The Old Stomping Ground

  A true friend and an unique character, my tribute to Socs who shared our lives for 16 years...

    
Where are you now, my friend
Since our sixteen years together have come to an end?
Have you returned to the old neighbourhood?
And the gateway at which you once stood?

Do the people there catch sight
Of the cat from number three, silhouetted in the moonlight?
Chide their foolishness and turn inside
As you slink into the shadows and hide?

Do you now lie under the privet hedge?
Bask in the sun on the window ledge?
Along the pavements do you still walk?
Pounce on leaves that you joyfully stalk?

Do you sleep in the plant pot under the stars?
Stretch out on the bonnets of neighbours’ parked cars?
When your wild spirit broke free did it soar?
Back to the old place, there to be, forever more?

  We relocated our new home,
But the gardens and fields you never did roam.
The hearth and fire were all you sought
As you clung to life and bravely fought.

Tired and worn, you still followed me around,
But now you moved without a sound.
I watched as your wildness and life ebbed away,
As my wild tiger became a kitten again with each passing day.

They say animals are the truest friends,
And that a broken heart soon mends.
But Socs, my old pal, I miss you in spades,
And the memories and love never fades

I hope you have returned to our old home,
Strong and young again, able to roam.
I will forever hold open the door and see,
You walking through with a 'meow' just for me.
      

Socs was brought to my house by a friend who, knowing how upset I was at the loss of a previous cat, thoughtfully got him for me.   Two weeks earlier, I had attended a party with her and had encountered him there for the first time. Seeing how smitten I was with him and knowing he needed a home, she had hatched the plan of uniting us.  However, arriving on my door-step she didn’t receive the reception she had expected, as my initial reaction was a firm “thank you for the thought but I don’t want any more pets.”  I brought her in for a coffee and the kitten was let out of the carrier to bound around the room.  Of course, before the kettle had boiled he was firmly in my arms, all thoughts of the pain of loss gone, and our lives together had begun.

What a character!  For the first five or six years he was a very independent cat with something of a wild streak.  His mother had been rescued, and on being taken to the vet was found to be both pregnant and terminally ill.  The decision was made to allow her to have the kittens as the birth was imminent, and she received some treatment.  It was believed that she had lived wild for a time and the  father was probably feral.  This may account in part for Socs' personality and behaviour in those early years.  

We often hear it said of someone that he/she was 'here before.'  This was the case with the tiny kitten and so he was named Socrates because of the pensive way he sat and reflected for long stretches at a time.   Once out of kittenhood, he became very much his own cat.  Occasionally he sought cuddles but mostly he behaved in an aloof, majestic manner reminding us daily of his kinship with the king of the jungle.  His body language, his walk, his whole demeanour, his day-to-day behaviour was that of being removed from the crowd.  He ruled the road with a blood-stained claw and woe-be-tide any cat that peeped around the corner, let alone was brave enough or daft enough to place a paw onto his territory.  They say a neutered cat quietens down and if this is true, then I dread to think how many more skirmishes he would have fought had he not had the procedure carried out. 
 
In his sixth year, he mellowed and his behaviour changed. He sought out soft beds, cushions and warm laps.  He allowed himself to be stroked and cuddled and in time, this extended to everyone; neighbours and passers-by.  There were frequent reports of surprise visits to neighbour's sofas and beds for which I apologised with some embarrassment, but everyone seemed to enjoy these casual visits from the unexpected guest.  Over the years, his social life and invitations were greater than my own and neighbours enquired after him as naturally as they did about the rest of the family. People could not pass without giving him some attention.  It was as though having realised the joy to be had from being stroked and cuddled, he sought to catch up on the many he missed in the previous years of self-imposed aloofness.  But the outdoor life continued in the main, and on mild nights he slept under the hedge or in the plant pots, used the privet canopy to watch the world go by or the rain dance on the pavement. And still, he vigilantly patrolled his territory.

The years went by and awareness of the passage of time spurred us on to pursue the dream of relocating to a rural area.  We joked about Socs retiring to the country where he would wander over his estate and be lord of all he surveyed.   Fate however had other plans and four weeks before the move, he fell ill and never fully recovered.  He moved into his country home where he lived as an invalid, pottering about the house and stepping just outside to lie in the sun.  There were to be no great adventures, no long strolls or marking out his new domain.  All of that was now in the past.  He slept most of the day, his whispers and toes twitching in his sleep as he stalked his foe and walked old roads in his dreams.  His new found pleasure was the wood-burner in front of which he lay prostrate or sat upright peering into the flames, like an ancient Egyptian paying homage to the god, Ra.

Socs has gone but his spirit is around me, memories of him are etched in my mind and my love for him is buried deep in my heart.  One small animal brought and taught so much in his time with us.

In memory and thanks to Socs.

Thoughts on the Wind

 

“It is a pitiful degeneracy in our modern life that we are not more often transported out of ourselves by the eternal things that surround us.

Consider the wind!  One of the best tests you can apply to yourself as to whether you are lost to the primeval grandeur of the world, taking it all for granted, is to note your attitude to the arbitrary motions of the wind.  Do you take the wind for granted? 

 Do you only notice it at all if it is wildly furious, madly violent, bitterly freezing?  Or, on the other hand, is the least breath of it upon your face like the touch of the remote Past?  

Do you never feel it without thinking what a miraculous phenomenon it is, this invisible and yet most living presence, as it moves over the city, over the land, over the sea?  Nothing can excel the wind in awakening from the depths of our natures those far-away memories which seem to carry with them the very essence of life..."

John Cowper Powys

(1872-1963) 

A Philosophy of Solitude 

Whispers on the Wind

 One of my earliest memories is of standing at my bedroom window gazing at the line of distant blue-grey mountains where I ran free in my imagination.  I spent a lot of time in those hills with a woollen rug rather than a carpet of grass beneath my feet. I longed to be among them, in the fresh air with the sky stretching above me as far as my eyes could see.  My room was at the front, over my father's newsagents and the chatter of the customers and sounds of suburban traffic drifted endlessly through the window and up the stairs.  

When I grew older, I escaped to the park alone and walked by the duck pond, following the paths that meandered under the trees and zig-zagged around the flower beds.  I loved those green places but they were bitter-sweet for they gave me a taste of nature that whetted my appetite so that I hungered for more, much more.  I wanted open spaces, miles and miles of freedom, rugged mountains, stone paths that crunched under my feet, chasms and boulders, clear flowing streams, grassy banks and meadows touched by gentle breezes that made the flowers nod and sway.  I wanted land, water and air all around me. The park was an escape, a place of solitude and quiet where I was happy and sad at the same time, mixed up feelings of childish pleasure co-existing with a deep longing, a mature feeling too complicated for one so young.  It was like a stone lodged in my gut that reminded me of its presence at regular intervals.  

As the years passed, I grew to understand this feeling.  I was a wild child.  Something called to me.  It was inside me yet also outside of me.  There was a tenor in the air and I loved its voice.  And I came to recognise that my father heard it too.  I saw that look in his eye as he stopped to listen to a song-bird, looked at a flower or stood with arms folded, leaning on the shop counter watching the rain bouncing off the pavement outside.

He came from a long line of farming people who were (and a few still are) embedded in the land.  The earth was not only under their nails but their skin as well, deep in their hearts and souls.  And so it is with me.  Some, across several generations, were torn from the land, forced from their home by economic necessity, myself included.  It is a terrible wrench and there is much work to do in putting down roots in a new place, not only physical but psychological and emotional too.  It is easy enough to pass your days somewhere but not really dwell there. 

I lived in another city for many years but never felt rooted in the place. Just as in my early years, I spent long periods of time in its parks and gardens but that familiar longing tugged at my insides and something called on the wind.  I began going on camping and walking holidays to the Lake District and Wales but still the voice whispered "come away."  In the end, I did.

I now live in a rural area amid hills and fields. Birds and small wild creatures are part of my daily life.  I feel my roots sinking more deeply into the earth with each passing day and my soul soars up among the branches of the trees and up into the star-filled skies.  This is freedom. 

The voice is still on the wind, it floats around me.  It is closer and I feel its breath against my cheek.  It whispers a different message now, its tells me that I am home.