Show Me: A View and Something that Relaxes Me

Robert at Thoughts of a Father is trying his hand at a photo meme. He has named it Show Me and each day he will ask us to "show him" a photo relating to a specific request. I skipped yesterday in favor of letting my 9/11 post stand alone, so I'm going to do two days in one again. I don't know that these three things represent my favorite view - I already posted the view out my back door (see show me your kitchen) and have posted elsewhere the park-like yard across the street. Instead, I've chosen three small things that delight my eyes on a regular basis. As for things that relax me... well, when Angel isn't driving me crazy doing something naughty she give the best hugs in the world and when Tara Grace isn't yelling at me she has the loudest rumble and the sweetest spirit you could wish for. They give me joy. They are my kids. I considered taking a page from Robert's book and letting them stand as both my favorite view and something that relaxes me, but... I had already uploaded these other four yesterday so...

This tree trunk is what I see if I look straight (well, almost straight - if I look straight I see a wall) ahead. There are often squirrels running up the trunk, sometimes a woodpecker and often wonderful sunlight. I love that stone wall too. Hancock is famous for it's blue stone quarries. I think that's what it's called.

One of the aforeomentioned squirrels looking very cute.

And many mornings if I look up at the sky, I see the turkey vultures circling. When I look out the back door in the mornings, I often see their shadows. Keep wishing I could figure out how to capture the shadows on film but haven't figured it out yet.
I love this birch tree. It's in my neighbor's yard and I think its just one of the most beautiful trees ever. Not my best photo of it, but I (well, my friend Nate did it, actually) moved all my photos into a new external hard drive and I haven't quite got a handle on getting them from there to here yet.


This is Tara Grace. As I'm typing this she is running around the room playing with a little mylar toy. She's so darn cute when she plays. She has come such a long way since being rescued. I'm repeating myself from other posts, but Tara moves like a ballerina and talks like a long shore-man. Here is some very modest (she's MUCH MUCH MUCH louder) footage of her.

Angel has the face of an innocent - and the spirit of an innocent - just a very very very very very creatively naughty innocent. My friend E. - who has many, many cats - took care of Angel and Tara Grace when I was in limbo in a motel before the deal on my house finally got settled (long horrible story). Anyway. E always says that having Angel around was like having another 11 cats. If she can't find mischief she invents it. And then she gets all snuggly and gives you a hug so you forget that you want to wring her little furry neck.

Camera Critters: Tara Grace

This is my second time joining in with Misty Dawn's Camera Critters. Last week you met Angel Joy, world's naughtiest kitty. Can't favor one kitty child over the other, so this week I introduce you to Tara Grace. Both these kitties were rescued but Angel was still very young and doesn't seem to have any real scars. Tara was outside for a long time and it's pretty clear that besides being half starved so that her body didn't mature (she still weighs only 5 pounds) and her vision is damaged, she was also mistreated. Although you could see in her body and her expressive face the intense longing she had and has for touch, it took almost a year before she could begin to really allow herself that pleasure and it is still difficult for her in some ways. I'll probably never be able to hold her like I do Angel. What astonishes me about Tara Grace is that despite her history she has remained profoundly gentle.

A year ago - right around this time - Tara Grace almost died. Her brush with death was one of those bad things that brings wonderful blessings. First off, she was so ill when I found her collapsed that she had no strength to be afraid and so I sat for almost 5 hours reiki-ing her and talking with her. She has been much less shy of touch ever since. In the morning, when I called the vet in hopes that they made house calls, they said that they didn't, but because my house was so close by, their kind assistant offered to walk up the hill and take Tara down with him. Dan's generosity was the start of a wonderful friendship and brought five wonderful new people into my rather lonely house-bound life. And of course, it saved Tara Grace's life. Two crises and a dental surgery later Tara has been given a new lease on life. I feel guilty still that I didn't realize how ill she was until it became a crisis. She had been sick since she first came into my life and the first vet who saw her didn't pick up on the crisis of her teeth. I thought her condition was her normal. I was also blessed at that time to be put in touch with a group called AWAN. AWAN, which stands for Animal Welfare Adoption Network, operates mostly in Ulster County, New York, but they were kind enough to help me pay the astronomical (for someone on limited disability income) expenses of Tara's surgery and three overnight stays at the hospital. I am forever grateful to them.

Tara is so sweet to look at. She moves like a little ballerina. She has learned of late to play more and it is like watching a wonderful delicate dance. Then she opens her mouth and the sound that comes out belongs to a cougar or a long shore man. It is loud, harsh and very cranky. I sometimes think she is channeling my mother, she is so critical... It's interesting and endearing to me that Tara converses. She will grumble at me and I'll either grumble back in an attempt to mimic her or speak person to her and she stops, looks straight in my eye and responds. We have some pretty long talks from time to time.

I know this is getting rather long. Sorry. Tara gave me one other gift. She finished a task that Angel had been working on for a while. She smashed my old, not so good, zoomless digital camera into multiple pieces. Bless her. My new camera has opened up worlds to me that were closed before.

And now I'll stop talking and let Miss Tara speak for herself. Isn't she sweet?

Merrow!

The Circle Game

I'm a word person and sometimes a new word gets stuck in my head. This week, I've been reading my friend Linda's posts about autism and one of the things she wrote about was something called "stimming." Stimming is a way that autistic children (and really all of us on earth) find to cope with feelings of stress. For autistic children, it might involve flapping their hands and sometimes - as in the case of her young son - walking in circles. For myself, I play computer games or watch TV. If I could walk, I might pace, but that's not an option any more.

Anyway, Linda's article on stimming was in my head last night as sweet Tara Grace acted out the damage of her early life in her kitty version of stimming which involves muttering and circling the house, around and around and around... sometimes she just circles the window and my desk, making sure to stomp on my keyboard over and over (aggggh). I was watching a movie on the computer last night and she managed at one point to mute it. After I spent 10 minutes figuring out how to undo that not too good naturedly, I might add - she did it again. Within minutes of the movie's end, she stepped on something that took it right back to the start. Ironically, at the moment of this little act of torture the human, a little girl in the movie was singing Joni Mitchell's magnificent song, "The Circle Game."

After my very very worst self emerged and shrieked at poor Tara for just being herself, and as guilt and embarrassment at my reaction set in, my brain made a link to her behavior and stimming. Tara, I thought, is kind of like a feline version of a very mildly autistic child, only because she's a cat and not a child it's so very different. There's an element of humor in it. Her routine is so relentless, her muttering so passionate... it can make me laugh. It also worries me, though. Some days I feel like she will wear herself out and I feel so sad because she's not able to allow hugs. She will sometimes stop for petting - I think that's what she's seeking ultimately - some form of comfort. She's still too damaged from her early life to allow hugs. I can't pick her up and hold. I can't soothe her stress.

And I was thinking that this is just the tiniest taste of what it must be like for parents with autistic children. Tara Grace, after all, is a cat. She is my child equivalent, but she lives a cat's life. Nobody judges her for her circles. If anything they endear her to my friends. And she does not have to go out into the world. No ignorant adults or foolish children will stare at her or judge her because she's "different." She will never have to cope with the realities of operating in a world that doesn't always welcome eccentricity. Tara Grace won't have to go to school. She won't have to face the insanity of puberty with the extra burden of being different. She is safe here and sheltered from the difficulties of the wider world. As my cat, she is an eternal child and while I may worry about her, I know she's going to be ok.

I don't know how parents of even "typical" children do it, how they balance the joy and fear and responsibility of parenting. It has always seemed wrong to me that the "game" of life should be harder for some than others. At the same time I try to feel empathy for people struggling with the pain and beauty of their autistic children, I realize that I don't have a clue or a hint of a clue as to what it's really like. I have so much to learn.

I am anxious about this post. I don't know if I should post it. I don't want anyone to think that I'm comparing my cat to their children, that I am making light of something so serious and painful. I'm not. Obviously I've decided to post it in spite of my reservations. I tried to change the subject but it has refused to change and I've found that when that happens, there is usually some purpose that I don't understand. So I will risk it and hope that there is some value in these words that I can't hear through my anxiety and with the plea of forgiveness if I have offended in any way.

Just because I love it so much, I thought I'd share the Circle Game and it's lyrics. We really are all on a circling carousel in some ways. I've heard life compared to an onion where you peel away the layers as you move through experience. Either way - carousel of onion - it is an amazing ride.

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star
Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like, when youre older, must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and dawn
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return we con only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels thru the town
And they tell him,
Take your time, it wont be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and dawn
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur
Coming true
Therell be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through.
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Wordless Wednesday: Tara Grace in Black and White

Tara Grace

five pounds - fragile but tough
talks like a gangster - moves like a dancer
she has suffered cruelty and abuse
without losing the gentle sweetness that is her essence
I am honored by her love and trust

You can Read Tara Grace's Story here.

Happy Wordless Wednesday

Caught on Tape: Tara Grace Not Doing Anything

AGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Ok... if this works, it is probably video that only a "mother" could love. Tara Grace, who is so demure and quiet in this video normally barks at me like a longshoreman or like a gangster threatening a hit. Of course since this is her movie debut, she clammed up. She is sweet in motion, though, isn't she? I have some video that I took of Angel being naughty the first day I got the camera but it's kind of blurry so I think I'll wait until she's naughty again and see if I can get it in better focus. I apologize because this is way too long, but I haven't figured out how to edit things down yet. I've been trying to upload it since early Wednesday evening, have crashed the computer 5 times, finally figured out that I needed to download some additional thing and now hopefully will be able to get it posted, though it appears that it is still going to take hours and hours and hours to upload. Sigh. Pure stubborn, willful determination has now overridden good sense. I WILL post it even though it's too long and probably nobody will watch it. I will do it because. So there.

Here it is! Tara Grace's debut! Please don't become so enthralled watching this that you miss out on the Saturday Wordzzle Challenge...

Tara Grace: My Furry Family, Part Two

Tara Grace is my virtuous kitty. Both because of her personality and her coloring, it's much harder to photograph her and these pictures don't do her justice. My friend Nate Tyson took the picture above and I really love it. I think it captures her sweetness... and her eyes aren't glowing like they are in most of my photos. The thing I admire most about Tara is that despite a very hard start in life, she has never lost her gentle sweetness.

The same "E" who brought Angel into my world, also introduced Tara Grace to Angel and me. Tara Grace - who loves to eat - still weighs in at only 5 pounds. "E" and another friend cared for her outside for a while. She was initially very skittish of people. They got an igloo and set it up and "E" took her food every day and told her to have faith, that she would have a home soon. It seems that Tara, who I think is VERY smart, listened. At Thanksgiving about a month after I moved into my apartment in Callicoon, the weather got bitterly cold, even for upstate New York. Temperatures went well below zero and it seemed clear that Tara Grace (who was named Isis at the time - totally wrong for her) would not survive those kinds of temperatures, even with her igloo. "E" brought her inside and with the landlady's permission set her up on the stairway between her upstairs apartment and my first floor place. I had agreed to adopt her but since she had lived outside for so long, it seemed prudent to take her to the vet and make sure she had no contagious diseases before putting her in proximity to Angel. Angel, of course, had other ideas. She would escape up the stairs every time "E" came into my place and lavish poor bewildered Tara with enthusiastic affection. At that point, it seemed pointless to wait, so I left my door open and let Tara find her way in. She spent some time under the bed trying to escape Angel's enthusiasm, but slowly she explored and settled in.

She was the sweetest and saddest little kitty. It was clear that besides malnourishment, she had been abused in other ways. She was profoundly shy of touch, though you could see that she palpably, achingly longed for it. She didn't seem to really know how to play either. It became clear to me that although she could see, she couldn't see very well - another side-effect of being half starved for much of her early life. When she did get to a vet, they said they couldn't really guess her age. Her teeth were very bad, her growth too stunted.... Vets have tended to put her age at about 8. I think she's much younger. I think she's probably 5 now, a little older than Angel.

I thought and think that Tara is very smart. That's probably how her frail little being survived out on the tough, cold streets and woods of Callicoon. "E" and my other friend had named her Isis but I didn't think that really fit. She didn't seem like an Isis, though she does have something of the Egyptian cat statuette that I associate with Nefertitti about her. I briefly tried Kwan Yin, but that was all wrong too. Anyway, when I came up with Tara Grace, she took to it instantly, kind of like, "well, finally, somebody's calling me by my real name." It was really clear that she knew that was her name - and she responded to it. But I digress. Tara's idea of play - I think that's what it was - was to bat at my cane if I moved it. She would sit and stare at it. I would move it and she would reach out and bat at it. Very odd. String toys got no reaction. She had some other odd thing - a coat hanger maybe... I forget now, that she "played" with. Very odd. Very sad. Balls thrown got no reaction. If she came across one, she would push it around a bit, but she didn't seek out play very much. She was like a little gray shadow.

I have to admit that in the beginning, it made me kind of sad to have Tara around. I felt like she was never going to really trust me. I'm glad to say that I was wrong. She's never going to be a lap cat, but slowly, slowly, she has found ways to receive touch. Tara apparently owns me at night. She sleeps on me... mostly right on my shoulder up next to my head and Angel - who has possession in the day time, had better not try to take that spot. It was when we got to our little house that Tara really began to blossom. The second she got here she seemed to know that this was truly "home" and safe.

Then last spring one of those bad things happened that brings with it lots of good. As I was getting ready for bed, I found Tara Grace, semi-conscious, lying in the litter box, barely breathing. She had always had chronic sneezing and congestion and I thought that was because of her rough life on the streets. It was, indirectly. It turns out that her teeth had gotten so bad that she had a profound systemic infection. This was a turning point in a lot of ways. Tara had been getting more comfortable with touch, but it was still mostly sort of push-pull. She'd approach me at my desk, I'd reach out, and she'd run away. Now, as she lay close to death, I spent almost the whole night lying next to her on the bed with my hands on her tiny, frail little body, giving her reiki and talking to her. At first she was anxious about my touch, but over the course of seven or eight hours, she realized that it was not lethal and that it was making her feel better.

Several visits to the vet, a dental surgery and a small fortune I didn't have later, Tara Grace is a new cat. I feel guilty that I didn't realize how sick she was all along. But the surgery has given her a new lease on life. She is much friskier. All the human contact seems to have helped her relax a bit more about touch too. Interesting story that says a lot about Tara and what I most admire about her. After her first crisis, the vet agreed to come to the house to take some blood since it was simpler than having Dan come get her and bring her back.... or so we thought. As I told you. Tara weighs 5 skinny little pounds. She is TINY. You would think getting blood from her would be a piece of cake for two six foot men and a large short woman. Three against one, Tara wrapped in a towel to help restrain her. Not such a piece of cake. She would have none of it. What was even more amazing to me about her brave and determined resistance was that it was non violent. She didn't try to claw anyone or hiss. She just squirmed and struggled and refused to let us hold her still long enough to get one small vial of blood. That's my Tara. Stubborn but gentle.

When I got my new windows, I knew it would make Angel happy, but since Tara doesn't see so well, I wasn't sure how she'd react. As you can see from the pictures, she loves the windows at least as much as Angel and I do. She loves to sit up there and watch the world inside and outside the house. That makes me happy too. And now that she is feeling better, Tara is more active across the board. She doesn't play all the time, but when she does, it's a joy to watch. Where Angel plays like a line backer tackling the ball, Tara dances with it in little delicate leaps and jumps. She really is a kitty ballerina. I've tried to catch it in a photo but no luck yet. I love it when Tara plays, though. It's proof that anything is possible and that even the darkest life can be turned around.

What else do I want to say about sweet Tara Grace? She is complex. She looks and moves like a dancer, delicate and genteel. Her voice, however, could sink a ship. She talks like a gangster. And she talks a lot. Tara Grace has strong opinions. I sometimes think she is channeling my mother. She's very critical. Partly, I suppose, because bed time is when she allows herself the most physical intimacy, she is highly disapproving of how late I usually stay up. On nights when I'm particularly foolish, Tara begins her muttering rounds (she really does mutter too). She circles the house grumbling, jumps up on my desk, stomps on the key board, circles again, all the time grumbling away. She's very funny. Dinner time is Tara's other crusading time. She will usually come out from the bedroom about an hour beforehand and start making the rounds or just sit on my desk and stare at me, maybe making a trek or two across the keyboard to make sure I'm paying attention. The joy she brings me is different than the joy I get from Angel. Tara's love has been more hard won, but she has graced me with her trust and her head-butting affection. I've been slowly working on getting her comfortable with being touched all over her body and she is making great progress.

Some of her new tricks. She has added jumping on my back to part of her room circling. Since clipping her nails is probably never going to be something that happens while she's conscious, this is not always enjoyable. She also has a new wake-up technique to replace poking me in the head. She dances on my back. She's so light weight that it's not painful, just very funny and hard to sleep through.

There's probably so much more that I could say about sweet Tara Grace. I feel honored by her love. She doesn't make me sad any more. She makes me happy.