It was Easter Monday, and we had been away in Brisbane for the long weekend, spending time with Mum and our manchild who has moved out (so he’s probably just “man” now).

When we have small stays away we have an amazing young girl- Little A- come and mind our cat. She comes and stays for hours, forcing pats on Woofa The Shitcat, and just hanging with her. Sometimes in life you meet people who are true animal whisperers, and cats know them, and know them well. You see, this little sunshine came to live next door to us when Woofa was spending one of her 482748972957892759 lives. In those weeks I was feeding her Ziwi pellets like they were tablets and giving her water in a syringe. Little A was right there with me much of the time. Cheering Woofa on, and sending her the good juju.

Once Woofa recovered (no one fully knows how) Little A was there to give her ear rubs and toe tickles. Woofa was a cat who loved very few, and Little A was one of them, and for that I am grateful. For the next part of this story is not so nice.

Warning: Not nice stuff to follow. 

When we got home from our trip, Woofa did what she always did- as we bought in the cases, she shot out like a bullet to make her ablutions. She would abide the shitty-litter when needed, but she always preferred a fresh air toilette. Before too long she was back inside to spread her fur over as many of our black clothes as she could- marking our legs with her scent and making us angora-like. I used to find that annoying, or at least the depilation that was always required after a Woofa encounter. I would take that annoyingness now.

As I was starting on the washing, Woofa decided she needed another run outside. It was nearing dark, and I usually wouldn’t have let her out, but she had been inside all weekend, and I thought, “Why not?” Why not indeed. Sometimes in life you have to be cruel to be kind, and other times you think you are being kind when unbeknownst to yourself you are actually being cruel. This is my guilty cruel.

I let my cat out for some freedom and to let her breathe the cool night air, and within minutes the massive cat-killing-listed-dangerous-dog next door; the one who is not allowed to be unmuzzled or in fact off its lead, EVER, had my little mate in his mouth, crushing that night breath right out of her.

Crushing her little lungs until they couldn’t draw in one more ounce of air.

Crushing her and crushing us at the very same time.

Flashback:

We got Woofa at a time when life was tricky. My Dad had died earlier that year, and I had a gaping maw in my insides that didn’t feel like a hole at all, but a lump of bluestone; just as heavy, just as cold, just as grey. I didn’t know quite how to grow around grief back then (oh what a thing to know: joy not joy) so when I looked into the blue eyes of that tiny kitten and I felt a little chip of bluestone fall away, I had to have her. Don’t get me wrong: I pretended that she was for the children (MOTY, me) but I think we all knew she was for me.

And so she was.

She was the one who sat with me through the long nights of worry about Coco. I would sit on the couch in Coco’s room, watching the rise and fall of her chest in the eon-nights before the horror-relief of transfusion day, trying to decide if she was doing the “puffy breathing” that constituted an emergency (what the hell is puffy breathing anyway?) and Woofa would purr a rhythm of a normal life. Some nights I could even believe her song.

She was the one who sat on my feet and kept me warm all the nights when Hayls was crook and I didn’t have the words to cheer her on in a way that she would feel buoyed. And then after. She was there with that same warmth in the after, when she cajoled me to believe that one day I would feel warmth in my blood again. And she was right, that cat of mine.

Or perhaps I was hers.

I guess that’s more true. I was hers. She owned a piece of real estate in my cells in exchange for all of the things she gave me.

By and by and through the years my life got easier and less grief filled. Less death, less fear, more life, more fun. Things got easier and harder and easier again, and all the while, any time I had sleepless hormonal nights, or early morning wakings, she was there and there and there with me. I’d open my lids and there she’d be, right up close and staring at me with those blue eyes saying, “It’s okay. You’ve got this. You’ve always got this. Now get me some food. And by the way, I don’t really give a shit about what ails your mind, give me the food. Now would be good.” I would raise myself from the bed and the so-familiar-it’s-almost-unnoticed ba-dumph of her hitting the floor would follow me to the kitchen.

Flashforward: 

There’s now been a little time since the Cujo next door killed my mate. Enough that you’d think I’d be used to going to the pantry without being accosted for “meo-ore food, meo-ore food”. But I still reach for the bag.

Enough that you’d think I would have stopped dream-thinking there is a little warm comfort weight on my feet at night. But I still feel the heft of her.

Enough that you’d think that I would have stopped half waiting for the ba-dumph. But I hear it in my mind.

Death is a strange and cruel thing. It allows your brain to leave you with things added: guilt that you let your cat outside to be picked up by a monster, fear that you might lose it like George at the murderer’s owner if she dares come near, anger that some deaths can be so so simply avoided, and yet they are not.

But the reaper? He leaves you not with things added, but with things taken away:

your comfort,

your solace,

your little friend,

and perhaps most of all the ba-dumph as she follows you, to salve your heart.

RIP Woofa Shitcat Butterball Popsicle Asher. You were a Goodcat after all.

I’m sorry.

Remember joy? It was a thing we used to have a lot of, and we talked about it heaps, back in the day. Then over the last year or so; not so much. So many new words and phrases have jumped into our vernacular that it seems we have forgotten some of our old faves.

And we’ve stopped writing and posting about our favourite things too. At least I know I have.

Things have gotten so serious and scary and strange, that telling you a story about how yesterday I thought I’d like to move to the country, so I drove for over an hour, some of it on dirt roads, to get to the old Kandanga School, a property that I thought I’d buy. When I go there, I realised: it was IN THE COUNTRY. Which meant there was country things like flies and dirt and cows, and not so much non-country things like cafes and homewares shops selling pinch pots and Witchery stores. It turns out that I don’t like the country quite as much as the romantic part of my brain thinks, and Country Road is really nothing much like country roads.

With the world doing weird-world stuff I feel a bit frothy talking and telling about the millions of things that go through my head (why does Woofa the shitcat sit on the back of the couch instead of on the couch, how did that wispy white cheek-hair grow to five centimetres when I only plucked it yesterday, should I start a combined chiro-cafe-bookstore called Crooked Spines, or should it be Aligned Spines, or should I also sell records and call it A Few of My Favourite Things and be done with it?)

So on my drive to the country I played Dan Zanes tunes on the way there (from when the kids were little and Hayls was alive) and Hamilton on the way home (now that the kids are older and Hayls would have loved the MadKing songs) and I remembered a little of who I was before the crazy stuff began. I remembered that I liked to go to cafes and drink coffee (only one or I can’t sleep) and write stories. I remembered that I liked to breathe deeply, to look a the sun shining on peoples’ faces and to talk to strangers about unimportant issues. I remembered that I am not a scientist or a researcher or a biochemist, I’m just a Mum with kids that I want to hold close for as long as I can, and take care of them the best way I know how. I remembered that I like it when people are kind.

So no, this blog doesn’t tackle the big issues. It doesn’t tackle any issues. But it does carve out a little space of joy for me, and so that’s what I’m doing from now on. Bringing back the joy.

Joy to the world.

What brings you joy? I’d love to hear…

…From The Ashers

I know I’m supposed to write you a blog right now, but I’m way too stressed.

I have yelling at the contestants on MKR to do (I really do despise them all I think- even the nice ones- I know they “really don’t want to go home yet” I know they’ve “worked so hard” and that they “really want to make cooking their life”.  I don’t need them to tell me fifty-seven times per show.)

I have to make dinner for the next two nights.

I have to clean the bathrooms- they really just can’t wait another day.

And I really should drink the last bit of that wine so that it’s not sitting there in the fridge door every time I open it, taunting me and trying to make me drink it during “the week” (Sundays are not in “the week” you know).

Excuse me…

Okay, I’m back- I just had to stop the cat from completely shredding the carpet- she’s locked in our bedroom- and has been for THE LAST TWO WEEKS- ostensibly to keep her quiet, since the eye-scratch-incident.  She’s going quietly mad in there, and so are we.  She climbs the venetions, pisses on any clothes we leave on the floor, and miaaooowwws every morning from 2.30-4am.  Tomorrow I get to take her to the cat ophthalmologist (yes, there is in fact such a thing) for a two hundred dollar consultation in BRISBANE (two hours each way).  I have a new car.  The chances of her not defecating or urinating on the way are as slim as Carrie Bickmore’s arms.  So yeah, bring that joy.

So this is what you get in lieu of a blog.

Now shhh, Elementary is about to start, and I can’t be distracted from my Johnny Lee.  (He may require my help.  And if not I’ll just stare at him, mouth slightly agape.  I’ll try not to drool.)

Wish me luck (with the cat, not the drooling)

What’s your Sunday night routine?  

How much do you love Elementary?

…From The Ashers xx

Epilogue:  As I was typing, the cat was going BATSHIT in the bedroom, trying to get out. The bastard has just pulled up the carpet. We couldn’t get into the bloody room ‘cos she carpet-barricaded us OUT.  Oh, sweet baby cheeses, save me now, and don’t let me wrap that cat in the wrecked carpet and chuck her in the pool.  Or don’t judge me.  Either works.

So we have a cat: Woofa Butterball Popsicle Asher.

(Not taken today)

We got her at a time when I maybe wasn’t going so well.

When you have a kid with a “thing” sometimes you can be a bit of a mental as you chisel away the entrenched stone of your heart that is made up of all the ridiculous notions of perfection you had, and sculpt yourself a new shape.  One that encompasses the reality of loving the kid you have.  I say “you”, but I mean “me”.  It was ME who was a bit of a mental.  I guess I was working my way through the stages of grief, but not of a loss of something tangible, but of a potential.  A potential life for our daughter that existed only in my imagination.

There was also the sense of loss in knowing that I would have no more children, for I couldn’t, once I knew that we both carried secret mutations on a precise spot on a particular chromosome that when coupled, would make a kid with a thing, one out of every four times.  Again, a loss of potential, a fleeting wisp of an idea of a baby that I allowed only to exist in my peripheral vision.

So when I saw that Ragdoll and her deep blue eyes- kind of like the eyes of a kid I know- I had to have her, even though it wasn’t the best time for me to be looking after another life.

And if you could see that kid with a thing cuddling that cat, pushing it in a pram or touching noses together, you’d probably agree it was a good choice.  Even if you think cats are a bit shit.

Her name was Popsicle when we got her, but we wanted to name her ourselves.  I wanted to call her Johnno or Chairman Miaow.  Liam wanted to call her Fooey Fooey Meow Meow, and Nath didn’t give a toss ‘cos he hates cats.  But Coco wanted to call her Woofa, so of course that is what she was named.

Woofa is the laziest cat in the known world, and usually comes in around 5pm on a big day.  Today she didn’t.  And then tonight she didn’t and then late this evening she didn’t.  And even though I profess not to like that cat, I started to feel sick at the thought of what we might be scraping from David Low Way tomorrow before the kids got up.  I called her one more time tonight before bed, even doing the silly “pusspusspussPUSS” thing that no self respecting cat has ever heeded.

And she came.  She came all wobbly and miaaaoww-ing and strange.  I couldn’t tell immediately what was wrong although I knew it was something.

It’s her eye.  The entire thing is full of blood, so much so that at first when I held my breath and prised the lids open I thought there was no eye, just a dead red socket of eyelessness.  I’ve looked three times and taken a photo and sent it to the vet, and I’m still not convinced that what I’m seeing is her eye.  Her azure is crimson.  I want to quote Lady Macbeth and say “The multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the blue (sic) one red”.  Or something.  A bit melodramatic, but it’s her eye.  Or not an eye.  I can’t decide and I can’t sleep yet until I look one more time and be sure that someone hasn’t just done a King Lear and an “Out vile jelly” to it, like I first thought.

Seems I’ve read too much Shakespeare and Stephen King (the World’s two greatest storytellers, by the way) for sleep to come easily tonight. (But of course the bloody cat is asleep next to me on the Time Capsule, dreaming the dreams of the innocent.)

I guess you don’t see with your eyes when you dream.

Do you want to see the eye photo? (You know you do)

What are you, lovely readers, Team Dog or Pussy Lover?

…From The Ashers xxx