"COLUMBUS" LIVES ON

If this appears ethereal, there is a reason.  There is a story here.  You bet!  This cat represents one of the lives that a cat named "Columbus" has.  It was yesterday, Sunday, after Mass, when I was walking back home and was still about one hundred yards away from the house.  From behind me, over my left shoulder a slinky, tight-bodied, tall and elongated feral cat with a long, stiffly held tail and a determined demeanor gained on me and passed me by without so much a "by-your-leave."  He, I prefer to think it was a "he" for the purpose of this story, slid off to the left through a hedge and proceeded to go toward the garbage disposal area of the houses in the neighborhood.  The neighborhood used to  have brigades of feral cats.  Many of them were the offspring of a household cat that we once had.  His name was "Christopher" when we got him as a three month old kitten.  I am not a believer in names for animals, but the children and Belle insisted that the cat had to have a name.  I said, "OK, but not 'Christopher.'"  You can tell that "Columbus" was a rather easy logical step for them to take in their naming game.  It was also decided that the cat was to be an outside cat and a vermin hunter.  Truth to tell, this worked out rather well.  For about a year.  After that the cat population began to swell perceptibly and the amount of food that they were consuming became more than somewhat considerable. Table scraps, of course.  I have a rule about feeding cats and dogs.  "If you're hungry, go kill something."  Lazy cats that these were, they even learned to eat rice and vegetables, left-overs from last week.  I found out that this was happening when I couldn't find my rice and Brussels' sprouts one day. My mother-in-law got an earful that day.  But we laughed it off.
Now the cat population, as it grew, took on a certain hue that indicated that "Columbus" was one busy guy.  The promiscuity of that "animal" was legendary.  The whole mile-long ridge of Linda vista was crawling with ash-grey cats.  Directly engendered by one, "Columbus," I'm veery sure.  The comical [and frustrating part for me] was that they were finding the major part of their sustenance in our back yard, thanks to "Lola."  There even came a time when we no longer saw "Columbus" for weeks on end.  He had turned into a "C & E" pet.  This went on for a long time.  Some years passed until one day, late in the afternoon, we saw "Columbus."  Laid out in the back yard, rigor mortis was evident already.  He had come back home to die.  Just as in the stories that we have all heard and disbelieved, that cats always come home to die.  He did it.
Now, the rest of the ferals didn't care.  They still wanted to eat without having to hunt.  They got fed for a few more years until Lola [Grandma and second mother to our boys] became incapacitated and could no longer feed the herd. ["Herd" is not the correct term, but you know what I mean.]  The result was that the population went down, but the count of the ash-grey offspring was still holding its own.  By yesterday, we were at least seven years distant from the incapacitation of Lola.  So, I am writing this to celebrate the fact that there is at least one tough looking Tom carrying the "Columbus" gene to the fair damsels, and surely, to the unfair ones too.  "Columbus" was a rather cuddly guy.  This descendant is a "Terminator."  I am convinced that he peels rust scales off of old car parts for breakfast.  So, good job, "Columbus."  You timed it just right, Ol' Buddy. You showed up in my mind through your Avatar on my last day in the neighborhood before I turn 75.
If there are any of you who believe in coincidence, give it up.  It's more fulfilling to believe in Providence.  That way, you'll always have a connection to the higher things in life.
This is not what I was going to talk to you about tonight, but this has been more fun.  Besides, by tomorrow, I will have 24 hours of experience at my new age.  By then I'll be an expert at it and will be able to tell you in great detail about how it feels.

GROUCHY KURMUJJIN -- WHO'S THAT?

Yesterday I got wrapped up in politics.  I follow politics because it is good for my blood pressure.  My blood pressure stays high enough to let me know that there is still life in me when politicians speak.  I often wonder whether they are human beings or not.  They must be, I guess because they know how to talk. Lord, yes, they can talk all right.  They rarely say anything, but their lips are moving and their Adam's Apple is moving up and down.  So something is happening there, but no one knows what it is.  I think that inside all of us there is a politician.  We just do not dare admit it.  Despite the distaste that we learn to develop about politicians, we also have to realize that without them we would be hard pressed to have an organized society.  We are created such that we need to be organized.  We are not cats, after all.  Cats, at least the domestic kind, seem to get along very well in a community of one.  After they break loose from the litter, they haughtily go their own way.  As we can easily observe, dogs are more like we are.  They need community and organized hierarchy in order to live well.  If they can't find it among themselves, they train a human or two to walk along the path of life with them.  It's beyond my ken, but some humans allow themselves to be taken along for that walk.  Hold on to your seats now, I admit, at least intellectually if not emotionally, that there is a little bit of cross species attraction in humans too.  Good thing too.  It contributes to the welfare of the life forms on the planet.  Even the Grouchy Kurmujjin and I have about .000001 of such an attraction.  When it comes to dogs, we prefer to wok them than to walk them, let alone walk with them.  Truth to tell, the two of us have about .00000000001 attraction to politicians, putting dogs in a better position than the human sub-species, politician.  It is important to note that it is not essential for us to have positive attractions to certain realities to make them necessary to  life as we know it.

Grouchy Kurmujjin

SSooooooooooo ...  Who is the Grouchy Kurmujjin?  That is he on your right.  He happens to be one of my alter egos.  He is the glorious Misanthrope in me.  He too has a blog.  It drips with socially, politically, diplomatically and other forms of non-acceptable behavior and language.  He is the part of me that I keep at the .00001 level in this blog.  It is not easy sometimes, but I combat his appearances here with humor.  It is important for me to acknowledge his existence.  It is also important for you all to at least meet him in passing.  He, after all is also contained in the drop of water about which we spoke yesterday.  If you want to have a little fun, you can click on the red letter links [not this one!] in order to find yourself in the pure and unadulterated presence of the Grouchy Kurmujjin.  You will notice that the counter on top of the page indicates that there are not too many blog reading people who know about my buddy.  I can assure you, however, that there are many, many warm-blooded human beings who know him personally, and know him very well.  They are the ones who read the local obit page every single day in the hopes that they now know that the prairie daisies will have a little extra boost on their upward climb to the surface of America's Finest City.  [That is sunny San Diego, California, for those of you who may not know.]
One of these days I will introduce you to the other me's.  Yeah, there are four of us.  They have blogs too.