Crouching Tiger, Hidden Tabby...

One thing I've noticed about our cats is they've all pretty much learned that there is sometimes more then one way to chase a toy or feather around an obstacle. If I drag the feather one way around the island in the kitchen, Mara knows that she can run around the other way and intercept it. Pretty smart, actually. It demonstrates a pretty good understanding of spacial relationships, probably a skill that was useful when they had to hunt for their meals. It also appears to be something that is learned. Mara has known how to intercept things for some time now. Nyala on the other hand has just started to figure this out.

This morning while we were eating breakfast, the girls were playing and chasing. They were both standing in the living room. Nyala took off in one direction and Mara took off in the other, both at a dead run. Their paths crossed behind the couch...

Now I'm sure you've seen this... The action film high flying wire work. Two combatants, launch at each other into the air, their trajectories to take them past one anther mid flight. There is a great example in Big Trouble, Little China. The Hero jumps into the air toward the villain, who himself has launched toward the hero. As they pass in mid air, they exchange several sword thrusts, parries and strikes, then continue on their way, landing on their feet and launching again toward one another. It was also an effect used in numerous other martial arts genera films.

The two cats approached headed straight for one another. Then, in perfect unison, both jumped into the air, their respective momentums carrying each past the other. We watched as both cats, paws extended in front of them to swat the other, sailed past one another, each watching the other pass, then landing on their feet and continuing their run. Edward and I just looked at each other and started laughing. We'd both seen the same thing. Straight out of the movies, no wires needed... Crouching Tiger, Hidden Tabby...

That's why two cats can be so much fun....

Ring Tailed Cat

She was so tiny when she came home. She weighed only eight tenths of a pound and was just the length of my hand. Her eyes were seafoam gray, not yet the cool yellow that they would become. The doctor thought she might only be 3 or 4 weeks old, too young to be taken away from her mother. She was the smallest kitten we’d ever taken in.

She came to us when we were thinking about getting a kitten. Our youngest at that time was Smoke at 10 years old. A friend at work had just adopted a pregnant female and was looking for homes for the kittens. We’d agreed to take one if there was a female in the litter. But that’s not where she came from. Another colleague got up one Sunday morning to find a box of 4 small kittens at the end of his driveway. Someone has left them there, knowing I guess, that he would find them homes. Tina was one of those four. When we were deciding which kitten to take home Tina fell asleep on my leg. The deal was sealed. We went from my colleague’s house directly to the vet. Then brought her home. Four weeks later we brought home Sara, from that first litter of kittens, now we had two very tiny cats.

Tina was so tiny that she hadn’t had time to learn all the social graces of being a cat from her mother. I’d hoped that she would learn from the other three cats that we had at the time. But Sandy took and instant dislike to her, something that never changed. Smoke was the first to adopt her. He remained her life long friend. Thomas was mostly afraid of her at first, but grew to play with her as well.

She imprinted on Edward, since he was home all day. He would leave her in the bed where she would sleep. When she woke she would cry for him, not moving off the bed until she saw him come for her, a behavior she would continue to do her whole life, crying for us when she woke up alone until one of us would come find her, to let her know it was OK to move. She also decided that my ponytail was most like the mother she lost too early, and began trying to nurse there, after first trying Edward’s hair. The doctor said she might do it her whole life. She did. She was confused in 2007 when I lost my hair to chemo, but when my hair grew back, she decided she would sit on the pillow and put one paw on either side of my head, breading first with the left paw, then the right, before plopping her head down on mine and going to sleep as if to be sure it didn’t go away again. I lost count of the number of times I went to sleep with Tina on my pillow, her head resting on mine.

She was often willful and bored quickly with new toys. She demanded attention by scratching furniture she shouldn’t, or the wallpaper, before we took it down. She saw the walls painted and the carpet replaced, the roof redone and the spa removed. In her last days she saw the windows in the house replaced with hurricane windows. If we’d known what was going on we would have waited, to make her last days more peaceful, rather then with the noise and stress that comes with any major home renovation.

There are so many things I miss about her. The times she would greet me at the door when I got home. The way she would plop down on our laps, daring us to move once she’d settled. She would always insist that there was something on our lap to sit on, a blanket or pillow, as if she didn’t want to touch us when she sat on us. Her purr was so quiet that for a long time the only way we knew she was purring was to feel her throat. She never learned to rub on our legs, but instead always went through the motion, only to miss by a few inches. She would burrow into a pile of laundry still warm from the dryer, and swat any items we tried to remove from it to fold. She’d just learned to like butter from our plates after breakfast. Or her claws in my neck as she breaded and nursed in my ponytail at night. What I would give to still feel that.

We lost Tina just 5 months after losing Smoke. Smoke was 19, Tina was only 9. I’d thought that she, too, would live a long life. That maybe she could challenge Smoke for the record of longest lived cat. She’d always been healthy. I thought I would have years with her. By the time we knew there was a problem, we had days. I feel terribly guilty for that. I was able to stay home the day before she died. I’m grateful for that. I hope she knows I love her, and miss her. I hope one day she decides to come back to us. I miss her terribly...

Hidden in the gray of her fur were tiger stripes that you could only see when the light was right. At the end of her tail was ring of white fur. We always laughed that it was a halo, not over her head, but over the other end, which contributed to her willful disposition. She grew from a fraction of a pound to being a big cat, weighing in at 12 pounds. But she was always Tiny-Tina to us. She will always be Tiny-Tina in our hearts... Our ring tailed cat...

Pretender

We're on our way back from Elizabeth City, NC. We just finished flying with the US Coast Guard, down the NC coast, some 236 miles, one way, along the coast, at 80 knots (~70 mph). We're taking pictures in case a hurricane comes through that area this season. With these photos we will know what the coast was like before the storm, at least through photos. After getting off to an uncertain start, due to fog Tuesday morning, we had great weather. Sunny, a few clouds, and about 73 degrees, which when sitting next to the open door of a helicopter moving at 80 knots can be a little cold. It does get windy in the cabin with the door open.

Phil ran the video camera (he got the most wind), and I took pictures with the still camera. I sit on the floor of the helicopter, with a gunners belt, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's the belt a gunner wears when flying with the door open, so they don't fall out. Anyone not in a seat with a seat belt wears a gunners belt when the door is open. This same airframe is flown by the Navy, the Army, and Marines, as well the Coast Guard. Our video equipment is strapped to the floor behind me and the camera is next to me.

It took about 3.5 hours to fly from the Virginia border to the South Carolina border. By the time we got to Myrtle Beach, SC, where we landed and refueled (our aircraft and ourselves), I was stiff and sore. But we'd finished everything we'd come for. And hopefully we could fly the next day and get even more data.

We had lunch at a Ryan's Steakhouse. Ryan's has a buffet lunch, it's quick, reasonable food, all you can eat. Perfect for the 3 young guys of the flight crew, and OK for the rest of us. Now, you must understand that the US Geological Survey requires us to wear a Nomex flight suit and leather flight boots when we fly, as well as a helmet, life jacket, etc. When we get off the aircraft, we usually stay in those flight suits when we go out to lunch as we did that day. As it so happens our flight suits are the same khaki-green color as the Coast Guard's.

At one point I got up to get some dessert. As I passed a neighboring table, I locked eyes with a young boy, maybe 7 years old. As I normally would, I smiled an waved. It was then that I noticed the look of wide eyed wonder on the boy's face, which quickly turned to a board smile as I passed. I think I made that boy's day. A little while later, as I was talking to the pilot, I felt something at my shoulder. An older woman had stopped and was trying to get a better look at the patch on my suit. "U.S. Geological Survey" she read. "Yes, Ma'am", and I gestured across the table, "and the US Coast Guard." We explained a little about what we were doing and why we were there. They left thanking us for our service. When we got back to the car I asked Adam, our pilot, if that happen often. "Oh yeah", he said, "I've even had people buy me lunch".

Unfortunately, when we got back to the hanger that evening, we found out we couldn't fly the next day. We'd accomplished what we'd really come for, surveying the whole NC coast, and they decided they needed the helicopter on Wednesday for another important mission, showing off for some VIP. Oh well. We'll fly with the "Coasties" again. Every time we've worked with them, they've been very helpful and a great bunch of folks to work with. And a hell of a lot of fun, too.

"It's a different world up there" Edward told me later. Still, I felt like a pretender... I'm not in the military and I feel a little sheepish about being mistaken for them. They're doing an important job, be it that they are in the Coast Guard, or the Army or any of our other 7 uniformed branches of service. "So are you...", said Adam. I guess so, even if I'm only a passenger with a camera...

Afterimage

I found him to be notoriously difficult to photograph... and in the end equally dificult to sketch. If the light wasn't just right, he simply came out as a black shadow, none of the details of his coat would show. He was a long haired cat, whose shoulder fur was short. His tail waved above his back like a plume of ... smoke. His neck sported long lighter fur that hung about his shoulders like an Elizabethan collar. In the sun, his fur took on a brown hue, where is was normally black and gray. The slightest breeze would ruffle the tips of the guard hairs. He'd always turn his nose to the wind. He was declawed before we got him, and he stood splay-footed, something I always wondered if it was because of the loss of his toes.

In the last days of his life I told myself several times I wasn't going to take any more picutres of him. That I had enough and many good ones from his younger days, before his fur dulled and separated and his whiskers turned white. I didn't stick to that. Twice more I was able to capture him, once in the days before he lost his sight peering out the front window, and once after his sight was gone, on the porch listening for the sounds that were now more distant then near.

As with some of the cats, the inspiration to sketch didn't strike until the last day. And even then it almost didn't take. For me, to sit an sketch something is to really look at it. There was nothing more I wanted to do that day then watch him, and wish that we had more time. To wish also that he could rest, because he couldn't sit still that day. So for him, like the others, I got out my pad and pencil, and watched my friend pace, hoping to fix his image once and for all in my mind, and perhaps on paper for others to see.

He settled only once during the morning, and I got a quick outline, but he was sitting under the end table, and like all the photos I'd tried, the light wasn't right and he was hard to see. A little later, silhouette followed, and another sketch as he rested on the porch. In the past, the patterns of color in the cat's fur always made my job somewhat easier. Light and dark played with the texture and length of their fur. Not with Smoke. He was all black, and long haired to boot. You couldn't capture his face with a dark smudge here and an absence of line there. The detail of his shape was lost and found in the pattern of his fur, you couldn't just draw an outline, or so I thought. Midafternoon, he settled at the foot of one of the office chairs. He sat there resting between pacing, and from the paper emerged an outline that required no fill. For once I had captured the long haired black cat in a few simple strokes. My mind's eye filled in the rest. I didn't try to draw all of him, I didn't need to, and in that final sketch, that final picture, I saw the young cat that had come to us so long ago. Here, very simply, was Smoke, reaching out and resting, at peace and at home.

We buried Smoke with the others in the back yard, under the bird bath. Five friends rest there now. Seven statues of cats grace the surrounding garden. One for each buried there, and two for those who are missing from the garden, but not forgotten.

My computer's screen saver lets me choose pictures to scroll across the screen, panning back and forth across the images. For now, and a little while longer, those are all pictures of Smoke. All images that captured a friend in motion, memories to remind me of one who is gone. Those images are freeze frames of a life that was always on the go. Now, the pictures have stopped moving and the life is gone. But the soul remains and the love will go on forever.

I miss you, Sir Cat...

Relay for Life

Last night I went to the Seminole Relay for Life, sponsored by the American Cancer Society. It was held at Osceola High School, and was one of 12 Relays in the area last night, 4 of which were in Pinellas County. It started at 6:00 pm and went all night, concluding around 9:00 am in the morning. Team members walked the track at the high school all night. Each team was supposed to have at least one team member on the track at all times. The moon was 3 days from being full, and the night was clear and cool. There were people everywhere, they'd been walking since the start of the event. At the center of the field, a man in a jesters cap hosted a hoola-hoop contest to see who could keep the ring going the longest. Tables along the inside of the track sold everything from cyalume necklaces and flashing pins to muffins and massages, all proceeds to go to ACS. The atmosphere was like a carnival.

At 9:00 pm the Luminaria Ceremony took place. All around the track people had placed white paper bags with tea lights in them. The field's lights were turned out and the luminarias lit. Each luminaria was dedicated to a survivor, or to the memory of one who did not survive. Participants were invited to light their own candles first, starting with survivors and those currently battling the disease. Then family members, then friends we're invited to light their candles. It quickly devolved into respectful chaos, with people lighting their own candles, then helping friends and strangers until all candles were lit.

It was then that I noticed that on the track behind me, everyone was walking, slowly, introspectively, respectfully around the track. People quietly talked about those they had known, some who had survived, other that had not, others only newly diagnosed. As we walked, we passed a large group standing along the track gathered in silent memory. "That's for Emily." Emily? She was the captain of the Chemo Crew. Emily had battled cancer three times since 2001. She'd been a participant in the Relay for the last 7 years. Chemo Crew was the largest group in the Relay. She attended Osceola High School. Emily died two weeks before this Relay. Her team raised over $17,000 before the event. It was a moving tribute.

The candle lighting was very moving. Eventually the lights came back on, and the events started again. At each team's camp site the selling nicknacks, snack or drinks returned, having been suspended for the Luminara Ceremony. The buzz of activity returned. The DJ organized a tug of war at the center of the field. Walkers passed by on their appointed laps. I'm glad I went, and while I got there late and didn't stay long, I will go to another one some day. I met up with friends who had formed a team, I cheered them on, and walked with them while I was there. We are our own support group. We all met on line, we often meet for lunch. Our group, sadly, will keep growing. New members are always welcomed with the wish that they, like us, didn't need one another so much, and all the while wishing that one day, our group will cease to expand and be needed no more. Until then, for ourselves, and those who no longer can, we will walk...