Category: cats

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Corrections and Clarifications

The anger came back this morning, in the I-should-get-out-of-bed-but-not-yet time. I suppose it may have been partly triggered by the new uncertainty caused by images of commuters on trains and station platforms. However, as always, it was turned against myself. How can I keep writing about my real feelings and put it on show? How can I come on here and share my true thoughts, take that risk of being seen for who I am, all that self-pity and negativity and doubt? I’ll stop, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll give up again as I always do with everything.

But I got up and did my half hour practice, and when I went downstairs and made coffee I realised how valuable that is, that it actually does help – or something does. Routine and discipline, you see – it makes life possible. Which I guess includes this as well. Here I am at my keyboard with Miko on the desk beside me, supervising the street outside, both of us listening to a sudden outburst of gulls. Blue sky and sunshine, and I can’t really tell whether there are more people and traffic, though I can see that there are at least six empty parking places across the road whereas they’ve been full for the last few weeks, but I guess the consolation is that at least six drivers aren’t taking the bus.

I didn’t speak to my daughter yesterday, but I assume she for one hasn’t gone back to work. She’s not waitressing any more, but she still works in the leisure/hospitality business, her job involves visiting pubs, so I’m guessing she’s reprieved until they reopen. Anyway, she has two children at home.

I am still in my cosy bubble, for as long as it takes. I may never come out. I still feel that life is less stressful like this, but I keep panicking that eventually I will have to engage with the world again, and wonder what exactly that will mean. It’s like when I was travelling and would every so often get a reminder that, at some point, I would have to come back and face up to life again.

Just remembered that I have some corrections and clarifications for my quote from the Joni Mitchell song yesterday (I finally looked it up). The song is Barangrill and the corrections are: it’s three waitresses (not two); they’re talking about Singapore SLINGS (which makes so much more sense than ‘sleeves’, a mistake I’ve been making for almost 50 years), and there’s ‘not one ANXIOUS voice’ (I think I said ‘angry’).

So there you go, I’m not perfect (as if I ever claimed to be).

Oh my goodness, I just glanced through the window, (checking for swifts) and saw a plane flying over – it looks like a commercial airliner, rather than anything naval/military. Strange how something so familiar can disappear without being missed until suddenly it’s there again.

Check out Barangrill, if you like Joni. I hadn’t heard it in years.

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Routines and Decisions

Structure and chaos. Rules and freedom. Dyspraxia and social inadequacy – nature and nurture. Cats and husbands. This and that. Writing and not-writing.

I’ve been awake for two hours already, but I observe my routines. Time is open-ended – until 1pm, when the afternoon’s radio marathon begins (though I can delay that by setting the TiVo to Radio 4 Extra so that it can be paused and rewound if I miss anything). Little happens in the mornings beyond the routine of: feed cat; half hour yoga, tai chi and meditation; shower; coffee; blogging; breakfast (which can end up being at 11, or even later). Except for shopping days, of course, but that was yesterday. There are other day-related things, apart from shopping (which isn’t strictly day-related, but has fallen into that pattern because it takes me exactly a week to use up two litres of milk), like putting the bins out (Tuesday), Zoom tai chi (Wednesday), Skype therapy (Thursday), but they all happen in the afternoon or early evening.

This is very different from pre-lockdown routine, when on most days I needed to be up and ready to go out by a certain time. Which may mean – if those activities eventually resume in a similar format to before – that post-lockdown life (which, may I say, I’m not anticipating any time soon), will be different again.

None of which is what I was thinking about in those two hours before I sat down at the keyboard.

By the way, the Joni Mitchell song I quoted from the other day wasn’t ‘The Blonde in the Bleachers’, as I said, but the one that begins:

‘Two waitresses both wearing black diamond earrings
talking about zombies and Singapore sleeves.
No trouble in their faces, not one angry voice,
none of the crazy you get from too much choice,
the thumb and the satchel or the rented Rolls-Royce…’

Joni Mitchell

But surprisingly, even though I can now hear it clearly in my head, I can’t get as far as the refrain to remember what it’s actually called (nor do I have a clue what ‘Singapore sleeves’ are) – and I still haven’t got round to looking it up.

Choice as tyranny, that’s what I was going to write about. The comfort of routines versus the horror of being forced to make a decision. That’s why I cling to them in the mornings; though I don’t always wake – or get up – at the same time, the sequence of activities is quite consistent. Otherwise I lie in bed and do nothing – which is not, repeat NOT healthy for my emotional wellbeing.

I still have to make decisions, of course, and I find the two most terrifying are: what to wear, and what to have for dinner; terrifying because they are relentless. And every decision (however trivial) entails judgement: options must be evaluated, probabilities and utilities assigned; projected outcomes considered (especially unanticipated ones) in order to identify and attain an optimal solution.

It’s exhausting. Better to sit in the sun and drink coffee.

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Hors de Combat

I’m back from my weekly Tuesday morning shopping expedition. The emergency run for cat food two days ago doesn’t count, because I couldn’t bring myself to do the sensible thing and work out a full shopping list before I went, so I ran out of fresh milk yesterday as usual.

Before I left, I prepared breakfast for my return, and, in the process of slicing the end crust of the loaf into two to fit the toaster, cut my left index finger. I held it under the cold tap, wrapped it in kitchen roll, and kept pressing it and moving the kitchen roll as it became soaked in blood. Then went looking for plasters, which I found in the form of continuous strips in the downstairs bathroom. Hunted for the scissors – on the kitchen table, among all the card-making stuff. Cut a biggish strip off and wrapped it over the wound and round the end of my finger.

Collected together bags, wallet, phone, checked I had the right cards, filled Miko’s water bowl, made sure she was inside, she started running around manically so I spoke to her gently and sat down with her for a few minutes to calm her down, checked the list (on my phone), picked up the scarf I’ve been using as a face mask, wrapped it round, left the building, and in locking the door realised there was fresh red blood dripping down my arm. I must have put pressure on the wound somehow, probably when pulling up the door handle.

So I went back into the house, and tried to work out where I’d left the plasters and the scissors. I noticed that everywhere I’d walked there were perfectly spaced, perfectly round bright red drops of blood on the floor. They looked like tiddlywinks.

I thought: never mind wrapping a scarf round my face, I really can’t go round Tesco dripping blood everywhere. I decided I was hors de combat, and could justifiably excuse myself from shopping duty – the main priority was milk, and I’d got a carton of UHT (bought for making yoghurt, but also as an emergency reserve) and a tin of evaporated.

I found the plasters back in the bathroom cabinet, but only at the second iteration – the box was lying down behind the lip at the bottom of the cupboard, and I didn’t recognise it. I stuck another one over the first and that seemed to do the trick. Might as well go shopping after all, as I’d psyched myself up.

So, once again I went through the whole palaver of remembering everything I needed to take, including the scarf which I’d discarded over the back of a chair, and this time I opened, closed and locked the front door without injury.

I haven’t even got enough words left to tell you what happened en route to the supermarket and after I got there. Give me rules to follow, and I’ll panic about getting them wrong. Thoughts for another day.

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Thinking About Thoughts and Other Stuff (tbc)

How can you tell the difference between denial and acceptance?

How can I learn to control my thoughts?

No, I don’t like the word ‘control’. How can I learn to cope with, manage, ride the waves of my mind? ‘Manage’ is also too strong. Manage the way I react to the vagaries of my mind? But what is there to do the ‘managing’ if not my mind? What is my ‘mind’ anyway?

I like the idea of riding the waves. I’ve never tried surfing, never even felt a desire to, but I enjoy the sensation of floating on waves – I also like riding in a hot air balloon (an experience I’ve had three times in my life and would happily do again). A balloon pilot or surfer (or sailor, wind-surfer, hang-glider, glider pilot etc) cannot control the movements of the wind and/or waves, but can control the behaviour of his or her craft in response to the conditions that it’s experiencing.

I did something sneaky earlier by referring to ‘thoughts’ in the second paragraph then going on to talk about ‘mind’. What’s the difference? Is it that my thoughts are equivalent to the wind and waves, and is my mind the sum total of all those thoughts, or is it the mechanism I use to ‘manage’ them? Isn’t it both at the same time? Not only that, but if the ‘management’ I’m referring to is about choosing the best responses to the thoughts that arise, what do those responses consist of? Okay, sometimes they may be physical, like getting a drink in response to the thought ‘I’m thirsty’, but don’t they also involve thoughts, at least initially?

Ah well, I’ve just done another sneaky thing (or my ‘mind’ has done it without me noticing at the time) by introducing the word ‘choosing’. How much choice do we have over our responses? Choice is the essence of freedom, but it is also a tyrant (‘…the crazy you get from too much choice/the thumb and the satchel or the rented Rolls-Royce…’ Joni Mitchell, I think it’s from The Blonde in the Bleachers).

That’s what I was thinking of when I sat on the edge of my bed an hour or ago, the comfort of routine versus the panic of having to make a decision. Should I go straight to the shop and get cat food, or give Miko the only stuff we have left, which is a choice between meat in jelly (bought by mistake) which she refuses to eat, or fish in gravy, which she also turns her nose up at? That led into a whole can of worms (which I don’t think they sell in the pet shop, but I’m sure she wouldn’t eat anyway.)

Enough, or I’ll miss my word limit. I’m trying to show that decisions (however apparently trivial) scare me because of the possibility of getting them wrong. It’s not just other people who do that to me, I can do it to myself.

Hold that thought.

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May Day

Today’s memory is from a year and a day after the previous one (a lot can happen in that time – in fairy tales, at any rate).

On the beach at sunrise with a smallish group of friends and friends-of-friends, one of them a Pagan celebrant who led us in a ceremony of welcome to the sun on May Day morning. I remember chanting, facing in the four directions (towards the sea, the land, the sun and… towards the pier? -it’s all I can think of in that direction!) There was also singing, djembe banging, some mandolin playing, probably dancing and definitely consumption of brandy supplied by her partner (not something I normally do at six in the morning, not even on May Day!) And breakfast in the Beach Café.

Thinking back, I realise I hardly ever see that group of people any more. When the world passed around the sun again, I had entered the year of my own personal self-isolation, of chemo and surgery and radiotherapy, and when I emerged from that into 2018, it seemed as though everyone’s life had changed, not just mine, the dance had shifted, we had all taken up new positions and our paths no longer intersected – except sometimes on Facebook, repository of friendships and social medium of choice for my generation.

That wasn’t the only memorable thing that happened that May Day, however. When I got home to the flat, I had an email from my ex husband, saying that he’d received and provisionally accepted an offer on the old family home; obviously my formal agreement was needed, but that was hardly in doubt. The beginning of the real end of that chapter of my life, a summer of driving up and down between here and there, clearing out everything, including the attic where so much of my past had accumulated; helping him initially to move into his new place in Bedford (and in the interim our son and his fiancée from their tiny studio flat in Guildford to a two-storey maisonette), and finally, in October, moving into this house, with one van of stuff transported professionally from the flat, and another trip for me up to Bedford, another rented van loaded and driven down by my daughter’s partner, another drive back southwards in my Micra with another terrified cat in a basket on the passenger seat.

If I’d known on that spring morning that it would be almost another six months before I was finally settled in my own home… well, I don’t know what I would have done. But it happened, all the dusty accumulation of the past, the physical stuff and the emotional clutter which had haunted me, all moved, all resolved, and here I was.

Maybe the stress of that year contributed to my body’s next bombshell – who knows? But I got through that too. And here I stand, and every day, whether May Day or any one of 365 others, the future still knocks on my door.

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Day 27 – Meeeow!!!

No poetry at all today, so here’s one I prepared earlier (last week in fact, same day as the Power Tools).

My cat listens.
She sits upright,
her paws just-so
her tail wrapped around
and looks me right in the eye.

‘It’s okay’ I tell her,
‘Don’t worry,
I’m not talking to you!’

Her eyes narrow.
Perhaps she’s thinking:
‘Silly old bag.
Don’t you realise
I’m just a cat?’

Linda Rushby 27 April 2020
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Day 17 – Sonnet for An Introvert

Having already trashed the terza rima, I thought today I’d go for another classic poetic form – the sonnet.

Apologies for the longer final couplet, which I found written (as four lines) in my notebook, scribbled there a few nights ago and promptly forgotten by morning, when I wrote something completely different.

I could have used it another day, but I think it sort of fits (and saves me having to think up another two lines to finish with).

If I can write a poem today.
perhaps the world will go away
and leave me in this happy place
of never meeting face-to-face.

I burrow like a worm or mole
and hide inside this cosy hole
while listening to the radio,
relieved I’ve nowhere else to go.

I do the things I like to do,
and never go and join a queue
(not even one two metres spread)
I buy my milk first thing instead.

Life feels strangely normal – or perhaps it’s normally strange?
That same old déjà vu, coming around again.

Linda Rushby 17 April 2020

PS Just thought I’d add Miko as my ‘featured image’, given that this reflects her philosophy on life as well as mine.

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Easter Sunday

I wrote a poem yesterday evening, and announced it on Facebook. But now I don’t know if I want to share it – it’s a bit personal.

Seems a waste, though, if it means I have to write another one today.

I haven’t done my yoga etc half hour yet, because when I got up I thought I had something to say and if I didn’t say it, it would annoy me because I’d forget what it was and have to think of something else. So here I am.

It’s just that I was thinking: have I done this long enough to prove that I can do it? Have I done it long enough to prove that there’s no point? I suppose it kills the time – but then time passes anyway, whether I do anything or not – it has no regard for human intentions. Now I remember that when I was downstairs feeding the cat and getting a cup of water – or rather, after that -I forgot to bring the washing basket up from the kitchen.

When you write a journal, is it/should it be about momentous things which have happened, or just whatever rubbish pops into your head at the time of writing? The latter is easier, and sometimes it throw up some surprises. That’s my excuse, if I need one.

I need excuses for everything I do. I feel pressure to justify my actions, even though, realistically, I know that no one cares or is interested. My life trundles along its predictable daily paths, and if it wasn’t for social media, no one would know – or probably care. That’s significant, that I think my actions and thoughts are of no interest to anyone. I am anonymous and invisible, even more so at the moment. If anything happened to me, I wonder who would be the first to notice, how they would notice, how long it would take, and what would they, or even could they, do about it?

My main concern is what would happen to my poor little cat. Anyone else concerned can look after themselves, but I worry about her, trapped here alone and starving. Perhaps she would finally be brave enough to go out through the cat flap, and once out there, she’d probably be a lot tougher and more resourceful than I give her credit for. They’re like that, aren’t they, cats? Someone would find her and maybe take her to a vet, where they’d scan her and get my details from her chip, and try and contact me. Maybe that’s when they’d realise I wasn’t responding, and call the police, and they’d come round and find me? Or maybe not, in these times, when everyone has more important things to worry about than a stray cat – or a stray woman, come to that. One more or less in the grand scheme of things. Who knows what might happen? And I didn’t write about moths. Maybe I should keep that one for tomorrow now.

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On My Desk

Difficult to write with a cat where the keyboard should be. Fortunately it’s a wireless keyboard.

Does mean I’m sitting very awkwardly. If I sit with my knees under the desk and keyboard on it to one side, I have to twist my lower back to reach it. Not good. If I move my chair so I’m directly in front of the spare bit of desk, my knees are hitting the desk drawers and I have to stretch forward which also puts a strain on my back, and I have to reach over the keyboard when I need to use the mouse, which is awkward. I’ve tried with the keyboard on my knees, but that’s also awkward and I can’t look at the screen at the same time.

In trying to take a photo of this situation, I noticed the mess on my desk. What on earth is the end roller of my old Dyson vacuum cleaner doing here? Box of tissues (fair enough); empty cassette box (who knows what happened to the cassette?); CD box containing – a CD which – yes! – does match the title on the outside of the box (Neil Young’s ‘Harvest’); copy of ‘Tea With Douglas’ which I was using for reference in my last book design job; two empty (used) jiffy bags in different sizes; copy of ‘The Culture of Contentment’ by John Kenneth Galbraith, which I was also using for reference (for the same job, on the order of the front matter for a non-fiction book); a dozen recordable CDs, some with backup data from years ago, some blank, all on a spike; a note book; a Black and Decker Dustbuster on its charging stand (which is here because I’m supposed to use it for picking up dry cat litter off the bathroom floor, and this is the nearest place I can plug it in which isn’t on the floor where it’s liable to get tripped over); a ceramic pot with a large capital ‘B’ on the side and ‘RUSH’ inside the bottom bulge of the B, which is intended to hold toothbrushes, but I bought it because if you think about it could be a pun on my name, and I intended to use it for pens but it contains only a green CD writer pen whose felt tip is fuzzy, dried up and unusuable, an orange gel pen (probably also dried up) and a pencil with a hand carved and decorated end like a cute penguin; stack of four 5 cm diameter semi-clear pastel coloured round plastic boxes containing small stationery items (on closer inspection, two hold buttons, one pins and one miscellaneous including staples, picture hooks, screws, drawing pins, freezer bag ties, a green magnet from a notice board and a small metal plate with East Asian characters which appears to have come off the back of something); three coasters and a coffee cup.

And a cat. Except that she has now woken up, jumped down and walked off in a huff.