Monday, September 21, 2009

A Cat Concerto for Ted and Tom....

... and Felix and Seymour and TopCat and Lulu. These are all of the cats that have been important to me for one reason or another. Sadly, none of them are still here with us, except in spirit. The video below, which I initially stumbled upon over here somehow made me miss all of them even more. I realize that the cat part of this video is very cleverly patched together, but it has been incorporated into the composition so beautifully that it's become a work of art in its own right. Maybe I've turned into a crazy cat lady (who no longer has any cats), but I somehow felt Ted's spirit around me when I watched it:




This time of year contains a little sadness for me because it was around the end of September two years ago that my beloved Ted passed away. And last September my friend lost her cat Tom, which made me doubly sad. I'm certainly not a natural-born cat lover the way my husband is, but Ted changed all that for me, at least during his lifetime. Now I have an appreciation for cats that I would not have had otherwise. Ted was special. They all were. So I'm declaring September to be National Cat Memorial Month.

Here's something my friend Nancy wrote about Ted after having him as her guest for two months while we were on the road:


A study in Triangles

Ted.
His face
is a broad,
lovely triangle.
The brown front end
of his nose is a microcosmic
triangle of the larger face,with
two black nostrils defining its outer
limits. When he tips his head upward,
looking at you over his shoulder, while
laying on the bed, the large triangle-head
is inverted, nose at the top. At this moment,
a person standing in front of him sees a whitish
triangle, his soft neck and chin tipped skyward. His
rubbery black craggy lips form a two-sided arrow of a
triangle. And, of course, one can't miss the nearly isoscoles
ears. Finally, Ted's tail is the narrowest of triangles ever imagined.







9 comments:

SingLikeSassy said...

LOVE THIS! ::run to post all over Facebook and Twitter::

Kristin said...

What gorgeous pics. I think I miss Ted and I never met him.

Barbara said...

Bravo! Ted must have been quite a cat. Pets are what make life really special!

Cyndy said...

Thank you all for indulging me in this one final farewell post. Pets really do enrich the lives of their owners. I am happy being pet-free now, especially since I have all of these nice memories to look back on. And who knows, after I'm done with traveling and have settled down for good, maybe I'll get another pet. You never know...

Washington Cube said...

Oh gosh, this reminds me of my cat, Trot. He could not stand for me to do anything that didn't include him. If I played the piano he'd walk across the keys, or get on top and swat at the metronome or the pages of the music or anything to distract me. If I was writing with a fountain pen, he'd be sitting on the desk, then swipe his paw against a page of wet ink and...oh well. I had a guest kitty in my home the other day (one of the neighbors) and he got up on my desk here with the computer and was pushing his paw up the printer tray and dropping his head on the keyboard and rolling around. And who's to say that Nora kit didn't think she could play the piano? I thought she did a great job.

Cyndy said...

Aw Trot sounds like a nice cat. That's how they show their devotion I guess. I never had any piano experiences with Ted because our music studio was out back and Ted seemed to prefer violin music anyway.

I just remembered something that I haven't thought about in ages. When Ted was very young our area was much more rural than it is now. There was an old man who lived on the next property who used to sit outside his woodshed on sunny days playing his fiddle. The shed had some kind of fireplace or stove in it and for all I know the man lived in that little shed, although it was really an outbuilding to the main house. Anyway, we could see him and just barely hear him playing songs like "You are My Sunshine" off in the distance. I wish we'd taken the time to go say hello, but we never did.

When we'd call Ted, he would always come bounding home from the direction of the old man's shed. And he would always smell kind of smoky. I think Ted was keeping him company while he played.

He enjoyed the bass too, but I didn't find that out until we moved to our current location.

Also I think Nora knows she has the gift. Did you see how jealous the other cats looked? Especially the one who stomped off at the beginning.

Washington Cube said...

Nora definitely has the gift. I thought she looked inspired.

Nancy said...

Ted WAS a very special being whom I was privileged to get to know in my home. He was brighter than me--he had great judgment & managed to contort his big self to pee in the wastebasket that held the pooper scooper when I forgot to re-place his cat-box one day). Cyndy, thanks for the kitten-pics--he was a darling babe. And the catcerto was priceless and lovely.

Cyndy said...

Nancy - I could tell that Ted really enjoyed staying with you and he obviously wanted to show his appreciation by being as considerate as possible. He was a very good and smart cat. Glad you enjoyed the pictures and the music!