I'm Happy

I hate to admit it in a way, because maybe some of you don't know, because I usually blog only when worn out, that I am very happy. I love this house I live in. The cherry tree is in bloom. I have been sad lately, with the loss of my dear Hopi. I try to sleep and I wake up in the memory of Moby's head falling, as he died and it hurts. I loved them.

I have a life I could not have dreamed I would ever have, when deep in the darkness of life in the mental health system. I get to help cats. I meet tons of people, all half dark and half light, some more one way than the other. I am very blessed with a life I sometimes feel I don't deserve, with a wonderful place to live now. Because I remember all those without.

I lay on my couch, a good couch bought from Goodwill, sturdy and comfortable, nestled into a sleeping bag that I got out of a dumpster behind the Julian hotel years ago, and look out at that cherry tree blooming. I love the sleeping bag. It is cozy, blue and red plaid flannel, and comforting and my cats love it, too. I had two of them that I fished out of that dumpster and washed, but I gave one to someone along the way. I can't remember who.

It is a treasure of mine. It will be with me until it falls apart completely.

I try not to think very much of Hopi right now because I cry then. Inconsolable. Not even Electra, who also loved Hopi and misses her greatly, can comfort me. Vision and Miss Daisy cry out in their sleep and have nightmares. It's Moby they miss. Miss Daisy is back to the nightmares she's had since she came to me, the one's about the abuse she endured before she came to me when somebody tried to take her out and kill her.

She will kick a back leg over and over, then it's like she's running in her sleep. She's crying out and then her whole body will make a violent jerk. Then I wake her but I make sure my arms are around her first so she knows now she's wrapped up in somebody's heart who loves her.

She's deaf because somebody tried to kill her, with a gun I think. They missed and she ran. I think they had her by the back leg but she got away and ran for it until her paws, in the hundred degree heat, on the searing pavement, were burned and bloody. She ran for it, and that farmer heard her crying. That kind farmer.

I have her to cling to in these losses and she has me. And Vision, the very old river girl, the granddaughter of Captain Courageous, who was the Angel of the River, she is still with me, too. Captain Courageous died along the river. The old man, Ray, who fed her since she was a kitten, who promised for a decade, to take her home with him, and he never did. He let her die down there, sick and slow. I was gone. When I heard, I searched the banks for three days.

The old man Ray is full of shit and was always full of lies and empty promises and too much beer and flatulence. He finally told me the truth about himself. He said everybody used to call him "Mr. Inertia" because he never did anything he said he'd do. Then he said, "Jody, the name still fits me." And that's how he explained away Captain Courageous' horrible death alone along the river.

I never spoke another word to Ray in my life and I never will.

It's been hard for us all here, these losses. Harder on some than others.

My dear Hopi, I will miss you. One day, one day our souls shall join together.

My dear Hopi.

I am happy and maybe that sounds strange next to my sorrow over the loss of my friends. It isn't strange at all. I am sad, but the sadness will not sting with time and I truely do love my life helping out the strays and I do love this wonderful house where I now live and that beautiful blooming cherry tree.

I would not trade exposing myself to the joy even if it must be tainted with sadness.

I remember my father once talked about hungry stray cats down by the boat ramp in the town where he lived. I said "Why dont' you feed them?"

He said, "But I might get sick and miss some days, or I might go for a vacation and not be able to feed them while I'm gone and then they'd be expecting food and get none."

I said "So you're going to let them starve and die for these reasons?"

"Well I don't want to see them hungry," he said, "but I don't want to think they're starving if I miss some days and what if they die, that would hurt me."

A few months later, he told me someone shot them all. He seemed relieved.