SAVANNAH. What did you do? What did you do?
It was five in the morning, a virtuous hour, or so I suddenly discovered I’d assumed. I’d been up since three: fed the animals, checked the email, read something, wrote something, then felt deflated and migrated to the couch for a little break.
Elwood the cat has been losing weight. He’s worried me. So I’ve been feeding him various cans of hypoallergenic, high-calorie, high-priced food. Rabbit. Duck.
The duck, although I did not understand this as I lay on the couch in the pre-dawn quiet, wondering if I would have enough energy to continue my day without going back to bed, was not good for Elwood. It had given him what used to be known as the scours. His racing back and forth, of which I was dimly aware, was perhaps driven by his cramping, uncomfortable guts.
Anyway. I remember thinking it was cute, that Jake and Elwood were playing, that this was good. Like I say–out of the corner of my eye. But then–on one of the passes–I saw Elwood gather himself with that unmistakeable cat athleticism and leap onto a set of shelves. But he wasn’t done. He was headed for the mantlepiece. And in the process, he shoved off, with his thrusting hind foot, the peachblow satin glass melon vase that was one of only two pieces of my grandfather’s art-glass collection my mother chose to keep.
I’d already shrieked “Elwood!” in the instant before I watched the vase do a graceful half-gainer off the shelf and shatter rather spectacularly on the hardwood floor. Then there were some very loud “No! No! Noooos!” from me, and the cats scattered, and the dog took refuge in the bedroom and shivered at my obvious fury and, after I had mastered myself, the noise of the vacuum cleaner.
The vase is irreparable. I haven’t yet told my mother. The thing is–the thing is–I had used museum putty to glue this particular vase to its shelf. And it hadn’t worked at all. Among the shards (you can see it on the upturned bottom of the vase at the center left of the photo) is what remains of one piece of the putty. It’s still firmly stuck to a layer of paint, a layer that treacherously peeled up as soon as the cat’s hind foot torqued the vase out of the vertical.
I should have known, I think. I should have known, I should have put that vase and its companion, the cranberry-glass ewer, in the china cabinet or somewhere away from wild, upset-stomached early-morning racing cats. I should have. And now the cranberry-glass ewer is safely shut up with the Austrian crystal. But the vase remains in shards, in a plastic grocery bag on the stoop right outside the door; I can’t bring myself to throw it away.
Paint treachery. Destructive animals. Can’t throw away the shards, but can’t keep them inside the house. Happy new year. Yet somehow I don’t care, can’t care. The peachblow vase will join the cobalt ewer and every other fragile, valuable thing I’ve lost to pets. Does it matter? Well. No, it doesn’t. Not even a little. Not a shred. There are just, going forward, the memories of that half-gainer, and they exist solely in my head. There may be anger from my mother–deserved anger–but she won’t literally kill me, and absent that, I’ll go forward.
And buy more rabbit cat food, and less duck.
Morning-Land 