Our adorable little kitten, Tiger, has taken to our
home. He loves exploring it all; that is, all he's allowed to explore. He is, however, afraid of
Matthew. Matthew handles him a little
too roughly and doesn’t exactly hold him in a secure and comfortable
manner. So Tiger runs from Matthew when he
approaches. At one point Matthew broke
into tears crying that Tiger doesn’t love him.
Well, Tiger proved him wrong. First, the two of them share the same
bedroom. We keep Tiger in Matthew’s
room, though he gets free roam of a good portion of the upstairs. One night, past midnight, I went to check in on
Matthew as I usually have done, and now have a quick play with the kitten. To my surprise I found Tiger cuddled into
Matthew. And not just that one
night. Here are pictures from several
nights. These pictures are taken in the complete dark, and the light comes only from the flash.
These first are from
a sleeping bag type of thing that Matthew sometimes sleeps on the floor
with.
Those are from the same night. Here’s from another.
I thought when Matthew got back to sleeping on the
bed, Tiger wouldn’t be able to get up there.
The bed height is still higher than his extended height on his rear
legs. But somehow he’s able to get up
there and snuggle up.
Our wonderful little cat, who we found as an estimated five-week-old
kitten on
May 14th, 2015 turned eleven years old yesterday.We date her birthday from five weeks before adopting
date, which would put it on April 9th.He is still vigorous and outgoing, unlike our
eleven-year-old Rosie.I’ll post on
Rosie’s old age in the near future. For now this is Tiger’s day.He’s still a little devil and the king of
this household.Here are some recent pictures.
He still loves to climb.
He kind of matches our living room décor.Here he is trying to get Rochelle to feed him
early.
I recently found him sitting on my desk chair, looking kittenish
and cute.
Being silly in the bathroom sink.
On occasion he will turn penitent for all his cat sins.
Is there a feline priest to give him absolution? But then again he can reign in his kingdom in the best of
comfort.
October
4th is the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, and because St.
Francis had a particularly strong love for God’s creatures –he referred to them
as brothers and sisters – the Catholic Church across the world has an annual
blessing. You can read about it and see some
adorable pictures of animals being blessed from around the world, here.
Our
church had the blessing on the Saturday after the 4th rather than on
the feast day proper. This makes sense
when you consider during the week most work during the day and children are in
school. I wonder if other churches did
as well.
This
is our second year we did this. We took
Rosie down to the church, and unlike some of the pictures in that link I
provided the blessing at our church was performed outside. It was amazing how many people brought their
pets. Over forty and one person literally
brought Noah’s ark with him: two cats, several Guinee pigs, parakeets and cockatiels,
and I don’t what else.
Rosie
was excited as you can imagine. She wants
to sniff and greet and play with all other animals, friendly or not. And at eighty pounds she’s hard to handle
when she wants to rush over to someone or something. I got a couple of pictures.
I
was able to click Matthew calming Rosie down.
And
I couldn’t snap one while Rosie was actually getting blessed, I did have
someone take a picture of us with Fr. Eugene, our pastor.
The
reason I couldn’t snap a picture was because I had Tiger’s photo on the screen
while we were up there so Fr. Eugene could bless Tiger too. There was no way I could take Tiger
over. Some had their cats in the
traveling bags, but it’s impossible for us to get Tiger in his. He fights tooth and nail to prevent us from
getting him in.
On
a separate but related matter I do want to tell about my October 4th. As you may know I live on Staten Island,
which is part of New York City but unlike the rest of New York City we still
have woods and some wild animals. On the
morning of the fourth, on my way to work as I was driving I saw a creature rush
across the street and scurry behind some garbage pails. When I got a better look I saw it was a
possum. Half a mile later I had to stop
because a raccoon decided to cross the street.
He took his sweet time, but I was just glad to watch him. Later that night, while coming back from the
gym, on the corner near a wooded stood a deer nibbling on the grass. Now I could go a whole year and not see a
possum or a raccoon, and while deer are now more out in the open it’s not
exactly an everyday event to see one. To
see all three of these creatures in one day—the day of St. Francis of Assisi’s
feast day—is certainly a grace from above.
Thank you Lord.
Today
is not actually Tiger’s birthday.May 14th
was the day nine years ago we found him. But when we took him to the vet, they estimated he was five weeks
old, so the actual day we celebrate his birthday is April 9th.So on April 9th Tiger turned nine,
but I forgot to post then.But given we
have an adoption day, I have a fallback position of posting today.I’m going to share some recent pictures of
our sneaky little cat.He always looks
like he’s plotting something.
Here
he is inside Matthew’s school knapsack.
He’s
always jumping on top of one of us.Here
he is on top of my chest, as best as I can take the picture.
On
top of Rochelle.
And
here I captured him in Matthew’s bed.
If
you remember I had a post some nine years ago where Tiger would sleep beside Matthew.Matthew has grown quite a bit in nine years.
Truth be told, he's a wonderful affectionate cat. Finally,
his close up.
What
catnipulation (yes, there is such a word) is going through his mind?
Today
was Tiger’s tenth birthday.Hard to
believe it’s been ten years.If you want
to want to read on how we found him, you can look back where I posted here. Actually you can just click the "Tiger" link on the bottom of the page and pull up all the posts over the years on Tiger. Matthew was five in those pictures!Where does time go?
I’m
just going to provide some pictures, all taken in the last few days.We didn’t do anything special for him, except
maybe give him a treat.
Well
here he is looking up at me, probably urging me to give him his food.
He
just loves to rub up against things.I
think it’s an act of marking his scent on things.
Walking
by his litterbox.
Here
he is curled up on the ottoman into a little fur ball covering his eyes.
And
when I poked him, he gave a little squint.I don’t think he was happy I did that.
The
occasion of thinking on this poem has to do with a recent event in our
household that has, as it turns out, some correspondence to the event that
inspired the poem.In the wee hours of
Monday morning (overnight Sunday into Monday) I heard a big crash and ruckus in
the hallway outside my bedroom.I
initially thought that Matthew had gotten up in the middle of the night to go
to the bathroom and stumbled into something.Then I heard another crash and ruckus.I got out of bed to investigate.Tiger, our cat, was chasing a mouse that had gotten inside the
house.He was swiping and lunging at him
with incredible violence, and at one point got him under his paw.The mouse played dead—he was motionless and I
thought he was killed—but when Tiger lifted up his paw the mouse scooted
away.This was all on the upstairs bedroom floor.
For
the next day and a half Tiger was on the hunt trying to sniff him out and wait
for him to come out.When my wife got home
Wednesday afternoon at about one o’clock she found him just inside the
vestibule on the main floor, downstairs from the bedrooms, lying dead.There must have been a battle.I guess he ran to try to get out but Tiger
caught him.Here’s a picture.
Poor
little mouse. I thought him cute.I put
the body across the street at an unkempt yard where feral cats live.Tiger as a kitten came from there, nine and a
half years ago.
This
made me recall the Robert Burns’ poem, “To a Mouse,” where the poet felt a
compassion for a field mouse he had disturbed.
To a Mouse
By Robert Burns
On Turning her up in her
Nest, with the Plough, November 1785.
The
occasion of the poem was said to be Robert Burns overturning a mouse’s nest
while plowing a field.Both Burns’s
event and my event disturb a mouse’s life in November.His mouse I think lived, unlike the
unfortunate end of the mouse in my house.Both Burns and I connected with the mouse on a compassionate level.We both meditated on our own mortality from a
poor mouse’s life and fate.If Burns’
mouse lived after the scene, she will probably not survive the winter given the
disruption of the nest.
Some
of Burns’ diction is a bit hard to grasp.One can almost make out the Scots words but it would be helpful with
annotations of the Scottish.I don’t
know if the Scots used here is considered its own language, a slang, a dialect,
or a creole (probably a dialect), but it does mix English words with what I
take are Scottish versions of English words.Some words seem to be purely Scotts Gaelic (“cranreuch,” “daimen”) and
some are English words transcribed from a Scottish dialect (“sleekit, cowrin,
tim'rous beastie”).Wikipedia has what
it calls an English translation of the original Scots, which I’ll post here.
Little, sleek, cowering,
timorous beast,
Oh, what a panic is in
your breast!
You need not start away
so hasty
With bickering prattle!
I would be loath to run
and chase you,
With murdering paddle!
I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's
social union,
And justifies that ill
opinion
Which makes you startle
At me, your poor,
earth-born companion
And fellow mortal!
I doubt not, sometimes,
that you may thieve;
What then? Poor beast,
you must live!
An odd ear in twenty-four
sheaves
Is a small request;
I will get a blessing
with what is left,
And never miss it.
Your small house, too, in
ruin!
Its feeble walls the
winds are scattering!
And nothing now, to build
a new one,
Of coarse green foliage!
And bleak December's
winds ensuing,
Both bitter and piercing!
You saw the fields laid
bare and empty,
And weary winter coming
fast,
And cozy here, beneath
the blast,
You thought to dwell,
Till crash! The cruel
coulter passed
Out through your cell.
That small heap of leaves
and stubble,
Has cost you many a weary
nibble!
Now you are turned out,
for all your trouble,
Without house or holding,
To endure the winter's
sleety dribble,
And hoar-frost cold!
But Mouse, you are not
alone,
In proving foresight may
be vain:
The best-laid schemes of
mice and men
Go oft awry,
And leave us nothing but
grief and pain,
For promised joy!
Still you are blessed,
compared with me!
The present only touches
you:
But oh! I backward cast
my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I
cannot see,
I guess and fear!
Like
most translations of poetry, the beauty of the sounds of the language is lost
in translation.Still it helps.Let’s analyze the poem, but I won’t go into
the social and economic context of the times in which the poem was written.You can find that online if you want to.I’ll stick with the immediate poem.
There
are eight stanzas of six lines of iambic tetrameter, each stanza with an
unusual rhyme scheme of A/A/A/B/A/B.The
fourth and sixth lines—the lines with the “B” rhyme—do not have eight syllables
of a tetrameter line but either five syllables or four syllables.Why sometimes five syllables and other times
four?I can’t see a pattern, so perhaps for
oral articulation or perhaps just out of convenience.Nonetheless, I really like this stanza form.
The
divisions of the poem I see in this way.
Stanzas
one and two provide situation of the event.The poor mouse is in a panic, jabbering at the person who disrupted his
modest home, and scooting hastily about.The second stanza I would say is the statement of the poem’s theme, the
breaking of some sort of an unspoken agreement between man and nature.
I’m truly sorry Man’s
dominion
Has broken Nature’s
social union,
An’ justifies that ill
opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor,
earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!
The
last two lines characterizing the mouse as a “poor, earth-born companion/An’
fellow-mortal” lift the little mouse, one of the most insignificant and
despised of animals, to an equality with humanity.
Stanzas
three through six characterize the impact to the mouse of the overturning of
her nest.The mouse’s home is in ruin;
she is now exposed to the winter elements; the plowed field has removed any
source of food.
The
seventh stanza connects the mouse’s futility with humanity’s, “In proving
foresight may be vain,” giving us that great line that is truly a memorable
quote, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men/Gang aft agley” (“the best-laid
schemes of mice and men often go awry”).
The
eighth and final stanza, Burns concludes with a distinction between man and beast.The mouse is blessed because, as an animal,
he can only live in the present.He will
move on from this event and forget about it.The poet, on the other hand has memory that will bring back sorrow every
time he remembers such a catastrophe and, disrupted, will live in constant fear
of the future.It is interesting that
though not an overtly religious poem, a blessing is mentioned twice (third and
eighth stanzas).
This
is ultimately a nature poem, with man as an agent for disrupting nature for his
purposes.
There
are some great lines in this poem.I
already mentioned “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men/Gang aft agley” from
stanza seven.I would say the first four
lines are just so charming: “Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,/O, what a
panic’s in thy breastie!/Thou need na start awa sae hasty,/Wi’ bickerin
brattle!”The first four lines of the
fourth stanza are so musical: “Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!/It’s silly
wa’s the win’s are strewin!/An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,/O’ foggage
green!”As are the first four lines of
the eight stanza: “Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!/The present only
toucheth thee:/But Och! I backward cast my e’e,/On prospects drear!”
Such
a lovely poem.You can hear it read in
both the Scot’s dialect and a modern translation on this clip.
What
about my poor, little mousie?Well, though
I feel for his plight, I’m not exactly to blame.He intruded my space, and he faced a natural
enemy, Tiger!Behold the mighty hunter!
I
was wondering how I was going to get the mouse out.Tiger saved me the trouble.
