Moses’ Summer in the Garden

My garden has become a sanctuary, not just to work in it and harvest my salad greens and vegetables, but to remember, and sense the presence of, the garden cats who shared it with me. When my Autumn Joy Sedum turned pink in September I remembered Moses, my longtime garden cat from around 1990 or so when I moved in here to 2006, and these four photos which I framed and hung over my sink. Lately looking at them has been a sweet reminder that I have healed and continued to love felines who’ve left for their next life, and I still feel their presence in that space.

The beans are growing and the geraniums still blooming, nights are cold but the sun is bright and warm, and I remember a certain sweet gray kitty who spent every available moment on the brick patio next to my garden, summer and winter.

This series of photos is four of many photos I took of Moses out in the garden over the years she enjoyed it. I sold small framed prints of these four and others of Moses’ gentle presence out there, but put together this set for myself, titled it “Moses’ Summer in the Garden,” and matted it with a white mat in a horizontal black frame. I had hung it in a couple of different areas in the house until I found the right spot over my sink in the kitchen in 2004 where I can look at it and look out the window and door onto the deck on a sunny morning, and into the back yard. I look at Moses each day when I’m at the sink and remember those wonderful days with her.

The photos are from June, July, August and September, but each a different year and different means of photography including film, digital from my DSLR and from my little 2MP digital camera from the early 2000s, and even those differences describing Moses’ long tenure out as a garden kitty. I adjusted the color in the photos in part so I could make the colors consistent across two decades, across film and digital, and even different film types and digital cameras, and also to soften the feel to what I remembered of my quiet gray former feral kitty and her gentle nature by desaturating the color. The softly faded colors were just so…Moses.

Moses spent so much time out on those bricks by the garden and I took so many photos of her there. She was such a dear kitty, a feral I rescued before I knew feral cats existed, and to look at her now after all I’ve learned about feral cats I am honored at her trust and loyalty to our yard and to me. All she wanted was to roast her little gray self in the sun on those bricks, or on the deck if they weren’t available, heat up her hind legs especially, and just enjoy the fresh air, of course with my constant presence. Never once did she ever try to leave. She didn’t even look longingly outside the yard. That little patio was her favorite world.

I also made a black and white version of the four photos. Since Moses is gray and the photos have that exciting contrast from the sunlight and details of pattern that I love in black and white photos I really thought I’d like the black and white version better. I do, generally, but for something in which I have a specific memory I find I need some of the color to really bring it back to me.

One recent September I also remembered Cookie and Namir while Mimi and Mewsette and I were out. I thought of all the cats who shared my garden, and the fact that Mimi and Moses were probably acquainted from Mimi visiting the garden and patio when the basement door was open, though they never lived in the house together, but it ties the family together, Moses having joined us in 1987, before I moved here. The aluminum barrel in “The Garden Bean” is the same one that’s in the painting “Garden Sketch With Mimi”, in the same place, with beans growing in it. Some things never changed.

This September when the Autumn Joy Sedum was first tinged with pink and the sun warmed the bricks I felt all of them out there with me, whether their tenure as a garden cat was Moses’ 15 years or Mr. Max’s two weeks, and among the rest was Kublai, the first garden cat, then through the years Stanley, Sally, Cookie, Namir, Mimi, Mewsette, Mr. Sunshine, Giuseppe.

So many, and so many memories, over all these years. All of them have gone to their next life yet part of them stays here in this space with me. I have lost each one and grieved, and though it’s difficult to think the pain will ever diminish, in time it does, and this space isn’t filled with sadness but joy, and they reward me with a sense they are just behind the tomatoes, or a soft brush against my leg, unexpected reflected lights dance where Mewsette ran through the grass, Mr. Sunshne’s flower begins to spin, or a dove lands on Mr. Max’s chair. After I lost Mimi last year I began to visit the garden with my morning coffee, lately when the sky is light but not quite sunrise. This summer I took my morning exercises and yoga out to the brick patio and the garden paths. Most afternoons I make a cup of herbal tea and walk around the paths or sit in one of the wicker chairs at the edge of the garden. Often I’ll take another break and another tea and walk at dusk. I feel them all out there with me in that magic light, just beyond my vision, doing the cat things they enjoyed.

A little more about Moses

I’ve often featured Moses around October 16, Feral Cat Day and I had actually drafted this post for that time, but with my erratic schedule I missed a few weeks and posted other current pet loss stories, but knew I’d come back to this in time.

Her reign as a Garden Sprite lasted from very early in my years here, about 1992 until just before her death in February 2006. A physically limited formerly feral kitty, Moses never asked for much, but was passionate about what she felt she should have. Her hips and hind legs were wasted and her muscles weak the day I took her in in 1987, and while she gained more strength than I ever imagined she would in those legs she was never able to run or jump, instead climbing on the occasion she felt the need to be off the floor—up onto the chair from my sewing machine that I moved next to the bed each night so she could get up to join us—and hopping like a bunny for a few steps when walking somewhat quickly wasn’t getting her there quickly enough. As she grew older those hind legs and hips began to develop arthritis, and while I tried many treatments for her from glucosamine and chondroiton capsules to herbals and homeopathics, she resisted having anything administered to her however gently, and the best I could do was add homeopathics to the household water bowls.

But she had the solution. One day as I worked in the garden, she came to the basement screen door. Once Moses came indoors there was no turning back, and she didn’t even look outside, acting as if “out there” wasn’t there at all. But she’d been lying in the sun coming in the basement door and followed it across the floor as it moved…out the door. Well, what was a kitty to do? She looked at me hopefully with that lovely gray tabby face, and gave me one of her sweet, silent meows. I could deny her nothing, my eternally gentle and humble little bodhisattva, and under the spell of her soft green eyes I opened the screen door and let her walk outside. She stepped out the door, let me close it, and laid down on the sun-warmed concrete slab, which was where her sun had gotten to. Through the day, as I weeded and trimmed and transplanted and harvested, she moved along with the sun, sipping now and then from the water bowl I’d brought out, the one I then maintained in that spot for all the years I’ve lived here.

And so began nearly 15 years of daily thermonuclear treatments for Moses. Summer and winter she had to have time on her bricks, or at least on the wooden deck, even if only 15 minutes. I never let her go out without me so her days during the week were abridged, but when I began working at home she was in her glory; at her advanced age the increased time in the sun, the activity and the sweet pleasure for her probably gave her more years than she otherwise would have had, and made her last years more comfortable for her. Often in earlier years she liked little adventures into the garden and around the yard. I closely watched her, especially as she grew deaf in her later teens, but she never even walked into the garden then, staying on the bricks covering about 12′ x 14′, rolling herself lazily over from one side to the other so that she was evenly toasted, and watched with sleepy amusement as birds landed around her and little voles and field mice ran across her paws.

 

See other photos of Moses on The Creative Cat and read the story of her rescue and life.

See more Vintage Photos, scanned from prints on film through the years and photos From the Archives which were never featured here.

Also see more photos of Garden Kitties.

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Most of the photos of Moses here can be found in my gallery of cat photos on Portraits of Animals.

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