The Thing Is by Ellen Bass

Catfish in my antique bread-making bowl.  Catfish is the alpha-cat around here.  He's bob-tailed and hops like a bunny rabbit.  I think the nub-for-a-tail thing has given him a complex and he overcompensates.  You know how it is.  He also thinks he's a dog and follows Cody around and acts doggish....like coming when called....something other self-respecting cats would never even consider, much less do.

Garfield sleeping on one of my many cat blankets.

Cody taking a nap wearing a new sock hat.

Gir reading over my shoulder while I was blogging.  He likes to wop the cursor ever so often and suggest synonyms or subject matter.  He totally hates people who call me a crazy cat lady.  My cats are people.  When Gir was born, his mother tried to kill him 3 times.  She kept moving all the other kittens and left him behind.  He's a special cat and has powers.  He sat by my fairy door last night and stared for over an hour at it, his head moving right and left.  I didn't see any fairies, but I'm sure he did.   Like I said, he's special.  He never once swatted at a fairy either.  Smart cat.

Garfield on a shelf watching me blog.  He's my first orange/yellow cat ever and he has the softest fur of any cat I've ever had.  It feels like mink.  Catfish daily gives his brothers and sister a cat-bath.  I have the most wonderful, caring, loving cats on earth. 

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The Thing Is
By:  Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

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That's all I got.  Rainy, cloudy day here in the deep South.  I love y'all, I really do. 

Blessings,

~*~Marion~*~


"Women, poets, and especially artists, like cats; delicate natures only can realize their sensitive systems." ~Helen M. Winslow

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"I love cats because I love my home and after a while they become its visible soul." ~Jean Cocteau

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"Cats have intercepted my footsteps at the ankle for so long that my gait, both at home and on tour, has been compared to that of a man wading through low surf." ~Roy Blount, Jr

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"People who love cats have some of the biggest hearts around." ~Susan Easterly

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"It always gives me a shiver when I see a cat seeing what I can't see." ~Eleanor Farjeon

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"A cat pours his body on the floor like water." ~William Lyon Phelps