Cats and Childhood Ghosts

Remember that cat sticker I posted a little more than a week ago? Well, since then I've found several more pieces of cat art along Finchley Road, all obviously by the same person.

I always had dogs growing up, but when I went to college and became an apartment dweller I switched to cats. They're just easier and less demanding as indoor pets. I had three of them in succession for many years -- Angeles, Howard and Armenia. Armenia died in 2009, right around the time I met Dave, and he brought dogs back into my life. But now it seems that cats are reasserting their presence, both via art on the street and with neighborhood felines wandering through our garden!

(Incidentally, I do not believe in the cat/dog dichotomy. I think it's possible to love both, and I do.)

I was about to get into bed last night when some yowling started up on the patio right outside the bedroom window. I ran for a flashlight and found Blackie and Bell the Bengal face-to-face out there, having a standoff. They're getting quite brazen, coming right up to the house. Even when Olga was here cats would occasionally wander across the yard, but now they're much more confident in their exploring.  Dave occasionally spots one right outside the back door. (By the time I turn around it's inevitably gone.)

I saw Bell the Bengal -- at least, I'm pretty sure it was her, though she wasn't wearing her distinctive collar -- on the sidewalk a couple of blocks away as I walked home the other day. I wonder how widely these cats roam? (According to this web site, which is selling a nifty GPS tracker that lets owners monitor their cats' whereabouts, "an average male outdoor cat may have a territory of a few acres, while a female’s may be much smaller." If I had an outdoor cat I would love a device like this! How fascinating, to know your cats' location at any given time!)

After I posted my last garden cam video, showing the cats and foxes scaling the back wall to get in and out of the garden, my brother sent me a text: "Are you going to become the weird old retired man that irritates the neighbors by cultivating 20 stray cats?" I told him I was hardly cultivating them, and besides I don't think they're strays -- they're too well-fed. I think they're all pets that are allowed to roam.

I got somber news last night from the sister of a childhood friend in Florida. Apparently my friend, who is my age, is in Hospice care dying from cancer. I haven't been in close contact with this woman for many years -- I last saw her in person shortly before I moved to New York in 2000, and hadn't seen her for a long time before that. But I'm still shocked by this news. She lived down the street from me with her sisters when we were in elementary school and we played together all the time.

I posted this photo from the mid 1970's once before, when I learned my childhood friend Becky (behind me above) had died. Theresa, the friend who is now dying, is at left. A few months ago I learned that another childhood friend from my neighborhood, Tony, had also died.

It's a very strange feeling to realize that your world is passing away, to be inherited by younger people. I've been getting that sense for a while now, with younger people asserting themselves more and more in the culture and at the ballot box, and my Generation X aging. Of course it's inevitable, and X is a relatively small generation anyway -- our cultural influence (Nirvana) always lived in the shadow of the Boomers. Now we're being swamped by Millennials and Gen Z!

On a brighter note -- but also related to my childhood, so not totally off-topic -- I lamented in my post about the wildlife stickers that I didn't know more about them or the artists whose paintings were featured. Reader Ellen D. found an excellent article about the stickers by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Museum. "In 2000, the National Wildlife Federation donated the artwork used to produce their conservation stamps to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The collection comprises over 3,000 small-scale watercolors by 146 artists and represents over 1,000 species from all regions of the country," it said.

It also named some of the artists, and in my post I now see the work of Walter Ferguson (the badger), Chuck Ripper (the tree snail, polar bears and red oak), and Maynard Reece (the sunfish). I also see the signatures of Donald L. Malick (the piñon jay) and M. Saito (the railroad vine). I still can't identify who painted the others, but if you have any interest at all in the stickers and the history please check out the article!