Mercies

Mrs Magpie is now helping me with the cleaning. Here she is offering to do the washing up.

She's very particular. For instance she won't come and help or even come near me if I'm wearing a beanie hat or a coat in an unacceptable shade of green.

If she hasn't checked out my wardrobe and wants to come in she sits on the window sill and pecks at the glass. I have to leave the back door open for the dogs and sometimes she enters this way. I always know when she's been in because she leaves pens and pen lids scattered over the floor, bills torn at the edges and then she usually swipes Scouts pills for her joints if they are left out to remind me to give them to Scout.

Before Mrs Magpie came into the house the other bird resident was this duckling who we had to hand rear as it was being attacked by its siblings. It liked swimming in the washing up bowl.

And oh I've just found this picture of Rocket as a puppy - mmmmmm - what went wrong? The dog in this picture would not be barking at all and sundry who walk past the gate or be very particular about what dog food he eats. OR be over zealous with the neighbour's dogs. OR be given a warning from the Dog Warden of Wiltshire.

But here he is - still lovely and unable to grab forty winks on his own.

I asked Pocket if he was still going by the name Rinpoche Pocket but he sighed. I am still of course the precious one but living like a cat means wanting nothing beyond the life you lead. Cats do not need to examine their lives because they do not doubt that life is worth living. My that's very profound I say. You have to understand he went on that nobody is coming to save us from ourselves.

I asked him if these were his own thoughts because I thought that Carl Sagan had said that. He chose to ignore me and went on about sometimes a cigar was just a cigar . Well that was definitely Sigmund Freud I told him and have you ever actually smoked a cigar? He told me not to be so silly and where was he going to get a cigar from as he didn't think the corner shop sold them.

 Nerines and dahlias still standing just about as the wind howls about them like a lost dog.

And talking of lost dogs a friend of mine had to let go of her old dog the other day. I have put this poem on my blog before when we had to let go of one of ours but it's a beautiful poem and still makes me weep.

Mercies

by Don Paterson

She might have had months left of her dog-years,

but to be who? She'd grown light as a nest

and spent the whole day under her long ears

listening to the bad radio in her breast.

On the steel bench, knowing what was taking shape

she tried and tried to stand, as if to sign

that she was still of use, and should escape

our selection. So I turned her face to mine,

and seeing only love there – which, for all

the wolf in her, she knew as well as we did -

she lay back down and let the needle enter.

And love was surely what her eyes conceded

as her stare grew hard, and one bright aerial

quit making its report back to the centre.