The Year of the Tiger: Iris the Cat

Iris the cat looking at herself.

Iris was feral...wild through and through and yet she allowed herself to share space in my life for 12 years.

The day she arrived, in the outstretched hands of a teenage neighbor, her eyes were still sealed shut and she fit snugly into the palm of my hand. She had been found where her mother had dropped her while moving her brood. By the time Iris's eyes opened she ruled the cottage including me and my guy, 2 Irish Setters, an Old English Sheepdog, and a coop full of Rhode Island Reds.

Never one to give away her power she used the singular "OW" for all communication rather than the obliging "MEOW" that connotes attachment.

Her favorite activity was snake hunting back in the fields behind the house. She would approach with the creature draped through her jaws calling "OW. OW" as she came closer to the door. Once she returned home with a full grown rabbit carried through her cat window and arranged like a Florentine still life outside the kitchen door.

I do not condone domestic cats marauding the landscape decimating the bird and small mammal population. I would not allow a domestic cat to do so. Iris was a wild being and I respected her origins and her chemistry and her genes. As a result I experienced the closest thing to living with a tiger, albeit in miniature, that I could imagine.

Today I celebrate that relationship and the many gifts it brought into my life. Thanks Iris, you were indeed a Rainbow Goddess spreading across the sky of my life.

Voluntary Simplicity

From 1975 through 1979 my guy and I lived out of the city. We subscribed to Mother Earth News and Organic Gardening magazine and started a new life in a tiny cottage bordered by a field of wild grasses and a large woodlot. We had already given up phone service. Now we added in letting go of the TV, radio and the use of electricity. Our evenings were mellowed by the soft glow of kerosene lamps.

We fell in love with an antique wood stove discovered in the back corner of a country flea market. I basked in the warmth while handstitching a quilt from 22 Oxford shirts previously worn to his job at IBM.



I raised Rhode Island Reds, the chicks living in a box in the kitchen until they were ready to move out to the little shake shingled house beside the compost pile. I named my rooster Tip O'Neil, the speaker of the house.

Bramble, the Old English Sheepdog and Brandy,the Irish Setter were trained to walk along the outside border of the large garden but that didn't keep Bramble from leaning her head in off the pathway to steal the ripe and luscious Roma tomatoes. Munch. Munch.

Here, two blocks from the shore of Lake Erie, in the delicious quiet I began to live my artist dream, drawing and painting for hours each day and riding my bicycle over to receive my 'Tuesday's reviews' while visiting Mr. and Mrs. Domonkas.

This is a watercolor of my cottage and my fella relaxing beside the old wood stove.

Sharmon is correct I was being influenced by Chagall and Matisse and also Miro who taught me that "Every blade of grass has a beautiful soul, courage consists of staying home and close to nature. Nature who takes no account of our calmaties." I've loved that wisdom ever since.