Elvis » Sun Dec 15, 2013 2:30 am wrote:PS. After getting up from watching the movie and going into the kitchen, my cat peeked at me from around a dark corner. I took the eye-contact opportunity to mentally ask her, "well, sweetie, is there anything on your mind?" Her eyes glowed back at me from the dark.
"You know damn well what I want. More of that good tuna you gave me earlier." She jumped down and came over to me.
"But you just had some tuna," I say, out loud. I remind you, that stuff is expensive! How about a hug instead?"
I pick her up, she settles into my arms. "Purr."
Okay, enough, now she wants back down, onto the chair. I start to walk away and she swipes me with a claw! Well I never!
"You asked me what I want," she glared back, and walks to the refrigerator.
I relent, and a moment later she's at her bowl, chowing down tuna.
"Oh, and that litterbox ain't gonna clean itself."(edited typos)
Who's a vegetarian?
When I read Elvis' cat story the other day, it reminded me of an encounter I had with a cockroach down in Texas. I told my wife of the experience then, and even wrote of it in a story - many, many, many years ago... Samsara. I couldn't find it, or I would've posted it; so I began to throw it together for you.
My wife woke up, and we watched the full version of Anna's video. We were cryin' like babies. It was funny. She went upstairs to shower and dress, while I continued to write the story. Then, I was thinking in the shower about the story while my wife was cooking breakfast...
A few years ago, I drove my mother to Texas to visit her dying sister in a hospital between Houston and Dallas near their parents' olde mini-mansion where we stayed. The house was just as I remembered from my childhood: It was a red brick monster with white trim and doors. My mother walked fast ahead of me as I sauntered from the street up the wide concrete and red brick walkway, up those familiar wide red brick steps, and onto the red tiled front porch that was big enough to play hide and seek. We took another step up between two massive pillars that supported a balcony over the doorway. A leaded glass half moon window swept over the top, and you could kinda see through the leaded glass panels on each side of a glorious front door.
Mom unlocked the door and we stepped into the foyer. The only toilet on the main floor was in the back of the house, crammed beneathe the stairs, and a grown man had to hit his head to sit down to pee, or aim from the door.
I found myself not alone, but no one was there while I admired the tall ceilings, the enormous crystal chandelier that glimmered above the entry, giant Persian rugs on wood floors throughout, leaded and stained glass, 8" trim along the top of the walls and along the floor. Scarlett O'hara would've been proud of the wide, wooden staircase with an ornate dark rail swerving atop a line of white spindles, flowing up to a sitting area beneathe the leaded glass window at the top of the first flight... There was a beautiful antique table, with a white marble top on the landing; and two antique chairs that no one ever sat in. There must've been twenty stairs. I could almost see the slinkie walking down them. The rail curved around and up at the perfect angles, up eight more stairs and along the hallway over the stairwell at the top.
My grandparent's formal dining room, looking as it did in my youth, was to the left of the foyer. Through a swinging door toward the back of the dining room was a utility area, and a side door to the "porte-corchere". My grandmother would park just outside that side entrance. RD would park her car out back, out of the way.
RD was a old black man who worked for my grandparents for as long as I could remember. Geez... I'd follow him around and he'd talk to me as
he did chores around the house. RD took me to meet his family once... Regretfully, I had forgotten about him... He was the best of the bunch, I think.
There was a carriage house in the back, where Granddad would work on his Chevy. But the the Imperial was just a little too wide to negotiate those olde timey doors. Someone must've lived in the apartment above it - long before; because I looked up there and saw the few belongings they left beneathe decades of dust.
There was a grandfather clock standing in the alcove between the swinging door into the dining room and the swinging door into the kitchen, and another set of steps that wound up to a second floor blue bedroom where as a kid I found a closet door with steps behind it; the steps that led to an enormous attic with big dormer windows in the front. The top floor was a managerie... A book unto itself.
The house was built by an odd couple who sold it to my grandparents during the 40's. My mother never lived there. She was already married, and then divorced. I visited my grandparents as a kid; but hadn't been there for twenty years at that point. All the rooms and furniture looked the same as it did in the 60's. Every room had it's knick-knacks; every knick-knack was a memory. The innocent memories overwhelmed me.
In the grandiose living room to the right of the foyer, next to the grand piano and between the giant fireplace and mirrors, amidst the high back sofa and chairs, an empty hospital bed sat in the middle of the room. Oxygen tanks were all around.
Just beyond the LR was the card room where Granny and I used to play dominoes in the sunlight that shone through the big windows around the sides. The french doors were hardly ever opened to that red tile porch in the front. She had an elevator in the back of the room, which went through the floor to her bedroom up above. The cardroom was where the open caskets were viewed, one by one, as they all passed away.
Two master bedrooms were separated by the hallway at the top of the stairs; The original owners designed it that way. He slept in one suite, and she on the opposite end of the house. There was a bathroom for each, another few bedrooms and a study between them. The study had french doors that opened onto a noisy sheet metal patio above the front door.
After my grandparents moved in, they slept on one side, and my great grand mother slept in the other suite. She lived there for 22 years. Aunt Kitty slept over the porte-cachere, next to the room with the closet to the attic - atop of those steps to the driveway.
My great grandmother lived to be 99 years old. I remember seeing her in the bedroom in which I was about to sleep. I was too shy to go in there, and never saw her anywhere else - except in the cardroom.
My mother's little sister never lived in another house. She moved into the suite when I was ten. People didn't give her much credit; but she was the mathematician.
My grandfather, a WWI pilot, was maybe the bravest. He didn't talk much, smoked like a fiend, and died of cancer only five years after his mother-in-law passed away.
Twelve years later, when I was supposedly all grown up, I held my grandmother's hand as she lay dying in Aunt Kitty's suite. Kitty wasn't there, and I never asked her why Granny was in the bed in which her mother had passed away. I can still see her. The only time I ever saw my grandmother cry was as I let go of her hand. I wish I'd stayed longer. She took care of her mother for all of those years, but no one was there for her in the end. She was the sweetest.
It was a tough night, that last night we visited Kitty in the same hospital where her father died. As we were about to leave, she asked as if we could bring her a chocolate shake from the local Dairy Queen. Mom was in a hurry, as always; but I insisted... Kitty smiled and held my hand as I gently helped her to the straw...
That night, my mother slept in her parent's olde room accross the house, and I fell asleep in the deathbed with the light and the TV on. My eyes gradually opened as I listened to a noise on the floor. Eventually, I rolled over to look, and spotted the source...
The cockroaches in Colorado are little bitties compared to those in Texas. This one was as big as my big toe! It was eating
something next to the bed... It wasn't poison, thank God. I watched because I had never seen a roach this large... The bug noticed me and suddenly stopped chewing. We weren't going to hurt each other, just passing in the night. I laid back on my pillow, listening again... When I rolled over to look again. Much to my delight, my little buddy looked up; and it was a most gracious and glorious moment when he continued to chew. I rolled out of the other side the bed to turn out the light accross the room. I turned off the TV and laid in the dark as we talked silently in the night.
Yes, we conversed as those mandibles kept chewing; pausing now and then to ponder what was said... Next thing I knew, we were face to face...
Kind olde wisened compound eyes gazed through plasticky chitin (or whatever it is) into mine. "You're okay...", the olde soul told me, followed by something I didn't hear... Then I heard , "Ya' gotta a long, long way to go kid... " .
I'll never forget the spiney embrace!
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When I returned downstairs for breakfast following my shower, I spotted a fly bouncing against our front window. For the last few years, I typically trap such a fly in a plastic cup, slip a sheet paper beneathe it, so I can easily take it outside in the cup. Why smear it all over the glass? I also do this for spiders and bees.
The spiders and I now have a repore, and they don't even hardly come in anymore.
My wife, who is unaware of almost anything I write, watched from the kitchen as I trapped the fly, opened the door and set it free.
Out of the blue she asked me, "Did he talk to ya'?"
"What?", I replied.
"Weren't you the one who told me the story about the cockroach next to the bed?"
). It's so big and complex it's starting to show emergent, unpredictable behaviors.
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