Author: L.E. Hansen

Sedona Window

PHOTOS

 

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Thoughts

WILDLIFE UPDATE
      Yesterday, in a parking lot before a hike with me & Tula, Judi & Halle: One huge Mountain Lion. So big he looked like a real lioness. Unless there’s a lion missing from the zoo, not so. The dogs didn’t notice and the cougar took off very quickly, tail twitching. That probably had something to do with someone loudly yelling, “Look! Look! Mountain Lion!” while jumping up and down.
      Our walk thru the woods runs across from a field of weeds & brambles. In the field were 5 coyotes (pronounced here as “ky-yots–2 syllables). They were scrawny & sickly looking–mange seemed to have taken their fur. They were mostly skin and bones. Someone suggested they might be hungry. In any case, they weren’t intimidating, even with their heads low and watching. Someone else suggested that could be my problem. In another case, this is a good reason to have larger dogs. The little ones are not faring well these days. In some places they can’t even be out in their own fenced-in yard as cougars & coyotes will both jump over fences. And a biped standing there is not a deterrent.
      So there you have it. Life in the mountains. And that’s the ‘waaaay things are’* at least for today.
 
*As the mice say, in Babe.
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Cemetery View from mountain

View coming down the mountain.

From the path where Wolf and I and now Tula and I descent Red Rock Mountain. The Orange Cat followed us once so we learned to confine him before setting out.

 

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Thoughts

More On Orange
Life on this plane ended yesterday morning [written 2/24] for my little man, the Zeus Cat. Now I’m writing this to mark his passing–my need to use some words–clearly not his need or want. He was always removed from the ordinary days that the rest of us seem to require. Though he moved freely, as he chose, back and forth between worlds. It was always as he chose. My original intention was to have an indoor cat. He decided that he was to be an indoor/outdoor one. And there was no containing him. He ate and drank, as he demanded, from the patio table on warm days. Why serve him? You ask. He’d come in when he got hungry enough, you say? Sure. Once you got past a cat hanging from the living room window screens and howling. And the neighbors feeding the poor starving baby. (He was not above playing to the crowds.)He was born in Atlanta and moved with us and his first dog, Kate, to Ohio. There he got in with the wrong crowd and had his ears tattooed with the tips pierced. Then we moved to Raleigh where he got lost the very first move-in day within the worst snowstorm the city had ever had. (He left to check out the neighborhood where he knew nothing, much less how to get back to a new home.) Seven weeks later–an unheard of length of time–we got him back. (He never did say where he had been or what had happened.) From there we moved to Shaker Heights, Ohio, where he lost his first dog but got another–Wolfgang.He got seriously ill in Ohio and I know this as he communicated very clearly by vomiting on me. A lot. Thousands of dollars later he was cured and we moved to Colorado Springs. Here we buried Wolf and he got his for-real and forever dog, Tula. Tula let him sleep with her and eat with her (he loved dog food) and they played together every morning. They formed a real partnership and always knew where the other was, or where the other one had headed.

And then, at 16 years, old age crept in and gained a foothold. First thyroid, then kidneys, then who-knew-what. First he was dying then he was surviving then he was and then he wasn’t. It was of course the predictably unpredictable. Yesterday, wrapped in his green fuzzy blanket, Tula and Squeek came to say goodbye, nose to nose. They’ve not looked for him since.

Now here’s the strange part in a life well lived. I cried and cried as he lay dying, over and over. Now gone, I feel his presence. He seems to come and go, with something akin to the Vulcan mind-meld. I see the aloof look he would get as he laid back and slit his eyes almost closed with the “Don’t touch the fur!” I also feel him next to me as he would come for love & snuggles & petting. Usually at three o’clock in the morning. It’s still the same. He’ll come and go as he wants. He’ll let you know when.

With Love for all of the creatures we love and lose, who give so much by just being who they are, Lois, Zeus, Tula & Squeek

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Thoughts

It has been so long since I’ve been here that I’ve forgotten much of my way around. In any case. I’ve returned (somewhat) from the dead & dying. The Orange Cat, Zeus, moved on Saturday, February 23. It has become a fact that February is the cruelest month.