sofia in the cat chute
Today I dedicated to my cat friend. She has outgrown kitten. A kitten she could climb my pants leg and her claws merely tickled. I sat and held her for a full hour listening to Peggy Lee in 1961 and silence. I've been sitting here holding her for quite awhile. She stretches out and relaxes into a nap with head hanging over to the side or hanging back. She is the size of a full grown gray squirrel now. The squirrels and chipmunks gambol outside the windows and entertain her. Their heads and faces are shaped like a cat's. Squirrels are much like cats except they have fingers more articulated than cats. Sofia is colored like a gray squirrel, has a similar gray to a raccoon. Her stripes are faint like a coon's stripes. I like that she has the colors of some of our wildlife neighbors. There is a close relationship between squirrels and cats. Their bodies and legs are similar, their faces too. Cats have quick movements like the squirrels and excellent balance.
sofia and string
Questioning the spelling of cat's name. I like it both with ph and f thinking either one would do. As time goes by, my mind makes up arguments for using f. Writing her name under the picture at the top, the f automatically happened. I saw it and liked it, thought this is how I want to spell Sofia. It is a city in Bulgaria. It is a name of goddess. Southeastern Europe was Neolithic goddess country. A pyramid like an Egyptian pyramid has been found in Bulgaria. It had been there so long, topsoil covered it and a forest grew on it. A French archaeologist thought the mountain's shape too regular to have happened naturally. He investigated, found the pyramid and a city around it, tunnels, a major find. I rode a train through Bulgaria in 1972. It stopped at the Sofia station. I did not get off. The poverty in that part of the world intimidated me.
sofia plays
Sofia has just now found the source of her favorite toy, string. I tied a small natural sponge to a length of about four feet of string. She plays with the string more than the sponge. The knot at the end of the string is of more interest to her than the sponge. It is our toy we play with together. I make the string move and hop. She knows I'm making the string do those things. She likes for me to make the string come to life. She will play with it tirelessly. She has discovered the spool of string I had sitting on the desk I'd cut the string from. She knocked it over, sniffed it, felt it and realized it was more string. It was on. She took hold of it like another kitten, rolled onto her back kicking with her back feet, holding it with her front feet and feeling it with her teeth. It was like she had found the source of her joy. She rolled around with it until it rolled off the desk to the floor. I picked it up and gave it back to her. No interest. Game over.
sofia
Geraldine the mail carrier brought Christmas today. A big box with Sofia's new window seat. A smaller box with a cat hammock for under a small table or chair. A box-sized envelope with Ron Padgett's Collected Poems and a smaller package with Peggy Lee at Basin Street East. The jackpot. My generation of poets is publishing their collected poems and autobiographies now. Am now reading in Peter Townshend's autobio, Who I Am. He is a good writer, tells a good story, tells it well. It is interesting to see inside the London rock n roll world in the early Sixties when the Stones, Clapton, the Kinks, the Who were playing small clubs. The box the window seat came in made a great cat toy for the day. Put it on the floor, cat occupied for hours. The packaging paper was endlessly fun. I threw the sponge and string into the box while cat was playing in the paper. It was like tossing a grenade in. The interior of the box exploded. Cat in playground heaven.
sofia
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Sweet Sofia.
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