Gargoyle and Big Foot

A not-so-nice someone from my past quietly joined my list of followers and I just as quietly blocked the person.  No emotion.  A simple, not happening.  No further thought about it until today when out of the primordial ooze of sleep deprivation I rose . . .

Big Foot & the horse she rode in on
by Siniharraka Urban Photography

 My current WIP isn’t progressing.  I’ve been working on the same paragraph for about two days, not so much because it’s a difficult passage but because of this pickpocket, water loving, newly arrived noodle.  There are horrible and marvellous things happening in the world at large, but in the Writing Closet, there is only Big Foot.

We’d long been thinking Big Nose needed a friend, but he’s such a wonderful dog, we feared the chances of getting a canine version of the Gargoyle Possum.  You remember him.  The stray cat who turned out to be a bloodthirsty desperado with a brain tumour.

Gargoyle Possom

Big Foot is no Gargoyle Possum.  She brings all the clownery of puppyhood but inside a calm and grounded personality.  When she starts sleeping through the night, I may even begin to love her.  (Okay, so I already love her.)

 All the cats including Gargoyle have adjusted amazingly to Big Foot.  In an aura of complaisance, we noticed one of Gargoyle’s paws twitched when he slept but if you have dogs, a twitching paw doesn’t compare. 

So one afternoon, I’m snoozing on the couch with Big Foot when the slap of body part against wood wakes me up.  The Butler, who’s not really paying attention, says it’s Gargoyle twitching in his sleep.  Gargoyle is out of the Butler’s line of vision, but I see the cat’s upper body rise and slam against the floor.  The Butler’s examination makes Gargoyle march indignantly into the back garden and the incident gets swept away by Big Foot doing a flying leap onto the kitchen table.

The next morning, the Butler goes into town.  Big Foot settles into her morning nap.  There are various cat bodies scattered around making cat snore music.  I’m at the computer writing when Gargoyle goes into grand mal seizure.

If you’ve never seen a cat have a grand mal, don’t put it on your bucket list.

The vet wanted us to see if Gargoyle had another fit before medicating him.  Fuck this.  The cat has a brain tumour.  Of course he’s going to have another one.  We’re now in the stage of continued petit mals until the meds are regulated, but everyone (except, presumably Gargoyle) knows this is the last stretch for him.  We’d hoped he’d go quietly in his sleep, but he’s never been an easy cat, has he?

There’s no sense of Alpha-Omega for me in this juxtaposition of Big Foot and Gargoyle.  It’s the story that’s happening now in my anonymous little life.  While I toss tennis balls and take shoes away from Big Foot, Gargoyle’s emergency rectal dose is always within reach. 

Accepting inconsequential details
by Siniharraka Urban Photography

Every life is made up of these inconsequential details.  The heroic outburst of the Paris rose, the variety of butterflies around the buddleia, the buzzard and fox sightings, Big Nose’s hydrotherapy and Bunny Butt’s latest kill, these are the warp and weft of my existence. 

So it is that when these inconsequential details are attacked, taken from us, something so small that it seems childish to complain, that’s actually where something greater, more destructive starts.  Awards that are only allowed display in the guest bathroom.  A favourite TV show always interrupted.  A brazen hussy of a red dahlia ripped up by the roots.

The message here is that your right to small little pleasures pales in comparison to mine.  Or maybe even that this right doesn’t exist for you.  That, my friend, is a scary message.  On an interpersonal level, it’s new stepchildren insulting the bride’s friends at the wedding lunch.  On the global level, it’s the genital mutilation of all females aged 11 to 45.  Or happy dances over the most recent genocide.

Trollop
by Siniharraka Urban Photography

In my garden, there grows an inconsequential detail I call trollops.  Malopes, to the uninitiated.  El Punko, who has narcoleptic episodes when I discuss the garden, took photos of them for his urban photography website.  The message here is that exercising my right to have small little pleasures actually gives him pleasure.

With people like that in my life, not-so-nice someones from my past will continue to be quietly blocked.  If only it were so easy to block the not-so-nice from doing harm on the global level.