Kitty-width

It’s afternoon teatime. The cats know when I put water on for tea around three or four in the afternoon. Puffer and Bonsai trained me to give them a teatime snack, and now the rest of the cats wait for their snack. It’s high tea for them, a full serving of dry food. It’s such good kibble that I only give them canned food in the morning for the taste and texture.

With tea in hand, I open the door to my studio a kitty-width. Some come in to eat, others stick to the outside dishes. Today, ten come in. Beemer is one of them. He’s the one who I think pissed on my bookshelves last week, but I can’t be certain. It wasn’t strong-smelling, so I would have probably missed it if Puffer Vasu hadn’t done her inspection rounds later in the day and I noticed her lingering there.

There was also pee on the soap dish in the studio bathroom, evidence of someone using the sink but standing up and splashing outside of it. Yesterday, I saw ZoZo in the sink peeing. I think in ZoZo’s case it’s confusion about what is wanted. In the matter of the bookcase, I don’t know if it was about marking. Usually marking-urine is strong smelling.

Because of these recent episodes of urine in places I would prefer they not be, I keep an eye on things while they come in to roam and play and eat, and I keep the door to the kitchen closed.

I note that I have arranged furniture in the studio with kitty-widths in mind. They can slip between chairs and walls with ease. The door is open exactly the width of the widest.

A friend was here when one of the cats was doing a good scratch on the corner of a chair. “You don’t mind?” No. I’ve come to not only not mind but hardly notice.

Pamela told me when one of her cats used to use the side of an upholstered chair, she thought it was cute. I’m guessing it didn’t occur to her to feel irritated. It’s certainly a lot more relaxing when I don’t want to change their behavior in every little way to conform to some idea I have of how things ought to be.

In the last week, I’ve wanted a lot of things to be different than they are--my health, friends’ health, the weather, the number of perceived responsibilities, hotspots in the world of conflict, my checkbook balance. It’s not relaxing to be ever vigilant in trying to right wrongs, nor do I see it contributing to equanimity. Going at someone with the energy that they are somehow not doing things right is one of the best ways I know to stimulate resistance. It’s also a good way to give my happiness to others. Even when unspoken, I think we all are sensitive to someone wanting something from us.

This general unhappiness spilled over into my attitude toward the cats. I was seeing them as a burden and only taking from me. I forgot for a bit their contribution to the whole here. I was seeing them as Other.

I wish I could say this has passed, been seen through, been surrendered to, and the energy has moved into bliss. Hardly. But the strength of resistance is something I no longer can sustain. Bit by bit, I understand different aspects, and then a little lets go, and my good humor regains its strength.

If I’m going to live with cats--and it seems I am--I would like to enjoy the surprises, including pee in the sink and sculpted furniture. I would like to wonder at their creativity and response to life. With some degree of humor, I will continue to measure many things by kitty-widths.

Missed Opportunities

I have embarked on a natural dyeing project. There is something gorgeous about naturally dyed material, as if the essence of the original plant or animal shows through. I’ve long wanted to learn to do this. With summer here, it seemed a good time to begin.

The process of marrying color to fiber usually involves using a mordant, a substance that helps the chemical process of dyeing and creates light-fastness. In the case of cotton and natural dyes, there are three processes that greatly aid success--scouring with washing soda and detergent, using a tannin mordant, and using an alum mordant. All need heat for a length of time. Even with the ideal dye kitchen, each process takes a good half day to a full day for a pound of cloth or yarn. And dedicated pots, utensils, measuring devices (a gram scale being necessary for accuracy), a good place to clean and rinse, dispose of liquids, and hang dripping cloth.

Although these dyes and mordants are from nature rather than synthetically created, it doesn’t mean they are safe for humans or cats to ingest or breath the dust of the ground stuff. And the smell of some of the cooking dye materials ranges from unpleasant to downright disgusting, depending upon your nose, so the location of the simmering pot is important to consider.

Once again, however, there is the illusion of fun in the thinking of the project and its results, and there is the fact of doing. Like weaving, this is labor-intensive work. It helps to have a strong body that has a lot of endurance. It also helps to have a mind that is into organizing the doing of things. Both are currently lacking to a certain degree in this body-mind.

Nor do I have the ideal dye kitchen. I have a potting bench outside with a Coleman stove. In the storage shed that has mostly been taken over by cats, I have a locked metal cabinet where I store utensils and dye stuff. There is a lot of carting things about. My water source is a hose, which means there is chlorine in the water. The clean-up and disposal situation presents even greater challenges. If diluted, most materials can be poured around acid-loving plants, but there are only three. Pouring the diluted liquid on the ground or down the drain are the other options. A few days ago, however, I turned to watch Oh-Oh drinking first from a bucket and then from the puddle. A little bit now and then surely isn’t a serious health hazard, but over time these things can add up. Fiber artists who didn’t know to be careful early in their careers are susceptible to bladder cancer and other dire health problems. And even though I don’t think these things need to enter the physical system, I don’t know that either Oh-Oh or I have the knack of conditions not affecting health. I’d just as soon not expose us to the experiment.

I do know that my body is reacting to the materials, as benign as they are and as careful as I am about handling them. My eyes swell a bit and my throat gets a little sore after I have handled the mordanted cloth.My body protests too in the carrying of buckets and buckets of used mordant water into the house to pour down the utility sink. This effort isn’t fun.

It has become the same with the weaving. I acquired more tools to make it easier, but it hasn’t worked out that way. The warping wheel I purchased to ease the task of warping is inconsistent in the tension and I haven’t been able to sort it out to work the way it ought to. It’s a great idea, adapted from industry, and it means one doesn’t need to invest in spools and and a spool rack and tension box, all of which take up room in the studio. I think it simply needs some tweaking, but I find I’m not interested.

Both weaving and dyeing take time, physical effort, and a willingness to problem solve, not unlike gardening. “Failures” are certain. In this time in my life when I prefer to simplify, I have insufficient ambition to engage in labor-intensive complex endeavors and the figuring out of how to overcome obstacles.

“It’s too late,” I mourn to a friend. “I don’t have it in me any more and I feel so deeply sad to let this go. I really wanted to see it through.” She listens a bit and then offers wisdom. “Missed opportunities,” she suggests. Yes. There was a time I had the ambition and stamina, but chose to do other things. Now they are gone.

“When I think about clearing out my studio, selling the loom, maybe getting a small one with only four harnesses, maybe doing without, and passing on the dye stuff, I feel relieved.”

“What do you see yourself doing?” she inquires.

“Making big stitching projects,” I reply without hesitation.

“Do you see how your body lights up when you say that?”

How simple. How elegant. I can breathe easier.

Still, there is resistance to the letting go of unrealized ambitions. I bow to the resistance and let mourning arise.There are layers to this, an unexpected depth of subtle concepts. This is a point of choosing between happiness (as conceived by the mind) or truth. This is the point of celebrating with gratitude the missed opportunities.

Litha Moves On and Roo is a Free Woman

Litha went to her new home today. A perfect placement where she will be given more attention and a healthier diet than I have the time and energy to provide.

TangaRoo got the okay from her surgeon to go outside. He’s very pleased with her progress. Yesterday, she began pulling stitches out, so his work today was minimal. She is clearly excited to be with her clan again and using the outdoor litter areas.

We are back to two litter boxes, Puffer’s dishes have been returned to the kitchen, the heated bed is stored for now, and the other cats are coming into the studio for snacks. Puff is still a little suspicious, keeping an eye out for a little attacker. In the last few days, Litha went from small kitten to big kitten. Jumping, pouncing, turning in mid-air, and galloping. Attacking, puffing up sideways, and hiding under things to avoid the hissy wrath of Puff. She soon figured out that if she pretended she wasn’t really trying to get close to Puff, she could. Go for the shoe right near, or bounce over to the chair, or run through the hallway within inches.

Like all grandmothers, I believe each of these beings is special. Litha, however, has a quality about her that reminds me of Monkey Gurl’s presence and something too that strikes of Bonsai’s delight in life. Her new person says she has some of her last cat companion who died after passing twenty. Who knows how accurate we are, but she does hold the gaze, which is not something I have seen in very many cats. It’s as if she is familiar with this realm, familiar with the fun and spirit of being an earthling, and familiar with serving the joy of embodiment.

Again, who knows. This may all reside in my imagination, which doesn’t make it any more or any less true than other concepts of what is going on.

I feel relieved to have less responsibility to attend to right now while simultaneously feeling the absence of her playful presence. As for TangaRoo, I am happy to see her setting out into a gloriously sunshiny day after a downpour in the night. Her doctor says in about a month the muscles should have developed in a way that will allow her full functioning again. She got very agile in the last few days, running about with Litha, climbing the cat tree, playing with toys a bit. The only real danger is if she jumps down from over five feet or so, and then it would be a strained muscle that could be treated with baby aspirin.

Oh-Oh has returned too. The cat-vine must have informed him that Litha has cleared out, Roo is set free, and the studio is in open house mode again. He moved to the neighbors for the last two weeks, but before I knew that, I sent a friend to the animal shelter because I didn’t want to be on their radar so soon after the last cat-bailing. Today, upon his return, he strutted in and settled on the top of cat tree as if no time had passed since he was last here. He looks a little beleaguered--not his sparkly self. But he happily went around to my visiting friends for pets and little nips on their toes and seems content to be back on the diet I offer.

Puff has done her inside and outside rounds to be sure all is ship-shape. For the moment, things are more or less as they were. What I see, though, is that flexibility is the key to enjoying all these shifts in balances. Changes can happen in an instant. It’s a law of the universe. Something tips the balance a different way and the world looks different. Litha has moved to a new world and is reportedly settling in with ease. Like Monkey Gurl, I think she will take change in stride. There is something refreshingly clear about that way of meeting life which I hope to get the hang of. I too want to be a free woman.

Litter Challenges

For the past two weeks, I’ve had five pans of cat litter in strategic places: Puffer’s own large covered one with a special mix of clay, corn, and herbal in its usual location in the utility room; the other large covered one that also is in its usual location under the work table in the studio with its slightly different mix of clay, corn, and pine; two small ones for Litha, one on the kitchen floor next to her box house, and one in her box house that I also use for visiting aunties, with her special kitten mix in them; and one small one in TangaRoo’s crate, this with a mix that includes outdoor dirt that she is used to.

For some reason, TangaRoo hates to use the litter pans. I hoped that bringing in some of the outdoors would help her feel more comfortable with the apparent distaste. While she was kept in the crate, she complained loudly each time she needed to use the litter, but eventually she did. Before her surgery, I kept her in the studio for several long nights and found she had used bedding for her business.

If I completely obeyed modern medical instructions, these three would still be separate. But since I’ve opted for a looser approach, they have more freedom of choice. Puffer’s first choice always is to use all litter pans. Both she and Litha think the one in Roo’s crate is to be used daily.

Litha is still too small to climb into the grown-up pans, but the little one in Roo’s crate is the same size as her own special ones. I’ve read it’s unwise to use clay for the littles because the dust can overwhelm their tiny lungs. She didn’t like the corn, so I bought non-clumping litter for the early months.

If you aren’t familiar with cat litter, let me tell you that the introduction of clumping litter made the job of cleaning much, much easier, especially for multi-cat households. With the non-clumping kind, you end up scraping to get the used parts out, and you must wash the pan more frequently to keep things relatively odor-free.

But, like all things in our modern lives, each convenience comes with a cost. Clay is mined with little regard to the environmental impact on surrounding communities. Corn, of course, comes with the cost of modern farming methods. These products have to come from somewhere, usually in enormous quantities, and get transported. I think the outdoor cats, including Roo, have the right idea--look for soft dirt and use that.

Unfortunately for my neighbors, the cats prefer sand. A compound that is being built across the street has some lovely builder’s sand. And, my immediate neighbor has a sand pile for occasional use. About every two weeks, I go there with a scooper and make a good pass at trying to keep that particular pile cleaner. Flies are a problem. I clean my own property at least once a week.

There are solutions to this problem, but they require cooperation and some expense and effort. I keep thinking things will quiet down and I can get to that particular project. One of the main reasons Animal Control is called is because of the poop problem.

It turns out that in this country dogs and cats produce about 10 million tons of waste a year. San Francisco is exploring the possibility of using dog doo to generate electricity through a methane digester. There is a movement to create such contraptions for individual households, but the difficulties in doing so are not likely to lead to this as a solution to local poop.

Composting is another option, but with caution. Both cats and dogs excrete pathogens considered dangerous to humans. High heat is necessary for composting such waste, odor is a common problem, and then one needs to think about where to use it.

Some advise flushing because the waste gets treated. Sending the poop to the landfill in plastic bags, which is what I do, probably means it will sit there for a century or two. I have fussy plumbing, so I have been very reluctant to try the flushing option.

This is a lot of sorting for a mind that wants to rest. Yesterday, when I was cleaning Roo’s little litter pan of waste from all three cats, I found myself laughing at the thought I could get everyone to do things my way. I give up. Hopefully next week TangaRoo will be going outside (depending on her surgeon’s concerns), the crate will be stored, and this household will only have three litter pans each with their own mix.

If I someday come to deep rest even in the face of cat things, I will know that most of my conditioning has been burned up. This what-to-do worry is stressful and mostly not fun. And, as far as I can track, it makes no real difference. Cats are notoriously independent creatures and, therefore, unmanageable. Which may be a very good metaphor for the mind and all its convolutions in trying to help. Might as well sit back and enjoy with laughter the antics of cats and see what they have in mind for me.

Management, Worry, and Love

These days are devoted to my cat friends who are indoors--TangaRoo who is recovering from surgery, Litha who is learning about kitten life, and Puffer Vasu who apparently has a bit of a cold.

Even though my conventional vets advocate for separation, I have opted for some socializing. Roo is clear she wants nothing to do with the little gray fluff ball. Puffer appears more ambivalent. She hisses, and even makes a gesture of swatting, but she also has allowed some nose kisses. Still, she avoids the kitchen, where her feeding dishes normally are placed. For now, she’s sticking to the loft side and keeps a watchful eye on the door the little miss would come through.

TangaRoo’s healing, in my estimation, is going very well. Which means she feels well enough to really long for the outdoors. I have let her be on her own some in the last two days in the studio, cautioning her about jumping up and down. The stitches look well knitted to me and she is beginning to learn how to use the leg again. At the same time, I tell her, her surgeon wants me to keep her in at least another three weeks. This seems a very long time in the middle of summer and with cat cousins milling about outside.

Puff, on the other hand, I feel worried about. She doesn’t seem unwell, but is sneezing more than the occasional dust sneezes. I opted to not take her to the vets for the time being, but I may. Colds in cats usually mean a kind of distemper, which can quickly become a serious event.

These are the sorts of things my mind is occupied with. It wants to figure out the “right” thing to do, to make things better, to be responsible, to prevent tragedy. When I sit with Worry and the question, “Who are you really?” I find Love. I think this is the love Jesus evoked. Big-hearted, open-hearted, all encompassing love.

When I was on the edge of puberty, I attended for a while an evangelical church. I went because I really did want to open my heart to Jesus, to be “saved”. My mother, bless her heart, didn’t resist my insistence on being driven the twenty odd miles to town on a country gravel road each Sunday. She didn’t protest my wanting to attend Bible School in the summer, even though she surely had concerns about evangelical leanings. Her father was involved in both Christian Science and the Salvation Army and had developed rigid views about right and wrong, heaven and hell.

In the end, my honesty prevented me from going to the front, claiming salvation, and becoming a fervid member of a church that believed their way was the one and only way and all others be damned. I just couldn’t say with sincerity that my heart had opened to Jesus. But the longing for the love I intuited Jesus represented didn’t disappear, just subsided. Every now and then, I get a sense of open-hearted love. Warm, inviting, relaxed, joyful.

I’ve spent a lot of time becoming acquainted with Emptiness in recent years. Spacious, eternal, nonjudgmental. My terror of no-parachute-no-ground has calmed. I feel increasingly at home in the fact we are made of nothing. But what I want now is the passion and fullness of Love. The Amen-Hallelujah-dancing kind of love. I want to look around in the morning and feel bursting with celebration in what I see.

Worry, my current teacher, is what I wake with. When I ask, “What do you want?” it clearly replies, “Liberation.” It too wants to dance for joy, to smile at the convolutions of management concepts. It too wants life to live fully through the forms it sees, and the form through which it sees (“my” eyes).

Sometimes these mistaken notions unwind in an instant with insight. Sometimes they take several tries, several approaches, or an unexpected event. Willing such a thing doesn’t do it. Maybe that is the real message. The Great Love that Jesus and others have tried to help us know doesn’t go anywhere. It’s here all the time, often in disguise. Worry is one cloak it wears--love under pressure.

Puff, Roo, and Litha know a lot about following life instead of trying to manage it. They may wish for something different in the moment, but I don’t sense resistance to the wishing for something different. Acceptance is inherent in the protest.

Echart Tolle says there are three responses to something we don’t like--change it, leave it, or accept it. The cats know this. Roo, as I have been typing, has settled in to one of her favorite sleeping places. For the moment, acceptance. The next time I go to the door, she will likely shift her strategy to asking for change, “Outside, pleeeeeeease.” And I will have the chance, over and over, to respond with spaciousness and a relaxed management style, keeping in mind Puffer’s mantra: Everything is Good, Do What You Can, Everything is Good.