Mine, says the cat....

Well here we are, midway through Act Happy Week!  And let me tell you, it's taking some heavy-duty acting on my part, what with five new inches of snow in my driveway and negative double digit wind chills blowing through my yard!  Spring is being quite the tease this year....

Today's post comes from my lovely daughter.  I asked what made her happy, and she replied that coming home after work and seeing her fiance' curled up with her cat, Jade, makes her happy.

 

No real surprise there...my girl has been loving animals for as long as she's been on earth!  It all started with a dapper purple dinosaur:

 and from there she progressed to roly poly bears:

followed by the Cat Family.

Once she made the leap from picture books to real books she was on to the new best thing, Catwings!  I found the books a little creepy (I tend to find most of Ursula Le Guin a little creepy) but my daughter was entranced with the series.

Her note to Santa when she was five asked for only one thing--a puppy of her own to love and take care of.  And so Belle arrived, a little ball of white fur with a heart as big as the sky.  

They were inseparable for nearly fourteen years.  

And when Belle's time on earth was ended, we welcomed Willow a few months later. But Willow is our family dog, and didn't make the trip to college....

 

so it really didn't come as a big surprise when a month after we settled her into her first college apartment she called to say she had found a new love at the humane society.  Ms. Jade has now carved out her own place in my daughter's heart. I think my daughter is right...it looks like her cat makes her very happy indeed.

 

The cat’s song

By Marge Piercy

Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.

My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says

the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing

milk from his mother’s forgotten breasts.

Let us walk in the woods, says the cat.

I’ll teach you to read the tabloid of scents,

to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt.

Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat.

You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends,

says the cat, although I am more equal than you.

Can you leap twenty times the height of your body?

Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs?

Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch.

My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard.

My lusts glow like my eyes. I sing to you in the mornings

walking round and round your bed and into your face.

Come I will teach you to dance as naturally

as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long.

I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers.

Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word

of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg

and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.

                                               Act Happy!  Have a wonderful day, my friends.