Gifts of the Cat

ats whose guardians allow them to wander outdoors are known to return home with assorted kills. For many cats, this is meant to be a gesture of giving rather than a stash to consume later.

One such kitty is profiled in Susan Chernak McElroy’s Animals as Teachers and Healers. Sammi and her person lived in the country, where every morning began with the chattering of Sammi at the front door and her gift of a (dead) field mouse. Her person lavished her with praise for her efforts, which Sammi reveled in.

Then the pair was forced to move to a small place in a city—no more countryside for Sammi to roam in, no more field mice to hunt, hardly a tree to climb. Her person worried that Sammi would have difficulty making the transition. She needn’t have fretted, though. The cat adapted to the nature deficit without a hitch: Each morning, Sammi chattered at the front door and presented her person with…

…a couple of pine cones. Sammi was just as pleased with these inanimate objects as she’d been with the tiny rodents. And her person must have been more pleased.

How sweet is that? Sammi made do.

As I searched for a photo to accompany this tale, I found The Happy Cat, the feline pictured here. His person explains that Happy Cat has a special fondness for squirrels—likes to carry them around by the scruff of the neck as if they were his own kits. Sometimes he places them at his person’s door, quite alive and never hurt. But as soon as the squirrels realize their good fortune, they race off. Yet Happy Cat doesn’t try to stop them or pursue them again.

I’m not sure what to make of this. I wonder if something’s missing in Happy Cat’s life. All the same, I do admire his unique approach to gift-giving, and his reminder that every animal is an individual.

[Drop cap by Jessica Hische; photo by Fred Griffin.]

Eastward Ho I Go?

“Well, I guess we have to move to Iceland,” my husband lamented this week.

“Excuse me?” My husband has been talking about visiting Iceland for some time now, but moving there seemed extreme—especially considering his aversion to wintry climes.

“According to this NPR story, Icelanders love books,” he explained, his trusty iPad in hand. “Books are the gift of choice at Christmas—everybody reads there.”

An entire population of readers? Hmmm. Sounded like science fiction to me. However, I was touched that my husband would move closer to the Arctic Circle so I could be with other bibliophiles. So sweet.

A friend of mine apparently isn’t as positive about my reading obsession. For Christmas she gave me a canvas bag (with which to carry my library books, she said) with this quote on it:

“She is too fond of books, and it has addled* her brain.”
—Louisa May Alcott

This may be true, but it doesn’t stop me from reading more. After all, books are more than the information and imagination they contain. Books have a life (rarely viewed) of their own:

 

* Actual quote is from Alcott’s Work: A Story of Experience and reads: “She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.”

[Pictured are tiny Icelandic horses. Photo by Marketa Kalvachova. Video is from Type Books of Toronto.]

Snoop Dog’s CuddleDog

When I was searching through my half-organized photo albums for a pic of the bakery donkey, I found this:

As I’ve said before, we have precious few pics of the camera-shy pooch so any photograph of her becomes a gateway to a flood of memories. And this particular photograph includes memories of my father.

You may recall that my father had a penchant for sending me Peanuts-related gifts and cards. I can only guess that it had something to do with my role in a small-town production of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown.

One holiday, when I was well into my fifth decade, my father’s Christmas gifts to me included the Snoopy pillow pictured above. As I lifted it from its box, my pooch posed other ideas for it. To her, it was a splendid megaversion of the plush playthings that overflowed her Dogtoy Basket. Naturally, she assumed it was meant for her.

She nosed it and nudged me and politely waited for my permission to mouth it and call it her own. I didn’t worry too long about how Dad would feel if I regifted his gift. The very thought of a “dog’s dog” won out and I encouraged the pooch to play with Snoopy.

The experiment of carrying the pillow around and fetching it lasted about a minute. Clearly, it was too unwieldy for her gentle bite.

However, it became (or reverted to) the next best thing: a cushy creature to cuddle with.

I never found the donkey pic, but that’s okay. The donkey led me to a sweeter moment.

Finding Joy in a Jumble of Steel Cylinders

Christmas is coming.

I know this because holiday tunes have aired since before Halloween; the day after Halloween, neighbors were hanging lights and decorating trees; and yesterday the baby I saw in the back seat of a BMW was wearing a Santa hat.

When I trekked to the lawyer’s office the other day, the train dropped me off on State Street—that Great Street, as the song holds—midst shoppers and tourists and panhandlers and workers playing out their day against a backdrop of shimmering, beckoning store windows.

Christmas was in the air. And every bit of positivity I’ve tried to sustain through The Lull vanished. A serious case of woe hit me, just as it has in past Decembers.

Christmas is a time of obligatory giving, which is a great deal of pressure to be under for someone who thrills in giving the perfect gift to each person on her list. Worse, the brilliant ideas I have stretch far beyond my financial means. Never is the chasm between the haves and the have-nots so obvious in a big city as at Christmastime.

But then a sculpture caught my eye.

I detoured to the lobby of the Inland Steel building, where an abstract crisscross of golden steel cylinders hung suspended from the ceiling. It was an enormous three-dimensional asterisk-like star held in place by silver strings of steel anchored to the ceiling and to the pool rising from the floor beneath it. Carefully placed lighting illuminated the sculpture, reflecting light in the water and off the ebony polished marble walls. It was the mastermind of industrial designer and sculptor Richard Lippold.

I continued watching light play off it for some time, and my mood started to lift. Small wonder. Its title? Radiant One.

Once I left and crossed the street to continue my trip to the lawyer’s office, I spotted a Chagall mosaic adorning a public plaza.


Two great works of art in the same city on the same block!

I felt like I was the only one seeing them. They lifted my spirits, blurred my perception of the uglier side of Chicago and Christmas, and moved me forward into the day.

They’re no substitute for giving the perfect gift to a favorite someone, but they were the perfect gift for me in that moment—art as Rescue Remedy.