So, it has been a while since I have made a post, for which I apologize. I realize that I left you all hanging as I was about to walk into Dick Donkle’s house and snoop around. Of course, this is a common literary device, to create some dramatic tension at the end of an episode and then disappear for a while. Speaking of “disappear for a while”, this is the last phrase that anyone ever heard Thomas Merton say. You must know who Thomas Merton was. He was a Trappist priest who was a superlative spiritual writer, and an antiwar activist. He was in Thailand attending a conference of monastics from various religions, and he had given a talk just before a scheduled break. At the end of his talk he is said to have said, “let’s all take a break. I think I’ll have a Coca-Cola and disappear for a while.” During the break he went to his room where he reportedly took a shower, and had the misfortune of both getting a puddle of water on the floor and knocking over an electric fan while he was standing in said puddle, the result of which is that he met the Lord forthwith. So, his disappearance was more permanent than he had anticipated. Thomas Merton is one of Mike’s heroes. Mike read his autobiography, “The Seven- Storey Mountain”, at a point in his life when he had hit a wall on his own spiritual path, and the book was exactly what he needed at that time to get himself redirected and re-energized spiritually. But I digress.
A lot has gone on which furnishes me with my excuse for why you haven’t heard from me recently. For one thing, Mike and Judy went off for a few days. I don’t know if they needed a vacation or not, but they took one. As I have said before, I need Mike’s help to get my blog out. Michelle came by and scooped, fed, and watered us, and played with us for a while every day. She is very sweet. She would probably have her own cat if she were not so allergic. She has to dose herself and her nose up pretty well in order to tolerate being around us at all. Then, this past weekend Jackson got sick. As you might expect, he waited until late Saturday afternoon when Mike and Judy couldn’t get our regular Dr. Jeff, the Extreme Vet, to see about him. So Jackson started throwing up about 5 in the afternoon and was acting puny. Mike and Judy tried to talk themselves into waiting to see how he was going to be in the morning, but around 11 in the evening they packed him up and hauled him off to the emergency vet. They diagnosed a fecal impaction and kept him for the rest of the weekend, giving him enemas, laxatives, intravenous fluids, and making him generally miserable. Judy went and got him Monday and brought him over to our beloved Happy Meadows Veterinary Clinic, (known to all the neighborhood pets as the Extreme Vet), where they gave him more enemas and kept him until he pooped, and then sent him home. Was he ever glad to see us all again and to be in his familiar surroundings. He was pretty well cleaned out by the time he got home. Mike and Judy have been keeping him isolated so they can make sure that his digestive tract has become once again functional without extraordinary measures. I hadn’t given it that much thought, but I had noticed that he had been acting a little weird recently, and that when he had passed a stool, he was passing dry spherical poops that looked almost exactly like nutmeg seeds. If you have never seen one, go online and look it up,and you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Well, this morning Mike and Judy got up extra early and left the house. I noticed Mike didn’t have his usual coffee and toast. They came back a couple of hours later. Mike was looking for all the world like he had just been on an all-nighter, barely being able to walk in a straight line or keep his eyes open. He made coffee and had some matzot and immediately fell asleep in his chair. I wonder what that was all about. Oh, did I mention that it’s Passover now? I don’t think so. Mike and Judy had their annual Seder on Monday night this week. The usual suspects attended. They always have a very nice time and eat well. I always like to hear the story of the liberation of the Jewish people and their exodus from Egypt where they had been enslaved. I am all about freedom. An amusing thing happened at the Seder last year. When Michelle opened the door to let Elijah the prophet in, in walked Nevermore, the dog who lives up the street. If you have been reading my blog up until now, you would know about her already. She has a habit of turning up where she’s not wanted. Anyway, she’s a pretty sweet dog and didn’t stay long or cause any trouble. It was just a situation in which her owners had let her out to do her business and she had decided to take a short stroll and sniff around. If somebody opens a door, what else is she going to do but walk in? She told me she really wasn’t looking for the children of Israel. Anyway, she was not interested in sampling the gefilte fish, and she left without much persuasion.
I see I got off track again. So, while Mike dozed off in his chair, and Judy went upstairs to take a nap, Jackson finally got his business working, and passed a perfectly normal, un-nutmeg seed-like poop, and he has been let out of jail with much acclamation. Or maybe this is too much information. Whatever. If you’re not interested in my life, feel free to stop reading about it. (Mike just told me that’s rude and I should take it out, but I’m leaving it in. Nowadays, people seem to be able to say whatever they want to and put it out there for the whole world, whether they’re interested or not or whether it’s true or not. My neighbor, Dick Donkle, regularly sends out tweet-storms about the homeowners association, of which he is president, and about our neighborhood, Happy Meadows. He and I are alike in that we are both interested in communicating, and we both hope that people read what we say, agree with us, and admire us. Where we differ, is that you can rely on the veracity of what I tell you, and he is a habitual if not pathological liar. But I digress once again.)
I believe today is Good Friday. For Christians, this is a sacred day which commemorates the crucifixion of their Savior. As a cat, I have a lot of respect for religious and spiritual custom and ceremony. We have our own beliefs about where we came from and what God means for us to be and to do. Such things are of extreme importance, and everybody’s beliefs deserve respect. I’m sure I will have more to say about feline spirituality in subsequent blogs. If you are interested, you might want to read my grandfather’s book, “Autobiography of a Georgia Cat.” He goes into this in quite a bit of detail, and in his story he relates two of our most important feline myths. I just love those stories. For Mike, this is the day where every year, once again, he realizes that he has forgotten to put the trash and recyclables out on the previous day, so we get to have it all sit around for an extra week. Lovely.
So, it looks like you’re going to have to hear about Dick Donkle’s house another time. Maybe it’s just as well, because I’m not sure it’s that interesting anyway, certainly not as interesting as the tale of the constipated cat. In the meantime, Mike and Judy and the other four-leggeds and I want to wish you a happy and blessed Passover, Easter, Vernal solstice (a little late, sorry), or whatever makes this time of year special for you. God bless.