Of Cats and Signs and Dead Pioneer Women

Current mood: Mood Without a Name

Right now I'm thinking about Jasper--sweet, naughty, ever-hungry, sometimes annoying, irreplaceable Jasper--who, I might add, like my brother, sister, son, daughter and myself--will be joining one of HIS family members (Jane) when we move.

Isn't Jane a cool name for a cat? Really, how many felines have you met named Jane? Do you know the origin of her name? Of course you don't, but I'll tell you whether or not you care to know.

Some years ago, Amanda and I drove up to Mt. Hood (damn, what a bee-yoo-tee-full place, by the way). We were hiking around poking at things, checking out rocks and plants and whatnot...the usual hiking around stuff.

We stumbled upon an old, weathered sign which had long fallen from its post and lay there, looking sort of sad. It seemed to be staring skyward...moaning to the sun and clouds, questioning its own existence, wondering if there's a God.

The sign lay in a location not too far from the Pioneer Woman's Grave (a kind of morbid-sounding historical landmark, honoring someone whose headstone I never saw and whose name I didn't know).

I believe she was a sort of Unknown Soldier of the Westward-Ho days, enduring the bumpy pilgrimage in a covered wagon, and probably died during childbirth or from frostbite or consumption...maybe all three...you know, the kind of stuff people succumbed to back in those days.

It still beats the hell out of me why anyone in their right mind would have taken a covered wagon to an elevation of six thousand feet...man, those horses or mules had to be tired.

Maybe the whole bunch of them died because they were lost. Maybe the Pioneer Woman went first, which is why she had a grave...maybe the rest of the party was eaten by bears or wolves; maybe they ate each other. Maybe the Pioneer Woman ate everyone else and then buried herself...

...but I digress.

The old sign that Amanda and I discovered, however, did have a name: Mineral Jane West. Is that cool or what? It sounds like a kind of Annie Oakley name, summoning visions of a curvaceous, shotgun-blasting, pistol-twirling, tough-talking young woman in a cowgirl getup who could pick a thimble off a picket fence at 300 yards...however the sign's origin was, as it turned out, a rather unglamorous one.

A jane is a kind of dirt service road and west...well, that's a location. Thus, it was just an old, weathered, sad piece of wood laying on the western slope, a sign that at one time indicated something of meaning to forestry crews.

Loving people that we are, as a gesture of deep and abiding respect and selfless mercy, we "rescued" that sign and took it home...and probably could have been sent to prison for doing so. It hung proudly on the wall of my balcony and remained there after I moved out and my kids stayed on until the lease expired and the apartment was vacated.

My daughter--perhaps the most the sentimental person of the bunch (hmmm--I wonder which side of the family THAT comes from?)--felt great fondness for that token of happy times, so Mineral Jane West went with her when the remaining members of our little household dispersed. Besides, as I previously mentioned--it was cool, very much so.

When Amanda and Josh came for their kitten (one of Jasper's three sisters--also the best one, I might add)...they were faced with the dilemma of what to call her. She had an interim name...I always, always name my orphans...who doesn't? To be perfectly candid, though, it beats me if I can recall what name I used. I rescued a lot of kittens, so I recycled quite a few names.

Wait a minute! I remember! I called her "Pixie" and actually, she was the only kitten I ever bestowed that name upon.

At some point (I can't recall whether it was before or after she made the 700 mile trip to her new residence), the kitten was named Jane, inspired by that sign Amanda and I found on one of our beloved hikes on "our" beloved mountain.

Back to Jasper and Jane...of course, when we move back to PDX, he won't actually live with his sister. I'm certain, however, that they will meet again.

But let's not get all mooshy about this. Hell, these cats even know each other. I can see it already: there will be the perfunctory, tentative, mutual nose-sniffing, followed by the dilated eyes, frozen stance, tail lashing from side to side in very slow motion and an indeterminate amount of staring.

After that, things will get kind of rude. They will bristle and they will hiss. One cat will attempt to make him/herself taller than the other, and shorter of the two will get sort of flat but never take its eyes off the tall one.

At some point, the Tall One may take a swat at the Short One (or the Flat One, whichever name you prefer). This is accompanied by the typical low-volume, high-pitched growling. Such festivities can continue for quite some time; if the Tall One is food-motivated, the stalemate may be resolved by emulating the sounds of Meal Time.

The worst, worst, WORST thing anyone can do is to suddenly snatch up either cat to circumvent harm.

Because Harm Will Come.

Students, refer to term one, Animal Behavior, Topic: Redirected Aggression. The interloper should wash the resulting scratches for fifteen minutes and remember the lesson. Any severed digits must be kept cold and brought along to the hospital for possible reattatchment. The Observer should make sure to have plenty of thick towels handy when attempts are made to remove one cat from behind the stove and the other cat stuck to the ceiling by its claws.

You, the brilliant (present/former) students that you are, already know this.

Amanda and I already know this. I think we were both born knowing this already.

Thus, the advice given above is for the well-intentioned but headed-for-disaster population I refer to as The Unknowing.

It's really kind of amusing to imagine someone more naiive in such a situation, being all misty-eyed, eagerly anticipating the reunion of kittycat siblings, thinking it will be a momentous, tearful occasion...only to be met with the sobering reality of what cats REALLY do when they "reunite" after not sharing the same air space since age nine weeks.

As a matter of fact, I hate to break it to you all, but anyone who saw "Milo and Otis"...that darling movie, narrated by Dudley Moore, starring a caramel-colored kitten and an ever-worried looking little pug...hmm...my experience tells me that upon finding one another after growing up and adding to the pet population explosion...Milo probably would have gotten all cat-like on Otis, delivering a well-aimed scratch at the hapless dog's brachycephalic face...so much for THAT happy conclusion.

Reality--harsh, merciless bitch that it can be--had no place in such a cute little kitten-and-puppy-who-get-
lost-in-the-big-scary-world-but-manage-to-find-each-other-movie. It would have traumatized a lot of little kids.

Or made them laugh their butts off.

This the stuff humor is made of. As I've said before, "funny" doesn't happen when things go right.

Nope.

When life is at its most amusing, it's always a comedy of errors.