Pat's Rose is Old. We Fortify Ourselves in Art. Works for Cats, Too, Likely for Guinea Pigs and Parrots. For the Rest, Applications Being Accepted.

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Brother Peter Moore unearthed this.

The House Dog's Grave

by Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)

I've changed my ways a little; I cannot now

Run with you in the evenings along the shore,

Except in a kind of dream; and you,

If you dream a moment,

You see me there.

So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front door

Where I used to scratch to go out or in,

And you'd soon open; leave on the kitchen floor

The marks of my drinking-pan.

I cannot lie by your fire as I used to do

On the warm stone,

Nor at the foot of your bed; no,

All the nights through I lie alone.

But your kind thought has laid me less than six feet

Outside your window where firelight so often plays,

And where you sit to read‚

And I fear often grieving for me‚

Every night your lamplight lies on my place.

You, man and woman, live so long, it is hard

To think of you ever dying.

A little dog would get tired, living so long.

I hope that when you are lying

Under the ground like me your lives will appear

As good and joyful as mine.

No, dears, that's too much hope:

You are not so well cared for as I have been.

And never have known the passionate undivided

Fidelities that I knew.

Your minds are perhaps too active, too many-sided...

But to me you were true.

You were never masters, but friends. I was your friend.

I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures

To the end and far past the end. If this is my end,

I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.

The Haircut. The Visitation.

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Got a nine dollar haircut and some advice besides from J. the stylist, who tells everyone -- me, the salon cat, his parents -- that funerals weird him out so he will never ever go to any. His parents understand, he says. I think they have spent their lives understanding.

And now to the visitation, 5p for family, 6-8p for hoi polloi. This will be a moment. We have not seen mom's body. If tears heal, let's drag in the lepers and the hard of heart because I think I know what's to come. If not now, when? J. the stylist said one of the things he does not like about funerals is what he considers how many of the tears sad are false, or at least irrelevant, since (and I'm paraphrasing here):

What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her?

Perhaps, that's true. But give true tears credit, and false tears, too, for I think some don't weep in the moment, but store their sorrow up for later on. It's natural as flowers in spring. Just wait.

And let us remember the rest of Hamlet's thought.

Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.

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