By G. Stassi.
It’s 4am. I am now enjoying my coffee, biscotti, and my five of my cats are sitting on the table staring at me even after they’ve eaten — it’s all mental telepathy with those guys. I’m starting to wonder about the things I do for them that were, unbeknownst to me, implanted in my mind by them.
Maybe, that’s why I’ve kept the girls’ baby socks for eleven years now and stuff them with freshly picked catnip and share my kipper snacks or moreover, even crave kipper snacks? I’m also starting to wonder why I get up at 4am now?
I’m hoping Lola, our rooster, doesn’t start this morning. My daughter Nico, knew she was a rooster from the time she was a chick but I didn’t believe her. Nico would tell to me “look at Lacey’s tail mama, she’s a rooster” so many times that I would get irritated with her. Her name was Lacey so I couldn’t help but download some Kinks for my girls and now he is “Lola”. Somehow, I thought Ray Davies could cushion the blow and help me to explain to my girls that we just can’t keep a rooster in the City in a 1100 square foot house. “She” will be moving to “his” new home today — a farm owned by our friend Jackie who runs the local feed store. It’s sad because Lola is a sweet rooster that I used to think of as an outgoing hen. My friend Jackie’s rooster – a friendly guy that used to follow her around – had a tragic accident, subsequently perished and now, she is heartbroken. Now at Jackie’s place, there is a harem of 13 wanton hens waiting for Lola and he didn’t even have to walk into a Foster Farms plant and blow himself up for this reward. Roosters can be evil but Lola is a hand-raised, house pet. It’s so appalachian around here at times.
As I ponder over my morning coffee (that I must make the old fashioned Melita way even though I have a $400 Nespresso sitting on my counter) — about why do I have a total of 15 animals to support: seven manipulative cats that knew “how to act” savagely when I tried to adopt them out as stray kittens — why do I have three obnoxious dogs that bite the vet and sit on the bed and bark incessantly when I have a dinner party — why do I have a lame polo horse that bolts with anybody but me on his back — why do I have 5 chickens when one was a sufficient supply of eggs — I start to realize that if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have the pleasure of them to write about; to spend my last penny on; to sit with in the backyard and soak up some vitamin D; to rant and rave and cry to; to sing off key to; to philosophize with while semi-intoxicated; to shamelessly pour my broken heart out to; to mourn over; to bury in the backyard; to obsessively love; or to make my heart sing so honestly.
As my friend Shelly once said to me “horses are truth — that’s all they know — if you’re not telling the truth they can’t hear you — they just don’t understand that” and I think that’s true of all my animal friends — they only see my true self — I’m not fooling a single one of them.
So why do I wake up at 4am to feed these creatures? Because every moment, deep in my soul, they feed me and I’m thankful for each and everyone one of them.
