From the Archives: Seven Cats in the Kitchen, June 29, 2011
It’s just a kind of a humble scene, each cat just doing their thing after dinner that evening, the five black cats and the two torties, a family of seven cats. After this we would all move off to my office and I’d finish up my work for the day.
After losing Namir in 2009 and Peaches and 2010, we stayed at this level until 2012, losing Cookie in February and Kelly in August. But for those two years these seven were a beautiful family. Cookie and Kelly were very close as the elders at 18 and 19, Mimi and the siblings far behind at 8 and 4, but they stayed together in everything, the young ones vigilant over their elders, and Cookie and Kelly imparting wisdom to the younger.
That was especially true between Cookie and Mimi who would become my keeper after Cookie, and the lead cat in the household as Cookie had been for over a decade. I would often find the two in quiet communication, and Mimi sometimes leaning in with rapt attention.
Cookie and Kelly were in the first family of rescued cats who came to me in this house, Cookie in 1992 and Kelly in 1996. They overlapped with the cats who’d moved with me from the house I rented until 1990, including Kublai who I rescued in college in 1981, and Sally who I’d rescued to keep from a shelter surrender in 1984. On the other end, Mimi and the siblings would eventually welcome hospice fosters, and then Basil, our first formerly feral kitten with the Homeless Cat Management Team, and then a steady stream of litters of feral kittens. And now, here we are today. It’s not easy to chart, they are all intertwined, and eventually they all become one big family, past and present.
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From the Back Yard and Beyond
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Just Figuring It Out As I Go Along
I’m all off my daily schedule with posts here and elsewhere and I’ve forgotten to share what’s posted on my Substack profile this past week. Somehow these things often include cats in general, especially my own cats, especially Mimi.
Gardens are about constant change, minute by minute, season by season, year after year
You’ve watched the resurrection of my garden beginning with the persistence of Mimi last year. This isn’t the first time I’ve resurrected my garden with her assistance. I originally wrote this essay in 2018, the summer my back yard really was 10 feet high with jewelweed because the deer had eaten everything else, and Mimi, Mewsette and me stayed on the brick patio outside the basement door with no back yard or garden explorations. It was also when it became apparent my hip had a serious problem, but before it was diagnosed. It’s a brief essay, and all the characters have appeared here on The Creative Cat.
Poem for Saturday: Inventing the Wheel
Partly because it’s been so hot and reminds me of that big distorted yellow sun in the photo, it’s also a time to consider the actions that brought us to where we are.
Photos From the Archives in Previous Years
From the Archives: Salad Days, Morning in the Garden, May 9, 2009
It’s hard to believe this was over 10 years ago, and then it also feels like decades ago, and maybe a year or two ago. I have so many photos of the two of them out there with me, and I keep finding more as I dig through digital and print photos. I treasure each one, but this one photo is absolutely one of my favorites. How I miss them…and seeing them so alive and connected with me and the place helps me know that I will heal from my losses, eventually, as I did with each Namir and Cookie and all the others, and some memories will be permanent places of love.
On May 9, 2009, Namir watches for critters while Cookie supervises my harvest, or perhaps she’s planning on a sip of my coffee, in the controlled chaos of my garden in springtime. Cookie’s determined expression as she walks toward me means she had been away for “a while” and it might have been too long, the human may have been distracted by the task at hand and Cookie needed to set things to right. I adore Namir’s alert expression as he watches likely a little rodent he’d like to kill, yet he stays loyal and by my side. If you look closely at the side of his neck you can see a square shaved patch. He’d been in the emergency hospital a few weeks before for congestive heart failure, and in truth he had a little less than two months with us. But we didn’t know that, and thoroughly enjoyed the moment. This time of year, when spring really bursts forth, I deeply remember these two, and this time, as you might guess with the number of photos of them I’ve shared.
First thing in the morning is the best time to harvest salad greens, especially if they are the first of the year, so I took my coffee with me and my garden cats supervised the entire operation. I managed to get a precious clear and candid shot of the two of them before they realized I was photographing them from my position of leaning over the greens and picking with one hand while I brought up the camera and took the shot with the other. Don’t worry about all the stuff in the background—once the garden was in and producing and the sun was high and hot, the three of us started on the hoses and buckets and carefully organized things in the shade under the deck.
As we have Shakespeare to thank for so many wise and perceptive phrases still used today, the phrase “salad days” has little to do with a mix of greens with dressing, yet it does have to do with themes of youth and “greenness” as well as an application to the photo above. The phrase first appeared in 1606 in Antony and Cleopatra as Cleopatra compared her current passion for Marc Antony to her former love for Julius Caesar, declaring her earlier dalliance to be the indiscretion of youthful naïeveté as in her “salad days” she was “green in judgement”. Through the years the salad shifted from the fleeting inexperience, innocence or foolishness of youth to a later time of life when a person, group, organization or concept is or was (usually the latter) at the peak of ability or popularity, as in “the good old days”.
So above we have a cavalcade of meanings, literally collecting the short-lived salad greens at the peak of their youth, and I also remember both the fleeting moments of joy with these two in the peace of my garden as well as “the good old days” when Namir and Cookie were both still with me. So much in one picture, and a place to start and let my mind wander, coming back to this moment.
Photos “From the Archives” and “Vintage Photos”
Photos pulled “From the Archives” were taken by one or another digital camera of mine between 2002 and, well, yesterday, but usually they are older than that, and I had never had the chance to feature them. Vintage Photos are from my film archives back to 1983 when I purchased my Pentax K-1000 camera. They’re a fun way to “introduce” other members of my feline family who came and went before I began blogging, and to illustrate my feline family in general from days gone by.
Art and Gifts featuring cats you know! Visit Portraits of Animals
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Feline Photography and Greeting Cards from Portraits of Animals!
Tortoiseshell cats can be camouflaged against many backgrounds with all their irregular speckles and dots. This photo of Cookie taken in the spring of 2010 truly shows her ability to blend into her background as her orange and tan blend with last year’s leaves and her green eyes blend with the spring’s new growth. I could not love her more. This photo is available framed or unframed, on canvas or on paper on Portraits of Animals. You can find this photo in my gallery of Feline Photos.
Namir turns his gaze up to me, enchanting me with his “bedroom eyes” as we spend a morning in the garden. To visitors and to me, once he is sure he has you under his spell he turns on those famous bedroom eyes, narrowing them just enough so they looked mysteriously slanted and angling up a tourmaline glance, as if sharing a secret, looking totally exotic (he thinks), purring joyfully, certain you belong to him completely. This photo is available framed or unframed, on canvas or on paper on Portraits of Animals. You can find this photo in my gallery of Feline Photos.
You can also find it in my Animal Sympathy Cards.
Copyright
All images and text used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission, although links to your site are more than welcome and are shared. Please ask if you are interested in using and image or story in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of an image or a product including it, check my animal and nature website Portraits of Animals to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit Ordering Custom Artwork for more information on a custom greeting card, print or other item.
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That was one happy kitty buffet feeding time!
It was quite the production.