Last night, for the second time in a week, Dean got himself stuck in a closet. We would've never known, but for Slane's incessant clawing at the carpeted threshold outside the closet door, meowing and complaining until we (okay, Peg) finally crawled out of bed to release his little "brother".
The same thing happened a few days ago. Peg came home from work and tucked a jacket in the hall closet. Maybe an hour went by. Then I noticed Slane on his hind legs, pawing at the door and vocalizing his displeasure at something or other. I walked over and pulled open the door, and out trotted Dean, trying to look nonchalant at his confinement.
But what's strange is that we never heard Dean crying for his release. In fact, upon reflection, we realized we'd never heard Dean meow, ever. We began to wonder if something was wrong with our little guy.
He's about a three-quarter scale cat, and we have always figured he must've been the runt of his litter. Our sense of size, or the lack thereof, is accentuated by the fact that his brother by a different mother is something of a giant, with a huge melon head.
And Dean has his other challenges. A toenail-looking membrane protrudes from the corner of his left eye--Peg wanted to fish it out when he first came home, thinking it didn't belong there, but that was over seven months ago. He misses when he tries to jump onto furniture. sometimes slamming into the back of the couch or the side of the bed. His balance is sometimes a little off, causing him to fall off the furniture even when he's successful in his leap.
So maybe Dean is a little handicapped, to use a word that's probably anathema in 2021.
But he can, in fact, verbalize, even if he never howls or meows. His purring in bed at night sounds like a Volkswagen bus revving next to our ears. He has a ferocious growl, directed only at his brother, and only when he thinks Slane wants to swipe one of his filberts (Dean loves to steal filberts and the occasional almond from the nut bowl, carry them around in his mouth, and hide them around the apartment. Peg fished maybe a dozen out from under the couch last week).
As it turns out, some cats just don't meow.
The vocalization is an artifact of when they were kittens trying to communicate with their mother. Cats apparently never meow at each other, only humans. So the more "domestic" the cat, supposedly, the more likely he is to meow.
Or at least that's the conventional wisdom on the subject. I'm not sure I buy it. Slane is by far the more "wild" of the two cat sons, eschewing human touch and mostly keeping to himself, even if he likes being in the same room with us. But his meow can be heard from one end of the apartment to the other when he wants something. Go figure.
So even if Dean has his challenges, maybe leftovers from a tough kittenhood, there's no concern in his reticence. He is just a cat of few words.
A little heavy-hearted this morning at what will be my last full day here in the Solarium apartment. Tomorrow we're headed back to Florida for a week of work and appointments of one kind or another. From this point forward, the time split between here and Florida will be reversed, as the pandemic ends and the wheels of litigation grind back into motion. I'll mostly live there, and come up here when I can. P will continue to work up here.
The separation implicit in that arrangement pains me, sort of, in that it doesn't yet seem real. Is this really the end of our days up here on Southside Hill, days that began with a balmy boat-ride on Seneca Lake, then wound through snows and weekend adventures all over the upstate, and now draw to a close during another warm week as this place explodes back to life? We will look back on this time and place as maybe the best of our lives, just as we view with reverie those magic days on the farm at the beginning of the pandemic, growing closer in our little bubble cut off from the rest of the world.
This moment marks the end of that, as well. From here on out, there will be workdays in the office, and in the OR, and we'll live like every other American couple who see each other at the end of the day and upon our return from work-related travel. The farm will serve as a refuge and escape, but probably never again the place where we spend every day. We'll always keep Wyldswood, however, as it has become one of those liminal places for us, a space where something magical or holy hangs in the air. I find myself sighing at the thought of it, soft late afternoon light flowing through spanish moss.
We are hanging onto a piece of Corning, as well, and will likely own a home up here on the hill before the summer ends. Of all the places I've lived--and there have been quite a few--this is the only one that has grown to feel like home, that perfectly dovetails with my value system and sense of the aesthetic. I make fun of the stoic blandness of the locals, and their propensity to follow the rules no matter how silly, but I will genuinely miss my time living among them. Maybe one day the sojourners will finally get to come on home, now that at the end of the journey we figured out where home abides.
The refrigerator beeps five times every sixty seconds, reminding me to call Chad about the fact that everything in there is fast approaching room temperature. Birds chirp outside, louder this morning because we left the windows open all night to let in the fresh, cool night air. Spring is truly here.
Maybe we'll walk down the hill tonight to the Elks Lodge for wings. It's Thursday, after all. Another goodbye.
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