Kill Blog #5

Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh. Sweet baby girl kitty is inside the house with a rat right now. I hate to say it, but I ran outside, shut the door, and am just waiting for her to put it out of its misery. I saw her in the bathroom next to what I thought was a corpse, but as I grabbed a grocery bag and moved in to pick it up, it dragged itself into an empty t.p. roll (PepPurr's previous toy), which made her all kinds of excited. Now I have a quandary. I'm pretty sure the thing is critically injured but there's no way I can bring myself to finish the job, either deliberately or by slow suffocation in a grocery bag at the bottom of a garbage can. I may be a country girl who has held her share of chickens on the chopping block, but that was a long time ago. Hell, even my dad takes his chickens to a professional "renderer" these days.

As I stood in my tiny bathroom and pondered what to do, PepPurr worked the poor creature out of its hiding place and started to fling it dangerously close to my face, causing me to squeal a little girl and go running out of the house, chasing my dog in front of me.

She just came out the window without the rat. Wish me luck on a quick, clean find. I'm going in.

Update: after a frustrating search with a very excited dog trying to prove the ratter in her bloodline, I finally discovered it on the back of the couch right where I sit. At least it looks like it ended without much trauma. Sigh.

Kill Blog #4 - Survivors

Last night was a long, sleepless night. Difficult as it was for me, it was tougher for the little family that met my monster menagerie. I think I was able to save each one, though. Here's how it went down:

PepPurr. The dog wakes me up at 3:30am. I can hear the bell on my little black kitty's collar tinkling enthusiastically, along with an occasional thud that can only mean one gruesome thing. I let the dog down off the bed, put on shoes and pants, grab a bag from under the kitchen sink, and head to the bathroom to investigate. The dog is losing her little mind trying to see what's happening in the bathtub. PepPurr is sitting in the tub staring at a tiny little bunny rabbit hopping around. I pause for a moment to admire PepPurr's ingenuity at preventing the rabbit from hopping away in the darkness, then swoop in and grab the bunny. I walk across a soaking wet field, deposit it through a hole in the giant fence separating our property from the elementary school and ball field next door, and watch it hop away. Well done, MathMercy. Now back to bed.

Savvy. The dog wakes me up at 4:30am. This is getting old. I have to be up in three hours. A quick inspection fails to turn up cats or any other critters in the house, but the dog is unconvinced. I let her out the back door and start making some tea. A plaintive cry calls me outside, where I discover my big gray cat teasing a little bunny in the grass. Oh yeah, bunnies cry. When I try to grab the rabbit, the cat picks it up and starts hissing and growling. He is often my sweet lover kitty, but Savvy is sixteen pounds of muscle, fang, and claw, and in this moment he is pure hunter. I try unsuccessfully to make him release the bunny and end up watching him carry it over the fence. We repeat this little sequence four or five times over the next 30 minutes. At 5:00 I finally succeed in getting both cats shut inside the house and head back to pick up the rabbit. My dog beats me there and trots off with the bunny. She is much less experienced than the cat, so I have no trouble prying her jaw apart and rescuing the bunny, who is miraculously still alive. I snap a photo, slip it through the fence onto the ball field, and congratulate myself on the second rescue of the night.

Lola. Holy fuck. Are you kidding me? It's 5:30am. It sounds like PepPurr has a bunny in the living room. I put on my shoes and head out, but I find the cat eating cat food and the dog watching me calmly from the couch. Huh. That's weird. I start looking for an abandoned bunny. It takes me a few minutes to realize that Lola is watching me calmly from the couch with a bunny in her mouth. A minute later, Bunny #3 joins Bunny #2 on the ball field. I hope their mama finds them. If she doesn't, though, I am counting on the elementary school kids to take them in.

Losing all that sleep was a pain, but it was nice to be able to rescue something this week. Last week, I realized that I know the sound of Savvy crunching bones, as he dissected and consumed a rodent in the hallway at 7:30am every day Tuesday through Friday. Worst alarm clock ever. I took photos every day, but Thursday and Friday are pretty gross and I prefer the live bunny. No death pictures today!

Spring Blossoms

I was briefly inspired to start converting my room-sized junk drawer back into a reading/sewing/guest room today. I say "briefly" because after about 20 minutes, I opened a box that contained all the journals from back before I decided that, for me, writing journals is little more than emotional self-indulgence.

After spending some time on memory lane, I am happy to report that the journals of my teens and twenties aren't all negative. Don't get me wrong: there is plenty of gloom and angst, but there is also a lot of joy. There is even poetry. That's right. MathMercy used to write poetry, and she is about to share some of it with you.

This poem was inspired by irises, and mine just bloomed yesterday. Finding it today was probably kismet.

The Faintest Scent

Spring is just moments away, 
Waiting. 
Breathless and giddy like a first date, 
Not yet late but hesitating 
So as not to seem too eager. 

Never one to give Them exactly 
What They Want, 
She hints at just enough 
To keep Them clamoring for more. 
Spring waits outside the door. 

A sigh heard faintly through the willow, 
Spring whispers.  
(Don't weep, my dear. I'm here.) 
She leaves just the faintest scent on pillows, 
Enough to open windows 
To invite her in. 

Springtime is my sin. 

I had put this poem on Poetry.com back in 2000 or 2001, so I was mildly surprised and amused to find that not only does Poetry.com still exist, but so does my poem. Let that be a lesson to you, kiddos. The internet is your permanent record. No matter how well you think you've hidden it, all of your future boy/girlfriends, college admissions boards, and future employers will know that you used to write poetry (gasp).

Incidentally, I'm not surprised if you don't know the scent of iris. Irises have a delicious honey aroma that will make you melt, but they don't like to broadcast it. You basically have to get right in there and risk walking around with pollen on your nose. You won't care, though, because you will be drunk on the scent of paradise. Drink it in and let springtime be your sin.