A Tom and Jerry-style Catastrophe

Except in this episode, Tom is in fact a spayed Queen (Speckle) and Jerry a timid cat called Anushka, with the heart and demeanor of a mouse.  

A true story of what happened when, after the tragic death of a beloved pet, a well-meaning owner resolved to comfort the grief stricken companion cat by adopting a new friend for her. Tom and Jerry meets High Noon crossed with Star Wars, Speckle morphed into Darth Vader and timorous Anushka revealed she was a nervous C3PO.  

Speckle's anxiously furrowed brow pulls her pricked ears forward as she stares out of the window, sunlight  glossing her tortoiseshell coat of many colours. She heaves a deep sigh. Where, oh where, is Egg?

She'd noticed her human was deeply distressed some time ago, round about the last time Egg had been seen.  That was, well, six weeks in human time which would make it about...extending her claws to double her body abacus, she calculated 6 x 7 and eventually reached a number. Forty two weeks. Why, that's almost a year in cat terms.

Egg - pudgy and grey  with an attitude overloaded with superciliousity, snub nose pointedly raised high - would never stay away from the food bowl or her comfy Yak hair throw for this long. 

Something wasn't right. Deciding to check the kitchen cupboards for the millionth time, Speckle jumps from the desk in her habitually awkward manner, four paws landing heavily on the floor.

Meanwhile, crouched on the arm of the easy chair in the Pro Life cattery, Anushka looks up warily as the room darkens.  The light behind the human filling the doorway outlining a solid, featureless shape.  What now, she thinks. 

Without warning, she's  trapped in a nightmare. Her world shrinks to a cardboard box, engine noise, strange smells and unfamiliar sounds.  From somewhere, a sing-song voice chatters non-stop until finally the motion and noise cease and for a minute, the world is silent and still. Lurching as the box tilts and bounces abruptly, things change again.

Light, space, food, water.  Then, from behind a door blasts Hoover-like snuffling, which becomes a sinister hiss.  Terrified, Anushka darts beneath the bed and crouches there, trembling.  As the hours pass, her eyes begin to swell and water, her body wracks with sneezes.  She's dying.  No, she's dead and this is cat purgatory.   How did this happen?

"What the devil?" Speckle growls, on the other side of the door. Foreign cat.  On my turf.  No. No no no no no.  

And so begins 3 months of yowling, howling, hissing, spitting, clawing, plaintive cries, tail biting and nose slicing, resulting in  a blood feud and enmity worthy of a Sicilian vendetta.  From two furry licorice allsort cats whose lives began in animal shelters, unwanted.

Just five years ago Speckle was swept up and dropped into a strange home, yet now, Queen of All She Surveys, she viciously defends her home. Could it be true - females who scale the ladder of success stiletto (or claw) the hands on the rungs below?  How disappointing! 

Slight progress has been made however - Anushka emerges from under the bed at meal times and at night, when she knows Speckle is shut out of the bedroom. 

Free of her self imprisonment, she chases insects, disembowels her soft toy ball, hunts down and annihilates the mats. She's even been heard to purr on occasion and has a fine turn of phrase, scolding the human in a high pitched whiney yowl if dinner and breakfast are late.

When the opportunity presents, Speckle slips into the room and lies on her side, paw plaintively stretched under the bed, the odd pathetic "miu" sliding from her lips as she begs the intruder to come closer and feel the fury of her unsheathed talons. 

Earsplitting shrieks, maddened chases through the house and intense loathing is subsiding - malevolence has dialed down a tad.

Speckle is beginning to understand that this chick is not leaving.  Which is not for want of trying by the humans - the cat carrier has come out several times and miraculously, the sight of it produces a happy, loving, purry little furry Anushka, winding herself around a human and showing off how at home she is.

It was difficult to explain to Him Outdoors that the tough Tom cat he'd suggested to replace Egg had been superceded a nerdy, allergy prone reticent little girl who'd even been treated by an animal spiritualist (she found a huge ball of grief in her chest) to little avail, but he soon fell for those enormous eyes too, and bailed on 'return' duty.

With an instinct to be envied by any fortune teller, particularly at those moments it was decided "Ok, this is it, today she goes back", which seemed to bring a different cat out to play - confident, delightful Anushka even before the carrier was hauled down from the shelf.

Irresistible.  Clearly, she's decided that this is her home and she's not to be returned to sender like some wrongly addressed parcel.

So life continues, the cats live past each other with occasional bitter interludes and the humans are yet again slaves to their pets.  

Sigh.

Can a woman be too capable and independent?

And why is that question still being posed in 2015?

Dawn on Saturday should have found me in Nairobi but unfortunately, international travel arrangements were kicked into touch by an "only in Africa" situation, and instead the weekend peeped over the horizon to find a small convoy of two cars, laden with camping gear, five young men aged between 12 and 18 and a pair of women gasping for breathing space offered by the Kruger National Park. 

Parks and open spaces, "green lungs", hoover up CO2 and spill life-giving oxygen into a frenetic city, which cruelly slurps that up and spits out even more toxic emissions (90 million tons a day, Al Gore tells us). Ouch.

But entering the Park immediately synchronises human lungs to the rhythm of the bush.  Our chests expand wide and deep, drawing in soft, pure air, fragranced by dust and Red Bushwillow (Combretum apiculatum) overlaid with eau d'animal. As if we'd walked into a wall, our blood pressure instantaneously drops, breathing slows and muscles relax. Heaven.

Once inside the reserve, my genius friend hands over her vehicle to her cool dude (licensed) guest from Argentina and of course, all the boys want to be together in that car, leaving us women to travel in Lola. Terrific, that works for us too - Kruger's big and striking north for our camp close to the Mozambique border, we have hours to while away, absorbed in bright conversation.

Enneagrams. Buddhism. Books. Further education and studies. EQ and its effects. Travel anecdotes and then, true cavewomen, we fall to analysing relationships.  Boss (hers) husband (mine) males of our experience (past and present, varied roles). Friend's relationships. Single parenting our sons. 

Result?  We concluded that men can be comfortable around smart, strong women providing they aren't too strong or smart, all of the time.  The battle of the sexes is truced and troubled waters oiled when control is occasionally relinquished and handed over to the peacock.  

Which is a bit of a problem if you are a strong, intelligent, opinionated, educated woman perfectly capable of running life, work, home and children exactly the way you want them to be managed.  You're so competently achieving this and fitting in some 'me' time that you don't have space in your úber organised schedule to step back and hand over the reins.  The agenda is jam packed - what if the baton is dropped and your strategic vision not met?  This isn't about sexism or female chauvinism – this issue is one of control and fear of letting go.  Lack of trust.  Perfectionism.

Both genders need to recognise that relationships are a jointly baked pie. One baker's strength is in the pastry, other baker’s in making the filling. Success lies in establishing and acknowledging whose skills lie where and respecting that boundary. And knowing that over a lifetime, different pies with diverse fillings will be baked and roles reassigned. Fluidity rules.

My learned and commandingly corporate friend and I are faintly optimistic that we've raised our boys to be confident men.  Powerful enough to jointly bake a pie and willingly swap pieces and places with the independent, accomplished women with whom they choose to share their lives.

That's our contribution to answering this darned question.

Grand Canyon of Emptiness

Being a wife without her husband and a mother without her children means that a home is just a building, boundaries of clay enveloping empty space. I don't find "alone" scary, and the past 2 years of alone-ness has passed by swiftly , barely punctuated by loneliness.  

Why, then, should this week bring a grand canyon of desolation to break like an enraged tidal wave over my head and sweeping my soul, helplessly caught up in a riptide, out to sea? 

I love my life, dammit, it's busy and interesting and filled with new experiences, travel, stimulating work, remarkable people and some heartwarming community projects.  I wake up happy every day, and am incredibly lucky to do so.

But.

For one month, 30 wonderful days, Junior came home from varsity and as the sun breaks through cloud, releasing rich colour and light in its path, I found a fulfillment I hadn't even known was lacking.  

Eagerly looking forward to early evening, when he returned  from work and we enjoyed a drink on the verandah, sharing tales of our day, I enthusiastically prepared meals, setting the table for two.  Suddenly, life has more meaning. How could that be - there was no lack of purpose to begin with?

Then Him Outdoors arrived home for Christmas and I'm just short of Senior Son to make life paradise.  There's laughter and noise, a pile of dirty dishes and laundry. Walks, eye-rolling and exasperated sighs.  Snoring and having to share "my" bathroom. Morning tea in bed.

If I have to sum it all up in a word, "sharing" will do.  In a good way.

A tsunami of friends and family arrive and the roar of a full house drowns out the sound of a  tide turning as the hours slip past.  The flow ebbs away until the crashing waves are silenced.  A home is transformed back into a brick structure and emptiness echoes the bleakness within me. Now the water is my brimming eyes, staring into empty rooms.  My hands, so busy for a while, hang reproachfully at my side, tingling with unused energy.  Crying out for something to do.  A beloved someone to care for.  My family.  At home.

I thought I had it all sussed out and sorted by now, but I've uncovered a secret place.  I'm a nurturer, needing to be needed by those I love most.  It puffs out my chest and makes my toes dance.  And conflicts with my fierce independence. Am I two people in one body and mind?  

And most importantly, can I be alone in this?  Is there anyone out there who is also contemplating, with bewilderment, a paradigm shift of who they thought they were?  Is medication in order or is this yet another step on the ladder of mid life crisis?

Frankly, my dear, I'd thought we were past this by now.