I think of this blog as primarily a place to talk about art...creative process...things that inspire...things that are beautiful. But sometimes life jumps in and holds all that hostage for a bit. I'm a cat person. I've been a dog person too, but I've been a cat person since before I have fully formed memories. My mom told me that I would dress up our old tomcat in doll clothes and drive him around in a baby carriage when we lived out in the country in Kentucky. We moved to Indiana just before I turned three, so what this tells me is that my first creative endeavor was as a feline stylist. Apparently he would actually tolerate being costumed for a period of time and then he would disappear for a few days. Poor guy. Cats have always been in my life. Growing up in Indiana, we had a cat (who then had kittens...when you're eight or nine, that is just so much fun) and at least one other who wandered in and adopted us with a big gash on his shoulder. My mom treated that gash about a dozen times before it finally healed. Since living in Nashville...um, that would be 31 1/2 years...I've always had a cat. Or cats. When my oldest son was a freshman in high school, we had 3 dogs, 2 cats, 2 kids, and one mom. A friend of his was feeding a cat who was about 2 years old that had been dumped. It was October, starting to get cold, and the friend's parents said they could not adopt the cat. Caleb asked me several times if we could take the cat. Several times I said no, repeating the perfectly logical explanation that we had 3 dogs, 2 cats, 2 kids and one mom. I didn't think I was being unreasonable...I thought I was being sane. So, in Caleb's brilliant, adolescent, manipulative wisdom (knowing his mom so well), he decided that I should meet the cat I was saying no to. "Hey mom, this is Addie. I knew you'd at least want to meet him. I know we can't keep him, because, um, you said no. I'll figure something out...just don't know what it will be...." After 15 years of being amused by Addie's quirkiness, left over from whatever happened to him in those first couple years of his life before he landed with us on Benson Street, and listening to his part-Siamese yowling, and realizing he would never fully accept the two little cat brothers that Caleb brought to me from Texas a few years ago (another story), and finding him sleeping on the corner of my bed in the winter, and purring like nothing you've ever heard when he got a head scratch or a back rub, I lost him this week. My other son, who went with me to our very kind and wise vet, kept reminding me that he was probably the equivalent of a human centenarian. It was time. He was ready. Doesn't make it easy though to say good bye. Addie in 2013.
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Hi, I'm Donna. Long time artisan/creative. Full time work in nonprofit world. Mother of two adult sons. Currently, also mother of two cats. Recent PostsThe patience project. Because patience is a virtue. And a creative challenge.
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