Tired of cutesy mice and feather wands that your kitty-cat ignores? Try an eyeball instead! These gruesome cat toys will be available at our booth at Shock Stock, Canada’s only convention devoted completely to horror and exploitation; April 13-15, London, Ontario. For more information visit Shock Stock Part II.
Above, about as much attention as Maggie ever showed me: hesitation, a quick sniff, and then just beyond my reach. Getting older now and finally gaining some weight, the skinny calico I had as a teenager still comes yowling down the hallway when I visit home, but rarely does she let me pet her. Maggie was named after Bach’s wife, Anna Magdalena; Bach, himself, lived on in spirit in my mother’s once-darling pet, a cockatoo named J.S. Bird. Despite all the baroque, mother successfully taught it to whistle the opening bars to Beethoven’s 5th symphony. I wonder if Maggie would be impressed.
And speaking of catattacks, have you been to Sweater Eyes’s official website? There are too many cats to count on the homepage alone. Photos, plushies, and philosophy from the biggest cat lady of them all.
Chosen by Katie herself, here is today’s photograph and accompanying experiment.
Days and nights of happiness.
Photograph by Katie Vanderhaeghe, Sweater Eyes. Click to enlarge.
DANTE ON THE STAIRS
A staircase made of grating, a downward descent. Katabasis for the soul.
Flash, instant, my guide’s role reversed: my Dante, taking me through hell and upward to the light.
Separate what I know from what I see before me; try to imagine it differently, see this through naïve eyes. Richer from knowledge? In some ways, yes. Multiple perspectives and multiple genders, traversing different lives and letting what happened, happen. But only once; I no longer live in that moment.
This moment, on the stairs. About the jump into my lap, beside me, on the step above me. Doesn’t matter, he’s here.
Looking through my own eyes, hair and dust, glass. Reframe it. Review. Reword.
I’m sitting on the soft plush of the staircase, about two thirds up. Dante, soft and petite, his every bone I know—Dante, alert, vigilant, lying on my chest—this cat is watching my every move. He knows my vices. He doesn’t mind.
I can’t capture everything in this picture: the sound of matches and videogames, the heat from the bed, the intense comfort of my first home—but you see this space with a little bit of what I love. Finally: my Dante, myself, my art, and space: space filled and to be filled. Empty space and possibility.
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