Category Archives: home

Hungry Cats in Bleak Midwinter

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“Bleak Midwinter” might be the title of some news articles of this day, deemed by at least one researcher as the likeliest day of the year for a peak in emotional depression. His formula takes into account failed New Year’s resolutions, the economy, the weather, and I suppose the fact that it is Monday.

Could I be counted in the numbers, because I found it harder to get myself out of bed this morning than I did last Monday? It was on the way to the gym that I heard the “news,” and it made me happy just thinking that the endorphins I was about to produce would help me through this day.

It’s another way of describing bleak midwinter, I thought as I was driving home, and wondered where that phrase came from. It didn’t take long to find out again what I had certainly known in the past, that “In the Bleak Midwinter” is the title of Christina Rossetti’s poem that ends, “What can I give Him? Give Him my heart.”

Yesterday I was told that the human soul is infinitely empty, because it is designed to hold the infinite God in Trinity. For us to become aware of our emptiness and need for God is a good thing, so some amount of what we might call depression could serve us that way. As Oswald Chambers wrote, “Sorrow burns up a great amount of shallowness.”

St. Silouan said that we ought to “keep our minds in hell and despair not.” Don’t forget all there is to grieve over, don’t pretend that the world isn’t lost in sin, but come to Christ with your grief–otherwise you can’t help but despair.

Moving on to things I know more about: the cats in my neighborhood. While we had our own cats, I mostly chased the others away from our yard, but now I have leftover food since Gus died, and it seems right to share it with them. Occasionally I set out some kibble in his old bowl, if it isn’t raining.

The markings on this black and white cat make for an optical illusion that his head is misshapen. At least, I think that’s why he looks so ugly, but I suspect he doesn’t spend much time in front of the mirror fretting about it.

There are at least five cats who pass by on their daily prowl. If I hold very still I can take their pictures, but for the most part they are shy about coming so close to the house when they can see a strange human on the other side of the door. One or another will sometimes make eye contact with me, and then after a few seconds, bolt away as though he got a deadly revelation.


You might recognize the striped cat at left, because I wrote about her already, here , here and here. You’ll have to look back at one of those posts to see her amazing eyes. She doesn’t come around nearly as much as she used to, when she liked to follow Gus and pester him.

 

Mr. Glad was startled by a big raccoon on the other side of the glass the other night, gobbling up food I’d forgotten to bring in at dusk. The picture shows what were probably that guy’s ancestors, caught while enjoying the spoils after they tipped over a whole bucket of cat food, many years past.

I think my favorite cat lately is the black one below, because after watching me watch him emptying the bowl, he sat down to just be near me for a spell.

When we humans notice that our cups and bowls are empty, we can simply hold them up to our Lord and He will fill them, as He told us (John 6:51): “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

Homesick in Our Homes

church, history, home, poetry
Christmas Poem by G.K. Chesterton

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.

Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost—how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.

This world is wild as an old wife’s tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

Thanks to semicolon where I found this poem today, a good reminder of important truths of the season.  This Advent period is when we remember how we are “homesick in our homes.” The reality of that estrangement and fallenness and longing is a good bit of why we get physically sick, or sick and tired of various features of our earthly life.

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel!

Colorful, Loud, or Quiet Traditions

art, crafts, family, history, home, people

It wasn’t unusual to hear sirens in the neighborhood this evening. We aren’t far from the thoroughfare down which most fire trucks travel on their way to emergencies. But from the kitchen the sounds were a little different this time, and I wondered if there was an emergency on our street, so I went out front and indeed, there were the flashing lights, just two houses down.

Next door I could see the shape of my neighbor, so I crossed the grass and asked her what was going on. It’s Toys for Tots, she said. They do this every year. The fire truck leads a procession including Santa and reindeer, and makes stops in different neighborhoods each night to collect toys for needy children. The well-off neighbor tots were running out of their houses to donate gifts and get a chance to hop up in the sleigh for a picture with Santa.

Sure enough, I read the several days-old newspaper when I came back indoors and found out that this has been going on under my nose–or in my front yard, to be exact–for many years. I’m embarrassed to let on how out of touch with the town events I am. My nose was in a book or sniffing a pot of soup, I suppose. Or maybe we were driving around town with the children to see all the houses with their fancy light displays.

I have been enjoying the beginnings of decorating. So many of our beloved tree ornaments have been gifts from someone, and I usually can’t remember who! The little Czech doll at top I know came from our dear little Czech lady friend, no longer with us, and the the lamp-shaped glass ornament is very old, having been used by B.’s family for decades before it came to our house.

When the children were young, they and I would make various kinds of ornaments, and one of the early projects was a choir of angels made from wood shavings. They have been very durable and the largest always graces the top of the tree.
But for the last several years my favorite ornaments are real or glittery glass pine cones, and birds, like this staring owl given me by H. Much if not all of his plumage is made of bark and other plant fibers; she’s also given me wooden birds whose feathers are real feathers.
So…I’ve gotten started installing our traditional and longstanding Christmas decor. I hope soon to show my newer cozy and festive elements. And I have to say, I’ve been enjoying looking at photos of Christmas all over Blogland. Thank you all!

Good-bye, Gus

animals, family, home,

Our first cat we had 16 years. This is his photograph when a kitten. I’m sure you are laughing at my attempt at animal photography. We named him Custard, which shows I didn’t know anything about custard pudding. My neighbor said, “He’s an eggy custard, isn’t he?” I was pregnant with our firstborn at the time.

 

 

 

 

This second photo shows how the baby and Custard got along just fine. But Custard was always in the background, and not demanding or very important to our lives. We had human children keeping us busy and happy, five of them by the time he died.

 

 

 

 

Then this cat moved in. We found out about a year later that she actually lived just down the street and only wanted to sojourn with us while giving birth.

Aren’t her kitties darling? The father was a Turkish Van. We decided to keep the fellow in the middle of this group, and named him Mackenzie. This was before all Mackenzies were girls. He reminded me of a polar bear and therefore the name of a river in snowy country seemed right for him.

 

The whole family adored Mac, but he was always skitterish, not often cuddly. The older he got, the less he liked to be petted. He stayed outside most of the time and often sat on the rabbit hutch, facing the corner of the back yard fence, where he seemed to us to be in deep contemplation. If you look carefully at left, you can see his mostly white in the center of the picture.

By the time Mackenzie died of old age, all our children were moved out of this barn of a house, and we thought a new cat or two might add a little warmth. At the feline rescue center we visited both the adult cat room and the kitten room. We sat down and waited to see if any cats would be friendly and affectionate.

 

There was one in each room that came right up to us to be petted, and they were both very pretty, so we took two cats home!

With Gus and Zoë we had five golden months. We laughed at their romping, and one of them was always happy to snuggle if we wanted.

Then when we were out of town, Zoë was hit by a car and killed. She had been our favorite, serene and attentive, so we were terribly sad to lose her, after having her so short a time. But we still had Gus, who at the loss of his friend became a little less the wayfaring adolescent and liked nothing more than to sit on a lap for hours at a time.

He was unusual in many ways, but one odd thing was that he loved to hang upside-down on/from my lap and be brushed with the wire brush. You could scratch and scrunch his fur and flesh till your arms ached, but he would want still more lovin’.

Last week Gus met the same fate as Zoë, only a block from our house. I’m ashamed to tell this; I can see in hindsight that neither of these adopted pets was ultimately suited to the minimal arrangements we’d made for them when we were traveling. It must be that they didn’t have enough sense of home, when we weren’t here.

So we lost Gus, who everyone agrees was the best cat there ever was; and we lost our confidence about owning another cat. Our grief is sharpened by a conviction of irresponsibility. There are various reasons we’ll postpone the decision about whether to get another pet. In the meantime, our drafty house is a bit colder again.