Another day, another mouse carcass beside the bed. They catch them in the kitchen and bring them all the way upstairs to show us. Thoughtful of them.
Actually, I'm quite sure now that this is Kitten's mouse. He hunts everything: Ben, dry leaves, water drops from the bathtub tap. Our feet when we're trying to walk down the stairs. Everything except What's-Her-Name, whom he respects tremendously and in whom he has uncovered an unexpected vein of motherliness.
This fantasy life won't last long. He'll mature abruptly on January, when we load him into the hated port chat one morning and bring him back in it that afternoon: he'll go from Henry Aldrich to Walter Mitty in a matter of hours, without ever passing through James Dean. Besides, Kitten's not annoying, for the most part; he's delightful. He loves everything, loves to play with everything. thinks everything fascinating. He is growing very fast, but his paws are still tiny, his ears still out of scale with the rest of him, his movements still a little jerky, after the manner of kittens. It doesn't last long,
kittenhood; when it's over, there you are with another big cat in your house for years and years. We wish they could stay little. We wish everything could stay, and nothing ever does.
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Key:
Henry Aldrich was the feckless teenage star of "The Aldrich Family," which ran on American radio and at the movies in the late 1930s to the mid-1940s. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/94808/Henry-Aldrich-Plays-Cupid/overview
Walter Mitty was the middle-aged central character in James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, whose grand inner life was constantly being interrupted by the dispiritingly real world. http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/6821/thurber.html
James Dean was James Dean. http://www.jamesdean.com/
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November 3rd, "Too Busy to Pray?" A Geranium Farm Retreat with Barbara Crafton at St. Luke's Metuchen NJ. A day of quiet, prayer and meditations. If you're the kind of person who needs to do something with your hands in order to contemplate, Debby Sharp Loeb of the HodgePodge will be there with a very cool craft and its materials. For reservations call 732-548-4308, ext 10.
Also on November 3, Deacon Joanna Depue leads a retreat at Christ Church, Jordan, NY. "Prayer at Your Fingertips: An Introduction to Healing Touch." Learn about the physicality of healing and prayer, spend the day in meditation and quiet conversation. Call 315-689-3141 for more info and reservations. http://hometown.aol.com/christchurchjord/myhomepage/faith.html
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