November 16, 2009

For I will consider my Cat Buju




He is not supposed to be alive. My daughter heard his cries from inside a dumpster where she found a garbage bag sealed with duct tape. She tore the bag open and he  licked her hand. He barely weighed a pound. And when he curled up between her palms, she remembered a scene from one of her favorite movies, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective: "My little Buju."  He now had a name.

Our family nursed Buju back to health and when he was strong enough, we took him to the Humane Society to be neutered. Since then, Buju, who used to be scared of the slightest sound has grown stronger and bolder to the point where he has become a fixture in our lives: playing tag with my son, nuzzling my daughter, purring in my wife's lap.

Buju and I are the ones who are awake while the world sleeps. When I'm watching TV, he reminds me that I have a bald spot and licks the thinning hair on my crown. And when I'm falling asleep, he nudges me until I awaken and then he pads over to the window where he becomes, like Jeoffry,our guardian: "For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary."

He also thinks that he is a writer.

On most mornings before I go to work, I begin my day by writing. Buju escorts me downstairs to my computer and sits beside me. He plays with my pens, chews on my pencils, and like any good critic, offers commentary at the appropriate time.

And when I refuse to listen to his endless carping or he disapproves  of the text, he slaps his paw against the keyboard and holds down the keys for emphasis: asssssssssssssssssssssdddddddd

And despite my screams, "Buju!' which when he first came would have sent him scurrying under our beds where he would have stayed for days, he has now grown to the point where I don't scare him any more.

He must also think he's one of my children.

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8 Comments:

Alex Foster said...

Sounds like you got another wonderful addition to the family.

Rockaway Girl said...

Because of the loving and tender care your family has generously given to him, you have humanize him! wonderfully warm tale!

Crafty Green Poet said...

how lucky that your daughter found him and how sweet to see him so settled in your household!

http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/ said...

Hey, Alex, great to hear from you!

http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/ said...

Give thanks, Rockaway Girl.
Buju almost left a comment, but I put him on the bed beside the computer.

http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/ said...

Crafty, he has brought out so many qualities in us. Yes, we are lucky that my daughter found him.

Tricia said...

Our dachshund is a big part of our family. Animals love unconditionally. It's a beautiful thing. :)

http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/ said...

Yes, Tricia, it is a beautiful thing.
Thanks for the comment.

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"This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived. Let it be known, the earth passed before us. Our details are important. Otherwise, if they are not, we can drop a bomb and it doesn’t matter.”

~ Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones


"The immediacy of a work of art is what gives it lasting life. It is a paradox, of course, which is to say a life-giving contradiction, the opposite of a solvable mystery. And when one focuses the thoughtful mind on what is there before us, what is immanent, then a sense of loss hazes in, ineluctably. For that idea-generating surrender to the immanent must pass, and quickly. The trick is to enshrine that surrender in the work, so others can experience it inexhaustibly. That is the function of art—not self-expression, not social commentary, not innovating on or reacting to what other artists have done. To defy the temporal, the flux, art enshrines."

~Ricardo Pau-LLosa @ Americano