Of Animals and Me
POETIC REALITY
There was once a poet who wanted peace and quiet so he moved to a country cottage once lived in by the gardener of an estate. The cottage was surrounded by lofty exotic trees. But, as he wrote he gradually noticed his loneliness. He went to town to see a friend near death from cancer. The friend was not afraid of death, (who at 22 is?), but she asked him to take a kitten as her velvet delicate cat had had a litter. Among the soft furry forms was a little male who pushed the others aside to drink from his purring mother. The poet went to pick him up. Needle sharp teeth bit into his hand. This was the one. A little soldier. He took the small ball of anger home in a perforated cardboard shoebox. In the next few weeks he wrote very little. His divan was scratched, his curtains climbed. Soon the vegetarian poet was cutting up vile meat for the Soldier. Little stripes appeared on the fore legs so he was promoted to corporal. Two weeks later an immense ginger tomcat entered the cottage attracted by the smell of sliced calf liver. The tiny corporal, little bigger than a hand, leapt from the divan onto the cat’s face, gripping it on the forehead with his front paws and rapidly raked its face with his back claws. Eventually the tom shook its head free. And fled. Promoted on the bloody field of battle to sergeant, the kitten twitched with energy for hours.
Over the months there were a series of battles and the kitten rose through the ranks to major. After a fight with a midnight calypso-singing muscular black tom who never again returned, he was promoted to colonel. At dawn one morning the poet found 5 enormous headless rats on the neat stone door step. The little General, chin held high, toyed with the vanquished corpses. Honorably, in battle, the general lost an eye. For a few days he was renamed CATusov. It didn’t fit. Napoleon was small, so for the next month he remained as Bonaparte was, simply The General. Then one afternoon 5 ‘tom’ cats surrounded the general under the oak tree. Fur flew! Raging rolling madness! Although four of them fled when the poet threw a bucket of water, the General wouldn’t let go of the striped massive enemy. He had his claws firmly in! The poet put on leather gloves to separate the two weakened warriors. He dressed the torn face of the newly promoted Generalissimo, then, in keeping with the Geneva Convention, dabbed arnica ointment on the scratched beaten veteran. Now the small cat could languidly patrol his territory without challenge. The Generalissimo had no rivals. Then suddenly, as cats do, he didn’t come home. The poet missed the morning meow demand for milk. By midday the writer put down his pen and started to search hedgerows for the Generalissimo. In the evening he carried a torch and went far from home calling out for the Generalissimo. He returned and sat despondent on the divan. He heard a quiet purring. There, lying behind the divan was the Generalissimo. Tenderly licking 6 minute blind kittens, each one differently coloured. The Generalissimo had become the GenalissiMA....
THE DOGS AND THE MOON
I had two dogs. Othello was a pitch black stray found starving and shaking when people approached. Even when the welts of its mistreatment had healed it was always nervous. But it was good company for the aristocratic Rommel, a silly spotted Dalmatian. In the evening I used to drive them to an old walled cemetery to run about. Strange people walked their dogs there and greeted each other with the affable freemasonry of pet owners. But other odd people used the Stanmore graveyard for different purposes. A lonely, nervous, sensitively beautiful young woman brought 16 stray dogs with her and fed them and played the block flute with haunting melancholy as they looked lovingly at her. A venerable Chinese master slowly, almost imperceptibly, moved tracing ti-chi into the chill evening air, with dignity and inner calm, until friendly Rommel jumped up on him. Jabbering curses and flaying about with vicious shao-lin martial arts hand cuts, he attacked good-natured puzzled Rommel. They were, as Lao Tse would say, part of the order of the universe, yin-yang.
The graveyard got an Australian bi-centennial government grant to repair its historic headstones. Real masons lifted sagging capstones to reveal subterranean crypts, some of which were 4 meters deep with wooden planked shelves on either side. Interesting. But dogs are democratic and piss equally on the great and the humble and the damned and the saved. One evening, a full moon hung in the deep dark sky. I found a small capstone at the end of an old grave about to be restored. I stepped over the barrier to shine my torch into the hole. As I bent over to look, Rommel jumped on my back. I fell. Into the grave. Down, far down, into the chamber. It took a while to move my legs and arms. High above was the small hole. The moonlight seemed far away. I had to get out. Atavistic paralising horror was overcome by the adrenalin of fear. I reached for the plank shelves and started to climb with a foot on the shelves each side. Some gave way. After several falls and much effort my fingers found the rim of the entrance.
Trying to pull myself up, I skinned my chin. I was pale with fear, covered in cobwebs, flecked with blood and the dust of... well, let us say, the dust of ages. I got a knee on the rim and, with agony, I groaned as I emerged. My limbs were bruised and cramped so I stretched. Ahrrr! Everything hurt. Rommel and Othello howled. And howled. And howled. Then, in the light of the full moon, I saw the woman drop her block flute in terror, and wide eyed she ran past me with her pack of strays scattering. She didn’t return.
Months later I met the priest and asked if he knew of an eccentric, sensitive young woman dressed in bright, clashing colours who used to feed stray dogs in the cemetery and played the block flute. He did know of her. He had been called to a psychiatric hospital to reassure a sad lost young woman who tried to convince the doctors she had seen a corpse rise from the dead. I didn’t confess. I am alive. And Rommel licks my face.