Still Thinking about cats

Yes, I'm still thinking about cats. When I was five, six, years old, there was very often a kitten spotted under a car on the block; coaxing it out took hours, and everybody my size, even from the next block, would work at it. Sometimes people were allowed by their folks to take such a found kitten home. Not me, not then. Finally, when I was maybe in fifth or sixth grade, I actually got permission. So the chore of coaxing them out must have continued for years.

That cat was three colors, and also had the white belly. Is that a calico cat? I seriously don't know if she had a name. My cousins delighted in helping me secret her upstairs on days when their family was joining us for a dressy dinner and the long white tablecloths hung way down over the table edges; we'd let her hid under that table. They just loved seeing my mother, enraged and hurrying, wave the broom wildly and chase the cat all over until she herded it back into the basement, especially if that didn't happen until the decorous eating of dinner was well under way. High spot of the day. No, I never, ever, did that without cousinly coaching. We didn't use tablecloths like that for our quick and quiet meals, anyhow.

That cat rode on my shoulder all the time, when i wasn't in school. During the late grades, there were football games and fights on the corner to attend, and if I went, I had the cat with me. Girls, and cats, were only spectators. I think I used to take her with me on the bicycle too, but I have no idea how. Did I try to put her in basket? I rode that bicycle to the library every day for years, in the summer. Mr. Finendagen timed me, once, because his car was riding along next to me, and he told Catherine that I was going thirty-five miles an hour. Speedometers weren't so trustworthy then, I bet, or maybe classmates dad's weren't altogether trustworthy either. In eighth grade, I still used the bike a lot; I used to take it to school, even, altho that was only two blocks away. Because I can remember Ellen Jures became a constant bike buddy that year. And Jackie Hierens took me to her house, and we went on my bike.

I think her kind mother was trying to help Jackie interest me in going to Trinity.

Helenium

In the 1950s, the landlord had a back yard with a shady tree. I used to put the playpen under the tree and kneel by it, trying to plant or weed. Don't recall any result except that a stray kitten began to hang round me and the playpen, and so ingratiated itself that when we moved to Hinsdale, we went to a lot of trouble to safely bring with us a totally outdoor cat. God only knew what was on that cat, we didn't let it touch kids, but it loyally spent hours surveying the buggy with Beth in it, making sure nobody bothered that buggy. Truly an alley cat, it didn't want petting, which it didn't get; it did get fed very regularly.

When I was a kid, I'd been allowed to have a "basement" cat, not allowed in the living rooms but it hung out on the top stair. Yes, open the door to go down to the basement, and there'd be that cat, right in the way. Not ideal. It got petted a lot. Mrs. Spry, the neighbor on the far corner, did try to educate me and my family to vets and spaying, but farm families transported to suburbs don't spend on vets even for basement cats. On the other hand, my mother did teach kittens to jump rope. We humans held the ends of the rope.

The library in Hinsdale had books on gardening, and I got hold of The Lazy Gardener by some lovely writer who strongly and gaily recommended helenium, growing in masses, and taking totally no care. After lo, these many years, I did last year get hold of some helenium, the Mardi Gras lately developed, from Bluestone, and I am quite happy with it. Haven't got any twelve feet tall stretches -- that's what I pictured in the book -- they're short and heavily floral and quite sturdy and like drought.

Time's been going by me

It's embarrassing to see that the daylilies are blooming now, and I've not been trying to keep in touch with you at all. July is scary, and I fear lowering humidity and whatever the trees have been strewing. Why am I not yet in Seattle?

Well, the daylilies are lovely.