Margotlog: Three Cats and Some Humans - Winter Update
I'm more aware of them now with the windows and doors closed - the swishy tails, the meows, and pawing at sleeve or pants leg. I'm more in the house where they live all the time. In summer feeling guilty about cooping them up, I sometimes take sleek, black-and-white Julia, the most compliant, out to sit with me on the back deck, though I never lift a firm hand off her back. We bask together for a while, then that's enough. But at 8 above zero or 20 below, such indulgences are impossible. She might well have lived outside before the Humane Society got ahold of her. Still, I don't want any more cat-inflicted bird deaths. She's a sweet cat, but I have no doubt she could kill birds. Her pupils widen when she's very intent on capture. She waits, her tail swishing. Then, pounce. Another dead string. Another done-in stuffed mouse.
Live mice visit in winter. Maggie, smooth-haired calico cat with a weird orange square cutting through one eye, paws at an outside corner of the kitchen. The next evening, she and Julia are hunkered down staring under the low TV stand. Next they stalk around to the back of the sofa, starting to patrol the perimeter of the living room. A quick dart out to the adjacent dining room. Something has made a beeline behind the huge black radiator at the room's outside corner. I lift out the reflective panel stashed there to help reflect heat. A quick scurry. A somewhat gimpy gray mouse, awkward as a wind-up toy, skitters out of sight on the kitchen linoleum. The next evening, the guy human baits a mousetrap with a little peanut butter and lifts it into the lowered basement ceiling. The following morning there's a sweet gray-backed mouse whose back is broken. After a qualm or two-- outside with it. Our next-door neighbors confess to luring a mouse out of their house. We may have caught it.
I've just finished my winter evening walk-about, rounding from kitchen through entrance hall, living room, dining room and back to kitchen. As I walk I listen to various kinds of classical music. Tonight it's Boccerini, a delightful minor master, born in Luca, Italy, he spent most of his creative life in Spain. Throughout his hundreds of chamber music pieces, you can hear the Spanish influence in rhythms and use of guitars. Boccerini himself was a renown cellist, who overlapped with Mozart before outliving him by four decades. The jaunty rhythms and speedy tempo are great for walking.
The cats like Boccerini because I'm moving around, not sitting and staring silently at something boring like a screen or a page. I swish a toy with colored ribbons threaded through narrow orange and gold tubes to a stuffed mouse flourish. Back and forth this swishing creates a little breeze. The cats don't walk or pounce in my path, but my activity sets them going. Tilly, the old lady of the three, yet the most limber, and most whiny, follows me around with her big green eyes fastened on me. She won't bat at my toy. She wants me to get down on her level, so after 30 minutes or so of walking, I kneel beside the long "barrel" made out of some crinkly fabric and stiffened with heavy interior wires. It has a hole in its top where a hand can reach through and pat a cat inside. Julia, the best game player, will keep batting a ball away from the barrel opening when she's inside. But Tilly simply enters at one end and pads through to the other. I touch her furry back as she passes under the opening. Next she'll inhale or lick up some catnip from the corrugated round scratching disk. Finally, pestering me with meows until I sit on the floor outside the back of her chair, she is energized enough to paw at a ribbon I'm swishing at the openings in the chair back. We eye each other. Her beautiful, foxy-shaped face with its orange lightning mark--a feline Harry Potter--soulful green eyes, and tufty cheeks of motley black--always pleases me. Anyone who says cats don't have facial expressions hasn't looked very hard. Her eyes signal anger, appeal, scorn, sympathy, disgust, jealousy, and right now, relatively lively attention for an old lady cat over fifteen years old.
The cats like Boccerini because they like having me moving around
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Monday, November 10, 2014
Margotlog: Bare Ruined Choirs, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
Margotlog: Bare Ruined Choirs, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
The Wise Old Owl counts the leaves falling off her catalpa tree with the snow. She counts up to 56, the same number as children who have been abused by caregivers in Minnesota since 2005. Not many two-leggeds care to count catalpa leaves falling. Not many have cared to climb the tree of these children's lives to help them hold onto their leaves, keep those young chests and limbs from snapping off, breaking open.
It makes the Wise Old very sad. "Bare ruined choirs" calls to her the soaring cathedral of nature--quite a religious experience, she'll tell you. Choirs where children might sing, might have been kept safe, beloved and gently held, not with palms burned down to the bone, not with hearts beating inside broken ribs, not with cracked-open skulls.
Is this the poor house of Charles Dickens' time? Lots of very young children died then from malnutrition and exposure to cold and wet. No, the state of Minnesota does not condone poor houses or orphanages. Maybe she's mistaken, maybe the homes where these children died are the poor house of today. Not enough decent food, not any protection from rats and garbage, or the rampage of caregivers.
She wonders if maybe these poor houses are the killing fields of a kind of war? She's heard of concentration camps across the oceans where whole flocks were burned to death, stuffed into ovens. "Sing a song of blackbirds," blacked bones baked in a pyre of hatred. But not here, surely. Not in the sane security of the U.S. of A.
In her travels she's noted differences, however. Homes huge as pumpkins on steroids with four or five of those racing roaches that humans like to crowd onto highways. Homes that are mere piles of sticks with cold zinging through them. Poor versions of the poet's "bare ruined choirs." Noting as she does how pumpkins patches crowd together, whereas the piles of sticks are often off by themselves, at least here in the heartland. Or if crowded together, they house only the poor.
She suspects the caregivers who neglected or abused these 56 fallen leaves lived in the seclusion of Minnesota's heartland. It's not such a jolly place, this heartland. She's noticed that. Little towns become quite bare themselves. Empty. Ruined choirs. Why? She's watched slowly one jolly giant gathers all the acres into one enormous parcel. Takes several big machines and a few two-leggeds, leaving the town flock with very poor pickings. She can attest to that.
Knowing what's good for her, she's lately moved her home to a park land in a city. By the big river. One of her favorite places, that river. Don't find too many mangled, burned, picked over skeletons in places like this. They hum with prosperity. If they can't keep the leaves on their trees--nature being what it is--they buy fake. Take a gander, she suggests, liking the notion of a goose walking around with the two-leggeds. Don't find many bare ruined children in places like these.
The Wise Old Owl counts the leaves falling off her catalpa tree with the snow. She counts up to 56, the same number as children who have been abused by caregivers in Minnesota since 2005. Not many two-leggeds care to count catalpa leaves falling. Not many have cared to climb the tree of these children's lives to help them hold onto their leaves, keep those young chests and limbs from snapping off, breaking open.
It makes the Wise Old very sad. "Bare ruined choirs" calls to her the soaring cathedral of nature--quite a religious experience, she'll tell you. Choirs where children might sing, might have been kept safe, beloved and gently held, not with palms burned down to the bone, not with hearts beating inside broken ribs, not with cracked-open skulls.
Is this the poor house of Charles Dickens' time? Lots of very young children died then from malnutrition and exposure to cold and wet. No, the state of Minnesota does not condone poor houses or orphanages. Maybe she's mistaken, maybe the homes where these children died are the poor house of today. Not enough decent food, not any protection from rats and garbage, or the rampage of caregivers.
She wonders if maybe these poor houses are the killing fields of a kind of war? She's heard of concentration camps across the oceans where whole flocks were burned to death, stuffed into ovens. "Sing a song of blackbirds," blacked bones baked in a pyre of hatred. But not here, surely. Not in the sane security of the U.S. of A.
In her travels she's noted differences, however. Homes huge as pumpkins on steroids with four or five of those racing roaches that humans like to crowd onto highways. Homes that are mere piles of sticks with cold zinging through them. Poor versions of the poet's "bare ruined choirs." Noting as she does how pumpkins patches crowd together, whereas the piles of sticks are often off by themselves, at least here in the heartland. Or if crowded together, they house only the poor.
She suspects the caregivers who neglected or abused these 56 fallen leaves lived in the seclusion of Minnesota's heartland. It's not such a jolly place, this heartland. She's noticed that. Little towns become quite bare themselves. Empty. Ruined choirs. Why? She's watched slowly one jolly giant gathers all the acres into one enormous parcel. Takes several big machines and a few two-leggeds, leaving the town flock with very poor pickings. She can attest to that.
Knowing what's good for her, she's lately moved her home to a park land in a city. By the big river. One of her favorite places, that river. Don't find too many mangled, burned, picked over skeletons in places like this. They hum with prosperity. If they can't keep the leaves on their trees--nature being what it is--they buy fake. Take a gander, she suggests, liking the notion of a goose walking around with the two-leggeds. Don't find many bare ruined children in places like these.
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Margotlog: Why GIve a Hoot?
Margotlog: Why Give a Hoot?
Wise Old Owl looks at various arguments pro and con about adding bird-friendly glass to the Vikings Stadium design, in Minneapolis, MN.
* Item one: A Star Tribune editorial (Oct 18) has asked Wise Old to keep "bird deaths in perspective." Being a bird in modern America isn't work a hoot, so the argument goes. Bird deaths due to hitting a tall glass, Viking wall will be a drop in the bucket, simply not worth the expense of installing less-damaging glass.
* Item two: Wise Old decides to expand the human and avian perspective on this advice. The city of Minneapolis via the Park Board has been considering what to do with a piece of supposed parkland once called The Yard, and now evidently called The Common, adjacent to the rising stadium. When Wise Old closes her eyes, she easily imagines this parcel littered with dead birds, each 24 hours' "harvest" from winged encounters with Vikings glass. This is possibly akin to a football quarterback being clobbered by a linebacker. But, of course, birds don't wear helmets.
* Item three: Wise Old tries expanding the perspective even further. Another recent article in the Star Tribune reports Minneapolis' desire to recreate its downtown as more "tree friendly." Wise Old scratches her neck feathers at this one. How does a desire to be more tree-friendly, attracting birds in the process, fit with a shoulder-shrug against more bird-friendly glass? Quite a conundrum for this Wise Old.
* Item four, last item: Star Tribune reporter Brandon Stahl has roused astonished outrage at the death of 4-year-old Eric Dean of Pope County, whose stepmother beat him repeatedly, yet county child protection did nothing to stop it. Minnesota, it turns out, has one of the country's worse records on child protection. Gov. Mark Dayton has convened a panel to look into this.'
Not to be confusing, Wise Old asks, What's the connection between a lack of child protection and bird deaths from nonfriendly glass in the Vikings stadium? Wise Old hoots at even having to ask the question: It's a matter of compassion and--she gives two hoots here--preventing damage once the danger is identified.
With a final couple of hoots, Wise Old urges commercial giants in her adopted city to reconsider. Bird-friendly glass is, if nothing else, a great popular move. She closes her eyes and imagines the marketing potential: a gorgeous red cardinal preening atop the helmet of Adrian Peterson, if he's ever allowed back on the field.
Better yet, for the Vikes, a proud blue jay hanging on while rookie Teddy Bridgewater runs the ball down the line. Plus a medley of warblers on their way south, fanning the balls toward wide receivers like Greg Jennings and Cordarrelle Patterson, who haven't done so well lately fielding. Maybe bird-friendly acts can help.
(Originally published in the Opinion Exchange section of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Tuesday Oct 21, 2014.)
Wise Old Owl looks at various arguments pro and con about adding bird-friendly glass to the Vikings Stadium design, in Minneapolis, MN.
* Item one: A Star Tribune editorial (Oct 18) has asked Wise Old to keep "bird deaths in perspective." Being a bird in modern America isn't work a hoot, so the argument goes. Bird deaths due to hitting a tall glass, Viking wall will be a drop in the bucket, simply not worth the expense of installing less-damaging glass.
* Item two: Wise Old decides to expand the human and avian perspective on this advice. The city of Minneapolis via the Park Board has been considering what to do with a piece of supposed parkland once called The Yard, and now evidently called The Common, adjacent to the rising stadium. When Wise Old closes her eyes, she easily imagines this parcel littered with dead birds, each 24 hours' "harvest" from winged encounters with Vikings glass. This is possibly akin to a football quarterback being clobbered by a linebacker. But, of course, birds don't wear helmets.
* Item three: Wise Old tries expanding the perspective even further. Another recent article in the Star Tribune reports Minneapolis' desire to recreate its downtown as more "tree friendly." Wise Old scratches her neck feathers at this one. How does a desire to be more tree-friendly, attracting birds in the process, fit with a shoulder-shrug against more bird-friendly glass? Quite a conundrum for this Wise Old.
* Item four, last item: Star Tribune reporter Brandon Stahl has roused astonished outrage at the death of 4-year-old Eric Dean of Pope County, whose stepmother beat him repeatedly, yet county child protection did nothing to stop it. Minnesota, it turns out, has one of the country's worse records on child protection. Gov. Mark Dayton has convened a panel to look into this.'
Not to be confusing, Wise Old asks, What's the connection between a lack of child protection and bird deaths from nonfriendly glass in the Vikings stadium? Wise Old hoots at even having to ask the question: It's a matter of compassion and--she gives two hoots here--preventing damage once the danger is identified.
With a final couple of hoots, Wise Old urges commercial giants in her adopted city to reconsider. Bird-friendly glass is, if nothing else, a great popular move. She closes her eyes and imagines the marketing potential: a gorgeous red cardinal preening atop the helmet of Adrian Peterson, if he's ever allowed back on the field.
Better yet, for the Vikes, a proud blue jay hanging on while rookie Teddy Bridgewater runs the ball down the line. Plus a medley of warblers on their way south, fanning the balls toward wide receivers like Greg Jennings and Cordarrelle Patterson, who haven't done so well lately fielding. Maybe bird-friendly acts can help.
(Originally published in the Opinion Exchange section of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Tuesday Oct 21, 2014.)
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