The Banal Chew

It's Sunday morning, and as I sat down with my coffee to read news and FB headlines, a status update by Grumpy Cat sent me here.

I will never trust Grumpy Cat again.

Marble

I've been off the Facebook radar a bit this weekend, what with experimenting with a couple more dog biscuit recipes, visiting friends and doing some housekeeping.  This morning, I sat down to catch up.

Only a few minutes into the process of backscrolling through my newsfeed, I discovered the passing of Marble, the beautiful cat who lived with two of my dearest friends in Palm Springs. I immediately apologized to them for my belated condolences. That word, however, cannot describe what I wanted to say or how I felt upon learning of Marble's death.

I know the focus is on celebrating Marble's long life and the loss that my friends are feeling, but this evoked a significant emotional response within me. And because this blog serves as a personal and often therapeutic account of my weird life, I am writing about my feelings.

I had a special connection with Marble. I will always cherish the summer of 1996, when I stayed in my friends' beautiful home in the high desert just outside of Santa Fe while working that season as a professional singer. Not long after I moved in, a litter of kittens was dragged under the back porch by a mother cat trying to protect her babies. I remember working diligently and patiently every day to tame at least one of the kittens by the time the summer was over and I had to return to Tucson. I was successful with a big yellow tabby and I took the kitten back to Tucson with me. I called him Maxwell.

Shortly after I got back to Tucson, I learned from my friends that they had successfully tamed another before calling animal control to come and collect the rest. They had tamed a diminutive tortoise shell tabby and named her Marble, and she joined the two other feline companions in their home and quickly became a staple member of the family. Being the sap that I am, I was overjoyed. I can still remember lying in bed at night and hearing the coyotes scream in triumph after killing some kind of prey. I always worried it was one of the kittens, and each morning after the coyotes' eerily gleeful announcement, I would rush outside to make certain all kittens were accounted for.

My friends subsequently relocated to Palm Springs, which was excellent for me on a number of levels. It meant that they were closer to me when I lived full-time, temporarily or visited Tucson. And considering the many, many times that I traveled between Tucson and LA for flight connections between the US and Australia, Palm Springs was the perfect stopover place. Each visit I made to my friends cemented the fact that they are family to me. These two men mean more to me than I can express.

And then there was Marble, too. I dished out love to that cat as much as she would let me in her archetypal, feline way. I adored her primarily because of the "family" connection, but also because of her spirit and disposition. Aside from that, seeing Marble was always a wonderful reconnection with the decade of my life that I had spent with a wonderful partner, moving from Washington DC to the Arizona desert and then to Vermont, accumulating experiences and developing friendships along the way.

Sometimes, however, I despise these markers that punctuate my life. They make me realize that not only am I getting older, but that everything seems so, well, difficult to grasp in the greater scheme. That may not make much sense. It isn't tragic, really. And I put a positive spin on it by recognizing that all of these experiences, whether the critters or the people involved are still in my life, have helped make some sense out of this crazy thing called life.

The loss of Marble represents something substantial to me, and I'm devastated. But I'm very happy to have known her, and I mourn the loss with my friends. I know how much they both loved her, as they do with all the living creatures they decide to take into their home, feline or otherwise, and call family.

Happy 4th!

It is currently Independence Day in my native country, and I am sitting in front of my laptop in my adoptive country, looking for work (still) and feeling homesick.  But I'm not sad.  I will always be grateful to this place for offering me support and refuge following the horrific events over the past year. 

To all my friends and family across the Pacific, I wish a glorious day's end to one of our most cherished public holidays, particularly after the most recent Supreme Court rulings that allowed us all to jump another giant hurdle toward the finish line of equality for all. 

There's a lot to celebrate.  Enjoy the fireworks!