NO PARDON FOR THE TURKEY OR THE PIG

In a fit of weakness, I changed my mind about Thanksgiving and had the big meal with family, at my daughter's house.  She worked too hard on it for me to just ignore it, so the turkey and the pig didn't get a pardon from me . . . and I feel a little guilty about it.  I gobbled down the usual fare, the traditional Thanksgiving food, and without shedding a single tear.  I ate pecan pie for dessert, visited with family and a few friends, and then came home and collapsed into a post-feast coma.  This is when you watch football on the tube, something you can do in a coma.

But, it's the day after Thanksgiving, and I'm in a slow recovery.  I won't eat much at all today, and that's good.  And I most certainly won't go shopping on this Black Friday, which I see as an event for morons.  I'm not a Christmas person, so there's no reason for me to get excited about shopping.  I got over that a long time ago.  I sat up most of the night working on a book I should've finished ten years ago, but it kept calling me out.  Time gives a writer a different perspective on an old manuscript they quit on.  For one thing, I can't remember why I stopped working on it.  Maybe I just got lazy, a malady of the mind that comes over me from time to time.  Maybe I didn't like the direction the book had taken, but that's forgotten now, and I have new ideas.

I've developed all kinds of book characters over the years, and some of them have been animals. I've written stories about dogs and cats and horses and even once about a remarkable cow.  Long ago a writer told me to write about what I knew best.  "If cowboys are your best friends, write about them." I was a college professor for a long time, but I've written only one story about a professor . . . and he was a drunk.  I've written lots of stories about cowboys, but I'm tired of doing that now.  I like stories about ordinary people who get caught up in extraordinary situations.  And what do I know best these days?  Old farts.  So, this new book endeavor is about a retirement village full of older people, and it's based on the notion that if you must get old, then do it with some good humor.  If you can't laugh at it, old age will kill you.

You know, of course, that old age won't kill you.  You hear it all the time, "Well, he just died of old age."  Well, he didn't.  He died because something wore out, or he got sick, or he slipped on a bar of soap in the shower and hit his head.  Old age didn't kill him, but sickness or injury did.  And yeah, I know that old age brings those things about.  We almost always cooperate with death, just let aging take it's course and eventually rub us out.  I wanted to create characters willing to say, "Ok, I know your coming sooner or later, Grim Reaper, but I'm not just going to sit here and wait on you.  If you want me, you'll have to run me down 'cause I'm going to still be moving."

DO ANIMALS TALK TO US?

Can animals talk?  Do they have a language of their own?  Oh, you bet they do, and it's mostly all Greek to us.  I understand only one language - English.  That puts me at a communication handicap at times, but fortunately for me, I live where most people speak the same language.  Half the people who live where I do speak Spanish, or a form of it we call Tex-Mex down here in Texas, but they also speak English.  I've studied French and Spanish, don't speak them well but can read a little of it.  Some folks might argue that I don't even speak English well, but I seem to be able to get my point across when I speak or write it. And I communicate with animals on a regular basis, and that's 'cause I understand dog and cat language.  I learned to do that by simply paying attention to their mannerisms, their barks and meows and other sounds.  The tell me when they want food, or when they want in or out, or when they want affection.  If you observe and listen, you learn their language . . . and animals are a lot smarter than most people give them credit for being.

Most people have an anthropocentric relationships with animals, and that comes from the erroneous assumption that we are superior to them.  Have you ever seen a human being as graceful as a cat? Can you jump six feet off the ground, or navigate along the top of a wood fence only a half inch wide?  No, and you can't move at an unbelievable speed either, and you can't climb a tree like a squirrel either.  Compared to a cat, you are slow and clumsy and plodding . . . and perhaps stupid. We can't take on any of the physical attributes of a cat, but they can sure take on some of ours.  Anyone who takes time to work with them knows how much they are capable of learning.  I've got an Australian cow dog with a working vocabulary of several hundred words, and that's because she pays attention to what I say.  So do my cats, and I talk to them a lot . . . and they talk back.

Animals don't need to wear a wristwatch to know what time it is, and they don't need to watch the weather reports to know what's ahead.  My cow dog knows in advance when rain is coming.  She hates it because the thunder and lightening scare her, and I can tell from her movements when something is in the air.  My cats tend to huddle up when bad weather is coming.  They tell me when it's time to eat and sleep, their two favorite things.  I've got one cat that sits and stares at me when he comes inside for the night, makes repeated trips to the bedroom, looks up at the bed and then at me, saying, "Hey, I'm sleepy.  Let's hit the sack."  And he won't go bed without me, likes to sleep curled up behind my knees or around my feet.  Another cat crawls up in my lap and gives me a little nip to remind me it's time for his rubs, his attention for the day.  They all have a way of telling me what they want, and like children, they act up sometimes.  If Gracie, a calico cat, doesn't get what she wants, she pees on something that belongs to me.

Animals can be selfish, moody, angry, sad, disappointed, happy, or playful, just like people can, and they show that through behavior.  Animals grieve when one of their own kind dies, or is sick.  My little cocker spaniel dogs knows when you feel bad and tries to comfort you.  The cats have ways of telling me when something isn't right, when they feel bad . . . and you only know these things when you pay attention, listen or observe their language.  And like with people, some dogs and cats have certain personality traits and mannerisms.  In fact, each one of them is different from the others in some way, and what works for one of them might not work for the others.  You can't treat all of them the same way.

Some of my cats, for instance, are totally dependent, while others are free spirits that want to be allowed a lot of freedom to move about and do things their way.  Not all of them are friends, and some conflicts develop between cats that don't like each other.  Sometimes that changes when they reach an accommodation.  Sometimes they never do that and you have to keep them separated.  And sometimes, you'll notice some real love affairs between two animals.  Some of our cats are more attached to the dogs than they are to the other cats, want to be around them all the time.  Do they share a language of some kind?  I think so.

Little Lives

I suppose all of us think out lives are large, or at least larger than many living things on this planet.  We live longer than most animals, if that's any guage of a big life.  Some might argue that most people have little lives because they don't have much, thinking perhaps their own life is larger because they have more.  Living large, that's a term I hear from time to time.  I never hear anyone brag about living small because they means doing without, or perhaps it means living a life without a lot of excitement or fun.  If that's true, we live in a world where most life is small.

I grew up in a mill village in South Carolina around people who didn't have much.  They worked their asses off in cotton mills, but I don't remember much complaining.  Just having a job seemed to please most of them.  My community was full of mostly small houses occupied by people who earned meager wages for the work they did.  They got by, managed to have a few nice things, and for the most part life was good for them.  Looking back on my upbringing, I think the best thing that ever happened to me was growing up around those people.  I loved them, still do.  Things have changed there these days.  The cotton mills are gone, but the little houses are still there, and they're still occupied by people who work hard to have a decent life.  I live in Texas now, but my home town isn't a lot different from where I grew up.  Most people do what it takes to get by, and some of them don't make enough money to do that and end up dependent on the government for some help.  I don't mind that, and I don't think of these people has having little lives.  Besides, it's not up to me to decide what kind of life they have.

I don't think of myself as having a large life.  We do OK, manage to make ends meet most of the time, and we have some things so people would think means large living.  My house is large, and I have several large cars.  But we don't travel much, don't have a budget for recreation, and we usually don't buy what we don't need.  Most of our money goes for basic things, and that includes paying the leeches - the blood suckers like insurance premiums, taxes, and utility bills.  But doesn't everyone?  It's the American way, and it a way that keeps a whole lot of people living little lives.  Living a good live, one that's not so small that it hurts, sure isn't a freebie . . . and no one should expect it to be.

I've come to realize that my life is dependent on little lives.  Nothing pleases me more than holding a kitten in my hands, or a puppy, or any small animal just starting life.  I love animals, all kinds of animals, and without them my life wouldn't be worth living.  My point is simple.  There is no such thing as a small life.  A little life can sometimes make my day a million dollar day, and at the same time, an encounter with a big life can sometimes make my day not worth a penny.  If someone gave me the choice between being able to hold a newborn kitten or shake hands with a sports hero or big time politician, the kitten wins hands down.  Think small and it sometimes makes you large.