Coming Home

The way home from Illinois takes about five hours.

This morning, friends in Wisconsin were warning about a snowstorm.  Gary checked Accuweather.com and said the same.  There would be snow and sleet.  Maybe I should stay another day, he thought.

I looked at Accuweather, too, but the hourly forecast said that the temperatures all day from Illinois to Wisconsin would be in the mid-40s during the time I would be driving.  There might be rain, but snow was very unlikely.

In fact there never was any precipitation all day.  The roads were good and overcast days are perfect for travel. Bright sun can hurt my eyes. If it snowed anywhere, the snow had melted when it rained in the early morning.

Almost immediately, I was thrilled to see a great blue heron on the River Road as I left Dixon.  Soon after turkey vultures were circling above Highway 2, waiting to see if any of us motorists killed anything for them.

The Rock River, which I crossed and criss-crossed several times between Dixon and Milton, Wisconsin, is running high.  The melting Wisconsin snow is rushing down the river to Illinois.  It wouldn't surprise me if it overflows the bank as it has many times in the past.

Farther north, ducks and geese were on their way north.  At Lake Butte des Morts at Oshkosh, I saw flocks of scaup, though without a telescope (and speeding along at 65 miles per hour) I couldn't identify if they were lesser or greater scaup. At Little Lake Butte des Morts at Menasha, I saw my first tern of the season.  King birds sat on telephone wires.

Tomorrow I have to go to the Mosquito Hill Nature Center near New London for a meeting so I will stop at Van Patten Road and see which of the migratory birds have arrived.

It does feel so good to be home.

Last Day in Illinois

This afternoon, I helped Gary with work around the farm yard. My job was pulling up vines. It was the first gardening of the season so I enjoyed that, though I'll have a sore back tonight.

Now Gary is packing up his laundry and various gadgets he wants me to take back to Seymour tomorrow. He will join me there on April 10^th. We have a month after that to do a few things like guard sturgeon and do the annual Midwest crane count, and then mid-May, camping season starts. We almost certainly will get a canoe trip on the Wolf River in there somewhere.

It was Bettyann Moore's turn to do a story and post it at Black Coffee Fiction http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com. It turned out that her story was too long, so she will do a two or three part story which means I won't have to write another for another three or four weeks. I am looking at that as a vacation from writing.

Instead, I am going to be working on PR for the three books I've written or co-written since September 2012. It is time to set up more book signing events, to work on learning about social media, and dropping books off at local libraries.

Decades of Love and Other Disasters has joined the others at Amazon.com. I checked the sales statements a little while ago. I've now sold enough books to get a royalty check in May. I am hoping to make that a regular thing.

I'll also be working on setting up more storytelling tours. There will be the Circle Tour around Lake Superior in July. Liz Miller from New Zealand has asked me to meet her in Jonesborough, Tennessee in October, though I am not sure the Mercury Sable is up for a drive in the Appalachian Mountains. And of course, I want a tour in February 2014, my annual Get Away from Snow excursion.

There is plenty do do.  A busy summer ahead.

Bluebirds and Happiness

Today Gary and I walked through the fields of this Illinois farm. Gary lived in Dixon growing up  but spent a lot of time here during the summers with his Uncle George and Aunt Shirley, brother and sister. Now he is here on his own though he will be returning to Seymour on April 10.

We were barely out of the farmyard when I spotted a blur of blue and orange.  Sure enough it was a bluebird, followed by another and another and soon we had a flock of the little darlings. Killdeer were calling from the ditches and the robins were everywhere.  Spring is erupting in northern Illinois.

The temperature was 60 degrees, the day was sunny, perfect for exploration.

Up the road we found a neighbor shoveling horse manure into his vegetable garden. I told him about a parade I'd seen in Scotland.  In an American parade the equestrian units are usually followed by a volunteer with a shovel and a rolling bin to collect the warm leavings.  In Scotland, no manure collector is needed. The moment a horse drops an apple a little old lady rushes out to harvest it for her roses.  The fellow thought that as pretty funny.

The Harms farm is one of the prettiest in the state.  Most of Illinois is flat, but this farm has a creek and rolling terrain and plenty of trees.  We climbed up a slope with a marvelous view of the surrounding country then worked our way down to a cow lane.  This path has been here for over a century so is worn down.  There was mud because of the run off from the slopes but we didn't mind.  We crawled through barb wire fences and climbed over gates. I certainly didn't feel 69 when I accomplished that.

A herd of at least six deer flew over the barbed wire fence.  We scared up a covey of quail.

We returned to sit on lawn chairs on the front porch and drink lemonade as we waited to wave at cars going by but none went by. Plock Road is quiet except for people driving by on their way to work in the morning and again on their way home. The rest of the day we have the place to ourselves.

Except for the two cats who really run the place.

Here in Illinois

Before I left Seymour this morning, I checked to see how my new book, Decades of Love and Other Disasters, was progressing at Amazon.com.  I was delighted to find both the paperback and the e-book were now on sale at Amazon.com.  Somehow though, by tonight the e-book seems to have disappeared.  I will have to check on that on Saturday when I return to Seymour.

Tonight I am in Illinois in the Harms farmhouse.  Gary wants me to take a load home with me when I leave on Saturday.  He is planning on returning to Wisconsin on April 10.  He'll be here for a week in May, one in July and perhaps in August to do more work on the house.  Then in November, he may move back here for some of the winter if need be. Because I no longer have a cat in Seymour, I may spend some of the winter here, too.

While here, I am no longer cat-less. Mama and her daughter Lily live here.  When Gary first came here in November, they were wild cats, and Lily was the wildest.  They had been living in the chicken coop for the past thirteen years.  Once let loose, they examined the farm. Mama, who seems to have remembered living in a house, came into the farmhouse first, purring.  Her purr has a familiar and unusual chortling sound to it that I couldn't place until this spring.  She sounds like a sandhill crane in flight.

Lily was more skittish, avoiding all humans though as the days grew colder, she, too, came into the warm farmhouse.  Gary set about to make friends.

Tonight, Lily is between us, asking to be petted.  All is well but once again, there is a cat disturbing my typing.  It only took two days since Rascal's demise and once again, I am with cat.

Alone

Rascal is still here and will be here for a while.  I came downstairs this morning, went to his favorite night time sleeping area and waited for his morning "meow". I waited for him to come to the kitchen for his morning chow.  When I was here in the office, I put my feet up on the deck to make a nice lap for him to sleep on.  I reached for his hairball medicine.

When I came home from a walk I looked for Rascal on the house.

Tomorrow I leave for Illinois.  Usually, when I left on a trip I put off packing my clothes until the very last thing to avoid upsetting Rascal. Today, I packed because there was no cat to make me feel guilty.  I still felt guilty.

I put away all his toys and cat beds (he had three in three different rooms). I packed his leftover cat food to take to Gary for the two cats down in Illinois.  Chris will take the kitty litter for his cats. In every room, I found bits and pieces of Rascal and put them in a stack in the basement to deal with.  But the memory lingers. I thought of Emily Dickinson's poem.

The Bustle in a House

The Morning after Death

Is solemnest of industries

Enacted upon Earth –

The Sweeping up the Heart

And putting Love away

We shall not want to use again

Until Eternity –

Yep.  That kind of covers it. 

Goodbye Rascal

This afternoon, Rascal took his final ride.

Before, whenever the cat carrier came out Rascal disappeared but lately he slept most of the time. I think his hearing was almost gone. I opened the carrier door, swooped up the sleeping cat and slipped him in before he knew what was happening. I plopped him in the back of the car and we were off.

He yowled for about ten minutes but after a while it seemed too much effort and he gave up. In half an hour we were at the veterinary clinic. Almost immediately we were shown to the examination room.  The aide gave Rascal a relaxation shot and he slipped to his side.  I had ten minutes with the old guy and I talked to him about how he liked to catch baby bunnies and bring them inside. I told him the bunnies were eating my crocuses and would likely take over the garden this summer. I talked to him about how Gary was in Illinois crying about him, how his friends would miss him.  I stroked his fur and scratched his ears.

Then the vet came in and gave Rascal the final shot.  A gasp and it was over.

I went home alone.

As I drove I began to think about the past thirty years.  Soon after son Chris and I moved into this house, he began asking about a cat.  We wound up with a cat the waitress at Ashman's restaurant  wanted to find a home for.  Ms. Baby Doll was a year old and would live in this house for eighteen years. For the last eight she had to put up with Jake Dog, an Australian shepherd ten times her size.  She put him in his place when he was a pup and he always had nothing but respect for her. When she died, he went into mourning.  He didn't know what to do without his cat. So we got another cat, and that was Rascal.  Rascal arrived on September 11, 2001. Jake died and Rascal lived on until today.

There were two other cats in the story, Velcro and Beamer who lived here briefly but mostly the story was about Ms. Baby Doll, Jake Dog, and Rascal. I've decided to put the Christmas collection of stories off for another year and work on a non-fiction story about the thirty years with those three.

The best way to write this book is to use this blog. Once a week, I will write about my animals.  In time, I should collect enough stories and have my book. And my memories.

Meanwhile, it sure is quiet here.



  

Time to Say Goodbye

Rascal has not been his old self for some time and now he is going downhill fast.  He is losing weight.  About the only thing he wants to eat is the broth from my turkey noodle soup. Dry and canned cat food no longer interest him. He is arthritic. He no longer can go up and down steps without pain.

He is drinking copious amounts of water.  At his last visit, the veterinarian told me to watch his kitty litter.  When the clumps were smaller, he was fine, but now they are the size of a small platter. He likely has diabetes. If he were a younger cat, we would give him shots every day. At his age, it doesn't make sense to put him through all that.

Chris, Tisha, and Evan were here today for Easter and they agreed with me. The old cat is not the same as he was.  He is not enjoying life any more.

I called Gary.  He got all teary when I told him.  He loves our pets so much.

Tomorrow, I will call the veterinarian and he will go for his final visit. Until then he is getting as much lap time as he wants which is a lot.

Poor old guy.