Murphy the Cat, World Traveler

5-31-2014 

Murphy exploring the alley in Washington

My cat Murphy comes and butts her face at me as I write at the computer. She is demanding I feed her once again. I feed her a lot now because under her long fur she is angular and bony . Sometimes she throws up what I gave her, or a thin clear liquid.

I get up and stir the food in her bowl. Stirring brings the gravy to the top, and often that is enough to get her to eat again. Sometimes I open a fresh can. Every few days she takes medicine, and then she eats a lot. She and I have this conversation about food five or six times a day. She has kidney disease, and if I don't get her to eat, she will waste away.

Her name is Murphy. I think she is fifteen. She came to me off the street, but one time I was told her age by the friends in whose house she was born (she left because kittens grew up aggressive and chased her away). She might be older.

When I go on my summer expeditions with my hound dog Rex, I have been leaving Murphy home with house sitters, but this year she is coming along. I can't ask a sitter to interact with her as intensively as I have this spring. And the water at our house has turned so salty that no house sitter would be happy staying here.

I'm glad I'm taking her. I've wanted to every year (and she has wanted to go, jumping up in the van and yowling), but I was afraid it wouldn't be workable. Last summer, however, I had my eyes opened. I camped with my daughter in Colorado, and she brought her cats along, Lelu to be fitted with a prosthesis by a vet there, and Mika so she wouldn't be left home alone. I camped in my Toyota van, and they stayed in the VW bus. I was surprised how good a home the VW turned out to be for them.

I had some questions to answer before I made the decision. Would Murphy handle the drive okay? Could we travel without losing her?

Murphy is an indoor-outdoor cat. At home when I walk Rex, Murphy often comes along, and she will follow us along the shore, even a mile. She hunts, and I'm almost certain she has interacted with the skunks, possums, raccoons, and armadillos that live here. I wasn't worried that she would be frightened and run away if she were suddenly out of doors. But how would she behave in unfamiliar territory? And would she put up with not getting to leave the bus some days?

I went forward cautiously. I drove Rex and Murphy to a different spot on the shore, outside Murphy's territory, and I let them loose. Rex did his usual running around, and Murphy began to explore the plants that have grown up on the exposed lakebed. She didn't streak off, but I did have to walk fast a couple of times to keep up with her. When it was time to go back I wondered if I would have to corral her and carry her, but, no, she followed, and when I opened the van, she hopped up into it. So, we could be out of doors, as long as there was good visibility.

Then I took Murphy along with us as we visited my daughter in Oklahoma. It's a seven-hour drive. The carrier was in, and a cat box. I let her roam free, and after about two minutes of complaint, she found a place to settle. She came to my knee a couple of times to ask about it all. Once she got up in my lap and purred. The return trip went well, and a second trip, too, so that answered one question. She could handle the drive . She didn't throw up, but she didn't eat while we were on the road, so I may have to spend a multiple days at campsites more often this year. On trip two, she ate in the evening after we arrived.

I boarded Murphy at a vet in Oklahoma the first trip, but on the second we stayed in my daughter's driveway in the VW bus (plugged into the garage for AC, and one night, heat). Rex and Murphy could co-exist in a small space, I found, though it was best to raise the poptop and feed her on the surface up there, particularly if I were going to leave the bus. More than once I stepped out only to come back to Rex gobbling Murphy's food.

My daughter and I spent spent a lot of time in the fenced backyard with the two of them. Once Murphy had thoroughly explored the yard, she wanted to get out of it. She could slip through the sagging gate or climb the mesh of the fence, or slip under. I had to give her my attention or off she'd go. I soon saw, however, that she didn't travel far, just into the shadow under the bus, or strolling toward the sidewalk. It was easy to get her back.

I looked up once from weeding, though, and she was nowhere in sight. I crouched to look under the bus, but she wasn't there I climbed the street, calling for her. “Murphy! Murphy!”

What was I doing thinking I could take a cat on the road? I reproached myself.

My daughter's house abuts a creek overgrown with bushes and trees. I followed the path along it, but no Murphy. I crossed the bridge and asked the workmen at the bed and breakfast. They hadn't seen her.

Finally, I put Rex on his lead. “Find Murphy,” I urged him as we hurried along. We looked in the bushes in the empty lot across the creek, then crossed to the bed and breakfast. “Find Murphy!” I said again. Out she strolled, from a bush at the edge of the bridge. She had gone a house away.

Murphy got a lot of practice being cooped up in the bus. She sometimes tried to get out, but all I had to do was put my hand in her way. Her desire to go and explore may build up on the trip, though, so I've looked into harnesses. That is the one part of our preparation that has not gone well. I bought a harness for her, but I can't get it over her head. I'm not sure she would tolerate it anyway, as she rears back when I try to slip it past her ears. I may get another type, shaped like an X that reaches up from under her belly and velcros closed. I need to get in gear if I am going to do that, though, because I haven't found any in the stores, just online, and it may have to be made on order. If we don't get a harness, however, I think we will be okay.

If I lose Murphy on this trip, I will regret it bitterly. I do have another choice, to stay home this summer (and probably the next, given the slow progress of her illness). But I am looking into it carefully and taking precautions. And there's this: last night as I was setting laundry in the bus to take in to the laundromat (the salty water here bleaches out my tee shirts), Murphy hurried out of the dark and jumped up in the bus. Are you packing to leave? her mowr seemed to ask. You had better take me too!

Minimalist Travel

This is from my 2013 trip.  That year I camped in the Toyota, with a cot-width bed with storage under it and a chest of drawers (of sorts).  I took a tent too, but mostly camped in the van.  Amanda and I camped together for a couple of weeks (she with her two cats, one of whom was receiving treatment in Denver).  Later I drove out West with Rex the Hound Dog for the rest of the summer.  I was the only one in that tiny Colorado park (8 sites maybe).  I have taken the Toyota two summers and the Vanagon six summers

This year I'm back in the VW bus--Westy, Vanagon, whatever you want to call it.  More room and it feels less cramped and dark, but both of them are minimalist.  Living simply.   I'm getting fond of that.

This is the Vanagon  taken through the window from my friends' house in Washington in 2010.  Rex was lying inside on the bed.

Ten Thousand Things

2014 7-27 Ten Thousand Things

In a commentary on practice by my teacher Albert Low, I was surprised to read that he recommended looking down rather than at the scenery as one walked in nature, at least for the beginning student, in the “first fifteen or twenty years.” Since much of the long trip I take each summer is taken up with responding to the landscape, I was taken aback. I read carefully as he explained that “it is neither the trees nor the birds, the river nor the blue sky that weaves its magic: it is awareness. When we go out for a walk like this we adopt a particular mind-set, and this is compatible with practice. With the same mindset one can walk through the slums of London and feel the same communion.” One can be open and aware in nature or anywhere. We may hear the rustle of leaves; better, we may hear a police siren.

It is true that when I travel, my mind is more open and attentive, particularly to dramatic and beautiful natural things. Less so, when I am home. It’s not entirely true that I lack attention, since I have worked on being present over the years, but still, there is a differential.

It might be good, I thought, to take a look at my patterns of awareness as I stayed here in Vancouver. Certain things draw my attention on my walks with my dog and cat: flowers and shrubs, bamboo and fern borders, projections in the sidewalk, lawn ornaments, crows.

Animals capture my interest—a cat on the porch swing, ae little spaniel being walked down the block, fish in a koi pond, a dead squirrel this morning, which my cat Murphy sniffed and pawed. The squirrels that leap to tree trunks and Rex follows, jerking me round. Some of the animal-watching is protective—cats and squirrels may inspire a lunge on the lead. Other things are to my advantage too—trash cans to deposit the sack of dog poop, houses with for sale signs and information sheets (I have rarely found one I could afford), cars coming down the streets we cross.

Interesting differences in houses—roof lines, porches, towers and balconies, stonework, latticework, arbors, palm trees, brushy yards with weeds and overgrown hedges and trees hiding whatever is behind, squares of lavender or lily. Folk art—banners and prayer flags, lawn ornaments, screened images of birds (there are several on the walls around the neighborhood), hand-made signs. A child’s table with a single chair in a shady, postage stamp backyard. A paradise of wagons, three-wheelers, plastic playhouses glimpsed through the slats in a back gate.

Food being grown—grapes in arbors and along fences, espaliered apple trees complete with rounding fruit, herbs in raised beds, drying tangles of sugar snap peas, red gleams of cherry tomatoes, blueberry bushes, blackberry patches left to fruit among weeds, containers of lettuce plants and shaggy tomato bushes on decks and balconies, corn in a row along an alley fence with twine holding it upright, bruised apples on the concrete and green balls of English walnut.

Water in any form—the elaborate stream and falls at Anthem Park between apartment buildings a block away, the shine of something spilt along the asphalt near a dumpster, the shrr of water down a backyard fountain. When it rains, puddles and mud and beading on cars.

Stories—the two women, one black, with tight slicked hair, one a haggard blonde, smoking on the curb outside a residential home. The rose with a short stem abandoned on a metal table outside a Subway early on a Sunday. Underwear and jeans discarded beside the sidewalk, now covered with city grit and leaves. I look down into the gardens of Columbia House, which I believe is assisted living, and see an old man turning onto a path in his automated scooter or a group of women under a canopy playing cards. A man stops to let Rex enter the street, then waves and drives on as Rex veers to inspect a sapling. A young neighbor makes his slow way down the sidewalk, letting his cat trail behind. They cross a street and climb the steps to a porch.

Having read my teacher’s comment about everyday awareness, I let my mind open wider this morning. So many colors and textures to the sidewalk—smooth pale gray in newly paved spots, the gritty, moss-embedded dark of sections that date back to the twenties and have been lifted awry by tree roots, fish scale patterns on sloping corners where bicycles and wheel chairs need access, or red-painted metal plates there with raised polkadots for traction. Cracks and concrete patches, lines of grass or moss, a rain-melted wash of chalk, a scattering of dried fir needles. Someone has sprayed mysterious turquoise markings down the center of the alley—repairs intended?

To some degree, I always participate in what Rex sees. What has he pulled toward? what is he sniffing? He has a much different view of the world. The base of trash cans and dumpsters call him, and mysterious scents. He stops at bamboo piled at the side of the alley, and we walk over the blonde blades which have fallen across the alleyway. He sniffs and paws at a spot like any other in the mulch of a flowerbed.

Today as my mind softens, our trip down the alley is a progression of sniffings, at little nubbins of green with purplish flowers, hairlike fibers of flower or weed, the corner of a gate. On my walks I can tell myself stories about what I attend to (why does the family have peace doves and Tibetan prayer flags, are they pacifists? I remember picking brown-eyed Susans like these for my mother.) Rex’s world is full of things I cannot easily put into words. Since I cannot participate in their olfactory significance, they become random dips into the texture of life—arch of grass, board dark with rot, splay of pebbles, shadowy brown irregularity. Rex is showing me the ten thousand things that make up life—really, below the ten thousand things, not to emptiness but at least to things less codeable in language. That is valuable practice, I think. At the least, it feels good to do.

                                              Rex sniffing the air

The view from the road, creosote, concrete, and mountains