Light-duty, artistic CO2 laser cutting and engraving. Laser jobshops located in Colorado and County Donegal.
08/17/2024
CATURDAY
Lessons in Navigation…
First, I need to correct something I said last Caturday about Cleo’s origin. My surrogate daughter did, indeed, rescue her from under a car in an alley in a rainstorm, but Cleo was already living with the girl . She was hiding under a car after being thrown against a wall by the girl’s horrid, abusive mother.
But the way the girl originally found Cleo was that Cleo fell out of the sky! And that requires a bit of explanation.
The girl was enjoying a rare sunny day in Tullamore, sitting in a chair with a pillow in her lap. She had just moved a couple of feet to stay in the sunshine when Cleo fell out of the sky onto the pillow in her lap! The girl soon figured out that Cleo‘s mother had been carrying her along the rooftop above her. Mama cat slipped and dropped Cleo. The kitten probably would’ve been killed by the three-story fall but, instead, Cleo dropped right onto the pillow in her lap!
Can you say karma?
Later, after the girl and Cleo fled her abusive mother and moved in with me in Donegal. Later, the girl went away to college and left Cleo with me.
A few years later, I had taken Cleo to the vet in Derry to update her rabies vaccination. We were leaving, with Cleo loose in my car because she didn’t mind riding in the car, but she hated riding in the car in her carrier. Cleo depressed the electric window opener switch, and jumped out the window! By the time I jumped out of the car, she’d gone missing under the sea of cars in the vets car park. People from the Vet and myself search for hours to no avail.
Over the next several days, the Vet and I set out food in a humane cat trap with no results. I postered the area with no results. After three weeks, I was at wits end!
In desperation, I used a ruler and drew a line on a map, straight from the vets to my house. I went back to Derry and postered along that line. Two days later, I got a phone call from a girl who said, ” I have your cat”!
I broke every speed limit between my house and the girls house in the north part of Derry! She lived about 5 miles from the Vet . It turned out that the girls house was as far north as you can get in, Derry before running into miles of open pasture which, in the heat wave Ireland was experiencing at the time, might as well have been the Sahara desert.
Cleo had the good sense to stop and find a cat lover to mooch off of until the weather got better and she could continue her journey. And that cat lover saw my posters.
Cleo was overjoyed to get back to my house and I was overjoyed to have her home! And I was rather astounded when I examined the map and found that the line I had drawn went smack-dab through that girls house!
So what’s more accurate? SatNav or CatNav?
Cleo may have set a record as the world‘s most well-traveled cat. Cleo crossed the Atlantic 13 times, coming with me when I avoided the Irish winters by going to my original home in Colorado. After I had spinal surgery in 2019, I had to retire in Colorado and found that Cleo liked it better there than in Ireland. She couldn’t relieve herself in Ireland and bury it with dirt because there was no dirt to be found; only grass and moss. Colorado has plenty of nice dirt for her to cover her leavings.
Cleo succumbed July 11 to complications arising from an attack by my next-door neighbors' dog. The last thing she did on this earth was to give me a kitty kiss before she died in my arms. On coming Caturdays, I will keep Cleo's spirit alive by posting more stories about Cleo's other amazing intellectual abilities.
Cleo’s story may not yet be over, but I need your help. If you believe in reincarnation, as do about 60% of the world’s religious population, I will ask you to be on the lookout for any female tuxedo kittens born on or about this coming August 29. The closer to Colorado the better . Don’t puzzle yourself about the date; it’s a Buddhist thing.
