Category: cats

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Foxes in the Night

Two nights ago I went to bed leaving the side door open – not by accident, but because I didn’t know where my cat was, and I suspected she might still be outside (this was the last night before the heatwave broke). There’s no way for anyone to get to the side door without going through multiple gardens and over connecting fences and walls, so I wasn’t unduly worried about security. I usually try to get her to stay in at night, but I’d been out in the dark garden for a few minutes calling her name, and I just wanted to get to bed, so for once I left the door open.

Not long after I’d dropped off, I woke up to sounds of scuffling and unearthly screeching. I went back down again and this time found her on one of the kitchen chairs, so I closed the door, happy to know she was safe, and went back to bed.

I slept again, and the next time I woke, Miko was sitting on the bed and staring at the window, and the foxy scuffling noises were much louder and closer. I went over to the window and watched a shape or shapes in the shadows under the wall at the end of the garden, running back and forth and calling. Then it came out onto the middle of the lawn, where the light was a bit better and I could see it more clearly, running a few steps, rolling over on the ground, jumping up and running again, and so on. It all looked very weird, and I wondered if there was something wrong with it – could it have been poisoned? Then I remembered my daughter’s dog once fishing some cat poo out of the litter tray and rolling in it all over the front room carpet – the behaviour looked very similar.

I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I read some more of the book I mentioned, the one where someone is killed 50% in, far enough for them to appear alive again at 60%. This didn’t surprise me – though I had thought they’d stay dead for a bit longer – maybe till 75-80%. That’s an advantage of a first-person narrator – you can show their grief because at that point they genuinely believe the person is dead, and hence make it appear more convincing.

I’m still enjoying it, although there are a few odd time inconsistencies – like the post lady turning up just before dark. The detailed references to various parts of London which I’m not familiar with sound quite convincing, but the casual mentions of frost and snow, as though they’re normal in winter, make me wonder whether the author has actually lived in London during the last thirty years.

I keep thinking about plots which are written to that formula which I’ve heard about a lot of times this year, and I’m reminded of a book I read earlier, just before lockdown.

Maybe I’ll finish reading it today.

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Tell Me the Old, Old Story

I think I surfaced just about bang on sunrise this morning: 5:40. I went to the window and saw the pink glow creeping over the house roofs, then left the gap in the curtains and went back to bed, watching the colour briefly suffusing the wall. At least it’s sunny – well, it was for most of yesterday too – the rain didn’t last long.

Am I feeling any more sunny this morning? Maybe. Yesterday did not turn out to be a good day. I spent most of the morning digging through old laptops, archived files and a set of data CDs and DVDs which I burnt as part of a back-up system around 2005 and 2006 (amazed myself by finding them, although I knew I’d seen them somewhere recently – well, in the last three years at least). I was looking for photos – a specific photo, in fact – of my cat from October 2005, when we first got her, because yesterday was her fifteenth birthday and I wanted to make a post about it on Facebook, with then-and-now pictures. I did it partly because I suspect she won’t be around to see another birthday, and I am preparing myself for the inevitable letting go, but also because her entry into my life was such a bizarre turning point – and yesterday I not only found the background to her name, which I’d saved in one of those fifteen-year-old files, but my journal entry for the morning of the day we brought her home – before I knew what a shit-storm I was initiating. And that photograph (on one of the back-up CDs), which featured, ten days later, in the first blog post I ever wrote, on a blog called ‘Husband or Cat?’ on a platform which no longer exists.

I could tell that story again. Should I? There are people who know it already – at least one of whom might even be reading this – in essence, at least, even if not in detail. But the details are still there, still documented, still accessible. It’s an odd story, full of drama, and passion, in its way, with a beginning far too implausible for fiction, and an ending… how did it end? Well, I guess – at least, as I’ve said before about all the world-churning choices I’ve made in the last fifteen years, if I hadn’t done what I did, I would never have known how things would turn out if I did, now would I?

I suppose that’s what fiction’s for – to explore the other side of the ‘what if’ – but I don’t have the energy or inspiration for fiction. Maybe that’s why I was compelled to make the choices I did – because it was the only way of finding out? When I think of the dreams and expectations I started with, it’s true that none of them quite worked out as I thought they would, but they shaped my life nonetheless.

I was going to write about writing advice – and Taoism. Another time, maybe.

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Surprise Visitor

I had a lovely surprise yesterday afternoon. I was sitting in the garden when there was a knock on the door, which surprised me a little, because although I was expecting my daughter and the grandkids, it was a bit early considering she’d messaged me not long before to say they were in McDonald’s at Petersfield services – and also I’d left the door unlocked, and usually the kids just barge in when they get here. I was even more surprised when I opened the door and saw her brother waiting to be let in. I knew they were trying to meet up here while she was staying (it’s his birthday today), but apparently there was an email and two texts which I’d managed not to see, saying that he was coming, but that his wife was staying home with the two dogs. I must be getting even scattier than I thought I was.

Anyway it was lovely to have the four of them here, it was almost nicer in a way that it was just us without their other halves, (although I get on well with both my daughter-in-law and prospective son-in-law). We sat in the garden drinking prosecco and tea (Simon was driving) while Simon and Flick (whose birthday is next week) opened their presents from me. Then my wonderful offspring managed between them to fix (for the time being, at least) the shower room light switch, the speakers on my kitchen music centre and the strimmer.

There’s another family birthday coming up next week: my little cat will be fifteen on the 6th August. She’s still not eating – it’s been over a month now, and I am preparing myself for the worst.

I may or may not be writing in the mornings while Laura and the children are here. Depends on when everybody gets up. Yesterday I didn’t have time because I’d had a rough night then slept in till 8 and was in a rush to get to a writers’ group meeting for 10.

I feel I should have more to say. Life gets in the way of thought and writing.

I’ve downloaded a sample of a book that was recommended to me on Amazon. It’s very spooky the way it does that, because it is about a writer who is trying to write a biography of DH Lawrence, and a novel, and is a stream-of-consciousness rant about how he miserably fails to write either (but writes this book instead). The opening section got me hooked, though I can see how it could also be massively irritating to a lot of people. Like this blog, it rambles on and on without ever getting anywhere, although he is obviously doing that deliberately and skilfully, whereas in my case it’s just about incompetence and lack of imagination and talent.  

For a brief moment, it made me determined to stop fart-arsing around (excuse the expression) and actually do something with my writing. A brief moment, until reality set in again.

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Thinking, Writing, Writing, Thinking

What I write here is whatever pops into my head, and that’s all I can write.

How many times have I said that? Yeah, I know, a lot, I keep droning on about it. What am I doing wrong? I used to think that as long as I kept writing every day, something miraculous would happen , and I’d find a way of being able to write ‘properly’, to think up stories, to go back to my novel and finish it. But it doesn’t work, so why am I still doing this?

‘Oh, you have to write through all that shit’ people tell me. That’s easy for them – maybe they only have a small amount of shit to get through. For me, it seems there is no getting to the other side.

‘Write another story like that one’ someone said to me yesterday, referring to ‘Eagle Flight’, which has just gone into ‘Flights and Fancies’, the upcoming Southsea Storytellers anthology. And yes, it’s a good story, I agree, one that I wrote about twelve years ago. But how did I write it? Where did it come from?

The answer to that is that it was inspired by an object (a soapstone eagle) which was used for an exercise in a creative writing class, and worked up into a story for an end of term assessment. If I dig around I might be able to find the tutor’s comments, but obviously in those days they were all handwritten on the hard copy.

Just before the lockdown started, I went to another creative writing course, with similar exercises to stimulate writing. I went to the four sessions and brought the material home and haven’t looked at it since. A friend invited me to join a writing group on Facebook which has regular prompts, and I’ve done nothing for that either, bar sharing a couple of poems.

I don’t engage with any of this any more, and I haven’t for years. Why do I still hang on to this tiny, frayed thread of an idea that I might ever be ‘A Writer’? Why do I even want to? I am very late writing this morning, and I almost didn’t bother at all. It’s stressful. I’m stressed enough, worrying about parcel deliveries and my sick cat, how can I get medicine down her to help her appetite when she won’t eat anyway? Worrying about so many things, most of them not so important in the scheme of things but they still need to be dealt with, they require action, and action requires thought and decisions and plans and comparisons of the best way to do them and then energy to get on and do whatever it is.

And I want to run away, not necessarily to another geographical place, but into an emotional place where I can be and let other things be and not have to think about making up stories or whether I can write or not or if it’s worth trying.

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Exit, Pursued By a Bear

Felt so wretched this morning. Try and list the reasons? Would that help? I don’t even know what they are. All the little frustrations and irritations of the week? Worry over my cat, who is still not eating well, refusing the kidney-friendly food recommended by the vet, and her old food if I try to sneak in her medicine? Apprehension at the opening up of the lockdown?

All of the above. The daily world has enough causes for anxiety without digging into the past. But the past never goes away, it’s in everything I do and feel, and the same emotions I was feeling fifty years ago well up again, the shame, frustration, self-hatred. I thought they would go away when I grew up, that they were caused by external circumstances, but they’re still there, and am I any better at dealing with them? Have I learnt anything over half a century? Maybe this: that whatever else may change, these feelings never do.

You know, you start something with good intentions, you make it a habit, and then a day comes when you think: ‘F*ck it, this isn’t working, I’m not doing it any more’.

This may be that day.

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Poorly cat

Just dropped Miko at the vet’s. It’s all social distanced, I’m not allowed in so the procedure is: I ring the bell; someone comes and unlocks the outside porch door then goes back behind the second door; I open the door and put her basket down in the porch, then close the outer door again and they come back through the inner door into the porch and pick her up from there. I have no problem at all with any of that, I think it’s perfectly sensible and reassuring.

When she had her six month check-up in January, she had lost weight from the previous one last summer. I wasn’t too concerned, the same thing happened last year and I put it down to the fact that I was away for a fortnight over Christmas and New Year, and she has a habit of going on hunger strike when her routine is disturbed, even though she’s used to the friend who comes and feeds her.

They recommended I bring her in after three months for a free weigh-in with the nurse, and gave me an appointment for April. That, of course, was delayed and eventually cancelled. The vet rang me for a chat, she asked if I had or could borrow any bathroom scales so I could weigh her myself, which I don’t. Then she said they aren’t doing nurse appointments at the moment, but I could have a socially distanced appointment with the vet, and to call if I had any concerns, stressing that they have a duty of care towards Miko, but I was sure she was fine and that it could wait till her 6 month check in July – I knew I would have to pay in full for the vet appointment, whereas the nurse appointments and 6 month check are included in my care plan, but that wasn’t the main reason, it was more just because I didn’t want the hassle.

But last week, in the hot weather, she more or less stopped eating altogether. She’s always been very picky about her food, very rarely clearing her bowl. Her normal routine is two pouches of wet food a day, one in the morning and one evening, and a bowl of biscuits always available. But a few weeks ago when the weather got warm I began spacing her feeds out a bit more, so that she was having half a pouch four times a day. Then it got so that I would put the fresh food in her bowl, she’d come running and eat a mouthful or two, then leave the rest.

I called the vet on Friday and they had an appointment free that afternoon, so I took her in to be weighed and she has lost 500g since January – and a quarter of her weight since last summer.

They booked her in for a senior health check this morning, including blood and urine tests. I was going to write about how I’m feeling. Maybe tomorrow.

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Rising and Retiring

While the cassette recorder is on my desk, there’s even less space than usual for Miko to squeeze into. Which makes typing even more than usually awkward. At least I have my reading glasses today.

Yesterday evening I was writing an email to an old friend and listening to music, and I got to thinking about the south of France, the scents of flowers and herbs, and the little shops in out of the way towns selling unbranded local soaps and colognes; the paintings of Van Gogh (partly because of the jigsaw I was doing earlier that morning when it was pouring with rain here); the woods around the retreat centre in Limousin where I stayed six years ago. I started putting together bits and pieces for a poem, including kittens playing in a pile of nets in the harbour at Sorrento (different country, I know, but same sea). Then into the music stream popped a young Joan Baez singing ‘Plaisir d’Amour’ and I thought ‘oh, how appropriate!’ but I’d already sent the email by then.

Why is it that I often feel quite peaceful and comfortable with the world in the evenings, but then almost always feel miserable when I wake up? No, it’s not related to alcohol consumption – I’ve thought of that. Someone once told me that what you think when you wake up relates to what you were thinking when you fell asleep, so make sure you’re always thinking happy thoughts before you drop off, but this is clearly nonsense. How can you know exactly the point you will be falling asleep before it happens, let alone control your thoughts in preparation? What would happen if you were lying there thinking: ‘Right, am I asleep yet? No? Better think of something happy then. How long can I keep this up for? How long do I need to keep it up for? Has it happened yet? How long am I going to have to keep up these happy thoughts? What if I drop off just when I’m getting frustrated or stressed?’ etc etc. You’d never actually fall asleep – unless this is just because, as I keep forgetting, my brain is weird and doesn’t act in the same way as normal people who can control that stuff?

I’ve been told: ‘You’re obviously not a morning person’, but that’s not true, I’m better if I get up in the mornings, I hate lying in late and losing half the day. But it’s like everything else, I have to motivate myself to do it, the activity, the process of getting out of bed, it’s not even that I particularly dislike it when I do it. Sometimes I even talk myself through it: ‘right, duvet off, one foot on the floor, sit on the bed, second foot on the floor, brace yourself with hands on the mattress, push down and straighten legs’. It’s the gap between thought and action that stretches out and out, as though thinking is a substitute for doing. 

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Mirror, Mirror

I was going to start writing this morning by saying: ‘Suddenly, nothing makes sense.’ But I realised that’s not true, there’s nothing ‘sudden’ about it. Individually, nationally, as a culture, as a species, we’ve been heading for disaster for – how long? God knows – ever, I suppose. Just when it feels as though things can’t get any worse… no, I’m not going to end that sentence.

Most mornings I coax myself out of bed by thinking of some joy-giving activity I can do in the day to come. Yesterday I didn’t find much joy in anything. So how about today?

There’s a mirror on my wardrobe door, facing the window, in front of which is a dressing table, with another mirror, and between the two is my bed. I lay in bed this morning, with my back to the window, looking at an image of the edge of the dressing table mirror and the curtain behind, and trying to work out which side of the mirror and curtain it was. I finally convinced myself that it was the same edge and bit of curtain that appeared a little to the right in the dressing table mirror, but somehow this seemed all wrong. Shouldn’t it be the other side? Of course it shouldn’t, because it was a reflection of a reflection of a reflection, so it ended up the same as the original reflection of the curtain, but it still disturbed me.

I’ve written before about life feeling like a hall of mirrors, or a labyrinth. It’s a bit of a cliche, but this morning for a moment I felt how disorienting that experience can be.

It made me think of crossing the road in a country where they drive on the other side – although reason tells you that the traffic on the side nearest will be coming from the opposite direction to where you’d expect it from, sometimes your brain just can’t handle it, and you have to think really hard about which way you normally look so you can look to the other one. When we first moved back from the US, I was very nervous about driving in Milton Keynes, because on the wide dual carriageways I panicked that I would turn into the wrong lane. It may, of course, just be me – possibly related to dyspraxia, though I don’t usually have problems with telling right from left.

And here I am struggling to write with a cat in front of the computer and a mouse which isn’t working and a brain full of mush. I’m used to working without a mouse on the laptop, but on the PC I’m really struggling – again, it’s something I can usually do without thinking about it. Having to sit with the keyboard on my lap or to one side because the cat’s in the way doesn’t help.

I have to wrap a present, write a card and take a parcel to the Post Office this morning. Those are my tasks.  

Happy Monday.

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Happy Days (Part 2)

In some ways these last few days have been quite idyllic. Wake up in sunshine, morning routine, breakfast in the garden – with su doku – blends effortlessly into sitting in the garden and crocheting, which blends into an afternoon of listening to the radio and crocheting, preparing dinner, eating dinner (sometimes in the garden), and watching telly for a couple of hours and crocheting, then listening to music and crocheting till it’s time for bed. Okay, yesterday I went to the shop, but that’s become more of a regular variation on the routine, rather than a major disruption.

These are the kind of summer days it’s easy to fantasise about in the winter, or on any cold, rainy or generally stressful days at any time of year, so I’m deliberately appreciating them and not taking them for granted.

The obsession with crochet could, of course, be something else, like reading, writing, su doku, gardening, cooking, weaving, cross-stitching, tapestry, jigsaws, drawing, painting, decorating, tidying… Why don’t I pour my heart and soul into any of those? It can be done, but at the moment I don’t feel drawn in any of those directions.

Is it because I find it easy? But that’s just practice. It doesn’t always work out. I’ve learnt to let it go, pull it down and try again, put it on one side and try something else, or shove it to the back of the cupboard and forget about it.

I guess that’s what I do with my writing as well – shove it to the back of the electronic cupboard and forget about it. And this morning it’s not working at all. The words don’t want to come. I am looking at specks of dust on my computer, looking out the window at the street (which still seems remarkably empty). Wandering round my head to see if I can pick up any scraps of thought that might be worth recording.

Emptying your head of thoughts is not a bad thing – I spend ten minutes every morning trying to do just that.

I’ve just remembered a moment from last night, just before midnight. I’d been sitting up too late crocheting and listening to music, and when I went into the kitchen, I remembered I’d left the door open for Miko, and she was still outside, so I stepped out into the garden. Despite the neighbours’ fairy lights and the still-illuminated windows, there was mystery out there, no moon (it’s too new) but a few stars in the stillness of the night air. I called her name, and heard her scraping the gravel before I saw her. It could have been any animal sound, but she came to me and jumped up into the patch of light on the steps and ran into the house. I thought of owls (though I hear none here in the town) and night and summer, and the cool air and the mysterious life of cats, and thought about a poem but it didn’t come.  

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Somebody Else’s Problem

Today I think I will write about what I was planning to write about yesterday, before I was hijacked by a poem. But first I’d like to observe that the sun is shining, the gulls are flying past the window, the pigeons are woo-wooing, Miko is at her neighbourhood watch post and not bothering the keyboard, and for once it feels as though the day is off to a good start.

I used to joke that my mid-life crisis began when I started a PhD at the age of 38, and has continued ever since. I remembered that when I was sharing all those memories from Facebook at the start of May, and realised that, though I may still feel in crisis some days, it’s definitely no longer a mid-life one. So I started to ponder on when exactly that transition happened.

My first thought was – well – it must have been when I moved to Southsea in 2015 – that was a major break in my life, and marked the end of that period of rootlessness which had been ongoing since I split with my husband in 2009. But then I thought that my first months here were still part of that churning, the excitement of a new life, new place, new people, all that. Plus of course, the curse of the Madwoman in the Attic – the stuff that had been left behind in the old house, the emotional and physical baggage which had remained unresolved – was still hanging over me. That wasn’t sorted out till I moved into this house in autumn 2016 –that was the next significant point. But then what happened? Yep, 2017 – cancer year.

So now I think that when I look back over my life and mark it off into chunks, chapters of my autobiography, if you like (though this is the closest I’ll ever get to writing one), the present stage started at the beginning of 2018, when I began to pick up the threads of a life no longer dominated by concerns over my health. Comparing notes with my brother (who was treated for prostate cancer in that same year) and my therapist (who I started seeing in early 2018), I discovered that it’s a known condition for people who’ve survived cancer to experience depression after the treatment is over. For me, intellectualising it two years on, it’s about ‘what now?’ – the realisation that there was more future than I’d subconsciously been anticipating, and that finding things to do with it could be a challenge.

And – this has just popped into my head, and I have 70 words to express it in – being treated for cancer, travelling round Europe, being in lockdown – all have this in common: every day is just about itself. The future can be put to one side; maybe it will happen, maybe it will be somebody else’s problem. ‘None of the crazy you get from too much choice…’, no stress, no sweat.

Well, that’s something to talk about on Thursday.