My Cat, Parker

I have adopted a cat or, rather, the cat has adopted me.  As I wrote recently here, Oregon--the area in which my grandma lives, anyway--is full of stray animals.  This has something to do with why my aunt and her boyfriend have three dogs (four until one recently died if cancer), and 14-16 cats.  The number of kitties fluctuates, but I'd estimate there are about 15 on average at any given time.  I've given up trying to keep all of the names straight with this ever-changing cast of characters, except for the dogs and the cats who have been around for a long time.  Amazingly, most of these animals, save a few of the more feral cats, spend their days inside of their tiny one story house.  It's hard to find a place to sit, because most every surface and chair is covered with a furry creature of some kind.  They are either saints for keeping, housing, and loving all of these animals, or they're nuts.  I think they're a bit of both, but I really admire my aunt's heart and her sincere desire to save every homeless, stray or abandoned animal this side of the Rogue River.

So this new cat, Parker.  That's what I named him, after Dorothy Parker, a writer I like, because he's as neurotic and misanthropic as she was.  Also, he sort of "parked" himself on my grandma's picnic table out in her side yard, and there he made up his mind to stay.  He's been there for a few months and slept at night when it rained (which is often here) in the tool shed.  In the last week I've been trying to lure him up to the covered porch off of the litchen.  I love sitting there and reading, surrounded by plants and listening to the rain plink-plinking on the tin roof above.  The cat finally made up his mind, after several nights in which I spent hours sitting there, still and calm as a statue, to approach me. 

At first he would run onto the porch, hissing, and make for the nearest corner of the porch for an easy escape (the porch is enclosed, but the cats can slip in and out of the plastic which surrounds it.  A makeshift cat door).  Soon, he would run back and forth near my ourstretched hand, hissing, but coming a little closer.  Then, he would rub AGAINST my hand, still darting back and forth like a lunatic from one corner of the porch to another, still hissing, but actually making contact with me.  Next stage:   he would run back and forth and rub against my hand or foot, and had stopped hissing, but wouldn't stand still or settle near me.  Now I can actually pet him like a normal cat and he'll lay at my feet contentedly, occasionally rubbing against me to let me know he wants some petting.  It feels like a victory.  He is an odd-looking, boxy tabby with black and gray stripes and random splotches against a white background, and has narrow, scared green eyes.  He has a strange circular yellowish-brown smudge on his white chin which my grandma calls "unfortunate."  He's not the prettiest cat, nor the sweetest, but he has character.  I like him.

He still will start hissing at me occasionally, then seems to remember who I am and stops.  I think he was abused at some point to be so afraid of everyone (and oddly, he's NOT afraid of the other cats--just of people).  This cat hasn't come near anyone in months, and still won't let anyone near him except for me.  The poor thing is going to feel abandoned once I leave tomorrow, I fear.  I hope this gets him one step closer to coming near other people.  I don't want the poor guy out in the rain and sleeping in that leaky shed again.

Oh my goodness. This is so cool. This is an old letter I found in our recipe drawer this morning (of all places. That’s the drawer in the kitchen where we keep all of our cookbooks, recipe books, and loose recipes, too). It’s a letter written by someone (I have no idea who, except for the name "Wes" signed at the bottom, and a return address of "Wesley Y./Decorah, Iowa 52101"–no street address named) to Edna, an old friend of my grandma’s. I don't know how on earth this letter got into our kitchen in Lakewood, Colorado from Kerby, Oregon, but I'm glad I found it.  Edna is dead now. She lived down the road from my grandma in a little trailer in rural Oregon. A lot of people out there live in trailers. In fact, my aunt and grandma, who live right down the road from each other, have some of the only actual houses on their mountain road (it is family property, which belonged to my Grandma’s Uncle Bill–he had been a sailor in the Navy, had been in WWII and was an amazing story-teller, a great guy--I really loved him).

I don’t remember much about Edna except that she was really old (or seemed really old to me, as a kid), and really tiny, and very gentle and sweet. And very, very quiet. I liked her, I remember that much, though I was a little afraid of her. I have no idea why. She certainly wasn’t intimidating, and she was really kind. The first time I met her (the first time I was in Oregon, shortly after my grandma moved there), I was ten years old. She was pretty far along in years then–I think about eighty–and she died several years ago. I think she was about 95 when she died. And all that time, she lived on her own and took care of herself. She didn’t have any family, never married, and she was very quiet, as I’ve mentioned, and eccentric.

She also had about five million books. Her little trailer was very clean and orderly, and about the only "stuff" which she had much of in there, besides the necessities of life, were books. The other thing she had a lot of were cats. She had about twenty of them, maybe more. Seriously, I have never seen so many cats on one tiny property. Some of them lived inside her trailer with her, and some outside, strays and such, which she fed. There are a lot of strays in that part of the country. My aunt has about 14-16 cats herself. Some of that’s simply because it’s a small, rural town in a temperate area, and in part because there are a lot of hippies (real hippies, not what passes on the street as a hippie in urban areas), and wanderer/nomad type people who live in tents and trailers, and a lot of mountain people. Lots of drugs, free spirits, artists, and psychic energy (and a lot of uncontrolled pet population). This town, Cave Junction/Kerby, is near a vortex and is known as an area of great spiritual and artistic energy. It is a special place. The vibe there is really unique, and really cool.

I absolutely love Southern Oregon. It’s my favorite place in the world, even more so than the U.K. I hope to live there, or somewhere very nearby, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, eventually. I lived there for a few months out of high school (taking some time off before I went back to school), in a trailer on my grandma’s property. Nearly everyone has land there, though not much else. There’s lots and lots of land to go around. It’s nice being miles away from people, and most everyone there is extremely liberal. Well, I’m sure there are plenty of rednecks (I mean that in a backwoodsy-political sense; not as a moral judgment), but most of my grandma’s friends and the people I knew there are masseuses, artists, wood-carvers–though not Redwood, dear God! mostly burlwood–natural healers, etc., and are truly awesome. The last time I was there I was going to a meeting and ended up joining some people for a war protest. It was only 6 months ago, so yeah, the war was as fucked-up then as it is now.

The economy is crappy, but it’s such a beautiful and cool place. I met a lot of wonderful people during that time. I stayed with Native Americans, Little Wolf and Walks Tall, in their teepee for a while (truly. They had an actual, functional teepee which they lived in). Little Wolf weighed about 400 pounds.  She had looong, gorgeous black hair. I still envy that beautiful hair. Walks Tall was about 6'3 and thin as a rail. She was an incredible artist (she painted gourds, made jewelry, etc.), and she was also a gifted psychic and seer. I loved both of them. I wonder what they’re doing now. I got some of the best readings of my life from her. The economy is the primary reason I couldn’t stay–I couldn’t find any sort of job, not at a grocery or convenience store or anything, and I decided maybe I’d try college out, after all. It was one of the happiest times of my life. I really hope I can move back there, someday.

I’m totally off-topic. I’m leaving for a Oregon on Tuesday, for a week, to see my grandma, and I really miss it (miss the place, and miss my grandma, of course. It will be great to see both). So Edna had mounds of books and cats, and she was very intriguing to me. My vivid imagination had all sorts of stories and histories and situations worked out for her: what her life had been, why she was now living alone in her later years in an isolated, small town in Oregon. I imagined her as having a hundred thwarted romances, various tragedies, etc. I doubt any of those were near the truth. She was probably just a really smart, mild-mannered hermit type. She was very pretty, beautiful still in her 80s and 90s, and it’s interesting to me that she never married or had a family. Not that people need to do that. I’d be pretty damn happy myself with thousands of books and dozens of cats. I never really got to know her, though I’d go down with my grandma several times a week to visit her. I think it was more to check on her. My grandma is very caring that way. I’ll have to remember to ask my grandma more about Edna this week when we’re together. Anyway, this letter is one of the best things I’ve read in a while. I love letters, especially old ones. Damn Internet. I wish people still wrote real letters. The letter is typed, so there are a few typos, but I won’t reproduce those. Whoever wrote this letter could write, that’s for sure. This is really delightful. Or maybe I’m just odd.

"Stonehouse arbor.

Sunday, about 10:30 a.m.

Dear Edna, Ardath, Karsten & Emily: (sounds like the writing on the door of a law firm):

It’s Sunday morning and overcast, neither warm nor cold. They say there’s a 50% chance of rain this afternoon. I’m taking a breather from some stone-work I’ve been doing on the front porch. I DO remember that in Sunday school they taught that you shouldn’t work on Sunday–and at the time it sounded like a good idea to me, because Pa was at home waiting to get me to help with something.

But in Oleville you either work , or read, or grow wan from ennui, and I’m read out at the moment.

Rachel is out here, on the chair on the other side of the (rustic, weathered-wood) table, enjoying ennui–now that I’ve fed her. Cats are good at that, and she isn’t really the best at laying stones.

Ollie went to nine garage sales and bought–amongst other things–three bicycles to add to his growing collection of garage-sale bikes. It’s his belief that they are "money in the bank" because soon the whole population will take to bikes because of the rising cost of gas. Of course his are all children’s bikes, and how does that fit into the equation? Also he’s still looking for someone to raise rabbits (for fun & profit) for him. And he continues to toy with the idea of getting rich while feeding the starving Armenians by growing mushrooms in the little stone-quarry over here across the creek. It’s been some time now since he’s suggested I pay him rent. But he did extract $120 per month from Tommy while living in HER house and eating off HER food stamps.

My goldenrod and two types of wild asters are beautiful in my weed garden, and soon the ivy–of which I have quite a bit–will redden to that special sange de boeuf that the old Chinese potters prized. The walnuts are falling and I have a real whopper of a harvest. I promised Ginger a bushel. The two squirrels from across the street will bury enough of them to insure me a lot of work when they growing up in every conceivable wrong place.

Did I tell you I got my sink hooked up. It’s a real beauty that Ardath brought me three years ago: stainless steel, with a double basin. I didn’t put it quite where the sink used to be, before the fire, so there was some additional pipe and labor involved. I’ll have it paid for next summer but in the meantime I can eat off clean dishes with clean silverware. For a change.

The young man–Gregory–from Jim Thorensen’s apartment is off to Waldorf college–where they did not kick him out in two weeks as I had told him I expected they would. He’s had trouble with drugs and alcohol (which translates into beer parties). Anyway he’s one of the smartest people I’ve met for a while (his dad was a Rhode’s scholar), so I expect that if he follows their rules he will be at the head of class.

My grapes were a disaster this year. Sparse, half-empty bunches. I didn’t even pick them. They began to mildew as soon as they turned color. We’ve just had rain, rain, rain this summer–according to the weatherman, the most precipitation of any year on record.

Well, the Romantic Piano is on, and that’s a good time to take a bath–although actually there’s enough water in the creek. But no plug-in for the radio.

Love, Wes"

Now that is a great letter. This guy is really smart, and has some great descriptions, and I also sense he’s kind of a smart-ass–just from a few sly comments he made–and I most definitely approve of that. That thing about the starving Armenians had to be a joke, right?  I have just a few questions: why did he say he’d be paying for the sink into the next summer, if Ardath bought it for him? (Also, Ardath is about the best name ever). Why did he italicize "beer parties? (And what is a "beer party?"). Also, what on earth is the Romantic Piano?  Ollie sounds like someone I'd like to know, with his crazy schemes and children's bikes.  So does Gregory.