I Love My Cat

Peggi footprints in our driveway
Peggi footprints in our driveway

I realize we are probably the only ones who think this recent snowfall is pretty. Most people have had enough. It’s so late in the year for this stuff you can’t really take it seriously so I just enjoy it. It will probably be sixty degrees next week.

My cat has not developed in her seventeen years. She is still in the moment, she still enjoys the same toys, a crumpled up piece of paper, an old collar that she drags around the house, an empty box to scratch and sit in. She hasn’t gotten any smarter either. She is already plenty smart, smart enough to know she has a good thing going and she does the same thing every day as if it is the first time. She has taught me plenty and she lowers my blood pressure when I pet her.

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Locked-In Syndrome

Stella on bed
Stella on bed

“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is a beautiful movie. The lusiously colored, closely cropped, bedridden, framing really looks great on tv. We watched long stretches of it for the second time last night. The French speech therapist’s endless repetition of the alphabet hypnotized me. I felt as I too had “locked-in syndrome” like the lead character, Jean-Dominique Bauby. Julian Schnabel did a great job bringing this (based on a) true story to the screen. Bauby’s memoir, though, is where the magic came from. “My cocoon becomes less oppressive, and my mind takes flight like a butterfly. There is so much to do. You can wander off in space or in time, set out for Tierra del Fuego or for King Midas’s court.”

I’m thinking our white cat may have a variation of this “locked-in-syndrome. She spends nearly twenty four hours a day on our bed yet we’re certain that she has a life in there and that it is full enough for her. We can see this in her eyes.

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