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Zach-the-Cat Blog Retires

Toy mice are everywhere. My new kitten, a ginger rescue I call Elisha (Eli) Boo Hardin,

hides them under my bed (I counted 4 this morning.), behind the Rosemary potted plant, under the armoire that holds my TV, by the water bowl, in his eating plate, and under most chairs.  

I’ve stepped on one occasionally when I have to get up in the dark of night. Not fun.

Eli is asleep dreaming kitten dreams as I type this about his great predecessor—Zach the Cat. I am retiring this webpage not because Eli has come but because Zach is gone and it is time. Zach died of a heart attach on November 27, 2017. He was toasty warm as I held him and wept. I buried my face in his long, lanky body and felt that soft fur one more time. One minute he was being his happy self. The next minute he was lying on the driveway gone. I cried so hard that I think I drove my next-door neighbor out of his house. I heard him rev his engine and leave.

I inherited Zach when he was nearly a year old. A sweet friend from work was moving and had to give away her cats. Zach’s baby picture melted my heart. “I’ll take him,” I said not knowing what to do with a cat since I had never had one. I was always a “dog person” as us dog people like to say.

Zach changed all my smirks, cringes, sly remarks, and look-down-the-nose attitude towards cats and cat owners. He changed my bad behavior of judging cats and people who love them. He changed my attitude from a sense of superiority to a sense of gratefulness. Before Zach, I was “making it,” “pushing through,” “pressing on,” etc. with life and work.  And that’s not a bad thing. But you have no idea what you are missing until someone—and in my case, some little thing—comes along and purrs your heart into contentment.

I was awkward with Zach the Cat at first. What do you do with a cat? How do you hold him? Pet him? Be around him? A dog is mostly instantaneous affection and closeness. But a cat….well it took some time for us to get used to each other—especially me to him.

But after a while I noticed a strange feeling in my heart. I was experiencing warmth, care, and tenderness because of Zach. When he jumped up beside me on the sofa or on the bed at night and would throw his hinny right against my hip, it amazed me. When he crawled up in my lap as I watched TV or crept under the sheets in the winter and lined up right next to me, falling asleep in the crook of my arm, it all awakened a new joy and delight to love and care for something beyond myself. I discovered a new happiness in myself while appreciating this novel gift called Zach the Cat.

I also found new laughter because Zach made me laugh out loud so many times.

Like when I turned 50 and the 12 helium balloons bobbing on my ceiling with long curly ribbons became an object of Zach’s attack. Before I knew what happened, his lunge to the curly ribbons got him entangled in the mess which made him run. But the more he ran, the more the balloons chased him which he was unknowingly pulling. He ran circles in my house until those ribbons dislodged from him as he dived under a chair.  I laughed tears! Afterward, for several years he would run when I started to wrap my Christmas presents with the curly ribbons. Outside Zach loved to jump in the air to catch whatever I was throwing. His acrobatic antics had me in stitches—except when he would go to the top of the cabinets in the kitchen or to the third story of trees or get stuck on a neighbor’s roof at 10:30 PM or stand on the top of my roof refusing to come down when I said so. HA!

As a chaplain called to a lot of hard things, Zach the Cat brought me much-needed reprieve, laughter, affection, and love. Who knew a cat could do all that?  Also I believe I brought to Zach his much-needed security, attachment, and trust—all that makes an animal happy.

My friend Becky Russell encouraged me to start this blog mostly to get out my intense feelings of grief and loss after my mom suddenly died days before Thanksgiving in 2008. It felt good to label the blog “Zach the Cat” and promote him as I wrote about hard stuff back then. He wrote on it a little, but not much. Zach was more into eating, sleeping, and playing. Not much of a writer.

I can’t say enough about how that cat awakened my heart and spirit. I am grateful to God for such a sweet gift at such a perfect time. Zach has been quietly there as I have gone through the valleys (and hid sometimes when I was shouting from my mountaintops).

That was God’s Kairos timing.

Thank you oh Lord.

So now I say good-bye to this blog with a sense of loss, a sense of great gain, and a sense of incredible gratefulness to the Lord who creates all things and people.

^“Even birds and animals have much they could teach you; . . . All of them know that the Lord's hand made them. It is God who directs the lives of his creatures; everyone’s life is in his power” (Job 12:7-10).

“The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made” (Ps. 145:9).

Up to Your Neck

Seriously?



We cats are cute, but this is beyond cuteness..... 

--Zach the Cat

First Chili

 How great it is

To share the first pot of chili this fall with a friend.

Oyster crackers,

Thin spaghetti,

Abundant citrus green tea,

And a bubbling pot

of black-bean chili

Filled us up

As we ate from multicolored bowls
And drank from mason jars
And told stories that made us think and laugh and be grateful.


As the Psalmist said: “Taste and see that the LORD is good.
Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!”


The Lord delights in the analogy as well as the reality of the table, the meal—
and once again he was present at my table
in laughter, friendship, and hot chili

on this cool evening.

Finally


I've scrubbed

and swished

and wiped down

and put up

and straightened

and folded

and stashed

and vacuumed--

the last of which drove Zach the Cat 

from his comfortable corner on the sofa

to a hidey-hole in the house.

It's 12:04 now on Friday morning.
I'm hours away from getting up to go to work.
I really should be in bed,
and Zach really should be right next to me.

Instead I'm here at the computer and he's somewhere.

Sometimes things just have to get done

no matter sleep, the cat, or the calling of the sofa.

The place is cleaner for sure. Finally.

72

I can't hardly stand
Being inside
When it's sunny

and 72 degrees
in February.
Really!?

Home from work,
I threw off the old
And put on the older--
Grubby clothes,
a hair band,
hole-ly gloves,
and I'm ready
to play in the sun
alongside my cat.

The back yard
is now clean
and I am dirty.
As the sun eased below the horizon
Coloring the sky with pink, yellow, and baby blue,
The birds chattered and sang, calling it a day.

                                                                   Me too.

I sing for joy over
a sunny day,
a yard that's raked,
some hours "playing" outside,
and 72 in February.

What a gift.
Thank You.

Inez Lawrence

How can someone so little

be bigger than life?
I told her she was the toughest little piece of leather
I'd ever met.
She'd look down, purse her lips together to make a sort-of grin,
and say, “You do what you have to do.”

She nearly made it to 96.

She was no bigger than a little spark of fire from two sticks scraped together.
But she could sure make things burn.
Her little spark made her next-door neighbor burn with anger and hostility.
Her little spark made her renters burn with compliance and obedience.
Her little spark made her friends burn with loyalty.
Her little spark made her family burn either with their allegiance to her
Or their absence from her (according to her sometimes strongly opinionated perspective).

She kept her house, her yard, her self--all by herself--

almost to the last.
Her house was her church.
Earth and dirt were her friends.
Clutter was her job.
Authentic, trustworthy people were her family.
And she rode time like a bucking bronco,
daring it to throw her before the buzzer sounded.
She was the victor; she beat the bronco,
Dying in her boots—just like she wanted.

After some years into their marriage,
the young husband lost his job
because of an economy that had tanked from the Great Depression.
He didn't do well.

In those days there was no medicine for the great inner depression
her husband suffered.
And so he took his own life.
But she didn't collapse. She didn't leave home.
She readied the house for years of boarders.
She mowed her own yard and pulled her own weeds. 
She hung her clothes out on the line to dry
right in the middle of town.

Anybody else would have quit. Moved out. Sold the house. Maybe kicked the bucket.
She kept going.

There never was another husband.

There never were children.
She was close to her other siblings, but they had their own lives and families.
And so she went to work for a publisher who made telephone books.
She worked there 40 years.

Disappointment visited too often.

Disease tripped her up too many times.
Desolation gripped her soul during the holidays each year.
But she always regained her energy.
She always rebuilt her hope.
She always resisted the darkness that sought to consume her.

She was opinionated, loving, sharp-tongued, merciful,

A person of humility--yet she stopped at no expense for the quality she liked.
She was full of stories and sometimes gossip.
There were times of cake, coffee, homemade spaghetti sauce, and spice tea.
There were times of asking about my family, my friends, my work, my feelings.

In the 31 years that we were friends, what year did I begin to tell her I loved her?
I can't remember.
It was awkward.
She was not affectionate or verbal
about all that kind of thing.
But her love was sterling-silver real.

After all our time of talking (which was mostly me listening

and her talking),
I'd scoot the kitchen chair back from the giant table in the little kitchen
and walk over to hug her bye.
In the later years
It felt like I was hugging a bag of bones.
“I love you,” I'd say.
“iloveyoutoo” she'd say all shoved together in a hurry.

She gave me her best, her most.
 

I had no idea I would miss her this much.

I sure do love you, Mrs. Lawrence.


Inez H. Lawrence Dec. 21, 1919--Sept 11, 2015
Nashville, TN


Tennessee Peaches

Tearing open the knotted, plastic bag,
I reached in for each peach--

big, round, no bruises,

still a few days away from ripe.

Five peaches perched on my white tile

kitchen counter top.

Just the day before, in Lebanon, Tennessee at the

Tuesday Farmers Co-op under the metal cover,

My friend, my step-father, and I surveyed the okra, tomatoes, cucumbers, apples, new potatoes, and zucchini.
But it was the peaches that won my heart.
They always do.
“I'll take that carton,” I announced to the farmer woman vendor.
She took my $5 and I took the heavy plastic bag in which she dumped my peaches.
Driving home to North Little Rock, Arkansas I smiled
as I thought about my peaches from Tennessee
riding in the backseat.

But just now, after coming back from a Subway supper
down the road from my Arkansas house,
I unlocked my back door, walked into my kitchen,
And switched on my three little kitchen lamps.
And then I caught the smell,
Oh the smell.
It reached down to my heart, to my soul, and touched something.
A flood of feelings . . . .
Joy and homesickness,
Delight and bygone memories of family,
Pleasure and a gut-grasping need for belonging--
all those feelings and longings and memories
were alive within mere seconds of the peach aroma
infusing my kitchen.


The blessing of where I am,
the longing for where I was,
and the hope for where I'll be
all meet in the smell of
Tennessee peaches. 

Stayed in the Boat

Bull Shoals Lake in Mountain Home, AR
was great fun.
Our kayak class of ten was
well-behaved
because nobody drowned.

Kayaks are fun
except when a granddaddy long-legs is in the boat with you.
But he and I both survived.

I learned the forward stroke,
the backward stroke,
the side stroke,
the turn-around stroke,
and I didn't have a stroke.

 I can't remember when I have had a day
that didn't require any official or unofficial work
and was all play.

 But this day was just that.

I drank in the sunshine,

the colors,

the warmth (but not too hot at all!),

the texture and coolness of water
(I didn't actually drink the water),

the animals of a protected park,

and the varieties of people participating.

Vitamin D fed me
along with joy
along with laughter
along with doing something outta the box.

A day on the lake in Mountain Home brought back a really unusual feeling, and then I identified what it was. It felt like Tennessee to me.

It felt like home.

 

 

  

My pink water shoes are washed and dried now.
Along with my other clothes that enjoyed the lake.

And those white legs?
Well they've got a bit more sun
and don't require spray-on
bottled tan.

Grateful for kayaking--my new-found sport and enjoyment.

Kayak Class

Never been in one, a kayak that is.

I'm driving nearly three hours to be in an all-day class

on the White River in Bull Shoals State Park outside of Mountain Home, Arkansas.

I turned 60 this year, so I may be loosing my mind.

Or I may be trying to catch up.

Or I may be tired of  "all work and no play."


No matter.
I am glad I have the gusto and guts to go.


Hope I don't sunburn myself to melanoma stage.
Hope I don't act like the oldest, dumbest, weakest one in the group.

Hope my new lunch bag doesn't secretly give off an image about me like "She's old" or

"She's an oar short" or "She sure doesn't know how to pick out lunch bags."

I better be more worried about staying afloat than about my image.

KAYaking  here I come!!! Yippeeeee!

Writing Jitters

I'm taking a break from writing to write.

This week is my vacation—my writing vacation.
And eating out with friends.
And shopping for a new bed and mattress and sofa.
And taking a day's class of learning how to kayak on the

river.

(I like it that kayaking starts with my name.... KAY.)

I'm on chapter two of six.

When concentrating for longer than 30

minutes

I get jittery and want to do other things
Like go Krogering
or write on my blog
or snack on popcorn chips and Oreo Thin Mint cookies
or walk in the neighborhood (exercise

MUST become a part of my life)

or water my yard
or buy makeup at Dillards
or make chocolate rice-crispy candies for friends and

neighbors

or love on my cat
or do another load of clothes.

How do I keep my bottom still in the seat?
How do I stay focused?
How do I stop wandering?

Must get better at discipline.

But then I've said that to myself for YEARS.

Sigh....

Back to writing.

N o  MorE  FaCEboOk



I've needed to do this for a while.

Leave Facebook.

Sign off.

Get away.

Use time differently.

So I did it.

Hope I don't go into the Facebook delirious tremors.

I have one plug-in to social media.

ONE.

Facebook.

Not Instagram.

Not Tumbler.

Not Twitter.

Not SnapChat.

OK I do have Pinterest. But I haven't built it or kept it up or followed anybody.

I probably will now.

Oh and LinkedIn. Probably need to give that some serious attention.

Maybe.

Now I've unplugged that ONE thing.

Facebook.

There goes my social life. Sigh......

Maybe, just maybe, I will discover a new life

after  Facebook.

. . . for now . . .

Unleash Me

I am a woman who wants to. . .

Write, love and be loved, enjoy, travel, be, relate and be related to, pray, heal and be healed, and
worship and know The One who made me.

No more am I just interested in a 9 to 5 job (fine print: “with some evenings and weekends”).

No more am I intrigued by problem-solving   
      meetings and topically designed
               committees which only end up
being more notes in the minutes with more meetings needed in the future for more notes in the minutes . . . .
No more am I gratified
            by numbers, output, quantity, or scores.

I find time extremely valuable.

I find real conversations extremely valuable.

I find love and joy the most important among the trophies of skills, talents, abilities, possessions, positions, and titles.

What kind of “job” is that?

What vocational calling is that?

My Lord and my God, I am listening to you.

Amid this crowd of clamoring thoughts in my mind,
you stoop to write a message
in the soil of my heart and soul with your finger.

Unleash me from my fears and oughts and help me respond beyond my comfortable boundaries I have set and rules I have made.

Amen.                                                                                       

by Kay

Afternoon Matinee

 

Shadows grow longer

as I gaze from work's upper story windows

down onto the coiffed grounds

where a silhouetted,

more quiet, bronze-orange afternoon

takes the place of the earlier

energetic, effervescent morning.

 

The days are shorter

even with the same hours always given;

yet light is more quickly upstaged

by the dusk-to-dark act.

 

Lingering and looking

At the matinee performance of light and shadows

I am wistful and full of memories. . . .

 

 

 

While the warmth of the western sunshine

pours through my picturesque porthole to the outside,

I ponder, worship,

and feel grateful for a moment more.

 

 

Then moving on to all that awaits me the rest of my day

I pick up the pace

before darkness falls.
 

 

Unburdened

The unanswers, anxieties,

and clamor of things

that need plans laid

and  decisions made took a back seat as I walked

from my car to work's door this morning.

Startled from my self-absorption, I noticed

color had arrived in the many trees
dotting the campus.
Reds, oranges, and yellows amid the fading green--
all against a backdrop of sky blue.
The morning breeze scurried leaves
in swirls on the ground,
and the morning sun poured
through the colander of trees
creating shadows and shafts of dancing light.

I looked and saw,

tasted and knew
God is good.

This  masterpiece morning reminded me that

the Master Artist, the ever-present I AM
knows, sees, and acts
in this world,
in the pain,
in the present,
in my life.

With morning and all its color, light, and gust

giving my face a last caress
before I entered a day's worth of insideness,
I smiled grateful for hope anew.

 

by ckh --  experienced at Baptist Health-North Little Rock 11/10/14

Softening the Less

 No child

nor spouse

nor mother

nor father

do I hold in my arms.

So when

I pick you up

and bury my face in your fur

smelling the scent of chimney smoke

from your night air jaunt,

I smile.

A little joy and lots of love

fill up the vacancy in my heart--

softening the less,

giving me more

just because you

nudge your head

against my lips for one more kiss

on the tip of your ear.

You will not always be.

But for now you keep

the cold of lonely away,

at least for one more day.

(. . . regarding ztc)

Topped Off

Exhausted, I went in search of coffee. That's when I saw her.

Maybe my age, maybe younger.

She pushed a walker and haltingly stepped . . . stepped . . . stepped

While sporting her stylish boots, fleece-trimmed jacket, and dyed auburn-red hair.

Feeling so fat-producingly fatigued and washed out, I bee-lined for the cafeteria’s coffee machine

Only to find one machine out of order and the other out of coffee.

BIG sigh.

“Is the cappuccino working?” the stylish walker-lady asked me.

She had finally made it into the cafeteria only to find no rewards for her effort.

No I said. Nothing is working.

“Oh.” She seemed tired . . . like me. And disappointed.

Follow me, I said. I’m going upstairs to the Atrium where there’s coffee in the afternoon, I said.

We rode the elevator to three. She talked about her tumor on her spine, about her never-ending pain, about the many doctors, about the mountain of medicine.

While waiting on our coffees being prepared by the Atrium’s good-natured and beautifully smiling workers, the walker-lady told me her age--six years younger than me.

I immediately recognized my survivor’s guilt and pushed it back.

She told about her home being broken into twice, about now having to move into another home with a new person, about children who don’t talk to her, about ten grandchildren.

I saw the grey at her part in her hair. I saw the gold sparkle in her long nails. I saw the tears welling up and spilling over.

“I just wish they would take the tumor out. One doctor said maybe instead they will take a disk out and fuse my neck. Another doctor said just take the Oxycontin. I don’t like taking it. Makes me feel bad.”

How long have you been sick I asked.

“Ten years.”

Tears ran down her hollow cheeks. I gave her a napkin from the dispenser next to the cream and sugar.

Our coffees came. She looked at my badge. “So you are a pastor? Would you pray with me?”

Before she asked I sensed our “chance” encounter had The One Who Sees’ hand on it and on us.

We sat down with our coffees. I told her a story about another woman who had been sick for twelve years, spent her savings and something like the home mortgage on doctors, and still grew sicker by the day. Told her about the sick woman reaching for Jesus, about Jesus stopping and healing the woman, about the  woman's life being transformed as well as healed.

Then the walker-lady stretched her sparkly gold fingernailed hands past her coffee and grasped my hands.

I prayed for physical and spiritual healing for us both. God knew the ways we needed his healing, needed him.

She took the elevator and slowly walked out the front door in her stylish boots, fleece-trimmed jacket, and auburn-red dyed hair.

I walked down the three flights of stairs back to my office to drink the coffee. I was still tired yet gently refreshed.

“But He told me. . . ‘My power is strongest when you are weak. . . .’” –2 Corinthians 12:9