Day: February 19, 2014

I’ve been putting up a series of photos from the Spring and Summer, and this one of Minnie the barn cat struck me, it was taken five months before she was attacked outside of the farmhouse late at night and was found later in the day  hiding in the barn, dragging her paralyzed right rear leg. The choice was euthanasia or amputation, we hesitated, then chose the latter.  The vet said she would live a normal life, she just couldn’t hop up a tree quickly. Barn cats don’t usually get $2,000 surgeries, and I am uneasy about it still, but we proceeded.

Many people told us it was no big deal, three -legged cats have no problem, they can go and hop anywhere, this has not been true of Minnie. She suffered long and hard and struggles still to adjust, she has gained a lot of weight,  her weight is perpetually off balance, she has become much more guarded and fearful. She goes to the basement for much of the day, can’t jump up directly onto chairs or sofas or her favorite rocking chair. We expected that she could return to her quite content life as a barn cat, but she can’t, she wouldn’t stand much of a chance against the bobcats, raccoons, possums, coyotes,  territorial male cats and other animals that show up around here from time to time.

She cannot manage the snow either,  as she used to do – in storms she holed up in hay  bales – so she is inside much of the time. Before the snows, she managed to climb up some hay bales in the barn, but always scrambled to come inside. Flo has joined her during this period of intense cold and heavy snow. I do not regret Minnie being here, she and Maria love cuddling with one another. I do regret not giving more thought to what Minnie has suffered and lost rather than what I wanted to happen. There is no respect for death in the animal world, it is always and reflexively considered humane to keep an animal alive at all costs by any means for as long as possible.

But I’m not so sure it’s that simple. In the natural world, Minnie would be gone, yet the people who feel so strongly that all animals should live in nature rarely accept one of the fundamental laws of nature – animals die all of the time, it is the natural way.

Once again, what everybody told us is not what we have seen come to pass. I’ve seen this again and again, people judge reality to be what they experience, and every experience is unique and different. Minnie will never fully return to her life as a barn cat, she shows a number of trauma symptoms from the attack and the very painful period of recovery, I am glad she is around – we both love her, Maria more than I – but I am not certain that saving her life was not selfish rather than humane. I don’t believe in making decisions that cause animals great suffering, and that has been the case for Minnie.

I have seen many people bounce back from amputation and worse, there are many tools and support systems to help them. Animals cannot really ever comprehend what has happened to them, there are few tools that I could or would want to use on a barn cat. Minnie reminds me that it is a complex thing with animals to know what it means to be humane.

This photo reminds me of the way it was for Minnie, she spent her days outside on the rocker, soaking up the sun, hunting for mice in the pasture and garden.  When we had to make the decision, I looked into Minnie’s eyes and saw a spirit that was not ready to leave the world. I still feel that is so. It is my hope she can return to some of her natural life when the sun returns. But I am reminded again that I do not live in a black-and-white cable news world, so many things have so many hues.

From the creative but twisted mind of the former girlfriend, a manifestation of a brutal winter, the already famous and disturbing “Zombie Zen Potholders,” inspired by our hens, who have been locked up in their coop for weeks in this eternally arctic winter. Maria imagines them turning into Zombie Hens after all that time in there (getting a bit nervous, I checked in the coop, they were clucking contentedly and eating the remnants of Tuesday dinner – they love pasta).

I think these hens are the perfect symbols of our winter, perhaps they reveal something of the mind of the sweet and quiet woman I thought I married. She has not been quiet for awhile, and the potholders are surely not too sweet. I think she has already sold most of them, she just put them up for sale here, I think there are a few left, she made seven. I never know what’s going to come out of that Schoolhouse Studio, perhaps Frankenstein sheep are next. They cost $20 apiece, plus shipping.

In the morning, I had a new thing, a cat meditation with Flo. In the morning, she is always on her cat stand, high up and near the window. She seems the most at peace there, looking out of the window at the ice, snow, feeling the cold blowing in from the punishing winds. I close my eyes and meditate with her, as I have done with dogs and donkeys, these are animals capable of centering of great stillness, of wondrous contemplative instinct. Animals know how to be still, to accept the world, conserve themselves against it’s trials.

My cat meditations in the morning are new, different. Not as deep yet as listening to Van Morrison, but deep enough, especially when it is so cold and stormy.

Greg Burch is a big, tough man, he’s been a lumberjack his whole life, in sub-zero weather he and J.D., his beloved pug are out in the woods together. Greg practically melts around J.D., who goes almost everywhere Greg goes. J.D. hopped up onto the seat and the two nosed each other before the wood was dumped onto a tarp. I love photographing tough men who love dogs, their big hearts are revealed. Even a tough lumberjack is putty around a dog he loves.

It’s snowing heavily again and we are running out of firewood. I called Greg Burch – he’s had a bunch of emergency calls this week – and he came by and dropped off a cord. Got some stacking to do this weekend. Greg is heading back out into the woods to chop some more. We will probably need some more.