his free will.

That is what owner and former owner don't understand when they give themselves such preposterous tittle. Some day all three will have to sit down and address seriously the matter of ownership.

At 13 he feels he has gained a lot of insight on about everything. If only he could tell and not be forced to look at everything and everyone with a silent look on his tilted face.