Vera … Vera …

I guess enough friends have inquired about the whereabouts of the sister in the pair of littermates I agreed to inherit rather than lose the company of when their mistress abandoned them a couple of years ago on a fling with a thing. I gotta face the fact that sweet Vera is to never return without the slightest notion where she’s gone. It is much different than knowing she died like the past two that passed through my home and heart. In memoriam to her I present the following fairy tale I wrote for a collection Minx was asking for contributions to sometime last year.

Goldiwotsits and Boldigrushin

She wasn’t the most affectionate person in the world, but when Goldiwotsit wanted loving she knew some covers she could climb under to reap all the affection she and Boldigrushin ever needed. They both slept alone most of the time just for the comfort of guilt free farting and collision free restlessness. They both had their middle of the night inspirations to get up and write, draw, make or eat something and middle of the day siestas and passed each other affectionately in their separate interests throughout their lives. When the weather grew chilly the farts and the nearness kept them warm every night.

Goldiwotsit had a special life all her own of which she never spoke nor would he be aware had he not loved to watch her in his idle hours as she followed her muse about her day. Without benefit of books or teachers he watched her learn about reflection, refraction, spectrums, magnification and fluid dynamics by experimenting in the pond near their home. These were experiences she would never forget due to complete lack of need to explain herself to anyone. The closest she came to discussing such things was gazing into Boldigrushin’s eyes until they both slowly closed them with a nod of mutual understanding and ultimate love.

When he was rapt at his drawing board at times of her repose she could just sit and watch his concentration, his inhalation upon inspiration, his exhalation of herbal dilation, his tongue flicking in and out as if whittling out the precision of his expression. She wondered what the source of his need to have the rest of the world see what he sees might be. He’d spent a lifetime getting better at it and when they’d met he’d left the city behind to establish this wooded home as a place he could draw his pictures to trade for bullets to keep the wolves from their door. This gave him the quiet solitude to write his stories and tootle his flute for the pure pleasure of expression and learn to grow his vegetable garden for the satisfaction of self reliance in supplying the absolute necessity of life. She didn’t understand and felt no urgency to end such an interesting, alien mystery.

When she needed his attention, his touch, she knew she had only to nuzzle his ear to draw him back from the world of his imagination and gain him all to herself so long as the feeing was mutual or until either one became interested in something else. No matter who they may be with or what they were doing, they both knew their primary interest was in each other. It was less concern about whether they were doing well and more admiration for how well they did everything in their lives, even the learning from their own mistakes part.

Her curiosity was mostly satisfied by watching one place for long periods to let the pitter-patter pattern of local activity establish itself wherever she alit so that she could filter it out of her attention to spot the anomalies by the slightest glimpse, peep, scent or electric charge out of the ordinary. Boldigrushin had learned the method from her while they meditated on the mystery of life each sunrise sitting in his potting shed over looking the garden. She knew he understood her when he entered the state required to notice and watch a clod of dirt become dislodged and unbalanced by an emerging broccoli sprout and roll several inches away.

When this autistic, fugue, trancelike patter analysis state gleaned curiosities sufficient for further investigation, she was all over it whether it was a slithering lizard, a four leaf clover, new noise, scent of jasmine, nose right down in it for all the rare sensations to be offered. Seeing life be a such joy for her, whether snoozing or active, lightened his sometime jaded attitude toward his species’ jaded attitude toward the nature of the planet that sustained the lives of all its species. He got especially upset with their treating the rest of the world as property. always prompting him to explain to her that they even think they own their daemons and call them pets. When he got this agitated she knew he needed to be kneaded in his tense shoulder muscles now that she’d learned to hold in her claws.

•

cat and mouse

Because that song of Pink Floyd’s echoes so bittersweetly even when talking to her brother, Priest, that I have changed his name from the one they grew up together with. In light of the fact that he now has my attention all to himself he takes total advantage of mutual affection sharing to the point that I have decreed his name is now Schmoo, both for his color and shape and willingness to be whatever Lil' cxcxxxxx Abner needed at the time. As a sign of his constant companionship he added his agreement to Al Capp’s hero’s name.

the original schmoo