Blue like my oatmeal bowl

and campanules

Sisyphe is contemplating a hiatus. Overwhelmed with ennui, or just overwhelmed with things she has no desire to do, preoccupied with the past and sick to death of the dog hair and dirt (but not the dogs), grumpy and short of patience with all things political, she is neither insightful nor funny, if ever she were, which it appears that she might have been on a very few occasions because she was thanked for it specifically. But now, she is not in the least.

It's what happens when something bigger than everything else happens, but you can't talk about it because it has no place in a blog. It obliterates all the rest.

I picked up the Jane Austen volume on the table next to my bed again. Persuasion. Not my favorite. Jane lets it start to lag with the-head-injury-by-the-sea. One starts to prefer the modern day methods of just telling the gentleman in question that, yes, you still love him more than anything in the world and hope that he can forgive you for having been persuaded, with all the pain that occasioned you, to decline the offer of his hand. You would, in short, be the happiest woman alive if he would but offer it again.

Note, too, that he doesn't come equipped with an ex (or two) and children. Eight years have passed, and he is, incredibly, only improved by additional confidence and the glow of maturity, wealth and accomplishment.

The best of the Austen men were truly the best of men.

Sisyphe needs to duct tape herself firmly to the present and form the sort of incompletely informed but terribly sure opinions about others that would allow her to class them away as unworthy of her limited emotional resources as they seem to have found the means to do themselves. I mean, just how hurt can you be and still be worth anything?

....

So, the marmalade cat update

It now looks like short of running into the neighbors as they are packing their moving truck, we will have neither news nor thanks from them.

I took Wisp to the vet last week to have the vaccinations she couldn't have last January because she had to have a shot of cortizone for her progressive mid-line hair loss that began at the tail and crept up her spine. The vet said it wasn't because I sprayed her with the Frontline spray I use on the dogs, but I think he's wrong. He said this condition usually comes from flea saliva, but I had 3 of our 4 animals with me, and not one of them had any flea droppings in its tail-end fur. Besides, this has been the coldest winter I can remember in a very long time. Those would be hale and hardy fleas to have survived it to jump onto my cat around Christmas. I also took Rapide to have him check out the cyst in her left tear duct that they are going to remove the 19th.

Anyway. Back to the story I began.

The technician (nurse, they call them here) that day knew more. She told us that it was thought that the cat could be immobilized for 3-4 weeks to allow its pelvis to heal. They were amazed that our neighbors hadn't come to thank me for getting their cat to a vet quickly.

"Well, if they don't think that I did it, but was too cowardly to admit it, or if they don't think that I really did know that it was their cat that I hit and took to my own vet, instead of taking much more thoughtfully to their own vet, probably the one in Freneuse, closer to where we live, then they are just rude."

"Don't worry, you couldn't have taken it to the one in Freneuse, anyway. He never works on Saturdays," said my vet, who does work Saturdays, right along with his colleagues, in a very disparaging tone of voice.

There's one thing about which I feel much better. Not that I ever had reason to feel badly. That's just me. Torture myself for other people's lackings and rudenesses, sure it's my fault.

I mentioned to Audouin that a "vendue" sign had gone up in front of their house, without there ever having been an "à vendre" one. We knew they intended to move permanently to their vacation home, somewhere else, far away.

"Je me démande comment serront nos nouveau voisins."

"Probablement plus gentils."

Il y a des fortes chances.

....

Animal passports

So, do you know how much it costs now for vaccinations for your found cat? More than 100 euros. That's right. The European Union has decided that from January 1, 2009, all domestic animals that heed vaccinations will have to have a passport. It's sort of like your passport, only it contains their entire record of vaccination. They don't need it only if they intend to travel for business or pleasure, but if they are going to get their vaccinations. It costs about 60 euros, and it is good for life, or until the EU decides to replace it with something fancier and costlier still.

To have a passport, the animal must be tattooed or have an electronic identification chip inserted behind the skin of the neck under the ear (preferred nowadays). No chance of passing another pooch for the actual passport holder.

So, take the case of Will O'Wisp, who my husband found lying, dying of hunger on a walking path in the woods along the old sand quarry in the center of the boucle. At 1.5 kg, she was nearly gone. A soaking wet beg of bones that could barely lift its head, let alone stand on her four paws. Her rear legs were so atrophied that they collapsed under her very meager weight. You could feel the exact profile of each and every one of her vertebrae, the sides, too.

We fed her and let her sleep on a towel in the crook of my arm, where she still sleeps if Audouin refuses her the place between our two heads, where she likes to burrow against both of us, or if she hasn't selected Baccarat or Rapide in our place for the night. We took her to the vet to see if she carried diseases that needed to be treated for her to gain strength and survive. She did both, and last week, her third round of vaccinations since he brought her home cost us over 100 euros. That was on top of the nearly 300 we had spent in January to have both dogs vaccinated and get Wisp a shot of cortizone for her mange-like condition. She now carries a little medal announcing that she is protected by an electronic chip.

"I'll hang it with her other jewels," I quipped to the vet and his nurse, referring to the little puffy heart that came with her collar, hanging next to the nametag I had made for her, a heart with a little pink bling to match her pink collar. "This found cat announces to the world that she has humans who care." They laughed. Now we just have to hope that she's smart enough to get across the street without getting hit first. Cars can't read little medals and nametags, or see that they are heart-shaped with pink bling.

I arrive at my point, which is a question. Is the EU, in its desire to protect animals and humans, actually putting them more at risk by pricing routine care for peoples' much-loved domestic pets out of their reach? It's a huge budget, when you add it all up, and include feeding them decent food. For the two dogs, it's a 13 kg bag of veterinary food at nearly 80 euros every 5-6 weeks, plus the cats, who are managing on Purina, for now. The dogs are off the Pro Plan until they lose -- well, until Rapide loses a little more weight. She has already lost just about all she needs to. Then, they go on the maintenance food, and I might just keep them on this brand because Rapide's skin and fur improved just as much and as overnight as the vet predicted it could.

There are many people on fixed incomes, who find themselves facing their vet, announcing that they need a passport and an electronic chip for little Pierrou, people who are already feeding their beloved pet the cheapest brand of food available on the grocery store shelves. They join their pet at the food bowl for the next month, or leave and put their animal at risk.

Or, they can always eat cube steaks, like everyone else trying to eat on a tight budget these days.

You see, in the very, very rare instance that rabies is found, all animals within a certain radius who have not been vaccinated are systematically rounded up and put down. No exceptions. This actually happened near Bordeaux not very long ago. The culprit was Tikki, a dog illegally imported from Morroco to France. In the summer of 2004, Tikki died of rabies, after having been in contact with legions of humans and other animals, which started a domino chain of preventitive vaccinations for humans and the euthanasia of numbers of domestic animals whose owners could not show proper records of vaccination against rabies.

....

"She needs to lose weight"

These words from the vet, concerning Rapide, were just about the best thing that could have happened to me. Better than hearing my own doctor (or husband, one in the same) say it to me. It came just after I had dragged myself back to the gym, after nearly a year away. My excuse? The election. Who had time to work out and follow all the news? But, I was going back to the gym, since November, but without the regularity of application that I needed. Rapide was also spreading, and becoming accustomed to a level of inactivity that surpassed only my own. Baccarat was also at risk, although her sprints to the door any time I stood up from my laptop screen or reached for my coat to head to the store were preventing the same level of engraissement as her mother and I were suffering.

The vet might as well have told the three of us that it was time to lose weight.

January 2, we started our walking and hill program, and Rapide hated me for it. Maybe resented. She didn't seem to hold it against me between torture sessions, but it was another story during those walks, where she dragged along behind as far as the length of leash would allow her, the collar slipped up over the right ear (she walks on my left), sucking air like a Hoover.

"Au pied, Rapide!" She wasn't having it. Baccarat trotting along just ahead of me, ready to go faster, and Rapide dragging her full weight along behind, trotting like a sulky 14-year-old girl, who really wanted to plod, but my own pace wouldn't let her. She did all but stop short and refuse to move forward. It was all I could do not to scream. I did not look forward to our walks, as much as I love it when we arrive at the top of the rise onto the ridge road and walk along it under the stars, Mantes lit up below, off beyond the other side of the Seine to the right and the fields stretching off to our left to the Seine, la Roche-Guyon and the further ridges beyond. The Seine cuts a deep swath in an otherwise high landscape. There are very few cars up there late in the evening.

Night after night, we repeated the same scenario until Audouin read me the riot act for walking up the unlit road to the ridge in the dark with two black dogs, and once I got over my pout -- who did he think he was? My father? Not that I couldn't have used one of those... but that's the past -- I headed the other way from the gate, to the other end of the village where there's a really steep bit of street. Rapide looked at me like, "Are you being serious?" She didn't like the look I returned her.

Of course, all I had to do was get a flashlight for our walk, and put on a reflective jacket. They even make them for dogs, right along with reflective, neon yellow or orange collars for hunting.

"On y va, les fi-filles."

We walked that hill four times in a row, making U-turns at the top and the bottom, Rapide hauling her hind end up that slope at the far end of her leash and panting for all she was worth until I started to feel guilty for making their greatest pleasure -- a walk -- her greatest misery. After several evenings' application, my own hind quarters ached from the effort. Reluctantly, I let up on her. I could go to the gym for that, but she just needed to walk, not die of a heart attack.

The results of two months' effort were measured last week. When the vet came in, he sat down on the lowered examining table, at eye level with her haunches.

"Je pense qu'elle a perdu de poids," I ventured. He petted her and continued to look at her, where her waist cuts in nicely now at the pelvis.

"Oui, à l'oeil, je dirais qu'elle a perdu. C'est bien."

"Mais, je l'ai pesé, et elle est à 40 kg!"

"Vous venez de le faire ici?" he asked. I nodded.

"La balance ici rajoute 10%. Il faut l'enlever pour son vrai poids." That meant that she was at 36 kg. 35 is the goal.

I am not telling you how much I weigh still! I can't anyway, since I refuse to weigh myself.

Rapide is nearly on maintenance -- as well as trotting right along, for the most part, when she feels like it, like a champion with much greater respiratory ease --, and I am back at it. I even got my bike out and rode it the 16 or 17 km to the gym and back last week, and to the grocery store. We walk every day, at least 45 minutes -- although twice that would be good for them -- but that's hard for me if I am also going to the gym. Take the day that I rode my bike to the gym. That was 45 minutes there, 75 at the gym, 45 minutes back, followed by a 45 minute walk with the dogs.

I'd have time for nothing else.

Which might not be so bad.

And, no workers today. We expected them to be gone "2 or 3 days" last week, which I understand to mean the entire week, but today, too? The clouds have come to cover the bright blue sky, and I really, really need to attack the crap in the house and take what I absolutely can't throw away (yet) to the attic. I live in perpetual self-recrimination and guilt because we have no storage space and vast amounts of clutter, dust and dog fur. Worse, I can't work on anything I need to do when I know the house is in need of attention.

"Prends une femme de ménage," suggested Audouin. I explained that a cleaning lady will only keep the house as nice as she finds it when she first comes. We need to do the interior first, and then get a cleaning lady to help me. I cannot abide dust and clutter.

....

Fish flourishing

They come out from behind the conrete block when I talk to them again. I am forgiven the assault I committed, removing them from their home, the fish-pond-in-a-fountain?

I just went and did some basic research on goldfish. We don't have koi. I know that because they don't have the barbels on the lip that koi do (see the koi to the right), and the original fish in the basin were more likely two very ordinary goldfish Audouin thought had to be unhappy living in a bowl and released into the vaster confines of the old fountain. He was right, they probably were bored to tears and sad:

Goldfish are curious fish that will quickly become bored without items or other fish to interact with. If placed in a bare aquarium goldfish will settle to the bottom and only move when fed or frightened by sudden jolts. However, if put in a tank with sufficient gravel, aquarium accessories or plants (real or fake) they will make themselves at home. Adding a few companion fish will also help, but make sure each fish has plenty of personal space.

I knew it! I knew from hours of watching them that they are not as stupid as people say they are. If you live with them, and you watch them, you know they aren't. You also know what the Wikipedia article goes on to say, that they are mildly territorial. Ours lived in three clans, each tending to occupy the same area of the old fountain, although in the coldest winter weather, they would often all retreat beneath the old stone sink that Audouin placed in the fountain as a planter, and which is no longer visible under all the plants.

I also learned to understand reproductive behavior in them. I am nearly certain that one of them is carrying eggs right now, but I haven't seen any males potentially present chasing and prodding her to get her to release her eggs, which I am hoping to see. First, I have to see if I can figure out what the white spots on the gills of the males in mating mode actually look like. If that ever happens, I have to be on the lookout for the eggs, since I should consider removing them from the can so the others won't snack on them. Now, how do I do that? I am also, apparently, supposed to feed them "fry food". I'm sure that's easy. Just head over to Florosny and ask, "Excusez-moi, mais auriez-vous du 'fry food'?"

They're called "tubercles". I found a photo. I have seen these; I had no idea they meant that the fish were in mating condition. The only ones left are very light colored, and since my aggression of them, they are avoiding me a little, so it will be harder to see if they show any tubercles.

And, while the concrete block was one appropriate gesture, I need to give them some additional stuff, like plants, gravel and some stones, and fast, along with changing out their water now that they live -- for the moment -- in a confined fish can.



....

O CAT!, the suite

It turned out that Sam had seen this cat very often before, when he comes home on his scooter, he sees it racing up the lane below. So have I, now that he reminds me of where I have seen him.

I know what is wrong with him, although I don't know his fate.

I called as the vet's office said I could, and I learned little. They were still examining him and doing tests between scheduled appointments.

"Il est du coin?" I asked.

"Oui. Ils doivent être vos voisins."

"Ils sont dans la même rue?" I felt like I was asking for State secrets.

"Oui."

"Quel numéro?" I must have been pushing it.

"Le 14."

"Mais ce sont les voisins à côté, les X!" She confirmed that it was the very family named.

"Vous préférez peut-être que je vous laisse les contacter?" She said that, yes, they did prefer to wait to contact the owners until they had more conclusive information to offer them.

"Je pensais seulement qu'ils pourraient apprécier de savoir que leur chat est trouvé. Ils se font peut-être des soucis pour lui," I hesitated, to give her the opporunity to say, "Yes, of course they might like to know that. Why don't you go ahead and let them know," but she didn't. To cover my intent, I picked right back up, "mais, bien sur que je vous laisserai gérer." They must know what they are doing.

I mean, what if I went to the neighbors, told them I had found their cat injured and taken it to my vet across town, that he seems to have been injured fairly badly, and they jumped in the car and raced over and -- what? -- insisted on taking him away in his condition?

Better leave it to them. The poor thing howled in pain at every right turn and curve in the road.

"Je vous rappelerai un peu plus tard pour avoir plus de nouvelles." She said that would be fine. I waited an hour and a half to learn that the X-ray had showed a fracture to his hip.

"Ca a du être une voiture," she said, referring to our earlier speculation. She had wondered if he had fallen into our garden when I told her how difficult it is to get in from the street. It is entirely walled in, and the cats have to jump through the metal pickets in the wall and gate. It didn't seem likely that he had done that in his condition. It now didn't seem likely, from his X-ray, that he had fallen.

"Mais, il y avait du sang. Qu'a-t-il pour éxpliquer le sang?

"C'est assez important," she said, referring the gravity of his injuries. "Il a du essayer de rentrer chez lui mais ne pouvait continuer et est resté chez vous."

"Sans doute, mais je ne sais pas comment. Ce n'est pas facile de pénétrer notre jardin de la rue." Sam told me later that there is a little hole in the fence, over near where I buried Chloé, behind the rhododendron I planted last summer, the terribly pathetic one on which they gave me at a fire sale price and that is now doing nicely, like we knew it would, over next to the wire fence between our garden and Christian's empty chicken house. That's still not an easy feat for an injured cat. Even one who has probably crossed our garden before, without my knowing it.

"Je dirai à ses propriétaires que c'est vous qui l'avez amené ici," the technician was still talking. "Ils sont en traine de venir. Ils passeront peut-être vous voir."

"Oui. Oui, dites leur, s'il vous le plait. Ils nous connaissent."

I waited for the bell to ring at the gate last evening and again today, but no one has come to tell us how he is and what they can do for him. Maybe they think I hit him and didn't have the courage to say so.

Maybe they will come this evening.

Or tomorrow.
....

O CAT!

Baccarat found it. Leave to her. It was not really very difficult, though. Not much of a hunt, nothing at all of a chase.

I returned from the gym and a stop at the grocery store -- eh, oui, il faut bien --, took the dogs out to pee and let Baccarat and Rapide free in the garden in the full sunshine. Spring is coming. Then, I went inside, opened the windows and the French door and set to getting my pot au feu simmering. I was just begining to peel the carrots, when I heard Baccarat start in with her deepest "woof!"

"Baccarat, tu te tais." I placed myself directly in front of her, still woof-woofing intensely, "TAIS TOI." She shifted around on her paws like an anxious three-year-old who needs to pee, her eyes darting from the mound of junk at the base of the linden tree to somewhere just to the side of me.

"Bacs, regarde-moi. Tu te tais. Sh!" She tried. She really did, but she looked about beside herself with worry. It occurred to me that there might be something; she wasn't looking fixedly out over the field below like she usually is when she gets to barking. An animal. I turned to look where she was, and I saw the big, beautiful marmalade cat with long hair, resting under the partial shelter of the fake leaded stained-glass window the workers had leaned up against the linden tree, alongside their stock of lumber. It looked back at me placidly. It didn't get up to run. It didn't tense. It gazed back at me, while Baccarat went crazy, hopping from paw to paw, trying to butt her head past me to get to the cat. Rapide wandered over to see what was up and went into maternal-mode with Baccarat.

My brain slowed way down. Why was this animal just lying there? It looked fine.

I walked back into the house, and continued to peel carrots, which was absurd, I thought, picking up another anyway, peeling it and dropping it into the pot au feu. "You can't do nothing. Go get the camera."

That made more sense.

I grabbed a bowl of cat food on the way back out, and returned to the cat, fighting for space near it, pushing dog heads out of the way.

"Va t'en, Baccarat!" I commanded the excited one at my elbow. She turned her head to gaze like a cow at me. Rapide. "Va t'en, Rapide. Allez." I snapped a picture as the animal looked calmly at me. I backed up and took two more, the black bodies of my two Labs wiggling all over the place. "Allez vous en! Allez!"

I knelt again to look at it more carefully. There was a small pool of blood on the bit of plastic sheeting next to her. Blood. Fresh. It had to have come from the cat, but it looked fine. What I could see, at least. But it wasn't moving. If it were fine, it would have amscrayed long since. We looked at each other, as I fought to elbow my dogs back.

"Allez! Allez vous en!"

That's when I noticed the smell. It smelled like something rotten. And pee. I felt the queasiness start in my stomach. I couldn't just leave the cat there. Go back into the house and finish my carrots. I'd have to get it out of there. I reached in and stroked its head. It let me. Baccarat wanted to pet it, too, with her muzzle and big old tongue.

I took the cat by the shoulders and began to lift it, gingerly. It howled. It didn't claw or bite. The hind end didn't move right. It seemed limp. It was a huge and heavy cat, which wasn't going to help if lifting it hurt it. I went for a towel someone had left at the pool last summer, left out since then by the petite maison, and worked it under the cat's body. Every time I got anywhere near its rear legs, it howled in pain. I tried to look. There were traces of blood on a bit of lumber against which it had rested its haunches lying there. I peered in the leaf-matted long fur of the rear legs, and there appeared to be black sac-like things in the fur. Injuries? Pooled blood under some kind of bites? Had it been mauled? I couldn't see. The back didn't seem to be broken; it could move its legs, weakly.

I needed something to support it. The travel cage was out of the question. I'd never get so large an injured cat into it without really causing it pain. I spotted one of the shallow pans for mixing the chaux, emptied the tools from it, tucked the towel as best as I could under the cat, like a sling, while it hissed at the frantically concerned dogs, and lifted it into the pan. All I needed now was to get the dogs into the house, grab the keys, close up and head to the vet.

The cat howled and then fell silent again.

I talked to it all the way to the vet's on the far side of Mantes. Right turns seemed to be the worst. I was a mess from the gym, not having had time to change. "They'll think I'm completely crazy," I thought to myself, feeling for a brush in my bag. I spend my life at the vet, between the animals we added intentionally to our menagerie and those we have found and added.

Maybe someone can explain it to me.

They seem to come to us, the lost and the suffering, and we take care of them, from Cunégonde Mouse to the yellow Lab I took to the shelter for adoption, Wisp, who Audouin found dying of hunger on a trail in the woods along the sand pits in the center of the boucle, and our own, in need of care, getting sick, dying.

"Ils sont bien chez vous," said the young woman at the desk.

"Mais comment savent-ils de venir, de se mettre dans notre chemin?" I asked, knowing she would not have an answer.

Do they talk amongst themselves, word spreading through the gardens and fields, from village to village, "Hey, if you are hurt or hungry, abandoned, go to them, and they will help you."

She noticed the cat had a tattoo in the ear. They could find the owners, "Call at the end of the afternoon, if you would like, she told me, and we can give you news of the cat."

I thanked her.

"No, c'est vous qu'on remercie de vous en êtes occupée, et d'avoir fait le déplacement jusqu'à ici."

"Mais, c'est normal. Je ne pouvais le laisser là comme ça."

"Oui, mais il y a plein de gens qui l'aurait mis juste un peu plus loin, pour s'en débarrasser du problème." How, I wondered, could anyone just move an animal, hurt and alone, to let it fend for itself or die -- a little farther along?

"Je vous appellerai. S'il n'avait pas un tattoo, je l'aurais gardé. Mon mari serait furieux, mais je me dis que si un animal vient auprès de moi dans son besoin, il faut que je le garde. C'est le destin."

She smiled like she didn't think I was crazy at all.

Although I am. As mad as a hatter.

When I returned home, Shadow was waiting in the entry court, and Wisp scampered across the garden to come inside with me. That's when I noticed that Wisp hadn't been alone. There was a smallish cat, very like her only darker, bounding toward the stairs to the bottom of the garden. I called to it, and it stopped and turned around, sat. We looked at one another through the open kitchen window.

"Kitty, kitty. Hey, kitty." It continued to look at me. I went and got the camera, amazed at this congress of felines at my house on this fine day, and it was still sitting there, right where it was before I crossed the room and back. I took its picture and came out the door to approach it, but it turned on its heel and headed to the lower garden, by way of the box hedges along the stair. Not afraid. Not perfectly at home.

The Ad-dressing of Cats

T. S. Eliot

You've read of several kinds of Cat,
And my opinion now is that
You should need no interpreter to understand their character.
You now have learned enough to see
That Cats are much like you and me
And other people whome we find
Possessed of various types of mind.
For some are sane and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad
And some are better, some are worse -
But all may be described in verse.
You've seen them both at work and games,
And learnt about their proper names,
Their habits and their habitat:
But
How would you ad-dress a Cat?

So first, your memory I'll jog,
And say: A CAT IS NOT A DOG.

Now Dogs pretend they like to fight;
They often bark, more seldom bite;
But yet a Dog is, on the whole,
What you would call a simple soul.
Of course I'm not including Pekes,
And such fantastic canine freaks.
The usual Dog about the Town
Is much inclined to play the clown,
And far from showing too much pride
Is frequently undignified.
He's very easily taken in -
Just chuck him underneath the chin
Or slap his back or shake his paw,
And he will gambol and guffaw.
He's such an easy-going lout,
He'll answer any hail or shout.


Again I must remind you that
A Dog's a Dog - A CAT'S A CAT.


With Cats, some say, one rule is true:
Don't speak till you are spoken to.
Myself, I do not hold with that -
I say, you should ad-dress a Cat.
But always keep in mind that he
Resents familiarity.
I bow, and taking off my hat,
Ad-dress him in this form: O CAT!
But if he is the Cat next door,
Whom I have often met before
(He comes to see me in my flat)
I greet him with an OOPSA CAT!
I've heard them call him James Buz-James -
But we've not got so far as names.
Before a Cat will condescend
To treat you as a trusted friend,
Some little token of esteem
Is needed, like a dish of cream;
And you might now and then supply
Some caviare, or Strassburg Pie,
Some potted grouse, or salmon paste -
He's sure to have his personal taste.
(I know a Cat, who makes a habit
Of eating nothing else but rabbit,
And when he's finished, licks his paws
So's not to waste the onion sauce.)
A Cat's entitled to expect
These evidences of respect.
And so in time you reach your aim,
And finally call him by his NAME.

So this is this, and that is that:
And there's how you AD-DRESS A CAT.


Or, take it to the vet for care,
Have the clumps removed from its hair,
And that hope it comes back to tell
It's adventure and stay a spell.
....